2024-12-10 AGM Transcript
We're very quorate - 90 so far 🙂
We are testing the microphones 🎤
Betty is introducing the AGM, welcome!
Seven presenting here - new trustee Dee 🙂 Special thank you to to the previous trustees!
Events and Happenings
Eddie: Good evening, we've had many events. Green Fest! ... Not the best photo, just after we setup, but not everything was there. There was at least one member who joined from Green Fest. A big thank to everyone who helped out, particularly Emily who provided transportation, and to Malcolm who gave us the pagoda (tent thing)
We also have a gaming group which meets on a Wednesday, if you're interested in this sort of thing please do join us - probably best to contact us on Discord first so we can make sure there's a place in the game etc.
Film Nights!
Stuff about EMF Camp and Radio Space - I was speaking and not minuting
Future Makers! An excellent out reach event at the library. It was good - huge thanks to those who helped 🙂 Small children make a disgusting about of noise. Nice to inspire them though...
Combat Robots was also a big part of the future makers thing. It's very exciting to see this in the space and great to see in the space.
One Shot Wonders - Hello I'm Dee, apparently the game they lead was ridiculous. It's the third thursday of each Monday - everything from dungeon crawls to things like goblin quest. It's run by different people each time You should come along and have a go. There's often snacks 🙂
We had an Open Day this year which was excellent. We were all a bit nervous thinking no one would come but it actually went really well and there were a number of people who ended up joining the space on that day. It was a very nice, warm and cosy day of showing people from the public. We'd like to try and do these sorts of things more regularly - maybe every six months? Who knows. Bringing stuff to show off is a huge help, demos were very popular.
Discord! Most of us know about this now - we have a huge community there, an online modern version of IRC / chat. Each team has their own channel and we do sort of casual stuff deciding when to meet up. The hanging-out channel is where we generally plan our Avenues breakfasts. Hack the Space Day
Edgar - hack the space days, many of us here already attend - but these are the days , usually a Saturday or Sunday where members are invited to come in and hack the space. Lots of improvements are made on these days, lots of painting, cleaning, tidying, constant sorting of wall-o-boxes (why do they always need sorting). We are considering making them more frequent. They've been every couple of months but we think having them on a set date after the members meeting might make it easier. One is a mini hack the space day where we don't close the space, and the others are full closure hack the space days. (month % 2) == 0, Let January = 0. The next hack the space day will be Saturday 11th January. Tools
Table saw - we've installed a card reader on the table saw, it's been an induction tool for quite a while, but the card reader helps. It's definitely an induction tool. Safety concerns. We had a fire at one point which was due to the table saw extraction. Lots of damage, fire brigade made everything wet (but I guess they did put out the fire which is good). Please request an induction through HMS.
We also have a new orbital sander which was paid for by the hackspace. Eddie asked which one we should buy on Discord (so you should join the discussion and help with these kind of things). Eddie has also put a special pad to increase the longevity of the sanding pads.
Also also we bought a new table router.
Ooh we also have keyless chucks now which have been fitted to all of the the drills in the space - Thanks Steve!
There are also two new band saws although one doesn't work 🤷
Lots of new hand tools too. There are quite a lot of out standing inductions for the planer/thicknesser - part f it is broken, hopefully we can fix this. Eddie is writing up a new induction course for the planer, we can use the yellow thicknesser for now (the thicknesser is the bit that is broken on the main planer/thicknesser).
The new laser cutter! We have a new laser cutter, about 200 members have been inducted so far. About 130 of these were free inductions, huge thanks to Emily, Jaren and John for helping with these. And thanks to Matt and Daniel for installing the card reader. Someone even used the rotary tool the other day (it looked like they knew what they were doing).
Sublimation Printer! We have a printer now. It's very cool and we made mugs to test it. Please do not put normal ink in it, it needs to be sublimation ink or you will break the printer. Anyway, the machine is available, feel free to have a play.
Things about HMS Kiosk, Air quality monitoring and heating
Amazing posters from Gareth: They are excellent and he really does not need much nudging. Anyway these really help the space and are lovely! There's a Solargraphy workshop this weekend. We might put some of these on t-shirts.
Projects
There are loads of cool things going on in the space, there's a slide of pretty projects.
What?? Urchin is back! They've been around for a while. Quite creepy but very cool. Thanks to Mouse and Ian for these sorts of these weird things. 🙂
Teams
As you may be aware, from Gareth's Posters... Wednesday Nights are Member's Nights. You should come in and hang out. It is fun. Slow recovery from COVID but we're getting better.
Thank you to all the Teams
Lots of names listed against their respective teams. We are not reading this. Teams are vital, there's far too much to do 🙂 But also thank you to those who aren't in teams and help out still.
Membership
594 members now. 54% in the past six months and 14% in the past week. Stats are on HMS. We are gradually gaining something like 10-15 members month. Spread the work. What even is a Hackspace????
Minimum Membership Payments 1 year review
It's all numbers.... The motivation for this change was due to VAT and not really an attempt to make more money. We are not likely to hit the VAT threshold now.
The summary is that 89 members left originally which some have rejoined so now it's like 54. 85 cancelled entirely.
There's a graph showing the split between all membership income and the taxable part.
Metalworking
This has been a long running project, we haven't quite got all the benefits from this area yet. A huge thanks to all the people over the years who have contributed to this project, it's a members run organisation and it's only by all of us doing things that makes stuff possible. The good news is that we're at the final push, we have walls in place and starting to finalise where things are going. We're asking for a quote from a couple of people, as well as from Matt. Hopefully we'll start in the first quarter of 2025. It's not just to put metalworking downstairs, but also to improve safety and give more room for stuff. We should separate the dusty stuff and the sparky stuff. We'll need people at various points to help etc, especially with moving, but it'll be cool and a nice thing to help with.
Future of the lease
We are currently paying 40757 and this will increase to 42388 next year. It's 4% increase per year, negotiated down from 6% per year. Hopefully it will all be ok.
Future of Membership
Something like +70-80 per year. Hopefully at £15/mo per month we'll be ok. We do not need to consider increasing minimum membership yet. Standing orders is still a problem, stretching to 6 weeks means you are paying for 10 months rather than 12 which is a VAT issue. Storage and Disposal
This is not a new project. This has always been an issue in the hackspace. Self regulation is hard, lots of people have not followed the rules which means a small number of people have to catelogue and chase people on stuff. We have to tort stuff and it costs the hackspace money. If it doesn't fit into large project you need to contact us and arrange a suitable place for the project. Lots of this isn't viable, we'll try and get a clean state and start skipping stuff out of date. We need options to help us manage storage and will discuss with members about ideas. The take home is that there will be a skip 👀 🗑️
Treasurer Update
Income this year 76,000, over 5000 last year. Expenditure was sligthtly less, which means we made a tiny profit.
Fixed assets, stuff that depreciates over the years. Various small numbers. Rental deposit held by BizSpace 6850, should go up but they won't charge us for some reason??? 🙂
No big purchases this year. The 3900 last year was the boxford laser. Depreciation this year was £974.
Income for the year. Membership 32 down from 61, will explain later. 1163 vs 656 for events - mostly EMF Camp. Some of the snackspace income was actually donations from EMF (oops). Tool inductions hugely up but mostly due to all the inductions this year. Membership payments 33k, the other half. Members boxes and RFID cards, 225 from 200.
The change on the £5 min starting October last year. Anyone who pays less than £5 is a donation, anything over that allows membership. The first £5 is the membership and everything above is a donation The £5 part of that is not VATable. This allows us to stay under the 12 month rolling VAT threshold. I'm not typing the rest of the numbers there are too many Questions
A big reduction in the insurance payment. If we had a serious claim, we wouldn't be able to get insurance again and the space would probably close. We are very keen to improve safety.
Would cameras lower insurance? Probably not. This is a hot topic. We have inductions as a safe guard in place for this.
Voting
Got distracted with the vote but if I remember correctly it was 4 no, 4 abstain, and 86 yes, so the constitutional change passed.