Questions For Candidates (Organized)

DMS General
#1

This is a wiki post.

Members: Please edit this post and add your questions to the bottom.

Candidates: Please reply once, tag the member you are replying to and edit your reply as more questions come in.

All other posts to this thread will be deleted. If you wish to start a discussion on a particular question/answer, please create a linked thread. Thank you.

To get things started I’m going to copy the questions from the existing thread into here.

@Raymond

I have 2 questions:

What are your thoughts on the freebie shelf and are you for or against it?
How do you see the board moving above the day-to-day operations and more into strategy for the future?

@Cairenn_Day

I have a first question,

I have examples of 2 types of leadership

  1. is to enable members by posting say (making up a fake nonsense library committee here)
  2. we have a recent donation of books, they need to be listed and cataloged
  3. since we how have several books on the history of underwater basketry
    weaving. the art sections needs to be rearranged
  4. the new books need to be shelved
  5. please help to keep books in the correct location, if you see one out of place,
    please but it where it goes
  6. we are running out of room, suggestions to solve this

Now this requires work from multiple members and I might not get done in a timely manner

The other one is 'bull by the horns

  1. I sorted thru the donation and I catalogued them and discarded all the useless ones
  2. I am ordering materials for new shelves, but books will need to be less than 11 in tall
  3. if you don t put books back you wil be banned from the library

Now that method get the work done in a timely manner and with a unity of thought and planning

Which one would you consider to be a better method of leadership?

Big questions

  1. do you support a revision of our by laws?

  2. if so, how would do it? a)Board
    b) Board and committee chairmen
    c) member committee
    d) something else

@LisaSelk

Here are the ten questions that I have been waiting to post for the candidates running for the Board this year:


  • What makes you stand out above and beyond the other candidates?

  • Regarding our Class/Event and Honorarium approval processes, do you feel we are currently balancing our Mission Statement (https://dallasmakerspace.org/wiki/Mission_Statement) with what membership and the outlying community are interested in learning? If not, do you feel that our processes are currently too restrictive or not restrictive enough?

  • As a Board Member - between the following two items - Would your focus be on saving money for a future move and/or unexpected expenses, or would it be focused on purchasing newer/bigger/better tools in the near future?

  • Management of Dallas Makerspace is always a “hot topic”. In your idea of a perfect solution, how would the “power” distribution of our community be handled ("Who has ‘final say’ on what items, etc…). The “players” in the solution include: “The Board”, “Committee Chairs” (or committees as a whole…), “The Membership” (via member votes, etc…), and possibly an “On Site Manager”. NOTE: If your plans include an “On Site Manager”, please elaborate with additional details such as expected duties, hours on site, etc…

  • If you had to choose one of the following, do you feel that we should focus on “being the biggest and best” or “inter-committee projects and hackathons”?

  • In your opinion, which types of agenda items should be included on Regular Member Meetings, and which should be included on Board of Directors Meetings?

  • We are nearing 1500 members. What do you think the optimum number of members should be for our community?

  • What will You do personally to encourage and ensure better new member experiences?

  • What is one of your major pet peeves about Dallas Makerspace?

  • Finally: Paint Booth or Not? Why or Why Not? If so, then where would you suggest it be located? Do you plan on sacrificing existing committee space(s)? What about the government regulations? And, since our lease does not allow storage of paint, how would that be handled?


Thanks in advance for taking the time to answer as many of the above questions that you feel comfortable answering for us! :blankspace: :dms:

@AndrewLeCody

Candidates, what is your position on protecting personal information (names, email, access times, messages, metadata, etc) of members and guests? If elected do you plan to request access to raw or non-anonymized data, and if so, for what purpose?

Previously some members have asked for non-anonymized data of various users of Talk. I fear that these requests were made with the intent of retailition or to have a chilling effect on usage of the forums. We’ve had at least two such requests to my knowledge, and while previous boards have agreed with protecting member privacy, I would like to be assured that candidates for the next board will uphold that standard.

As a long-time privacy activist, this issue is important to me.

@zmetzing

Question #3: Do you think we need an employee? What responsibilities and authorities would that employee have while doing work for DMS? How will the employee’s performance be measured? What is the expected pay range for the employee?

@uglyknees

What I really want to ask (but I don’t want to put that energy out into the universe) is “who is your dream team of DMS board members? and why?” But I don’t think that’s helpful nor do I believe it will begin a forward moving conversation. It will not work out this way…and that’s a good thing.

What I would like to ask you to do is to speak of the management-related strengths (in concerns to DMS) you see in each candidate who is running. To make it fair and not labor intensive you can only say ONLY three words about that persons strength. That’s right people, I want to see what you to recognize as the strengths of each person running and thus I can piece together the puzzle of strengths I believe it will take to steer this ship called paradise. 9 people 3 words. You can do this.

Each of you copy this into your response and write in what comes naturally. This is not a time for taking shots at someone. Failure to be civil won’t be received positively by me.

David:
Alex:
Kris:
Luke:
Mitch:
Robert:
Walter:
Steve:
Brian:

@artg_dms

Given the growth of DMS, I see the need for a “division and separation of powers” to handle the growing pains. This would serve 2 purposes.

  1. Limit the power, authority, influence of any one person or group.
  2. Limit the burden of responsibility and accountability that any one person or group can take on.

As DMS grows, the BoD takes on a growing burden of things to deal with that keeps DMS up and running. Spreading that burden can be accomplished in 2 ways:

  1. Increase the number of members on the BoD
    and/or
  2. Delegate/ assign authority (along w/ responsibility/ accountability) downward through the rank and file of the membership.

I’d like to hear comments and opinions from each candidate.
Note: I was not asked to post this by any of the candidates.

Questions for candidates
#2
Questions for candidates
#3

Ok, that’s a lot of questions, so this may be edited a few times as I have time to answer.

I’ve served as a Director 5 or 6 times outside DMS both for non-profits, and for-profit orgs. I have a fair amount of organizational accounting experience, though I am not an accountant. Part of my current job, is to write legal documents (ordinances, resolutions, and contracts), negotiate contracts, and manage staff’s of Attorneys. I’m currently working on a Texas supreme Court case. Over the years, I’ve managed and recruited thousands of volunteers. I understand what it takes to get people involved, and accomplish tasks with volunteers. I’m also a died in the wool Internet geek, a now occasional gamer, programmer, network architect, etc etc. 30 years is a long time to learn a lot of stuff!

It’s also possible that I am the homeliest candidate, so I’m expecting a few pity votes!

I think we do in some areas, and do not in others. Some Committees, teach a lot of classes. A few, not so much. Generally, we need to do a much better job meeting the needs of new members to get access to tools requiring training. One of the most frequent complaints I hear, is that they joined to learn tool X, but no training classes are scheduled, or too few classes. This relates to our serious need to do a better job recruiting and retaining volunteers - some shops just have no one to teach, and aren’t looking either. That needs to change.

So often, I see various leaders throw up their hands about various problems, saying “well, we’re volunteers”. My answer to that, is: Did you take the job just to do what was easy? Or to get the job done? Because its never the volunteers. Its a lack of leadership. Where the Board is concerned, they’ve taken so much on themselves, that they are forced to prioritize - and usually the sexy fun interesting projects win, and the boring but necessary stuff loses. This is but one example of why building and recruiting a Management group is so necessary - because a lot of stuff won’t get done any other way.

Until we build a management team for the day to day stuff, the 20-30 people who currently do 98% of the work, flatly cannot get the job done, and will forever be playing whack-a-mole with things that need doing, to the detriment of us all.

I don’t think we are in an either/or situation. We can, and should, do both. But we should carefully plan and budget in order to accomplish these goals. Given the costs of a move, I think we need to get our financial ducks in a row first, before we make the kinds of serious investment moving would entail. We still have significant problems with our books, and our revenue accounting in particular. We need to change our banking structure as well, since we are now exceeding the FDIC limit on our current accounts. I’d like to see us pass our first audit, change our Banking to include multiple insured accounts for reserves and other savings-related funds, pursue a commercial line of credit, to prevent the situation where one member has to assume the risk for the whole Org by guaranteeing our credit account. I’d also like to set aside a 60-day reserve fund to give us some cushion in the event of some unexpected shortfall. At that point, I’d hope to begin a Capital Campaign to raise money for a new building, or perhaps another site.

Right now, we are saving, but its generally just randomly guessed at amounts. That’s because its difficult to decipher exactly what our true costs are, true revenues are, and what we can expect in the next month, much less the next year. We need accurate and well organized books, to tell us what those numbers are, and allow us to forecast accurately. We also need a budget, to provide guidance and discipline in our spending process.

I do think moving before we are financially ready would place our future at risk, and I want to see DMS survive and prosper long term. But I also think, our revenues are strong enough to support a mix of spending and saving both.

I want to quote Mark Havens here, one of the original guys who wrote the current by-laws:

That’s a pretty good model, and one followed by the vast majority of Non-profits. But somewhere along the way, someone decided that killing committees and replacing them with “Benevolent Dictators” was a good idea, and in so doing effectively exterminated new volunteerism and community growth, and left us with an ever-shrinking group of older member volunteers that the membership at-large commonly calls “The Clique”, moribund committee areas with non-existent committees and few or no classes.

We need to get back to the original model, restore volunteerism, and build real committees. Chairmen need to be leaders, not tyrants.

That’s the way successful organizations do it. That’s what our Bylaws were written to do. That’s what we should be doing.

The Law permits us to withhold Personally Identifiable Information" - and I would classify email addresses, home addresses, and financial information as PII.

I think considering the question requires understanding what we are. 501©(3) 's are non-governmental Public organizations. In this way, we are far closer to a government agency, that we are a private corporation, and in many respects, our requirements mirror this principle. Allowing the public to inspect our books and records, lists of voters, etc, are intended to allow the public to ensure that we are deserving of our tax exempt status, and are what we say we are. Therefore, we owe a duty to the public to be as transparent and open as we can be, in order to earn their trust. But that doesn’t mean we have to compromise our members details, or provide information which could result in identity theft, particularly since there is no valid reason for the public to know what my personal email address or home address is.

The more thorny issue relates to voting. If the vote cannot be verified, it cannot be trusted. What’s more, for good or ill, I can find no reference in the bylaws that permits secret ballot voting. I wish it were there, but it just isn’t.

Can you trust a Board member who disregards his public fiduciary duty to obey the law, ignores our bylaws, or breaks state or Federal law?

The better answer is - obey the law today, and change the rules as soon as is practicable. If am elected, I can promise you this - I may make decisions you will disagree with. But I will never willingly give you a reason not to trust me, or the Board I serve on.

@Raymond
What are your thoughts on the freebie shelf and are you for or against it?

I’ll be hoest, I’ve never really been much interested in it, but do recognize that many members find it useful and appreciate it. Conversely, I’m am adamantly opposed to any interpretation of our rules that allows any member to simply do whatever they want to do, whenever they want to do it. The end does not justify the means.

@Raymond
How do you see the board moving above the day-to-day operations and more into strategy for the future?

Clearly, we need to expand our corps of volunteers. and implement a managerial arm into our operations. I do believe this can be done with volunteers, but it can also be done with employees (should we ever get to the point we could afford one).

Right now, the Board is completely engrossed in everything - and you jjust can’t do a good job, while trying to do 5 jobs.

@zmetzing
Question #3: Do you think we need an employee? What responsibilities and authorities would that employee have while doing work for DMS? How will the employee’s performance be measured? What is the expected pay range for the employee?

Zach, I don’t want you to think I’m ducking an answer, but I feel that that’s a question best asked once a volunteer management team is created, implemented, and had a few months to gel. I think we’ll all have a much better idea whether an employee is needed, once we explore the limits of volunteer staffing. Likewise, I think we’ll have a much better idea what we can pay, once we have a budget in place, and solid revenue reporting to look at.

@artg_dms
I’d like to hear comments and opinions from each candidate.

I think (or perhaps hope) that I’ve covered this in my prior comments, such that my views on the matter are clear. Hopefully you feel informed!

@uglyknees

Honestly, all these candidates are good people, and it would be an honor serving with them.

PS - Clearly (see above) I’m far too much of a windbag to limit myself to three words!

Your fellow member,

Brian

5 Likes
#4

Brian (@Tapper), Robert (@Robert_Davidson), Alex (@AlexRhodes), Kris (@Kriskat30), Luke (@lukeiamyourfather), Steve (@Diplomat), Mitch (@themitch22), David G (@DaveG), and David K (@Photomancer) ~ Thank you ALL for taking the time to respond with thoughtful answers to the various questions asked on both this new Questions For Candidates (Organized) thread, as well as the original Questions for candidates thread!

I imagine having some idea of where the candidates stand on various issues will be helpful - especially for members who were not able to attend the Meet the Candidates meeting yesterday (Thursday, April 14th).

Thanks again! :dms:

#5

I’m copying my responses over from the other thread and setting this up so I can fill it in as I get to it. I may leave some questions unanswered for now, but I’ll try to get to all of them.

@Raymond

I’m for it, contingent upon adequate member interest in maintaining it. It never made sense to me for it to be a Logistics responsibility because Logistics already has enough on its plate without it. When DMS was small, that didn’t matter very much. But we’ve grown large enough that it should be put in the care of other volunteers.

For that to happen, the board will need to delegate responsibility and authority to other members and power will need to be given back to (or taken back by) the general membership to make decisions. That power can go back to the general membership if we fix the way quorum is calculated so membership meetings are once again worth going to for more than hearing about the status of various things around DMS.

@Cairenn_Day

This seems like a false dilemma, but I’ll do my best to answer anyway.

If people always put things back where they belong, the first style would work fine except that someone would still need to decide where things belong and different people will often have different opinions about that. In a big enough space, someone’s opinion will always be that the thing you want to organize belongs in the dumpster or as part of their art project.

The second style (where it seems like we’re assuming one person is in charge) would be at least partially necessary in a library type situation, because ultimately someone also needs to make sure things get done and done consistently. But it’s still preferable that non-leaders in that type of setting do their part to make sure they aren’t making things harder for the person in charge.

@LisaSelk

Given the current political climate of DMS, I think it’s that I really don’t want to be put in charge of anything. I’m willing to do it if necessary and I’ll do my best to do a good job, but I don’t want to have power over people. It’s just a thing about me. I think that’s what DMS needs right now. But it will be up to the members of Dallas Makerspace to decide whether or not that’s what they want.

I think it’s possible we could do more to attract teachers, but I don’t believe the honorarium process is currently one of our bigger problems. I think we should be looking for other things we can do to attract teachers from the surrounding community and to encourage members to step into teaching roles.

Every time we purchase a newer/bigger/better tool, we need to have or make space for it. There are still a few unused areas in Dallas Makerspace, but most of them don’t lend themselves to well to putting in a big new piece of equipment, so we will usually need to get rid of something if we want something new.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ever buy new equipment. But I do feel that every time we’re considering a big purchase we should consider whether or not it would be best to save that money for relocation expenses.

Ideally, most short-term and financial decisions are the responsibility of the Board of Directors. That’s a necessary mechanic of our organization because of it’s size. If the BoD didn’t handle such things, they wouldn’t get done in a timely manner.

However, I believe it’s very important that the membership always has the ability to replace the Board of Directors. This makes it entirely clear that the Board ultimately serves the membership and not the other way around. I truly believe that we would see better decision-making out of our Board (and not even a specific one - just in general) if they always knew they could be replaced by the general membership.

Reaching that state would be a matter of fixing how quorum and voting rights work. As it is now, voting rights are reset after every election. But how bad of a Board would we have to have for them to be so unpopular right after the election that they’re immediately replaced? What I’m saying is, as a particular Board’s term progresses, they get more and more immunity to being replaced.

The board should stay in power because it’s what the general membership wants, not because it would be incredibly difficult to remove them before the next election cycle.

If I had to choose one of those things, I think I would simply choose for us to be the best. But I think being bigger, having more/better cooperation between committees, and having events like hackathons could all help get us there.

If something needs to be done in short order or it’s a simple matter of doing something for legal compliance, it should definitely be a Board of Directors Meeting decision.

But I also think a lot of other board decisions could be discussed in membership meetings before they’re floated to the Board of Directors for a vote and I think that would be an excellent way for the membership to become more involved and engaged. That’s not a guarantee that the Board of Directors would do what most members want, but it would mean the board is informed about what members want before the final vote on an issue.

So long as DMS is run intelligently and maintained well, I don’t think there’s any exact limit. We could probably have 10,000 members and still keep things running smoothly as long as we have enough good volunteers and a firm grasp of how to organize them. That should become easier with a larger membership pool, not harder. If it doesn’t, we’re doing something wrong.

That’s a really tough one. I have typically tried not to interact very much with visitors and new members unless I’m pretty sure of the outcome because I’m one of those socially awkward types. (And I have been working on that lately, but it’s a process.) I think the best answer I currently have is that I would encourage more seasoned members to try to remember what it was like to be a newbie and to not give them too much of the full DMS experience all at once, especially not without providing an explanation in terms that most people will understand.

I think its goes beyond a pet peeve, but I have always been very bothered by the you-do-it-or-shut-up-about-how-I-do-it attitude we have here.

With our current organizational culture, if we had a career safety expert show up to our door and offer to volunteer full-time to oversee our shop, many members would demand (when confronted about a safety issue) that the expert either do all the work themselves or that they keep their opinions to themselves. The natural consequence to this is that they would get frustrated and quit trying after maybe trying to meet expectations for a while and burning out. Does that sound familiar to anyone?

I see this as a very serious problem. I firmly believe it’s part of the reason we don’t have more people volunteering, in spite of how much our membership has grown. As a whole, we need to finally realize that shared knowledge and wisdom can be a contribution, so long as the sharer knows what the hell they’re talking about.

I would still need to do more research before fully answering every part of this question, but I can say that I’m opposed to shutting down an active committee to make space for it. I would really like to have a paint booth though. I think there’s probably a solution that would allow us to make space for a paint booth without forcibly taking it away from someone.

I’m always in favor of obeying government regulations on issues like this, partially because I would never want us to get shut down over it. That just wouldn’t be worth it.

We’ve had plenty of times when our lease didn’t allow something and the solution is to have an appointed representative discuss it with the landlord. If they can come to some agreement with the landlord, no problem. If they can’t, we shouldn’t store it.

@AndrewLeCody

I’m in favor of member privacy being protected to the fullest extent allowed by law. If we aren’t required to release a piece of personal information, then we generally shouldn’t. In situations where we’re going to anyway for some reason, it should be with adequate notice before collecting the data or prior consent.

@zmetzing

I expect we will eventually need at least one employee, but there are some compliance things we’ll need to iron out before we actually do it. Once we hire an employee, Dallas Makerspace officially becomes a workplace, which means it suddenly has to comply with things like OSHA regulations. We’ve made great strides in workshop safety, but we’re nowhere near ready for OSHA. And our particular flavor of do-ocracy culture is to some extent an impediment to that.

It may actually be trickier than it would seem to form and assess performance expectations for an employee who doesn’t have a legally accountable supervisor because of our need to comply with the law. DMS members who work in the vicinity of the employee would be most informed about their general performance, but the Board of Directors or a representative thereof would need to assess their performance. And passing of information from observers of the employee to their supervisor would be prone to bias. I don’t currently know the best way to handle that.

I would expect the pay range to depend greatly on what job the employee is doing for DMS.

@uglyknees

Sorry, but even for the candidates I’m not personally very close to I feel like trying to simplify them down to just 3 words wouldn’t do them justice.

@artg_dms

I don’t think increasing the number of members of the Board of Directors is something we need to do yet. There are certain tasks that will always need to be done by every board member or a majority of board members and to some extent the workload increases for each member based on how many members there are. For example, in discussing an issue where board members are sharing their opinion, every board member has to listen to every board member who has an opinion to share. And I don’t think decision-making would improve from having more than 5 board members. There are some practical reasons it could eventually make sense to have as many as 7 members, but I don’t think we’re there yet and I don’t think we should ever have more than 7.

With that in mind, I think deletating/assigning authority is currently the way to go. But I also think more could be done to pass some power back to the general membership, like doing what we can to make membership meetings effective again.

2 Likes
#6

Tried to put them all together.

Raymond
1. What are your thoughts on the freebie shelf and are you for or against it?
I liked the Freebie shelf and found things for projects on it, I’ve put things on it: personal items and excess items from CA and Machine Shop. Most of that stuff disappeared, which is much better than just pitching things away. It is sort of a free market for Makers and very much a Maker/Hacker type thing.

I think there may be a sub-text here you are asking or a lot of other people may be thinking: Should the Freebie Shelf be gotten rid of?
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Freebie Shelf maintenance has always been an ongoing problem: over-flowing shelves, people just dump things there rather dumpstering them, put prohibited like liquids, CRT’s, on floor, etc… Getting people to clean it regularly, I’ve helped on occasion to clear – won’t claim to be a “regular maintainer”. The BoD dealt with this issue by specifically empowering the Logistics Chair, in their sole discretion to decide its fate. Erik delegated his Chair’s authority to make that decision to Brandon which exercised that discretion. While I miss the Freebie Shelf, I do not question the authority that Brandon had to dispose it. People may disagree with that decision, but that’s a different issue.
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2. How do you see the board moving above the day-to-day operations and more into strategy for the future?
We need active Chairs that assume more responsibility. I don’t feel there is a need to “hire an executive”. To do what: make decisions that are the domain of the Chairs or BoD? If to take care of the day-to-day items like plumbing, A/C, and garage door repairs, I think a better solution is to get a Maintenance (1099) person for 20~24 hours a week that has the authority to do this from a pre-approved vendor list. This person would perform routine maintenance that we current pay for: $250/month for A/C filter changes, that we still need to change more often. Have them set-up and do preventative maintenance on our tools – increasing up time or working on them during the day. Most of our plumbing issues could be done by a maintenance person and probably the savings would offset a fair of their salary plus we’d have higher up time.
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Cairenn Day
Which one would you consider to be a better method of leadership?
I agree with Robert on the Library example: Committees do have their own libraries and maintain them and decide what goes in them: I know Electronics, CA, and Machine Shop have small libraries – they manage them by the simple “We have this much space. Add something get rid of something”. This is committee level governance and for most things that is the leadership/governance model I like and would cover most committee level issues.
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This concept would apply other committee areas.
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Lisa
What makes you stand out above and beyond the other candidates?
I believe all the candidates are good choices – it’s our philosophies and personalities you have to decide which works best for you. I’ve been active at the Space as a Co &Vice-Chair Creative Arts and Chair Machine Shop. Have been active in Finance Committee. I’ve been active at the committee level. I strongly favor more committee responsibility and I want to see a development program started to assist current and future Chairs succeed. I’m very strong in member involvement, this is reflected in how Nicole and I started the SIG’s within CA and actually gave them power to do things and manage their area. I’ve done the same in Machine Shop and we now have vibrant strong committees with lots members actively involved. Those that have been involved with committees where I have a leadership role know that I’m not autocratic (at least I don’t think so) and actively seek out what the members think and when votes are taken I’m just a single vote.
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I’m very much in favor of the BoD using ad hoc advisor groups that can formulate a set of suggestions, present them to the membership, get final recommendations for either the BoD to vote on or for By-Law changes.
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One advantage I have is time availability, being retired I’m at the Space during the day and being on the BoD isn’t competing with a full time job. I’m on site, some of the “executive” functions spoken of I’d be available and willing to do. I’d say I’m very approachable and helpful based on the number of people that come and ask me for assistance (which is flattering).
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Regarding our Class/Event and Honorarium approval processes, do you feel we are currently balancing our …. with what membership and the outlying community are interested in learning? If not, do you feel that our processes are currently too restrictive or not restrictive enough?
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I feel we are definitely meeting out Educational mission. The shear number and scope of classes is the most obvious. But I think a LOT more actual learning goes on in the one-to-one mentoring/help we provide each other. Every time someone asks for help and is helped: that IS education and our communal culture. Call it tutoring. I see it all the time in the workshops and committee areas. Sit in the Commons room and you’ll hear a lot of people being helped. We nned give ourselves credit for this, this education many times is really the most valuable on personal level.
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The current Honorarium system and policies are pretty good. Tweaks needed are more IT related and is an ongoing process – we’ll get there. Issues of related to Private Events that has arisen I think in many ways are related to limited classroom resources, but even now I think how to handle it is being worked out.
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As a Board Member - between the following two items - Would your focus be on saving money for a future move and/or unexpected expenses, or would it be focused on purchasing newer/bigger/better tools in the near future?
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These are not mutually exclusive. We are in the enviable position of being very solvent and we aren’t wildly spending money. That is a credit to all the prior Boards and general member expectations. As a community, we are looking to having this wonderful place around forever. We are building a legacy.
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I’ve specifically stated that I believe we should save at least 15% of monthly dues towards acquiring additional space or emergencies. We bring in just shy of $60K a month. Our average spending, excluding monthly BoD allocations is around $30K, so we can spend $15K month easily on capital expenses AND save. Which is what we are doing. We could spend more, but we are being reasoned. I’d like to see committees submit what they think they will be asking the BoD to fund over the next 6-12 months so some priorities can be set, this also gives the membership an opportunity to see what is spending.
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Management of Dallas Makerspace is always a “hot topic”. In your idea of a perfect solution, how would the “power” distribution of our community be handled ("Who has ‘final say’ on what items, etc…). The “players” in the solution include: “The Board”, “Committee Chairs” (or committees as a whole…), “The Membership” (via member votes, etc…), and possibly an “On Site Manager”. NOTE: If your plans include an “On Site Manager”, please elaborate with additional details such as expected duties, hours on site, etc…
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On Site Manager: I discussed somewhat above. I don’t think we need an “executive” making our decisions for us: between the BoD and the committees I think that those powers should be reserved to us. A maintenance person that can call plumber, etc.
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Power Structure: Ultimately, all power is vested in the Board. I think more authority, responsibility, and accountability needs to be with stronger more active Chairs. We need to be assisting them and developing our future leadership. The most successful are those that get more members involved, so its “their committee”, it lightens the Chair’s workload. CA & Machine Shop both use SIG’s/Teams to breakdown the workload. It has worked very well in both these areas. Much of the success that Machine Shop’s revitalization is because, being the Benevolent Dictator I am, I let the committee make decisions on what to buy and what priorities are. Safety issues are where I assert my own prejudices. I think the reason we are getting about 20+ active machine shop committee members is they truly know they have a say in of Machine Shop.
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If you had to choose one of the following, do you feel that we should focus on “being the biggest and best” or “inter-committee projects and hackathons”?
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Going to hedge here. Being the BEST includes inter-committee projects, being big just for the sake of big I think can lead to problems. We are growing because we collectively do a whole lot more things right than the few things we really need improvement on. In industry, the concept of Continuous Improvement is part of their internal processes. We do try to do this, this is reflected in how were have created honorarium auditors, there’s now a more formal moderator group formulating standards, etc.

In your opinion, which types of agenda items should be included on Regular Member Meetings, and which should be included on Board of Directors Meetings?
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Member meetings: Anything the members feel needs to be addressed. It is the member’s forum. I think it serves and should serve as advisory votes to the BoD. I think the member meetings should have some additional defined powers. I would prefer that it be presided over by a non-BoD member, namely one of the Chairs. This keeps a bit more separation of powers.

BoD: I would like to see the BoD do more of the “strategic” planning. As a director, besides giving more power to committees I would expect them to be more accountable. Chairs that aren’t effective, absent, or really uninvolved should be replaced. Chairs should provide monthly status reports, not just for the BoD for the general membership. It wouldn’t have to be long, but would be posted to the wiki.
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Ultimately, the BoD is accountable for everything that happens here. It shouldn’t be micro-managing.
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We are nearing 1500 members. What do you think the optimum number of members should be for our community?
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This entirely depends on our physical facilities at this point. We’ve grown to where we need more space. Hopefully. it will happen soon. When we hit 1,700 I believe we need to try to stabilize at that point until new Space arrives. I would guess if we had another 10,000~15,000 sq. ft. we could easily go to 2,500. At that point I think we will start to reach market saturation and grow will slow.
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What will You do personally to encourage and ensure better new member experiences?
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What I currently am doing is I give a lot tours to people that drop in other than Thursdays. I also help people with badges on Thursdays. I take the time to go through the membership manual and explain what’s here to support them. I’m notorious for telling them to become active in committees AND asking what can you TEACH before they leave with their new badge.

What is one of your major pet peeves about Dallas Makerspace?
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LOL, Not being able to log into the fancy damn copier we have so I scan documents, however Brooks has fixed this a day ago for me. It would have to be the plague of: Not putting tools back after using them.
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Paint Booth or Not?
I would like a paint booth. I would not sacrifice a committee for one, but with any expansion would be high on list for space allocation and funding. My main concern is with regulatory compliance. If we can enforce members to use it responsibly to maintain compliance will be the issue.
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Andrew LeCody
What is your position on protecting personal information (names, email, access times, messages, metadata, etc.)
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Being on Finance Committee as an Administrator and being and having basic Admin access on Maker Manager I currently have access to a lot of the personal information listed above. I don’t share it. Period. If it is something really urgent I’ll email something to another member explaining someone wants to contact them and provide that person’s contact info. Then it’s up to that person. I’ve done this maybe 3 or 4 times in the last couple years.
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Kris Anderson
What are your thoughts on the freebie shelf and are you for or against it?

I personally liked the Freebie shelf, I’ve discussed this above, it was an on-going problem. There is a now a group forming to take responsibility for it. If they can do this, then definitely bring it back, if it doesn’t work – then it’s gone.
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Zach Metzing
#3 Do you think we need an employee? What responsibilities and authorities would that employee have while doing work for DMS? How will the employee’s performance be measured? What is the expected pay range for the employee?
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3.1 Not an employee but an independent contractor, 1099 not W-2. 3.2 Maintenance person, see discussion above. 3.3 There will be tasks to be accomplished. Are they being accomplished. 3.4 I’m going to guess $20~$25/hr.

Robert Davidson
What are you willing to sacrifice to be on the board of directors?

Time and effort. I’m retired, I have time, am willing to put into the effort - I’ve be doing so on multiple committees and enjoy Making Makers.
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I don’t expect it to be easy, I expect attacks because you can’t make everyone happy.

Because of my legal education, the threat of personally being sued is less intimidating to me. At the same time, this background can help avoid some traps or pitfalls. I’m strong on delegating and would make extensive use of ad hoc groups made up of members to help out. There’s a lot of talent here yet to be tapped. I think my background would also make more effective use of any legal queries we pose. I can frame the issue more narrowly, define the fact pattern at issue, a focus the question more sharply. This will reduce their billable research time and probably get us the actual question we want answered with less hedging.
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Nicole
Three word descriptions of other candidates.

Alex: Compassionate, Dedicated, Committed
Kris: Personable, Creative, Committed
Luke: Passionate, Concerned, Committed
Mitch: Personable, Maker, Committed
Robert: Concerned, Geek , Committed
Walter: Tenacious, Maker, Committed,
Steve: Personable, Concerned, Committed
Brian: Volunteer, Maker, Committed
David: Focused, Intelligent, Committed
David K: (Full disclosure: Nicole’s latest 3 words for me are: Dirty Rat Bastard)
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Note: I think all of the folks running are sincerely concerned and committed to seeing the success of Makerspace. We’re fortunate.

**JSWilson64 **
If the DMS board only had 3 seats, which two of this year’s candidates would you want in the other seats?
This sounds like a cop out, but isn’t. Truly, the two that are voted in by the membership. If they vote in folks that have the same philosophical viewpoints I do, good. If they vote in others, then they are also represented by those viewpoints.

Mark Havens
I count at about 10 different matrixed questions requiring short essays. I’ll answer what I think you are after and I’ll take Alex’s approach to answering generally.

When in ROTC they defined “Leadership” as the ability to get others to take on your goals as if they were their own. Most of what I think your questions are about is: How do you motivate people to get involved, volunteer, and help make the Space run as smoothly as possible.
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One of the things that I think has come out of the candidates meeting is all the postings on Talk asking for volunteers on specific, “I can do this” projects or tasks. They aren’t over-whelming, they look for what people can identify as something they can do. Then they are pretty much being empowered to do the task as they see fit.
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Getting people involved and giving them ownership is my personal style of leadership – you can see it in how I worked within CA & now Machine Shop. Give members a true voice and say. At our Machine Shop committee meetings, we vote on almost everything. They know their vote counts – so it’s worth the time to attend or send a proxy. I also try to keep meetings to less than an hour.
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Because I value their input, and I have time, I hold committee meetings two consecutive days in a row so they are more likely to attend. It’s working. SIG’s in CA are working. The work load is spreadout.
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Like Alex, Communication is the key. I let people know what’s happening, look for opportunities for them to become involved in whatever aspect interest them. My goal is to get ALL the tasks done, if each of them take a piece out of something they enjoy, then it’ll all get done and they are happy.