Last night we bribed new chairs, vice-chairs and members together with promises of listening to concerns, talking about detail and joy, and sharing some community, suds, and sams sweet bread.
I’d like to hear some reflection, thoughts on how it could be proactive for all members and chairs and vice chairs, what was the collective outcome and should we do this again in some sort of frequency.
Personal reflection:
I should plan this when my son is with his dad
I thought it was very positive and addressed many concerns publicly, some people were pissed about things and they were heard by a community - this is vital. Some people just wanted to talk and get to know people. Some people showed up for the beer. All valid.
Possibly every other month on the regular?
Plan it 7:30p to start
Firm things I heard:
Revaluation of honorarium for no shows
Discussion of no shows and having deposits (no possible)
Work on formalizing a “you’ve not been awesome (my words)” form for chairs and vices to use
Concerns over use and control of consumable consumption and moving tools from one place to another
“On boarding” needs and ways we could accomplish it @thespacemaker stating over and over to use digital media and the vets he has coming for (goodness sakes) @talkers was very generous and positive with leading and moderating the group
I had to leave at 9:30, I pulled down as many signs as I could walking out. If anyone sees any green beer and b*tch signs please tear them down. I still have a few shirts to make and a few shirts to distribute.
Thank you for planning this! As a newbie, I enjoyed it, and feel like I learned some stuff, but more importantly put faces to positions.
Since it was so late when we left and eatery options were limited, I scored a maiden voyage to Waffle House for dinner. (A dubious check off the bucket list…)
I am sorry as well. I just got out of teaching a 6 hour class and was a bit rattle brained and didn’t see it for what it was. Lets let it go and start over. cheers!
If the dev teams don’t drink it all up then I might have more whiskey, wine and meede for the next one.
Sorry if this wasn’t the intention of the meetup but my take away from the whole meeting was;
Class attendance suck; how can we fix
talk sucks; throw it in the dumpster and don’t replace it with anything
introductions the entire time
I imaging there was something of importance or at least some value to attendees; which I suppose is the point.
But I do agree; “On boarding” was another thing that was brought up and bluntly put we’ve been a docracy for ages. So in that spirit lets Do and get an intro class on moodle and calendar.
That class should benefit from @Team_Digital_media’s efforts towards the intro videos and should include;
Dallas Makerspace Manifesto
What is expected of a member
What is a do-cracy
Be Excellent
Makerspace Ethics
Clean your workspace
Safety
Talk, Chat, Wiki, Calendar, and On-site Ethics/good conduct.
How to reach other members
unbiased intro to talk, wiki, discord, calendar, SIGs, and Committees
Team_Digital_media’s intro video here
How to have fun at the space
unbiased intro to the maker movement
unbiased intro to events and meetups at the space
How to get things done
unbiased intro to next steps after one gets their fob
And to ensure members actually attend, this class should be a prerequisite for getting voting rights and able to attend any safety class offered by a committee for their tools.
I can see this being a quick 45 minute course that we have members join doing a regular bi-weekly meeting day so that its quite fair to everyone and honestly this is how a few other spaces like ATX and TinkerMill do it too.
Problem is finding the volunteers to do this on a regular basis. That’s one of the issues with all classes, finding folks to give training on a regular basis without burning out those who put so much in as it is.
Yep, I’m going to have to stop you right there and say that I find the idea of a mandatory anything for voting rights is a bad idea…PERIOD. While I can see why you might think this is a good idea, in every implementation I’ve seen, it is a hurdle that came about with good intentions and in execution was a political power play. We have enough pre-requisites already to do things. I see the value in safety classes for tools. I believe we should be streamlining the process, not adding to it. This is not a complaint at any one person or group or the concept of safety itself. Just merely an observation.
You talk about Ethics. This gets awfully close to indoctrination IMO. Who is going to come up with “Makerspace Ethics”?
“Be Excellent”- This is a terribly ambigous statement that is open to interpretation by all. What I consider excellent may not reach your level of excellence.
Do-ocracy. While we greatly benefit from people seeing a problem and correcting it. There is a fine line here. As we have grown larger, this is not nearly the simple thing it used to be. Most spaces are owned by a committee and require coordination of others. If you need any reminder of this see logistics past issues. (No offense Axenos )
I think a quick little video introduction before tours (and the links to videos once you join) is a great way to counteract the burnout - We could possibly move it to a monthly new member meet up/intro/meet and greet.
I’ve talked about this along with lots of others. I’m willing to help but I think it’s going to be a huge barn raising to do decide how to do this best and get it done.
Quite a bit back the entire Creative Arts team worked on creating an intro to CA because we are so very vast. Here’s some of the stuff we came up with (mostly out of date) if you note the back pages to the packet its (old) instructions on how to create a class for the space. A start to something. Someday we will sit down and revamp it.