Many of the discussions on re opening the space can be summed up in one sentence: “We don’t know”, but it seems that we cannot re open as the Makerspace we were. The “Space” was setup to accommodate as many members as possible. Social distancing means that is no longer the case. So do we have to divvy up the space in 6 ft cubes with one person per cube, or co-inhabiting people per cube? WE are already seeing membership drop from the economic pressures that so many are feeling. I would LIKE for the Space to allow former members to return at the rate they left since dropping membership is an economic hardship. Not sure why this has already not been decided. So, is the Space doomed? Will a “vaccine” solve all our problems? Can we really sustain the traditional idea of a MakerSpace? I’m afraid the Space has to change but what does a future Makerspace look like? Perhaps it is time to address this. Does the Space have to change … or fold? I am, happily in a position to weather the storm but what will I be supporting on the future? Just asking.
A vaccine will probably let things go back to “normal” .
Intriguingly, our 25% capacity is only a couple of people fewer than our average daily attendance.
Or - the virus could vanish. We were listening to NPR news early on, and they interviewed one of the scientists responsible for creating vaccines. He said that we didn’t get a vaccine for the last SARS virus (also a corona virus) because it just vanished before they got enough to create the vaccine. Plus, if it isn’t out there for people to catch, you can’t tell if your vaccine is effective.
I think we can have makerspace as we know it, just with stricter enforcement of the rules. Members who have relied on saying “my bad” being the worst consequence they could face for policy violations will need to be dealt with swiftly and the logistics of having an employee may need to be taken into consideration more seriously. We will have members who refuse PPE in the building and unfortunately they’ll have to no longer be members. The common issue I see is not being able to open because we rely on volunteers for XYZ to happen.
I am not being an “employee denier” here, but having an employee is so expensive and so fraught with potential for gubmint intrusion that I really don’t see us being able to do it any time soon (like years), much less deciding as an organization that we should do it. It may be that service businesses similar to janitorial services start to pop up that offer “social distancing hall monitors” and the like we could hire for some short amount of time?
I am not sure why how we move forward always has to be FUDed to the greatest possible degree? @MrsMoose, you are not the only one, but you are probably the most frequent offender. Where is the hard part about:
1 - If you are at significant/high risk, don’t come in: it’s your health and safety…take responsibility for it. This is true for any businesses opening up: malls, theaters, restaurants, whatever.
2 - If you are not at high risk, then come in, but be careful/aware: maybe choose to come in at low occupancy times; wear a mask; wear gloves; wash hands as needed; clean off machines before you touch them (don’t assume anyone is cleaning them after!); don’t get/stay closer than 6 feet from anyone; if someone gets too close to you while you are operating a machine or whatever, ask them to please step away; etc.
3 - While in DMS, be aware/cognizant of the issues others might be having or that you might be causing, Covid-wise. Ultimately we can’t enforce it, anymore we can enforce other arbitrary “be excellent” provisions, really, but we can try to make sure people are aware, and also provide easy means to be safer, like gloves, masks, hand sanitizer, wipes, and reminders/signage. It’s borderline intrusive, but I guess we could make people sign a “Covid awareness pledge” before activating their badges to come back in…I am not a fan of this, but I suppose it could be useful in making a point.
All of this has to be intuitively obvious…no? How is taking this type of personal responsibility meaningfully different from driving on the highway, (i.e. YOU drive defensively, don’t assume others will be) where many thousands die every year? How is it any different, in principle, from the Makerspace of a year ago where someone operating a tool or whatever unsafely could cause you harm at any moment, e.g. a part flying off a lathe, or someone not tightening a saw blade down well, or leaving a slippery spill on the floor, or creating a toxic gas in the laser area, or an explosion in the science area or whatever.
But YOU be the judge of your health and safety risks, and balance them off with need/want/desire to enter into a (generally) pubic place. It’s nice when others may act/drive safely around you, you can’t expect them too…something each and every one of us learned while young and hopefully made very clear in Drivers Ed.
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The only thing I’ve brought up is requesting the board make an official policy to address income hardships. It was met with a chorus of “If YoU ArE a ReAl MeMbEr YoU StAy ThE CoUrse! If YoU DoNt LiKe iT LeAve” so it was dropped. Make no mistake I still think that detrimental for a few reasons, but time will tell. I fail to see how that is a FUD?
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Employee/service whatever. That’s not coming from me it was simply a summary of responses from others in the thread Chris derailed…all our solutions had the same kill point
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COVID is different because as far as I know we can be held liable for it similar to a bar who overserves someone in a drunk driving accident. Isn’t that the whole reason we aren’t open?
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It’s not different from driving. Just like traffic laws we can actually make rules and enforce them if needed
I don’t have any issue with your (or anyone) voicing opinions up to BoD or membership in general about best way(s) forward. Regarding the FUD, I was referring more to statements like this:
It’s the most recent but you have made similar implications.
lol…It’s a really important distinction.
Is that really true? I don’t think so, at least beyond the “anyone can sue anyone for any reason…may not win, but you can sue them” perspective. Also, there is a lot of talk in Congress about making sure lawsuits like this are disallowed. But even if so, we can be held liable to exactly the same extent as a year ago if someone took a lathe throw-off in the eye, or slips and falls on the floor because I dropped my precious ball bearings all over the place. So nothing’s really changed. For DMS, taking reasonable precautions (notices, training), making sure people have signed the liability waiver and explicitly acknowledge an assumption of the risk, and trying not to have too much cash on hand for folks to go after have been our only real protections against lawsuits like this.
The gubmint can make (traffic) laws and enforce them…an employee-less, and by-design very flat, organization like DMS has a much harder time with the 2nd and therefore should be very judicious with the 1st. We’d essentially be asking the BoD to put up a bunch of rules whose effect would be to generate countless complaints they would then have to consider. “John was close than 6 feet to me” “no, I wasn’t” “yes you were!” It sounds like more fun than a barrel of monkeys to me.
Nothing I am putting forth here should be taken as saying “do nothing” or be complacent, or relying on hope and change as a plan. I just want to explicitly acknowledge there’s only so much DMS can really do about all this, no one approach is going to be sufficient to appeal/mollify everyone, and that our whole culture is intertwined with an assumption-of-the-risk model and personal responsibility ethos.
I am wondering who the carries the liability insurance for the space. No waiver will prevent a judgement if negligence can be proved to a jury. Remember, in this instance, the person signing the waiver most likely will not be the one filing the suit, it will be their next of kin. If the space cannot show that it is following the recommended guidelines or if it can be shown that the members are ignoring the recommended guidelines (remember all the video cameras?), the space could easily be accused of negligence.
All that wonderful equipment that we all miss so much could easily end up for auction. I wonder if the members of the space could be held individually liable as well? That might be a reason to quit the space until one is certain that the space is reopened in a safe and reasonable fashion.
I recommend to the board that they consult the liability insurance carrier and an attorney before opening the space.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on tv.
I know as a board member we can certainly be jailed for NOT following the order. As much as you love or hate Clay Jenkins, I would not go on TV and tear up a citation and offer to poke him in the eye.
Frivolous or not lawsuits need to be defended against. We can legally open right now but per leadership it’s too much of a liability. Don’t project your feelings about any of that and other whining from membership onto me. If taking their word for it is FUD then 
You must have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express…
I have no love or hate for Judge Jenkins, but I have respect for him. He seems to be doing the best he can in a difficult and unprecedented situation.
Actually, kinda like I feel about you folks on the board, and I certainly don’t want to see any of you in legal jeopardy.
We actually can’t; interactive spaces are still closed.
Not unless you prearranged it with Cruz and the Woke Patriots first 
I thought we had determined that DMS would be under the same umbrella as gyms?
Closest determination that can be made at least. Gyms are still not allowed to open yet in Texas at neither the state nor county level.
But they can on the 18th. We are voluntarily not going to be doing that though because we aren’t sure we can meet the requirements right? That thread got pretty derailed so I’m sorry if I misunderstood something along the way.
Me neither
Q: Once in court, how hard/easy will it be to prove where/how someone got infected?
Case(s) in point: all of the lawsuits against tobacco companies for ? decades by people who got cancer (or their next of kin after they died of it). Dead/dying people “Your products gave me cancer!” Tobacco companies: “Prove it wasn’t your unhealthy lifestyle. Or where you lived. Or where you traveled. Or your job. Or your family genetics.”
Guidelines are just that…suggestions. No one wins wrongful death cases by suggesting people didn’t follow “recommended guidelines” Not following laws? yes. Statutory regulations? yes. Failure to “enforce” the “look both ways before you cross the street” guideline? no. You didn’t feed the kids in school based on food pyramid recommended guidelines? no.
Q: How often have the guidelines been modified/adjusted as better information became available and was processed and finally promulgated? Which set of guidelines would apply if a case makes it to court: Local? County? State? Federal?
Except for the nursing home deaths in NY (far more clear cut) and similar situations, I don’t see a whole lot of lawsuits making it to court on this general subject, much less prevailing.
That said, its anyone’s guess what will happen once a case ends up in the hands of 12 people too stupid to get out of jury duty
Sometimes, especially with the frivolous, retaliatory, or malicious lawsuits, they can be dismissed with a motion, as opposed to defended against. Also, if you can demonstrate, pre-trial, that a lawsuit is baseless, it can also easily be dismissed.
Congress is debating/haggling over whether to provide immunity against lawsuits like this for business from people (employees, customers) who contract the virus while in their establishments. If they can actually agree on anything, it’s likely to be modeled on the existing blanket immunity provided to vaccine developers/manufacturers to protect them from lawsuits brought by the few people (or their next of kin) who contract a full-blown case, and suffer some harm as a result, of whatever the vaccine is supposed to prevent.
I wasn’t. I quoted you. You said you wanted people to sue the crap out of others for the “crime” of Covidcide.
You are right, I said ‘prove to a jury’, a more correct sentence would have been ‘convince a jury’.
Just for fun I found this website:
Several cut and pastes from this website:
Tobacco companies agreed to pay annual sums of money to the states to compensate them for health-care costs related to smoking (a minimum of $206 billion over the first twenty-five years).
In a 2014 wrongful death lawsuit against RJ Reynolds, a Florida jury awarded more than $23 billion in punitive damages to the widow of a former smoker, but in 2015 a Florida appeals court shrank that award way down to just under $17 million. (my edit: ONLY $17 MILLION!)
It has to be difficult to argue that one who smoked didn’t know it was bad for them, but they chose to anyway. Just like it will be difficult to argue that one didn’t know that they might catch Covid-19 at the makerspace (or anywhere else). I agree it would be hard to fault the makerspace unless a cluster of cases occurred amongst members. That said given how contagious this virus appears to be that could happen.
Again, you are correct in pointing out I said prove, but I would submit for your opinion that guidelines would be a very good way for an attorney to convince a jury that negligence occurred in a case where they were not followed or enforced.
Congress is debating/haggling over whether to provide immunity against lawsuits like this for business from people (employees, customers) who contract the virus while in their establishments. If they can actually agree on anything, it’s likely to be modeled on the existing blanket immunity provided to vaccine developers/manufacturers to protect them from lawsuits brought by the few people (or their next of kin) who contract a full-blown case, and suffer some harm as a result, of whatever the vaccine is supposed to prevent.
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While you may think that this is wise (I certainly do!), I don’t see it happening given the current state of our legislative branch. Trial lawyers lobby, the fact that most legislators are attorneys. Here is yet one more example of me being happy if I’m wrong.
And finally:
Well said. Therein lies the problem.
Yes. I hope people are able to sue when negligence or profiteering result in their permanent disability or wrongful death. If an employer wants to abuse someone and tell them to report to work without PPE or lose their income they’re accountable. I believe that for pretty much anything not just COVID. That was also a comment about the outcomes of Abbotts orders and the ensuing violence and infection spikes thanks to the Branch Covidians who now have no consequence for their dumbassery. What stretch of logic are you using to apply that to DMS?