Computer Committee Agenda items for next board meeting in 2020

Because the January item was tabled, and the Secretary needs to be afforded time to finish documentation of the current meeting and actions before setting up the February BoD meeting wiki article, I am placing my conversation here.

I’d like to thank for the board for listening to the positions of membership, and I understand some of the concerns regarding allocation of space. Nonetheless, to that point, I have already posted 4 discrete agenda items that relate to this endeavor for tabletop. Computer Committee will also need discrete agenda items. They will being as my item 5, with the understanding that item 1 also affects / benefits them. As such, I have duplicated that text here:

Agenda Discrete Item 1:
Problem: Due to concerns about room usages brought up during discussion at the January BoD meeting, there is a concern regarding orange and pillar and their “usage” if allocated to a direct committee space. With the exit of prior committees, there is question regarding ownership of these two space as they defaulted to Logistics.
Solution: Affirmatively transfer ownership of Orange and Pillar to the Education Group.
Relevance: BoD must approve allocation of space.

Now for the unique ones for Computer Committee:

In the past, the BoD has had concerns with the viability of this committee. The January tabled agenda item was supposed to address that. Therefor, I am breaking it up.

Agenda Discrete Item 5:
Problem: The Computer Committee has historically been challenged with delivery of objectives.
This is compounded by the fact that some activities are cart-before-the-horse without having resources.
Solution: Procure a lab of no less than six identical computer workstations, preferably eight to be used solely as learning stations. It is the intent of the OP to have a donation of eight i5 Dell laptops, with the same exact specifications. Barring that donation, we would be perusing the suppliers that infrastructure already uses.
Relevance: Hardware cost structure, and software licenses might surpass any committee chair direct authorization, and thus it is better to have BoD explicit approval.

Agenda Discrete Item 6:
Problem: DMS in the past has had 1 hour atomic intro to something classes, and 6+ month long programming classes. It has been a challenge to maintain those. It is even harder to reschedule them as they have been unique to the instructor.
Solution: Explicity define three separate “standardized” course plans for Computer Committee to host, to provide the “relevant makery” educational benefit to the space at large.

  1. Recurring quarterly introduction to smartphone application development. This would include a minimum of 8 classroom hours spread apart as the instructor(s) finds a reasonable stopping point.

  2. Monthly offered classes to cover general computing skills, and more importantly, how to utilize the various DMS computing resources. Note this is also intended to be made as an online resource before end of year 2020. Once published online, this sub item would be considered fully met.

  3. Programming language courses to be offered at least quarterly. The language made be independently chosen, but is strongly recommended to be within this subset: java, python, c. Substantive in classroom lecture time for these courses to be no less than eight hours, broken up as the instructor(s) finds a reasonable stopping point.
    Relevance: Obliterate all trace historical negative connotation of committee. This is the year 2020, the best year for the Dallas Makerspace.

EDIT: tagged into Next Scheduled BOD meeting in February

2 Likes

Thank you Doug!

I’d like to append item 2, infosec course. Its a two hour event covering various topics in computer security and one earns 1 CPE for CISSP, 2 CPE if one does a presentation.

Item 3 should also include javascript. We are partners with Freecodecamp Dallas and MLH.io afterall.

Agree with Relevance. but should also push forward with initiatives.