Perfect. That’s what I was talking about!
LOL, I think I’m at least 3 or 4 2000’s of a we
Depends on the metric.
I was making a joke at my own expense 
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Self-deprecation is a virtue. I make jokes at my own expense all the time.
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Where else can you do thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to fine quality tools for just $60/month?
Having lots of members is great unless a lot of them are idiots!
We don’t need members who are so clueless that they have no idea what they are doing and who are so self-centered that they can destroy a valuable piece of equipment and just walk away.
The types of damage posted here lately is so egregious that there is no way the perpetrator could be unaware that they screwed up! If we don’t hold people accountable for stupid mistakes that damage our tools, we should at least ban them for not reporting such damage!
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Cluelessness is forgivable and teachable. But you’re absolutely right on the self-centeredness. Few things are more infuriating than a person that doesn’t respect things that they don’t own. You can’t teach that - they are parenting failures and will never change.
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We don’t have data correlating machine breakage to novice users. The other school of thought says that more experienced users tend to push the machines closer to their limits and that (many) novice users err on the side of caution.
While there are empirical data (in the literature) supporting this on other types of machines, there are no DMS data supporting either side of the argument.
It’s important to understand the primary causes of breakage because they have different solutions.
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The other (similar topic) thread has closed.
I am continuing to follow this thread because I am interested in the idea of creating accountability in a communal community.
How is bonding created between members? Is bonding necc before accountability can take place?
Or are rules and training enough?
How is accountability created?
Does a ‘hard line’ work better or worse than a ‘soft line’ for rules, punishment etc?
Are there any psychologists, therapists, social workers in DMS membership that can provide insight on how Woodshop and DMS as a whole can solve its problems regarding tool and equipment use, breakage, irresponsible behavior etc?
I fear your efforts will be fruitless. On matters of which you speak I suspect there must be a stone altar somewhere within DMS engraved thusly:
Members are to:
1. make no efforts to change what DMS has always done, and
2. they shall eagerly anticipate different results.
Oh, and that “bonding thing” needs to be some sort of super fast super glue because the turnover is extraordinary. As evidence note that 38% of the current membership joined since Jan 1, 2019 (and untold others joined and left during that time). How many of those 749 remaining 2019 rate members use or want to use the Woodshop? What has the org done to help the volunteer Woodshop leadership deal with the revolving membership door challenge that is bigger than Woodshop? With this question, you come back to point #1 above.
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For someone who isn’t a member anymore you sure seem to know it all about how things work. It’s a shame your continual badgering of the directors and officers got in the way of you doing any actual good for the organizational leadership.
Maybe one day you will realize that the answer isn’t to make you king and pay you.
You sure love to throw stones as well. Its awfully easy to complain about a lack of support. I think you might be leaving a few crucial details out.
Don’t you have a multicam in haltom city to go run? You know, one where you can be king?
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Wow. I didn’t realize the turn over rate of membership was so high! Is that true of makerspace concepts as a whole? What can be done to improve membership retention?
I am used to craft and art making centers like the Creative Arts Center, the Craft Guild, and Community Colleges. There, students and members tend to stay for years and literally decades.
I wonder if part of their high retention is because of the essentially Passive position of their students; there is a teacher who leads and usually assigns the projects for the class. So students are always perennial ‘students’. They only have to get their project materials.
At a makerspace, there are classes, but the concept is essentially different; they are classes to teach Intro to tool usage, and classes where you do a project that can be completely in one class meeting (or two etc).
Whereas, at the art centers and community colleges, the assigned project takes weeks or could take the whole semester.
At a makerspace, the member has to be responsible for their own projects and ideas, follow-thru and completion. That may be difficult for many people to do.
I can see with a constantly revolving membership, supervision of space use, tool use and misuse can be quite difficult.
Perhaps two models need to be developed; one that addresses longer-term retention of membership, and one that addresses supervision and access of membership to expensive equip and tools when the faces of membership are always changing, and you have to start from the beginning over and over again (of responsible space and tool usage).
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Just to avoid any confusion … DMS never paid me for anything that wasn’t a reimbursement of actual expenses. I volunteered countless hours, coached and mentored many members, and even endured you and Mr. Sims telling me dust would somehow defy physics and flow against the wind within the magical walls of DMS. I do say I know a good deal about a number of things, don’t know anything about some things, I’m wrong at times, I prefer facts to opinons, and I try to learn something everyday.
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@John_Marlow, even if we have no empirical data about the specific causes of breakage, I think we can both agree that our very expensive tools are being broken in novel ways and an alarming pace. And I think we can both agree that continuing running the Woodshop the same old way does nothing to address the problem. Something has to change. The obvious options we have are to make members more accountable for their actions or limit their access to the tools until they have demonstrated competence in using them, or both. Do you know of a third way that hasn’t been discussed?
The woodshop committee attempts to address these issues at almost every monthly meeting. We have been asking for rfid readers on every stationary machine, and keep hearing something along the lines of “Soon, I promise.” For a while we were able to regularly offer a more comprehensive set of classes that helped reduce downtime. There are still a few teachers who teach the 1-4 curriculum we developed, but with our limited number of instructors and the socioeconomic discrimination surrounding the honorarium system, it makes it hard to schedule enough of those type classes to keep up with the high attrition that is largely due to many machines not working properly or at all throughout the space.
The average downtime for woodshop machinery and replacement parts has skyrocketed too. I don’t want to get into that in this thread but parts that used to take us 7-10 business days to get in the mail now take 5+ months to make it through our new review process, some of which we’re still waiting on.
A lot of the hotter topics on talk are very closely related.
IMO, the pile up of maintenance issues in the woodshop is caused by lack of proper maintenance and replacement part funding, access control and machine maintenance education.
The woodshop would need at least 20 highly coordinated volunteer instructors (who don’t pay bills with their honorarium) to teach their maximum of 3 classes per month and then a few more to do it for free under this new system just to keep up with the demand of some of our busier months. The funny thing is, even if we had that many instructors willing to help teach the classes, the honorarium payout would be the same as if 1 motivated person taught them all.
More comprehensive instruction+greater level of access control+faster turn-around on replacement parts=more functional woodshop.
I helped teach the comprehensive classes back when the committee decided to start offering them. I stopped when the honorarium policy prevented me from being able to keep up with the demand for woodshop access. Following the natural progression of the demand for training, I started teaching the output-oriented comprehensive safety course since that’s what the students were asking for. I fully support the idea of a more set-up and maintenance oriented training course, but I am also an independent contractor who pays actual bills with the money I make so I can’t teach enough classes to keep up with the demand for access for free.
I already get accused of things like “gatekeeping” or “gaming the system” for making the training longer and more comprehensive.
The woodshop works wonderfully when the leadership works with the woodshop effectively. The micromanagement from certain members of the DnO this past year is choking the life out of several committees and pushing long time members out the door.
(TL;DR)
The lack of teamwork and trust between DMS leadership and committee management is the reason there are so many machines down throughout the space. There are many different things that can be done to help the situation in the short term, but unless the underlying issues are addressed, none of them will be permanent or even long-lasting.
Teacher burnout is real, and many conversations I have had with other teachers indicate that burnout exists at the space primarily due to negative interactions with all of the competing egos and ideologies up top.
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Where are your minutes from the last two months and why weren’t they posted even close to something that could be considered on time?
Fabricating a version of events isnt going to change the fact that your training program is not making the woodshop safer or reducing maintenance costs. I guess it’s cool that you’ve still found ways to make money here.
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this.
As someone running two committees, nothing has impeded even major purchases. As long as we have minutes, it’s done. The longest I waited was a couple weeks when the procurement cards were maxed and needing to wait for a payment to process. Putting minutes on the wiki is not difficult; it’s a 5 minute thing that ensures everything is documented.
As for the training curriculum, this argument is already beating a dead horse but you’d have a much easier time both getting teachers and training the backlog if you had a class for general makers rather than only classes for those wanting the woodshop as a whole.
Right now, for a general maker that wants to rip some boards, miter a wood frame, and drill some holes it’s three different classes (covering a lot of unreleated tools) to use the three pieces of machinery required. If the woodshop committee would make a class like that I would certainly teach it, and it would help the backlog of members who don’t want/care for the rest of the shop.
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My breadboard class covers more material and in a more practical manner than the woodshop 101 and 102 classes did when I arrived. It’s the best I can do to keep up with the constant flow of new members requiring training. You can’t get good at using something overnight. If we can’t start convincing members to hang around longer than one project, we will continue to see a never ending stream of newbie mistakes piling up and costing the woodshop and DMS a fortune. (Running an orbital sander with no paper, breaking or misusing a bandsaw blade, using the wrong blade or saw for a certain cut, etc.)
The (current and/or new) leadership may decide to resume allowing the committee to support itself under the long standing honorarium structure or they may continue to stifle committee growth and/or operation by limiting honorarium and bottlenecking repair purchases that must all now be funneled through the DnO (who will process your request in a timeframe largely determined by their personal and/or political opinion of the person making said request and not the actual necessity and/or urgency of the same). Either way, makers still gon’ make. We need access to tools to do so. We are willing to pay for safety instruction. We are not usually willing to pay to learn how to fix or maintain stuff that doesn’t belong to us. We help anyone who shows up on maintenance day, or even shows any interest at all learn how to help us maintain the machines in the woodshop. Teachers do a lot more than volunteer to teach at a discounted rate around the space. Teaching tool safety classes automatically makes the instructor a primary point of contact for any committee related questions throughout the space and any space related questions throughout the committee area. Teaching tool safety classes requires tools that work, and as such, many hours are spent by teachers outside of class making sure that the tools work for the classes. I personally spent about 3.5 hours on maintenance day going through our old jointer blades to find enough to make a clean cut and it lasted about day or two. I don’t feel like we should need committee approval to make a repair that’s done by the committee once every 6 months especially when the maintenance period recommended by the manufacturer is every 30 hours. The results of not being able to get what we need to operate is all over talk too. I can’t even buy sandpaper because we need about $400-$600 worth per month.
Here’s what I got from reading the financial policy talk post and after considering recent statements and actions. If it’s over $200 and I buy it all at once you might press charges. If I break it into pieces smaller than the limit and buy it that way you may take away my card. If I submit the request to the treasurer it gets ignored. If I submit an inquiry and/or complaint to the rest of the DnO 5 weeks later about being ignored, I instantly get multiple replies from multiple DnO’s asking me to prove it, then when I do I get ignored by them too.
It’s very difficult to keep a $3-$5k per month running $200 at a time.
Our committee can start holding random 2 minute long emergency meetings at 10PM to approve whatever the heck we want if you like. I feel like the current " leadership " would be madder than a one-legged server at the ihop if we followed that example. Just saying.
Excuse me sir, even teaching someone to simply turn on and use the dust collector makes the woodshop safer, and my breadboard class was never designed to reduce maintenance costs. It was designed to teach basic tool safety with practical application. I am teaching the minimum requirements at the minimum pay I am able. If DMS wants more comprehensive training to ease the financial burden of having a never-ending stream of newbies making the same mistakes over and over it only seems fair that DMS should opt to ease the financial burden of the people providing the training services to DMS, while at the same time addressing the ongoing problem with member retention.
Bottom line, if you want us to start taking better care of “your stuff”, stop making us all feel like it’s “your stuff”, and start helping us feel like it’s “our stuff” again. Regardless of the different ideologies on how the space should be ran, member satisfaction directly correlates to member retention.
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So let me make sure I understand this, you’ve done everything right, but injury incidents and tool breakage are up, and the reason is that it’s somehow my fault that you can’t follow the same rules that literally every other committee can follow. Makes sense.
I’d still like to know:
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In the case this week, both machines that were reported with issues have RFID. Planner and Joiner. I w
I understand these types of investigations are difficult and a stop, question, and frisk policy wouldn’t be welcome. I do appreciate the open dialog and responses.
-Michael