No, that was discussed, but in the end the merged committee gets a few months reprieve to get its act together.
I heard that part but that it was a sig with space and funds then after that 3 month period if things where a success then it would be an official committee again.
I’ll invite anyone to talk with the board about that one directly and even reviewing the a/v from the meeting.
Stan’s synopsis is correct.
The new Committee will be periodically reviewed for effectiveness/meeting Committee minimum standards required in order to be a Committee for the first several months. The Board may elect to revert the newly merged Committee to a SIG if general expectations for the newly merged Committee are not adequately met and maintained.
This includes, but is not limited to:
Ongoing Committee Member interest, involvement and active participation in the newly merged Committee.
Scheduling, announcing and placing on the events calendar, monthly Committee meetings with associated (and published) Committee meeting minutes
Committee Class offerings that benefit the members and non member guests.
A demonstrated value-add to DMS insofar as it pertains to our goals, member’s education and growth (i.e., demonstrate an overall benefit to DMS and its members…and the State of Texas as a 501C3).
And we need the proposed Committee name Hackerspace changed to something else.
Awesome! I look forward to driving engagement for the many people who are interested in working on computer hardware and software, both members and non-members.
I urge people to vote for me or to run, that way we can meet these requirements and turn the Computer Committee (I’m guessing that’ll be the new name) into a vibrant community with a lot of value for computer geeks.
I think Dwight has shown what he can accomplish. I think none of what the board is saying is new, and yet it’s been this way for a long time. It’s time for some big changes. We need to focus on giving the computer geeks what they want. To that end, we need to figure out what they want, choose a few initiatives, do them really well, and show that we can benefit DMS members and non-members.
we need to figure out what they want, choose a few initiatives, do them really well, and show that we can benefit DMS members and non-members.
Personally, we need to listen to our committee members and the community we do have. They have said repeatedly they want hardware hacking, networking labs, classes for tensorflow, raspberry pi, IoT, python, locksport, and infosec.
All of which we have had with various degrees of success and really need a committee unified to drive it forward.
I’m sorry but the SDC model of “figuring out as we go” failed them three times and nearly had that committee shut down last year twice. Once by the board and once by the chair prior to my involvement with that committee.
We do not need repeats of the past, we need strong leadership that understands our committee, our community here and the committee to not drag their feet on the issues when they’re presented.
This isn’t a clubhouse its a makerspace that educates and we provide the tools, education and space for people to learn and make.
Citation needed, I don’t follow how a ‘committee’ is needed to have classes
I’d also like to point out that:
The committee report is published with classes, events, and projects and :
Considering the number of times we pull from the community at large to have this and monitor the trends on talk for which classes are wanted. I’m fairly confident this can be achieved.
https://talk.dallasmakerspace.org/c/vcc?order=views
A demonstrated value-add to DMS insofar as it pertains to our goals, member’s education and growth (i.e., demonstrate an overall benefit to DMS and its members…and the State of Texas as a 501C3).
a bug fix or two is nice but value adds have been:
Now, I’d love to see this level of commitment and drive from the committee as well.
My questions for the community here at DMS is other than documenting all the things, where are we lacking on this? What’s the markers for success? How can we continue the momentum that was already set forward?
If you’re happy with how things are currently, vote for Dwight. If you wanr to start fresh and focus on providing value to computer geeks and demonstrating it so that the committee not only survive the probation that we’re on right now, but flourish into a community that is active at the space, I think I’m a much better option.
What I’m talking about is not figuring things out as we go. I’m a huge fan of documentation and planning. The plan is to figure out what the computer geeks want via a survey, present that at the election, create some initiatives with steps assigned to individuals, vote on a few, like no more than three, and work together to drive those to completion.
Also, I’d love to hear an argument for why locksport is part of computer committee. Yeah, you could say it’s hardware hacking, but so is chopping away at a tree.
we need to figure out what they want, choose a few initiatives, do them really well, and show that we can benefit DMS members and non-members.
Personally, we need to listen to our committee members and the community we do have. They have said repeatedly they want hardware hacking, networking labs, classes for tensorflow, raspberry pi, IoT, python, locksport, and infosec.
All of which we have had with various degrees of success and really need a committee unified to drive it forward.
Citation needed, I don’t follow how a ‘committee’ is needed to have classes
@Brandon_Green A computer committee is needed to have real estate for lab equipment, tools for pc work and value added community projects. Things of which that do not fit within electronics, vector, nor infrastructure.
These three committees have missions that are different than what has been well established by VCC in the past and what Computing Committee should continue to keep established.
If all one focuses on is just software development then anyone can go to starbucks and get get free wifi there or join any of the software meetups around town for a fraction of the cost of our membership. Where’s the value add there?
None. Do we need a committee to teach these classes? No. ANY ONE can teach classes at DMS and if I’m chair or not; I’ll still be holding CTF, cloud, AI/ML, and python classes at the space.
The thing that hold any value and attracts members is the nerdy stuff they can play with at the space while 3d printing or waiting on a laser cut.
And honestly, @Team_PR has really up my butt to complete the projects we set forth this year so can we achieve that? If we can and get members while having the museum which is open for a small museum grant then smashing! I’ll be glad to see this through.
If we can’t come together as a group then I’ll back to helping PR, printmaking and having fun with the cooler SIGs that are still around.
You could not have a museum, and have the room for your lab stuff
what the computer geeks want via a survey,
We have the analytics and the voice of our committee. Nothing to figure out there. Anyone can do a survey at any time but attendance records for classes and forum views are the telling items. Software classes gets less than 100 views, raspberry pi, infosec, and machine learning gets the triple digits.
locksport is a part of computer committee
Because the committee drove it to completion and those same sig members joined the makerspace and Computer committee. Go to any hacker convention, meetup, or even talk to our own members here they love themselves some locksport.
Locks are just another system for us to play with and make work the way we want to. Digital, analog or otherwise. Its a puzzle in the mind of a hacker.
I’m not sure what “nerdy stuff” you’re referring to, but you watch your job and stay within arms reach of the laser at all times of operating the lasers. You do not wander off to a computer museum. Please don’t be teaching people unsafe practices that violate committee rules.
I don’t know any of y’all so I am not going to say anything politically about the candidates.
From my own PR perspective, I (and I think some other people in PR like @anonymous_bosh ) believe that calling this committee “Hackerspace” is a great way to attract members to get dual memberships with DMS in addition to any coworking spaces they’ve joined for the simple reason that we can prototype here.
Think about what we can offer to inventors of IoT (Internet of Things) apps and devices.
Need electronics? We have it. Need a 3D printer? We have it. Need to build something out of wood? We can do that. Need a science lab? We’ve got that, too. There was even a guy in a sewing 101 class for an idea for sportswear that he wanted to keep secret by sewing it himself. I think this is an opportunity for DMS to be known as the place where we make more than computer image mockups.
The Hackerspace concept can let us open a bigger tent for people in the startup and entrepreneurship communities, and give us a place at the table for Startup Weekend and Tech Week and Hackathons (again, hacking tech together, not doing anything illegal). Tech Week is know for having events all over the metroplex, and would give enormous marketing opportunities, especially if we can get food sponsors to pay for refreshments.
We could invite people in to speak in the lecture hall and put them up as free events on Eventbrite to attract more people.
Like I said, I don’t have a political agenda, just a desire to help build membership and serve the entrepreneurs and startups who can do mockups all they like, but have to piecemeal their prototypes.
Thanks for reading.
Actually… that we do. The Mame terminal project is large enough to house the FPGA boards (direct archive of the logic boards), RetroPI, PI cluster and terminal for the bbs. covers the museum part.
That rack gets moved into its proper place for storage and hopefully no one took off already with the cisco routers that go into it along with the VPS server that’s there. We’re talking 8u’s of storage the rest is free for draw storage for tools and other items.
That white display cabinet can either be donated to the south lobby or given back to the committee member who donated it to DMS. While the glass desk is small enough to still fit in the committee area and frame out the space while being a display point for committee classes.
Any books can sit on the metal shelving we already have.
Everything was planned for that footprint we have currently. The fundraiser thing is even part of pruning out the backlog of items the retro side of the committee wanted to keep around in my studio.
“nerdy stuff”
C128, bbs, and hackable stuff in the museum.
Please don’t be teaching people unsafe practices that violate committee rules.
Saying in general example of things that take a long time to wait on while either opening up for a slot, of course the lasers are something that must be baby sat. Most that bothered to visit the committee area in the pass are waiting on 3d prints or an opening at the lasers.
It might be worthwhile to fast track the members to a laser safety class as part of their orientation if they’re likely to have the urge to take it apart to see how it works, and especially to show them where the carbon dioxide hoses are.
@Holliday Thanks for posting about that. Those has been my vision for the space since before joining years ago back when we use to support member’s kickstarters for IoT and hardware hacking projects.
It’s been a long struggle to bring that back to the space with tons of road blocks but it seems we have the membership here now that can do it.
The hackerspace them has always been something VCC brought to the space and now as Computing Committee it should drive it further and be a larger part of the IoT community here while representing DMS at makerfaire, Defcon, and national Hackathons like the Major League hackathon.
All things we’ve strived to do under my tenure as Chair and things that we committed to double down prior to the merger.
Thanks, Dwight.
The post was flagged as off topic and hidden, and since it’s not directly about the election, I can understand why.
It would be great if the post could be visible someplace else, though.
I came to DMS originally looking for it to be part of the startup community, and was surprised that it wasn’t. The second time I came, I thought I’d make 3D prints, but never figured out the software because I got mesmerized turning pens on the lathe.
I want to join the Hackerspace committee, too, but we’ll see how it goes. My team won 2nd place at Startup Weekend two years ago, and the judges told us we lost by 1 point because we didn’t have time to show the app walkthrough. It was done, but we couldn’t get to it in 3 minutes because we focused on data about product demand.
I agree about shifting lock sports elsewhere. At a WordCamp I attended, it attracted a lot of black hat coders, which made me a bit uncomfortable.
Keep in touch, you have a friend in the PR Committee.
Holly
I hope I’m just misinterpreting the conversation, but in case I’m not I have to say… Members ABSOLUTELY CANNOT just take the lasers apart to see how they work. If you want to learn about the lasers and help maintain them, join the Laser Committee.
I would love to see classes on python, and its most used libraries like Numpy, Pandas, Matplotlib, Scipy and Scikit-learn, general Data Science and Machine Learning Algos, Tensor Flow as well as PyTorch.
I came to DMS originally looking for it to be part of the startup community, and was surprised that it wasn’t. The second time I came, I thought I’d make 3D prints, but never figured out the software because I got mesmerized turning pens on the lathe.
I want to join the Hackerspace committee, too, but we’ll see how it goes. My team won 2nd place at Startup Weekend two years ago, and the judges told us we lost by 1 point because we didn’t have time to show the app walkthrough. It was done, but we couldn’t get to it in 3 minutes because we focused on data about product demand.
I agree about shifting lock sports elsewhere. At a WordCamp I attended, it attracted a lot of black hat coders, which made me a bit uncomfortable.
Keep in touch, you have a friend in the PR Committee.
That’s Amazing to hear! It’s great that we have makers like yourself that are passionate about something especially with startups culture. Something that would greatly help our new president’s mission to reach out to that community and business leaders.
Lets meetup up at the VCC Office hours and crack out a plan. I’d love to hear your thoughts and what we need to get this moving.