Please understand that I’m not trying to take issue with the rule. I’m just trying to understand the description of “you have to make something”.
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I understand.
My challenge is that a lot of people don’t know the history, so when a bunch of people get on here and paint the old days in a favorable light it’s not good. We have new teachers stepping up, we have long term teachers putting up good classes with small fees, the calendar is starting to fill up, but now a subset of the previous abusers are trying to swing it back to their meal ticket.
We can’t go back to losing money on unpopular classes just so a dozen people can supplement their income without doing real work.
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Why is DMS expected to supplement their income due to their health or employment issues instead of being able to pay our own rent? That was the direction we where going, into the red! There were so few requirements for a class that there were abusers of the system. Unfortunately that effected everyone when making honorarium more restrictive to restore our cash flow. Trying to be as equitable as possible we put the solution into the hands of the chairs. They implemented a X classes per committee plan. Then some instructors proceeded to carve out MORE classes for themselves.
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Honorarium auditors which include the directors have first say if a class is viable or not. If you didn’t think it was worthwhile why did you let it through?
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“Garbage” like Lance’s classes were always full and he brought a multitude of new members in to join the space. I audited 3 of his classes and while they were a little short there was good information provided to help makers market their products.
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One high month of honorariums that coincided with the month that teachers and college students came back and added teaching at DMS is not indicative of the actual rate we spent on honorarium during a year. The months of May and November were always high as people who were wanting to teach were more numerous at that time. We brought in over $80000 a month and honorarium averaged at $15-20K. As an educational 501c this is not outrageous. We have always had plenty of money to pay for the bills and repairs needed and on top of that we had put away $10k a month for 2 years to save for expansion.
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We need to thank our teachers and not call them villains. $50 per class that only 70% of teachers even took home is a tiny fraction of what most classes are worth. Not everyone has the ability to volunteer the multiple hours it takes to teach for free. Those that do are extremely generous and should be thanked. So should the ones who also got an honorarium thank you that is a fraction of the typical fee they would charge in any other setting. I charge $200 per student for art classes in other venues but not at DMS because I love the place. And frankly I’d rather have a teacher who has hundreds of teaching hours experience vs someone new to teaching In safety instruction. Ain’t nobody getting rich teaching at DMS at anytime in its history.
The bottom line is the teachers are a big part of why DMS has been such a great place to be. Piss off the volunteers in a volunteer run facility isn’t in the best interest of anyone. The membership drop reflects this.
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Teachers can charge students whatever they want. Students can thank teachers by paying them. It doesn’t have to exclusively come from DMS. Honorariumm was created to encourage people to teach classes because we had almost none at the time (like one class per week or less). That’s not a problem anymore but the policy hasn’t caught up yet. The discussion should be about what’s best moving forward. Not what the status quo was.
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can we at least agree that classes required for clearance and use of tools should have no limit on the number of honorarium classes that can be taught? I feel that this is a good compromise to start from, since it would allow much more training to happen, and get those people who did a lot of teaching interested in teaching again, at least in theory
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Why unlimited, teach 3 students 4 times a day? That is what we are talking about here.
Also how does 4 required training classes get replaced by 1 project class?
No, we can’t agree on that. I wish we could, but financially, it isn’t viable. It causes committee chairs out for profit to increase the number of training required classes/tools so they can teach 20+ classes per month. We can’t afford it, and it’s bad for the space.
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As much as I want to encourage classes more, this was a serious problem. When trying to sort out what the heck the deal was with automotive 101, this wonderful explanation on the newly implemented barrier to using automotive cropped up.
I would also point out that much of the reason Automotive 101 made a ‘required’ class is that the former board complained that Automotive did not teach enough, and if they didn’t teach then their money would be restricted. At the time, the committee made $50-100 per class; so there was a fiscal rationale to teach Automotive 101. The current board no longer supports committees in this fashion, and they do not appear to want to encourage community and learning. Many of the people which where teaching, no longer teach- for a variety of reasons. I know that my Automotive classes alone are enough to purchase a second lift for the expansion and/or to pay for epoxy floors, but to continue to teach for fiscal health of the committee no longer is a valid argument
It’s why I’m not currently enforcing it, on top of the committee not coming to a consensus with it nor working curriculum. I’m working on a layout for a self-study requirement instead.
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There is a fine line between teaching for access and teaching for experience. Consider:
The woodshop is one of the most popular committees. say we pick up 100 new members like we want to happen and all 100 want access to the woodshop tools. Just how long at the rate that classes are offered would it take to get all 100 trained? Weeks? Months? Well since most classes are restricted to 6 at least 15 classes are necessary to give the 100 access. At the rate of what? - two offerings per month for basic shop and less for the multicam trying to get woodshop access often means waiting 6 months. What happens in that time? They drop. This dynamic has gone on for a long time and is the biggest extreme of what we see.
So we end up discussing and arguing about the symptoms rather than the cause. Volunteerism is admirable but it can’t be forced. We don’t and aren’t going to have people giving up their time away from their own projects 7 days a week. So we need to be looking at other ways to approach the problem. I’ve often said (in jest people!) remove the requirements and just let the blood flow freely. While it is in fact an option, it’s not the one we want. I freely admit I don’t have the solution but I think we need to narrow the focus on what the problem is - which is giving access without it costing the organization a lot.
That’s access. Project classes are valuable for gaining experience. While I didn’t need it, I took the breadboard class and while I am a long experienced woodworker I picked up a few things and in turn shared a couple of things as well. More importantly, that class teaches real woodworking while showing how to use the tools - “Here is how you push a board thru the saw. Next!” does not.
I’m happy to see honorarium going toward the project style classes. I wish there were more. But let’s work on how to get people SAFE access in an expedient manner.
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Please re-read what I wrote. I am in favor of barring people from teaching who try to cheat the system. People offering bogus classes should be stopped by auditors. People who attend bogus classes should report the teachers who are abusing the rules.
Nowhere do I advocate putting honorarium payments before DMS financial needs. Please don’t paint me with that brush.
I mentioned possible reasons why some people who have historically been able to shoulder the bulk of teaching legitimate classes have been able to do so.
To be 100% clear about my position:
1.) No cheating on attendance or class description
2.) Honorarium should never come at the expense of DMS’ financial needs
3.) People who teach in-demand classes should be able to do so, as long as requirements of #1 and #2 are met.
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Then the answer is not to limit the classes, but to instead, increase the monitoring of the classes. Don’t punish the rest of the space for a few bad apples (because regardless of intent, that is what the end result feels like). Work on catching and punishing the people who are exploiting the system. Have chairs and comitees monitor people who teach a lot of classes. Set mandatory minimum class sizes for tool training. Have people badge themselves in and out at the start and end of classes. And that’s just of the top of my head. I’m sure that there are smarter people than me who could come up with more and better solutions. But something different than the current system needs to be there, because what I’m hearing is that no one likes the current system
Also, 100% agreement with @Holliday
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Ok what would you say that people teaching 3 classes in a row on a single day with no break between them and only 3 students per class are doing? Maximizing the availability of the committees tools or teaching legitimate classes?
Do you have some time to monitor some classes?
But I would agree that it was the wrong tack to have committees manage their classes. Then never once identified people taking advantage of the honorarium system and pushed them out. Instead many just did additional gatekeeping and increased class counts artificially.
Two scenarios I have seen recently.
One committee who swears that there needed to be more classes added to fully access their tools due to the amount of breakage that was occurring. So even people who had just had training (myself included) had to rush to take a special class (and pay again) to get up to speed, or would now be forced to take 4 new classes (and pay again). Fast forward a bit, now a new class comes out that can teach the 4 classes in half the time, for only $15 more. To see how these changes benefitted the committee, there’s a very popular post on talk documenting the current daily damage being done in this area.
Next was someone who swore to us that he couldn’t combine the training classes anymore than they already were, because it would be too much information to provide in one sitting. Also quite miraculously, the same person just posted a new event that is a privately paid class that is comprehensive in scope and does just that.
What changed?
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Absolutely nothing changed about the training needs of the members, and my breadboard class isn’t new. As soon as woodshop switched to the committee approved 1-4 format, tool breakage dropped immensely. That is still our preferred method of safety training. Unfortunately, the thing that did change is that we can no longer offer enough classes for honorarium to even teach 1 set of classes to 1 group of students per teacher. My comprehensive class is rarely shorter than 5 hours. Even though I schedule it for 3, I stay as long as it takes to make sure the students are comfortable using every stationary power tool FOR 1 BASIC OPERATION. Advanced techniques/calibration are not covered. Hand power tools, lathes and MultiCAM are not covered. I will not teach a 5 hour class for one honorarium. In addition to reducing downtime and maintenance costs, switching to the 1-4 format made the time investment made by the woodshop teachers a bit more valuable/expensive (up front) to the space, but obviously still not as valuable as someone in jewelry spending an hour and a half teaching just the hydroflux, ceramics spending an hour and a half only teaching the pottery wheel or auto doing the same thing with the lift. Why is it that other committees don’t get vilified for teaching one class per tool, but woodshop still gets shit for breaking up one 20 (large/dangerous) tool class into four smaller more digestible courses over a year later? Not only do I keep seeing negative “game the system” type comments, but I also get committee requests and emails ignored by the treasurer and other officers for months at a time. I have put up with being shunned for trying to help the committee for too long. The BoD asked for net zero events during one of the first meetings of their term. That is something that definitely changed. I have constantly worked within the system provided by the leadership at the space and have helped more than a thousand members gain tool access in several different committees in the <2 years I have been here. I never “gamed the system”. I made efforts to maximize the potential of the system for a committee that was falling apart. In all of the ignorant vilifying rants made by the leadership about my specific situation they always seem to forget that I personally earned enough honorarium for the committee to purchase EVERY SINGLE TOOL in the woodshop that was voted on and purchased during my term as chair. I stepped down as chair when the personal grudges and vendettas garnered by the leadership at the space made it a detriment to my committee for me to be the leader. I stopped teaching many classes due to the honorarium fiasco/great money scare of 2019 started by the previous treasurer’s scare tactics and shoddy accounting. Teaching a class for money at the space is no different than making something and selling it. People do that all the time at the space. Products and services that are in demand cost money. That’s a well known byproduct of living in a capitalist society. I’ve never had to alter or cheat on my attendance records because my classes are in demand, and are usually always full (even at the $35 per student that I now charge). Imagine if you guys had just tried to work with me instead of against me. We could have easily worked on a class pricing plan to eliminate the impact of the honorarium payout both to the committee and the teacher. Instead, I get satellite harassment and selective shunning more than a year after the fact from the people who are supposed to be setting the example. Great job guys!
Additionally, Woodshop 102 crash course did not cost you anything. Regardless of how recently before you were trained in 101, that class only covered milling tools. 101 did not cover the router, drill press, bandsaws, or many of the other tools that were seeing the most damage. Now apparently we need to add the palm sanders too.
There is a huge sign on the wall in the woodshop that talks all about it. It was also on the wiki, and discussed in length at several committee meetings.
Lame ducks can only fly around in circles for so long.
PSA: If you’re not a registered voting member, and are interested in helping the space get back on the upward slope, make sure you follow the steps on the wiki to become one.
Voting Rights
- All members start off as Supporting Members, with no voting rights.[6]
- A Supporting Member must have been a member for the immediate past 90 days to become a Regular Member. Exceptions will be considered on a case by case basis jointly by the Infrastructure and Finance Chairs.
- A member’s application to change from Supporting Member to Regular Member must be submitted:
- Thru the DMS Voting Registration site at https://votingrights.dallasmakerspace.org allowing you to add or remove your own voting rights
- Via email to [email protected] from the email address registered on their account,
- Thru other electronic registration approved by the Board of Directors.
- Rights will be effective upon receipt of the e-mail or electronic registration.
- Members added via the Family rate will not be allowed voting rights.
Elections are just around the corner! Help make DMS great again!
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If the option was available to audit classes, you bet your sweet granny I would take that option. I LOVE Dallas Makerspace; it has been one of the very few constant forces of good in my life over the past few years. And I will take any opportunity to help it out. But you need to both incentivize people to do good, as well as punish them for doing bad.
heck, maybe we should find some way to bring this into reality. Feel like it could stop a great many problems before they start
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Thank you for your opinion Luke, however, why limit a discussion? We learn best from looking at what both works and doesn’t work. You, yourself put in a factoid from our past in your post. I’m sure it was helpful because some readers may not know that. Limiting discussion comes across as censorship.
Whoa Tiger! Funny in that woodshop seems to have the exact opposite problem of what you state.
Or by taking one project class skipping this new paradigm altogether.
As someone that was gatekeeping access to woodshop tools you “found” a way to work within the system via EventBrite instead.
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A strong claim - do you have data to support it?
I see all of 11 mentions of your DMS email that have crossed my inbox ever; 5 total mentions of your personal email address - and most mentions were forwards or CC’s. You’re certainly not emailing admin@dms very often.
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There seems to be an entire separate thread that disagrees with this statement. Or am I reading the joys of woodshop maintenance wrong?
So you won’t volunteer unless you are paid? Hate to break it to you but that’s not volunteering.
These departments have done a good job managing how they teach. They have also done a good job training their members and growing their membership. This is a red herring
There are lots of classes that are combined because a one tool class is too short. Button maker and vinyl cutter. Max is now offering a combination 3d printing class. The lapidary classes cover three different tools. The list goes on.
I am sorry you feel this way, I for one have never have a problem working with you. You know I always give you props when I bring tours through, I send people your way first when they have serious woodshop questions.
That’s an interesting way to put it. The numbers are all posted here on talk. We were bleeding money and had huge financial obligations on the horizon. Spinning it as a scare tactic is wrong. We were losing money and had all the bills for opening the flex area coming in.
Since the accounting has gotten under control we have begun the path of raising honorarium limits responsibly.
Yes, but we aren’t paying them to make and sell things.
We do work with you. The Eventbrite push is literally because of woodshop while you were chair. It was a way to keep high volume classes going while we couldn’t handle the financial obligation.
We have tried to work with you, we are still working with the woodshop under Mike. We have paid for every repair that’s reported, we have bought every tool that is requested.
The bottom line is honorarium is meant as a thank you to teachers, not a salary. If you need honorarium to be bothered to teach, that’s not volunteering. If you want to be paid to teach there are plenty of places to get a job teaching.
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