I love to teach however as not one of our wealthier members and with the fact that I live some distance away the honorarium helps pay for gas to get me there and sucks. It also works as a bride to my husband for having to take me now that’s all over since it doesn’t look like my husband will be able to drive in the foreseeable I’m going to be teaching a lot less classes because I don’t have transportation. Now if I was getting the full $50 honorarium I could probably afford to get an Uber from my house to the Space & back so I could teach the class I wouldn’t have anything left but I would still be able to teach. Not everyone is in the same situation the gas to get here is not a problem if you live 5 minutes away it may well be if you live 20 or 30 miles. If you work somewhere far from the site and you want to teach a class at night you may need to stop and get dinner on the way. That’s an eye ditional cost. We’re not in the same situation. I still intend to teach as soon as my life settles down and I can figure out how the heck to get to the space.
Yeah, here’s the quote from your post right here. Emphasis mine.
It went from one class to 4 for the shop in general for full access, with 3 classes required for arguably the second most common two tools in the shop for majority of members (drill press and table saw, behind the miter saw. 4 classes if you count the fact that cross cuts on the table saw are listed as a separate class requirement on the wiki).
These are the tools that members need training on the most, as it covers both the full woodworkers and those that use wood in projects but aren’t doing “wood projects” per se.
So you added a lot of classes, raised the cost, and are collecting triple the honorarium on this just for the most common tools, quadruple for full shop use.
Whether you admit it or not, it’s a factor in your decision and proposal.
So, you you take my quote out of context, and only include the part that you are manipulating to suit your narrative and you call yourself a leader? Not to mention you’re math is terrible. 4 classes are available now, while 2 were available before. That is doubling, not tripling the number of classes like you state, and definitely not quadrupling like Brian said.
I included the entire post for transparency. I also encourage you to make sure you have the entire picture before you make your accusations, and maybe stop trying to crap on people for doing what they were asked. I have taught more than 500 members Woodshop safety since I started teaching. I did it for money, yes, but I also do it because I’m damn good at it and happen to enjoy it. You don’t seem to understand that my “pure volunteer” work at DMS comes after the teaching is done when I spend literally hundreds of hours advising and assisting my former students with their personal projects. I challenge you to find one person whom I have charged for that, or to find one woodworker at the space who I have not helped for free in some capacity.
Money isn’t the only thing that motivates me, but it is a thing, and it is a necessary thing. Maybe you would be better informed if you talked to me in person, or if you tucked your tail between your legs and actually came to a committee meeting to ask the committee questions about these asinine accusations you keep throwing around. I don’t decide what goes on in the committee, I just run the meetings and order consumables. Nice try.
Mark has personally helped me on almost all my wood projects and even gives my name for projects he doesn’t have time to complete. Makerspace should be lucky and thankful to have have you and you’re worth more than what honorarium pays you. But I guess that’s why you’re on eventbrite now, to make up for that. I have Mark’s back on anything
Says the member that clearly doesn’t read what the heck the problem was.
To have full shop access is now 4 classes disregarding multicam and lathes.
To use the two most common tools that I called out most valuable to the membership base, not just people focused on entirely wood projects, is now three classes rather than one. One class does not contain of the the aforementioned tools.
Stop distracting from the core issue here:
The classes are structured to require more classes for the common tools, the person who proposed it makes an extraordinary amount of money off the makerspace and significantly increased his income off of it after proposing this structure.
I’m not denying any other work done around the space, I never made mention of that
But we have a cash flow problem, and we have to admit that some of that is people who basically are working an extra job here. The fact that the most common tools are spread across different classes, rather than progressing starting with the common tools, is not a good sign either after factoring in you have a significant conflict of interest since it forces a lot of additional classwork. If you had a core safety class, and a class focused on the common tools, then progressing to the less used, it would make sense. But this went the opposite direction.
And that’s what complicated this. You proposed a solution to a problem that explicitly increases your benefit. There are solutions that achieve the same results but don’t cause this problem, and have the benefit of increased efficiency on time spent teaching tools that students already know they will never use.
No matter what you say, the fact you didn’t recuse yourself from this process given the volume you receive is not good optics to say the least.
Gee, it’s almost like I travel for a living. It’s even stranger that we have this message board called “Talk” where people can bring up their concerns for discussion.
It’s stranger that such a big change was done without a discussion on talk until after the fact.
And propose solutions that explicitly give you higher benefit, rather than recuse yourself.
Can’t tell if you’re trying to be particularly, personally insulting here, or making a terrible attempt at a joke
Regarding the “transparency” of the full post, that’s not the issue here. You’re burying your statements about motivations, which included that statement.
You ignored that the classes conveniently are designed to waste time teaching tools many students know they won’t use, to make them take a different class for the one tool in the whole thing let alone if they could take it immediately versus having to wait for the next class
@Tapper and I are not alone in pointing out the conflict of interest.
The “three months of discussion in committee meetings” has zero documentation in said meeting minutes. There is no mention of it until after the decision was made.
For those that have time conflicts or otherwise trying to stay involved, minutes are especially critical for controversial or conflict of interest situations
I quoted the relevant item because this isn’t about the background, there were other ways to solve this problem.
This was about you proposing this solution, arguing for it, all the time having a clear conflict of interest
You have already stated you teach for the money, you have a set of classes crafted in such a way it requires to take a large amount of irrelevant training for a significant user base while at the same time increasing your own payouts.
Use of Talk or indeed any online system is not required for committees to create structure or rules.
I’m not certain Talk is a good way for reaching those using woodshop, see Bert’s excellent discourse and research on the subject of Talk’s reach. Additionally, it was a committee decision and not Marks.
I did not see you post once on the announcement thread when all this was being discussed.
And there was a post that was pinned about it.
Some background on the decision:
First off the WOODSHOP committee approved the plan. At the time there were 5-6 woodshop basics teachers.
Second NO ONE makes an extraordinary amount of money working contract labor at the Makerspace.
Third contract labor ie teachers for honorarium or Eventbrite is a completely different beast than being a chair. Both take hours of time, but the volunteer hours I have seen the woodshop Chair give outside of teaching are ridiculously huge to the extent that he can’t get any personal projects done.
So for anyone to attack someone who gives this much of their time and energy to making this place better makes no sense unless you just don’t like him personally and are trying to chase him off. Is that what this is about?
So 10000 plus dollars is now a trivial amount of money?
It’s super hilarious that you would come to Mark’s defense. Also, you assume personal attack, it’s just simply not that. It’s all about the appearance of private benefit. There have been exactly two instructors for the past months since this went into effect. There are now complaints people cant get access to the tools. There is the appearance of a conflict of interest.
It is my understanding that one of the hold up to being able to go to a less complicated and easier to obtain authorization in Woodshop is having the RFID systems in place for the rest of the tools that need it. Infrastructure did not have time to put it in place. Has that changed? Or is there something else that is holding that up? one of the big keys to a different system is RFID and it requires the assistance of people outside of Woodshop who in recent times have not had time to work on it.
RFID has exactly zero to do with wood shops class requirements change. As discussed originally, the goal was for implementation by the time woodshop moved to their new space.
“Time for them to leave”, and many of of Freddy’s pronouncements of late, and his tone and attitude in general, are inappropriate for his role. I don’t agree with Infratructure chair being an “Officer”, but since that is the case, such authority should requirie a corresponding level of skill in resolving, rather than escalating, conflicts.
Nope, $50 per class is a trivial amount of money. The total I received is not relevant to the conversation, as I was not paid one cent more than any other teacher for each class they taught. Sorry, not sorry for teaching more than anyone else.
So here’s the rub… since the shitstorm of honorarium reduction, woodshop has: fewer teachers. Yes? Could that possibly be a result of said shitstorm? Polls and talk discussions point to yes.
Woodshop independently, as a WHOLE committee, changed their safety classes and course requirements as a proactive step in providing better education, increased safety knowledge retention, and through all that a potential reduction in tool damages and repair costs.
Who might benefit from extra honorarium payouts? Teachers, of course. But woodshop also benefits from the aforementioned points. Nothing is stopping other teachers to teach woodshop classes.
Before honorarium changes, even with great accumulated monetary incentive ($10ks of honorarium), there were few teachers. Now there are TWO TOTAL, as per your words. Mark is handling the brunt of class teaching. He is active. He volunteers tremendously. Those are probably excellent reasons why he is chair.
Conflict of interest? There is the appearance of that when you take things out of context. But Mark’s vote in committee is the same as anyone elses. And these changes were passed in committee.
In the end, woodshop is one of the most popular areas of the makerspace. It would follow logically that it would produce large volumes of high quality classes to reflect and grow that popularity. Which they do. If your concern is of one person ‘getting more pie’ from honorarium, shouldn’t the focus of your efforts be to spread that amongst more people? The change in honorarium has run counter to that purpose. Clearly, REDUCING teacher incentive has REDUCED the number of teachers.
Respectfully, the only business you have in dictating woodshops’ committee policies is by your one vote at committee meetings, and your position in Infrastructure to GUIDE policies of infrastructure regarding the woodshop.
People sure like to characterize this as a board of directors created problem. The real cause is that unregulated, DMS could no longer afford the dollar amount the honorarium system was producing. Yes the BoD announced that changes need to be made quickly. The BoD felt it was something that the committees could negotiate between themselves to fix. They came up with a set of class number targets that would meet the criteria we need spending to be. As always that has some unintended consequences.
Can we get some data? I would like to see the number of honorarium classes per month in both numbers and dollars going to committees/funds and out with instructors.
I do not remember being invited to the beer and bitch sessions (specifically the opposite). They produced the guidance for us to consider. It is attached here
B&B - Honorarium Discussion.pdf (57.4 KB)
If you want financial numbers then contact the @Team_Finance. But I know they are working hard on pressing issues. One of those is committee balances. If you want access to raw data regarding flows, ask for QBO access.
Do you mind if I post some of the data I get from QBO? For many years now, I have never doubted that i could post public information, but recent chilling events have happened and I have been threatened to a “vacation” if I ask questions or post data that is in the public domain having to do with our finances by Freddy. If you want to know the question I asked as it has been deleted, PM me or contact me in person.