Hypothetical question.
Let’s say that I would like to use … ummm, let’s say the Thunder laser (chosen completely at random). Let’s say that I really hate driving to the space and waiting for someone else to finish using it and I have a bunch of stuff to cut. How about if I just schedule myself a private event on the Thunder laser for … oh, let’s say all day on a weekend ?
Aside from the “be excellent” proviso, what am I missing here?
… a de facto policy against reserving tools enabled by a deliberate inability to do so via the calendar or any other system.
I gather a reservation system was tried with 3D fab some time back. A large percentage of those reserving printers never showed or showed up considerably late, expecting the printer to be available.
Policy/excellency considerations aside regarding booking a tool or class/conference room for yourself all day, doesn’t the calendar system explicitly allow reservation of certain tools, e.g. the ones included on the “Tools” list (toward bottom of the page) when creating/submitting a class or event? Caveat: it may be I don’t understand what selecting one of the items in the list actual does or is supposed to indicate.
That’s a policy that, frankly, I would support.
This part doesn’t seem to be accurate. The new calendar system does allow me to set up a private event and reserve the laser (or any other piece of equipment) for myself to use privately.
In fact, I just did this - just to see if the system would let me. It did allow me to reserve the laser for myself from 10am to 5pm on a Saturday. (I just cancelled the event because I didn’t actually want the event - I was just testing the system).
Reserving a piece of equipment (like the laser, for instance) wouldn’t necessarily prevent a person from being generous and sharing the resource they had reserved, but it would definitely prevent a class from being scheduled.
I stand corrected. I blame habitually looking for “Conference Room” for the one event I routinely schedule (and skipping past the list of tools, which I do not believe were present in the previous system).
I believe in this case we’re counting on our education reviewers to catch these things during the 72-hour waiting period.
Edit: But if no honorarium is involved, then there is some potential for abuse. @AlexRhodes - do we have some process to deal with this?
Certain classes must have ability to reserve tools: laser, bridgeport, welding, etc. But tool reservation IMHO should be limited to classes not private events.
Classes are for the common good of membership in promoting use of DMS tools.
There is already a review process for items marked with honorarium, right?
Why not just force a review of classes that request tools? When it comes down to it, it’s the committee’s responsibility to determine how that stuff gets used anyway.
I think that’s what people are getting at… keeping in mind that the calendar/reservation system is a work in progress.
And conference/class rooms. These are sometimes a scarce resource and will only become more so as we grow. If it becomes popular or accepted to book them (or other spaces, e.g. CA Studio or Wood Shop or 3D Fab room or VECTOR area, all of which are “bookable” in new system) for long periods of time for personal or other uses not in general support of overall DMS mission, it will certainly become an issue/problem.
As there is no clear policy or language on the issue/practice, it probably needs to be brought up at next member meeting.
The “Tools” selection is only for sorting events based on tool. Basically if someone wanted to know when the next Laser class was without manually scrolling and searching…
To be clear, it is NOT for reserving tools, it is only there to classify events so people can find what they want faster.
That makes sense as the intent, but doesn’t it have that effect (i.e., reserving tools)?
There are both positives and negatives to that. The benefit is it would identify the conflict if two persons tried to schedule overlapping classes that required the same resource.
Am I correct in my original assertion that if someone “identified” a tool resource for either an event or a class, that the calendar would not allow a second person to “identify” the same tool for any portion of the first event/class? That seemed to be the way it worked.
One of the challenges with the old calendar system was its reliance on manual intervention. I’d hate to see us require “someone” to perform manual review of all requests for tools and classrooms (and I’m not volunteering to do it 
).
While I am morally outraged at the potential for abuse, I’m willing to trust that people would (at least for the most part) follow the rules if we could determine and post them.
An alternative to manual review, and I like @mblatz 's suggestion that it could be a member meeting discussion, would be to determine the policy, post it to the Rules and Policies, provide a link to those rules from the SUBMIT EVENT calendar page, and trust people to follow those rules. Any violators could be bumped/de-scheduled on an exception basis rather than requiring a 100% review.
EDIT: Oops. Now I see the link to the Rules & Policies from the Calendar page. Ignore that part of the suggestion.
Yes, exactly. This is such a clear need, as it would be for booking a room or an area like CA Studio for a class, that I just assumed that was the point of the selection list, with the ability to filter on the tool simply being a fortuitous byproduct.
The next BoD meeting is sooner:
https://dallasmakerspace.org/wiki/Board_of_Directors_Meeting_20160923
Well, ok, so if Brooks is right and it is only for sorting by tool for classes,
Translated: “Here are the classes regarding this tool”,
A simple note next to it should say “Note: You may not reserve tools here. Setting this only shows that your meeting/class topic involves this tool.”
You’re correct.
Rooms are the only things that are reserved, tools are not. You can schedule 3 events that are marked as using the Laser tool, but only one of them can be set to be in the Laser AREA at the same time.
Well, haha… doesn’t reserving the “Laser Area” effectively reserve the laser?
I can see someone trying to do this … and failing miserably. If there is no obvious class going on, odds are the bluff will be instantly called and business as usual happens after some ruffled feathers.
This does not appear to work as you described.
Two of us just tried this (since one member can’t have two classes simultaneously).
It would not allow both of us to reserve the laser tool, despite trying to use separate rooms.
EDIT: The error message when setting up the second/conflicting event specifically says,
“Some of the tools selected for this event are not available at the
requested time. Tools in use: Laser Cutter. If this event or class
requires certain tools to be available for use during then select any
that apply.”
Ok, so you’ve identified that there is a miscommunication about how the reservation system is or should be programmed. Moving forward:
This mixed-use case for this feature is complicated because:
You might want the ability to reserve a tool/tool area for a class.
and
You might also want to have a class ABOUT a tool, but not reserve it (ie HAAS).
You might even have a class where the first hour is in a classroom and the second class is in the tool area. I guess you could get around that by scheduling two events, where one is the actual class that tracks attendance, and the second part is just an empty reservation…
I’m sure there’s a relatively simple solution though.
Suggestion:
If you request a tool area, should it force approval from the committee? This should be so rare (training classes only) is that even a big deal?
These are all excellent points, and kudos to @John_Marlow for testing this and reporting the results.
@AlexRhodes, I really don’t think the Calendar system should be limiting event creation based on tools the event is tagged with. It was my understanding that this functionality was only for making it easier for people to find classes they are interested in.