If I understand correctly a normal member may add an item to the board agenda. What is the process to do this?
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The next board meeting is here: Board of Directors Meeting 20150621 - Dallas Makerspace
I know you’ve done some wiki editing before, so I think you’re comfortable with most of that.
Basically follow the format of the other entries already on it. Pay special attention to the formatting. You basically put your item(s) under the consent agenda (assuming there is only one solution). You want to include a title (with your name in parentheses as the submitter), a Problem, a Solution, and (if over $250) a relevance to our tax exempt purpose.
IMO, you should provide specific data in the solution including links to items you might want to purchase etc. If there are multiple items in question, I would recommend creating a Google spreadsheet or something with all the information so that it can be looked at beforehand.
Also, IMHO (and other’s HO’s 
) you should also inform the committee head who will potentially be affected by whatever you are proposing.
Let us know if there are any questions.
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Thanks. Which committee is in charge of the room with all the tables and the new laptops?
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That area is probably mostly considered a common area and if you had to pick one committee, it’d probably be Logistics.
My comment about notifying committee heads affected was more along the lines of committees with designated areas and functions. For instance if you were going suggest something that would be stored in a specific area, you’d want to inform the person running that area. If the committee head doesn’t want whatever it is due to storage implications or other reasons, odds are it’s not going to get very far.
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I saw you put in a request for some bookshelves. We do already have a bookshelf, but it is empty because we decided that we don’t have enough space for books - also most of them are outdated.
Also, it looks like your proposal has more than one option. In these cases, you should put the item under New Business - this means that it will be discussed and the board can choose their option. When you put an item under Consent Agenda, they just read off the name and if no one says anything, it’s approved. Of course, if there isn’t a plainly specified solution, it’s not eligible to be part of the Consent Agenda.
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Actually, I would like to get rid of the bookcase in the electronics room. They seem out of place in the age of the internets?
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Oh and we had/have an book scanner but I think it got archived as well.
It was actually “kinda” owned by a member… they tried to donate it but he was told to take it home.
Honestly, I don’t want another bookshelf around here. It was always just sitting there, and no one ever read any books from it… even at the old space.
Well if the bookshelf used to contain say, old software books, or old college textbooks, then I am not surprised that no one bothered to look at it much.
I am thinking about a different kind of collection of books.
Here is a sample of the kind of books I am talking about:
For the science committee folks, my copy of Shinner’s Manual. This book was produced by the Botany group in Fort Worth and contains a nearly complete dichotomous key for every plany in the North Texas Area
For the electronics committee folks, I would be talking about a copy (actually two the first and second editions) of the Art of Electronics.
For woodworking, we would be talking about books like Michael Dunbar’s book on windsor chair making and the Roy Underhill series among many others.
For metalworking, we would be talking about Alex Wagner’s book on blacksmithing, and many others.
For the machine shop I have an extensive collection of books, many are reprints from the Lindsay book days. Most reprints of books that are over a hundred years old, and will still be relevant in another 100 years.
For the creative arts, I have a large number of classical art books as well as the more instructional type for a number of media types.
For the Civic hacking group, I have several software based books that will probably have another 5-10 years of worth while lifespan.
It really doesn’t matter to me ultimately if the group wants to go with this or if the books remain in my personal collection. I just want to make the offer and see how many members still remember the value of paper books!
I would also say that 1-3 bookshelves really don’t take much floor space, and even more important since they would be along the walls in the General use area (or meeting room), they wouldn’t effectively reduce any of our floor space.
You may consider doing a poll on here to see if there’s interest before going to the board. I think they installed a plugin on here to do that…
Anyways, I say that because if the majority votes YES, GIVE ME BOOKSHELVES then the board will probably approve it
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The content of the library was so random and partially outdated before that it seemed like a dumping ground for a lot of stuff. For instance, there was a book on OLE programming ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_Linking_and_Embedding ). Just my opinion, but you’re truly not doing anyone a favor “donating” a book like that since it is COMPLETELY irrelevant. IMO it’s actually a bit dangerous to leave a book like that lying about, or at least a very bad practical joke should someone new to programming waste their time reading it. I’m all for free speech, but a book like that should be burned just in case we have an apocalyptic event and future generations might accidentally dig it out of a landfill.
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Kent,
I would generally agree with that about old software books, particularly programming, but I can think of a couple of exceptions that I would think about including in this core start.
A Grass Textbook, while almost a decade old, the basic software hasn’t changed that much that is isn’t still useful, and more importantly there isn’t anything newer. And I think the Civic Hacking group with their GIS bent should really take a look at GRASS which provides excellent spatial analysis tools instead of just being predominantly a mapping tool.
I also remember being really grateful for old computer/programming books during the Y2K upgrade since they turned out to be the only remaining documentation for systems that were still running. That said, I really don’t think software would be too high a consumer of shelf space, and thinking about this I think given the problem with the old bookshelf could be prevented by have a special interest group take charge of the shelves.
A rule could be a new donation must have a note about how to contact the person making the donation, and if the interest group doesn’t think its is valuable they can have them pick it back up, or they can toss it at the donaters discretion. They could also have one shelf where they place boos for a week or two and if no members object those books would be tossed, as a means of culling out any books that are no longer relevant .
Fwiw @bscharff I read several books off the bookshelf at the old space. Many of the programming books were a bit dated but the project-focused books and Make magazines were worth a look (or more in- depth perusal).
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Make has a digital subscription model as well. I don’t know if licensing is an issue, but it might be nice for the space to subscribe to the Make and Craft magazines digitally, and place them on the server somewhere.
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I have always been a book lover but in my old age have really honed my evolving library down to quality books.
So I AM for having some sort of library at the makerspace, but a smartly curated library with maybe no more than 10 or 20 books in each committee category.
That being said, my experience has shown that while books are great, nothing compares to the experience of a knowledgeable person teaching from their personal years and decades of experience. So I definitely appreciate the direction makerspace is going to create an environment that is conducive to people sharing and teaching. We have such a wealth of machines and equipment at makerspace but they can be intimidating and the scope of using them is so vast that it is becoming almost imperative for their to be more classes on not only how to use stuff but WHAT to do with them.
Val