Location, Date & Time
- Location: Boileroom Venue
- Venue Organiser: @Jagmills
- Date: Thursday 9th February 2017
- Time: 19:30 to 22:00
Meeting
Attendees
- Chris - @Jagmills (Director)
- Mark - @Cylindric (Director)
- Matt - @stochastic_forest (Director)
- Andrew - @AndrewPatience (Member)
- Alan - @Folknology (Member)
- Claire - @Claire_Lonsdale (Member)
- Florian - @florian (Member)
- Julian - @JulianWarren (Member)
- Leo - @Takumo (Member)
- Mark Hill - @mark (Member)
- Robin - @gingebot (Member)
##Apologies for not being available
##Minutes
Our first AGM at the new space. Thanks go out to the Boileroom for letting us have access to the venue to host it, and to Duncan (of the BR staff) for being the DM to look after us. The venue space is very nice indeed.
Duncan provided fire training for most members who attended, something we’ve needed to have for a while.
The presentation used for the AGM can be found here.
Financial Update
- Opening balance for 2017 is £5243.
- Closing balance at current forecasts is £1393.
- Our only real source of expenditure is rent for the space.
Membership Signup
- At current rates we will sadly run out of money early 2018. The current deficit for breaking even monthly is £220, which is (roughly) 10 standard level paying members.
- Lots of great discussion was had amongst the members of how we could achieve new signups and actively promote the space:
- Advertisement signs outside the Boileroom - @gingebot to manage organisation (see his post here).
- @Claire_Lonsdale - we could advertise on the BR bulletin that is emailed out for events (@Jagmills maybe even the space, might be a bit spammy though)
- We could host different events or workshops in the venue - perhaps charging a small cover charge to raise some funds. Many suggestions for this:
- VR night - using a VR headset to play games. E.g. “Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes” went down really well at GG.
- Membership presence at other craft events
- Surrey Soup and other fundraising events
- Retro gaming night
- Raspberry Pi Jam
- Basic soldering workshop
- SMD workshop
- Shrimp Arduino workshop and kits
- Upcycling workshop (e.g. pallet wood craft)
- Host a Mini Maker Faire
- Host a Repair Café
- Workshop Challenge - make a thing for the space, e.g. a furnace - but make it into an event
- We also discussed PR efforts and ways we could effectively advertise the space.
- Marketing materials:
- Could/should have a stock of flyers at the space to give to members to advertise in various places.
- Need to get a standard format that people can access. See @gingebot’s thread above.
- Do we want to sell any merchandise?
- Get some SHM stickers! @gingebot and @AndrewPatience to follow up with.
- Blogging! We need to promote things on the blog more, and get authors involved. There is a method for Discourse users to log in easily to Wordpress, @Jagmills to investigate
- Add ‘blogworthy’ tag to forum to flag up Forum posts which could be added to the blog.
- Advertisement potential ‘targets’:
- Gaming companies
- Surrey EARS (perhaps advertise membership there - we have a few friendly guys from EARS drop in occasionally)
- Surrey library (may conflict with library space though, how do we best approach this?)
- Maplins and other related stores around Surrey and Hampshire
-
@Takumo had a great idea of making some sort of RFID device that can take small donations, or at least take a user to a payment page.
###Renovations and Member Storage - Renovations are mostly completed - special thanks to all who have helped out!
- Outstanding renovation tasks:
- Take an inventory of all SHM stuff. BR have said they’d be very interested in getting us to inventory the loft somehow, might be a good way to raise some space funds or get discounted rent.
- @stochastic_forest mentioned the BR have shown an interest in replacing the loft ladder (currently a bit of a liability for space members) with something sturdier.
- Each founding member gets access to a 14L black box. New members to get a 7L version.
###Events for 2017
- Lots of events on for 2017:
- Innovate Guildford - 4th March
- Woking Mini Maker Faire - May
- Guildford Repair Café - Monthly
- Always the Sun Festival - September 8th-10th
- Do we want to offer some sort of discount to entice new members in?
- General consensus was to try a discount at Innovate Guildford. Something along the lines of first 3 months 50% off - TBD.
###Workshop Program
- To clarify we’ve had a great selection of workshop offerings that could be done at the space. Some suggestions here:
- 3D Printer Repair Clinic
- Basic Arduino coding
- Shrimpduino making and kits
- Soldering, SMD etc.
- Technical talks - e.g. LORA and FPGA.
- Node-RED use (more on this for the space shortly)
- Build your own website
- Laser design workshop
- Any suggestions greatly appreciated!
###Access System
- Version 1 has gone great. No hiccups or anything
- Version 2 on its way, which is much more polished. Once this is installed, we intend to approach the Boileroom who have expressed interest in getting the downstairs door system replaced/fixed (@Jagmills to follow up).
- Potential software rewrite to allow all members to ‘plug in’ to a smart space. For example, @RedDunc has been making a nice scrolling LED sign - we could easily display the member’s name as they enter. All through Node-RED, workshop planned (see @Jagmills)
###Laser Operation
- Good induction uptake! If you are interested in taking an induction, speak to @laser_users or post a request on the forum
- Charging for laser cost: the laser isn’t a free machine, it costs money to run (e.g. the laser tube and optics need replacing eventually). The general agreed upon idea is to sell materials through the Space Webshop (currently organised by @Jagmills, volunteers welcome
) with a very slight upcharge to cover this.
###Managing Consumables - Speaking of the webshop, we need people to take ownership of supply of various space consumables.
- @Jagmills is happy to get this rolling. A webshop with a stock of various items could be a good fundraising mechanism, as well as convenient for the members.
- Agreed upon to use £50 of SHM balance of stock, welcome donations for this.
- We need to have more prominent donation boxes available in the space, and any addtional donation mechanisms (e.g. @Takumo’s RFID donation gadget).
- Do let us know what kind of things we should stock. Current idea is small dev boards like Wemos and Arduinos, as well as stocks of various component ‘kits’.
###Equipment Suggestions
- Do let us know if there are any pieces of equipment you think the space should have by posting in the Equipment > Wanted category.
- Pledges can be given by members and towards pieces of equipment there.
- Pledge process should be noted - by pledging to a piece of equipment, this is a donation to the space and not a form of ownership of that equipment.
###Operational Policies
- Under-18 policy decided upon - any under 18 years old people in the space need to be accompanied by a nominated adult guardian who is a paying member.
- Perhaps a waiver or amendment to the membership policy is necessary to reflect this.
- Current insurance that we are looking into (@stochastic_forest) are Public Liability and Director Insurance, which are the bare minimum we need - other Makerspaces use this as their cover.
- Member Liability is something that is currently hotly debated. It seems most agree upon that the space is not liable for accidents (e.g. lasering off your own thumb), but it gets complicated when someone else may be liable or machines left in dangerous conditions. How do we address this?
###General Q&A
Most things addressed in rest of AGM.
- Can we add a navigation menu to Discourse? Same as the space, e.g. to find the other space-related pages. @Takumo to investigate (@Jagmills nominated him, sorry )
- We should add PPE to the space available for all machines.
- We need a donations box near the door.
Thanks to everyone for attending and for your input - it was incredibly productive and we had a lot of great ideas.