[Imc-makerspace] UI Consulting Meeting

[Brian Duggan]

Hey again folks,

The IMC Tech projects, including Makerspace Urbana, the Help Desk, and
CuWin (official mesh wifi non-profit), were selected as clients for Jeff
Kurtz's business IT consulting class at the UI.

I'm meeting with the team for the first time this Monday at 10am in the
Makerspace. All Makerspace members and Help Desk volunteers are, of
course, invited to participate.

Our goals are to make the tech projects at the IMC more integrated and
sustainable.

For Makerspace Urbana, that means finding more ways to subsidize the
space while we build our membership and income sources. Then we want to
build a roadmap to achieve lower monthly membership fees, getting
more/better physical space, develop workshops, and acquire equipment.

For the Help Desk, it means developing a business model beyond donations
that continues to ensure free service for users in Urbana-Champaign
while providing a quality volunteer and user experience. This could
involve close integration with a future mesh wifi co-op developing out
of CuWin.

Your input and cooperation is welcome. It would be great for us to build
a team that can work with their team. I'm unsure what the time
commitment would be, but we'll have a better idea after the meeting on
Monday. I hope that this collaboration will result in laying more
critical groundwork so that all these groups are around for the next 20
years+.

Thanks!
Brian

-- 
Brian Duggan
Technical Projects Developer
UC Independent Media Center
http://www.ucimc.org | 631 223 8442