[Imc-makerspace] Thursday's organizational meeting: notes for discussion.

[Chuck Geigner]

This all sounds very familiar ;)

On Sun, Feb 20, 2011 at 8:47 PM, Erich Heine <sophacles at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> At Thursday's meeting we had a discussion about the space, its
> organization, and it's future.
>
> The discussion began  2 Thursdays ago when some folks interested in
> starting a hacker space in Springfield showed up to the wireless mesh
> reading group, and started asking organizational questions. A few other
> people (myself included) who are new to the group also started asking
> questions, and the conversation carried over into this last Thursday.
>
> I was asked to put these notes on the mailing list to facilitate a
> discussion of them amongst the membership that wasn't present at that
> meeting.
>
> The conversaion started with discussion of the vision of the space and
> the principles by which the space should abide.
>
> For Vision, we decided we thought the current mission/vision statement from
> the website covered the idea pretty well.
>
> For Principles:
>
> * There should be jobs/roles for certain key tasks (see below)
> * Roles are strictly volunteer
> * Roles convey no special privilege
> * Strive to keep membership/dues rates as low as possible
> * Donations and Dues are private to the member (opt-out)
> * The space should be self-sustaining w/out Americorps help.
> * The group should generally governed via consensus
>
> We then discussed various roles we felt would be good for the space.
> These roles may not end up having a 1:1 mapping with jobs, but completeness
> a this stage is considered beneficial.
>
> * Keymaster
> - on the lease
> - tracks and distributes space keys
> * Treasurer
> - Knows the financial state of the group
> - Interacts with the IMC finance committee
>  - Tracks/collects dues
>
> * Business Development (or some better name, e.g. outreach coordinater?)
> - mail brochures to potentially interested people
>  - participate in IMC foundation group
> - advertise/promote/etc successes and mission
>
> * Quartermaster/inventory specialist
>
> * root (webmaster, other IT infrastructure)
>
> * safety officer
>
> * representative/spokesperson
>  - be the contact person for the "outside world"
> - maybe be person for new attendees to talk to?
>
> Communication and Consensus was also a topic of discussion:
>
> * We talked about email or other electronic consensus, for small and
> moderate issues, deciding that it would be a reasonable way to reach
> consensus unless someone blocks or wants to discuss it in a "real business
> meeting"
>
> * We discussed the idea that sometimes people are incommunicado for a
> while, or otherwise unable to attend meetings. As such, we liked the idea of
> bi-monthly agendas, giving some warning on topics coming up (when possible)
> so those with concerns can get them to the group prior to the vote.
>
> * Alternatives to Email were brought up, as a better medium for discussion
> and consensus building. Suggestions include:
> + forum
>  + wiki
> + polls
> + skype
>  + IM/IRC/other chat
> + Google Wave
>
>
> Finally we had some actions for this coming thursday (and who was assigned
> that task):
>
> * Bringing these principles, roles, and ideas to the list for
> discussion (Erich)
> * /root tasks - freshen up the website a bit (Brian, Isaac)
> * Look into and possibly demo the communication alternatives (Isaac)
> * A short (approx 1/2 page) document on what new attendees can expect from
> the space and it's members. (Derek)
> * Put together a list of successes that the space has had (Brian)
>
> So, what comments, thoughts, etc are out there on this?
>
> Regards,
> Erich
>
> _______________________________________________
> Imc-makerspace mailing list
> Imc-makerspace at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/imc-makerspace
>
>


-- 
Chuck Geigner
<arcadechuck at gmail.com>
http://herdingelectrons.blogspot.com
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