Date: Wednesday 11th January 2023 19:30 Location: Hackspace Manchester, Wellington House, M40 7FS Web link: tbc
Hey All, for the start of 2023 we thought it would be good to come together and discuss plans for what we want the Hacman to look like by the end of 2023. Itāll also be a good chance for new members to come along and meet other members.
Agenda
To add your own points, please reply to this thread. Items posted immediately before the meeting may not be included. Please leave at least 24h when adding an item. Time may run out - usually meetings last 1h30 but can end earlier or later.
Brief Team Updates
Board
Finance
Membership
IT
Outreach
Metalwork
Woodwork
Member submitted items
Items raised in this thread can be considered for AOB.
Changing open evenings (alloted tour times, rota?)
How to get involved around the space.
Visual Arts group formation
Scope and Responsibilities
Update on 3D printer induction progress?
Plans and aims for the year ahead.
February Hack-the-space day.
Tenancy at Wellington House.
AOB
Minutes
Minutes will be written up after the meeting, posted below this thread.
With the desire to form a Visual Arts group, is it worth a brief agenda item to discuss the formation & scope of such a group?
I imagine it might be easier to discuss the topic of how the group will manage/share responsibilities with other existing specialist groups (3d, laser, sewing), as raised in the VA team formation thread, in-person?
Following on from that, Iād be keen to introduce regular (at least quarterly to begin with?) Visual Arts meetings to take stock of the variety of items in the VA area and any largish-impact changes folks might want exploring (reorganisation and physical layout changes?) Assuming everybodyās okay with that of course
Cheers Rob. Iāve added it to the agenda. It would be really helpful to have some representation from the Laser cutter and 3D printer teams, or people who currently lead these items. @Harvinder_Atwal are you able to encourage these people to attend? Iām not sure who is on those teams.
Can I request that the ongoing discussion around the snackspace payment system is not included in this meeting? Appreciate that itās not on the agenda, but if anyone was considering itā¦
The debate already quite detailed and technical, and most of the membership wouldnāt know the ins and outs to be able to make a decision. Also, we wanna keep the meeting brief
Maybe mention there is a discussion and signpost accordingly. Or even suggest if we want to talk about do it after the meeting, and then interested people can stick around.
Would it be possible to have an egg timer system or similar for ābrief updatesā? There are a ton of points to discuss and we have people at home who love us etc.
Iād like to mention Iām running board game nights if possible. I know itās too officially late to get it on the rota, but I donāt want to give a whole update, more, āIām here, Iām running board game nights.ā
Since board game nights are a social thing, an in person meeting is an opportunity to meet people so they know who I am in advance of coming to board games.
FYI everyone, Iāll have the minutes with actions done in the next couple of days. Thatās not to stop anyone starting now on anything that was discussed.
Felt like a really useful and fairly focused meeting last night, still need to shave it down to 90 minutes but it was a heck of a lot shorter than previous ones iāve sat in.
Thanks to Mike for chairing and everyone else for the large member turnout.
Present: Ellis Ley, Mark Dale, Peter Roberts, Nathan Blades, MAtin Pickersgill, Rob Jackson, Jack Collins, Aaron Zidchouski, Steve Houston, Kieran Sharma, Frank Hall, Luke Nolan, Richard Westwell, Ben Dooks, Conall McGinty, Foluso Falade, Joe Christian, Tony Goacher, Mike Hindley, Jane Glaysher-White (online: Ellan Pearceā¦
Brief Team Updates
Board/financne/membership
Board has launched purchase proposal system. Now if members want anything for the space, they can develop a proposal and raise it to the board or a subgroup/team. If a proposal gets enough support, that team can can be granted the money to do it. This is part of an effort to improve the equipment we have and simultaneously get people engaged in improving the space
There is now an orange box near the front tour with crib sheets for open evening tours. We want to make it clear that weāre a community space. Membership is cheap because people pitch in. 250 members should be 250 hands helping out.
Looking at our figures for Jun-Nov 2022, we gained around 40 members and numbers are going up steadily. We run at c. Ā£1k profit pcm. This sounds good but electric bill has risen from Ā£300-400 to Ā£500-600 pcm. Also, tenancy ends in 14mo, and rent and service charge are set to increase. This is affordable if membership keeps growing sustainably. But longer-term future might be uncertain.
In Sept we had a sound recording company come in to record sounds. This generated Ā£600 income for the space.
IT
@rjackson is now getting up to speed with our various digital systems. A primary goal for the digital infra team is to improve how information is presented, especially to ease onboarding for new users. This may be based on a āWhat do you want to do todayā type interface.
Members volunteered to help the team understand the difficulties new members might have in navigating the various processes (training, inductions, storage, comms channels, etc.)
Outreach
Newsletters are now regular (every 2 months or more).
We get roughly 10 new members pcm.
We are getting good engagement for Instagram, but Twitter is being deactivated/mothballed due to lack of interest from members and value as a platform. FB gets v. little engagement. We can x-post from Insta, but otherwise it is not maintained. We will also be turning off the FB messaging feature.
Many suggestions were made about boosting outreach further (events like Makerfaires, working with universities, building relationships with other orgs like council, voluntary sector, hosting Skillshares, talking to repair cafes
ACTION: @Josephxtian has already spoken with Jane, who works with charities and other community orgs in GM.
Metalwork
We have a slight availability issue with the workshopās 2 trainers, so will be looking to boost numbers
We will soon be putting in a request for funding for the welding extraction
Woodwork
We are close to finalising the new layout
New dust extractor works v. well. Too well in fact. Needs some work to be fully operational.
Several successful purchase proposals have gone through
Training going well. We have a large team and manage it all with spreadsheet. ITās not perfect, but is manageable.
Changing the structure of open evenings (alloted tour times, rota?)
Open evenings were previously v. informal. There could be a risk of nobody actually being present to give tours, which could cost us new members and damage our reputation
Immediate goal is to formalise it with booked timings. Would be easier for tour givers and tour-havers. Would be less intimidating for curious members and puts in a slight delay between joining and induction/fob pickup
ACTIONS:
@Josephxtian to look at setting up bookable tours (on Eventbrite?)
We need to check what info is presented to new members and how user-friendly that is
ACTIONS:
@rjackson (and digital team) to look at how the system/webpage
@mikeh to set up forum post seeking input from recently joined members
Visual Arts group formation
There has been some interest in formin a visual arts team to have oversight of how the stage area is run
Sentiment is that 3D printing and laser groups will continue to maintain their own training and maintenance practices, but work closely with the VA team, which will look after the broader VA space
ACTION
@rjackson to start team and begin discussions about membership
Member Meeting
