Community Meeting 20200220

Meeting due to take place at 7pm on Thursday 20 February 2020

Review of/actions from last meeting

• SG to make media mailouts a quarterly thing - beginning in January

  • Went out this week.

• SG to create a list of publications we could send things to

  • Done (so he could send the mailout out!)

• MG and SG to go through boxes on the storage shelves to get rid of any old ones and make sure everyone who has a membership has a box (Carried over - 4 months)

  • Started at the Hack-the-Space. Might need some more doing.

• SG to work with laser team to collate ideas for laser room tidiness and small scale maintenance after a couple of weeks, then create the poster - not enough feedback yet, SG to create something and hope people are offended enough by how bad it is to fix it (Carried over - 1 month)

  • Still not

• Adrian to update our mailing list of councillors and the like - SG to attempt to sit down with Adrian to go through the list. (carried forward 1 month)

  • Not done yet.

• SG to "come up with options" re: adding copy to the mugs to say what we do - (Github Issue Carried Forward - 1 month)

  • Adrian suggested just adding "Coworking and Makerspace" and the URL. There was some general discussion about words to use. Or a jigsaw of pieces. All to provide ideas, Sean to run a twitter poll.

• AL to do a tip run with 'Fresh, Stale, Last Chance' items - (Carried forward - 1 month)

  • Mike did it. It'd be good to find a bigger table to cover the areas then.

• SG to find out who would be interested in running basic skills classes, and in what - Email sent, so will carry over.

  • Struggling to find people to run things. Would be good to find a couple of simple ones, and then run one a month.

• JP/SG to organise Xmas Hack the Space day

• SG to create GitHub issue to discuss which printers should be kept/disposed of

  • Issue created today. Nuclear Sean

Recent Events

• Xmas Decorations Workshops
  • Went well. There was much interest in all of it, especially the pewter casting.
• Beaded Bracelets Workshop (cancelled)
  • Wasn't any interest for this sadly. Not sure why - maybe it looked too easy
• Christmas Market
  • Went well. There's another market planned for April 4th. Let Sean know if you want to take part and/or help out with it.
• Christmas Party
  • Went well because Adrian wasn't there (just kidding!)
• Hack the Space Day
  • Attendance wasn't really high, but was productive. we should have another one soon.
• DoES Epic Trip to Pontio and Astral Ship.
  • Was good to get out and see other spaces and meet more people (and also appreciate what we've got here :-) We should do more trips to the Astral Ship (ideally in the summer when it's warmer ;-)
• Wearable Tech Badge Workshop Series.
  • It was well attended, and generally went well. Quite a learning curve for a couple of the attendees. Interesting to see that charging for a specific course had more take-up than coming to the free sessions, despite them being able to learn the same things then.
• Big Fix Repair Cafe.
  • Well attended, as at previous Repair Cafes.

Upcoming Events

• Rubber Stamp Making Course - 29th Feb and 7th March.
  • Darren is running two oversubscribed rubber stamp courses (might be more in future too)
• Fabric District Festival 11 - 13 June Somebody Should issue 1387. Check out the issue and get involved. Mary and Jason are looking for collaborators for something in it.
• Liverpool Makefest 27 June Somebody Should issue 1386. Offers of things to show off, help with running the stall, cars for transporting things there and back, etc. wanted (add details on the github issue)
• Open Week at Daresbury Laboratory 29 June - 4th July. Pete Lomas got in touch to tell us about it, we're waiting to hear more about it.
• EMF Camp 23 -27 July. Get tickets if you want to go - Martin might be able to help with that too.
• Festival of Maintenance (19 September - with additional DoES Liverpool community events?) Might be in Oct - date not completely fixed yet. Pretty likely that it'll be in Liverpool, so if anyone wants to help
• Gausfest is coming up - will be in Nottingham or Cambridge. Nuclear Sean recommends it.
• Repair Cafes will be regularly on the 3rd Sunday of the month.

Finances

• https://github.com/DoESLiverpool/somebody-should/wiki/Financials202001
• If you ignored the rates then you would say that things are going really well. January had an operating profit of £3000 and there was no specific cause, just various things adding up. We took payments for the wearable tech workshop but even that will only account for something like £400 of the income.
• Some more people using the space would always be good. There was a bit of discussion about switching to be a charity, but it's something we've looked at in the past.

Promotion

• Getting the mugs out would be good.
• We were mentioned on Radio Merseyside, talking about Maker Day earlier this month; had a few people along to check the place out as a result.

Best Time/Frequency/Format for Community Meetings

• Evenings seem better attended than during the day, would be good to get the daytime ones better attended
• Should we advertise the video dialin option more widely?
• Would a different time during the day work better? Or not Thursdays?
• ACTION - SG to discuss with the daytime crowd.

Sheet material storage

• Our pegboard is the wrong size, sadly. Adrian updated https://github.com/DoESLiverpool/somebody-should/issues/1170
• Having something for intermediate storage in the laser-room would be good. Maybe we should construct something ourselves? ACTION - MG to propose something to construct for sheet storage.
• Should be able to have some longer-term storage behind the solvents cupboard.
• We should instigate a Do Not Hack system where people need to label things they've brought in, and after a month it can go to general use.
• Where can we store other non-sheet materials?
• Should we put some cabinets up on the walls in the nook? What do we want to store and where?
• ACTION - MG to propose some storage options for the recess with the vinyl cutters

AOB

• Some people suggested having a clothing repair workshop. That might also be a "basic skills class" to run. They should run it, and we should help them do so.
• Cathy to run Industrial Sewing Machine induction at 9:30 next maker day (14th March)
• We need more mailboxes. See issue https://github.com/DoESLiverpool/somebody-should/issues/1392 Could possibly partition them by first-letter-of-name as an alternative. Maybe some nice ones could go where the wings are?
• Would there be any interest in a making-recycled-paper workshop? If so, join forces with Terence!

Confirm time & date of next meeting

• 19th March. Time to be confirmed.