Membership Phase 3

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Purpose

First, congratulations on becoming a member, and welcome to i3Detroit!

It's been observed that once a new member gets their key, the field is so wide-open it can be hard to figure out what to do next. This is intended to serve as a guide.

Everything here is optional, but it's a good idea to do all of these things at least once. Everything here is intended to help you level-up your membership skills. Do 'em in whatever order you like, of course.

Now that you have your key

  • Find something in the space with a parking permit attached to it, and examine the permit.
    • Why was the permit made that way? What can you infer about past problems based on the design?
    • Is the permit expired or about to expire? Can you help the owner wrap things up?
  • Get your butt onto Slack if you aren't already! It's where a LOT of activity happens, and you don't want to miss out.
    • If you're on a laptop/desktop, the web interface ([1]) is pretty good, the desktop client isn't really reqiured.
    • But on a phone, the mobile app is way better. Trust me on this! Once you get it installed, you'll probably want to turn off most of the notifications.
    • If it's not obvious how to do that, ask around until you find a member who can give you some pointers.
    • Join ten or twenty channels. Heck, if you feel like it, join all the channels that exist.
    • After a week, leave the ones that don't interest you. Or don't, it's harmless to lurk.
  • Get trained on some equipment!
    • Meet some people who already use the machine you're interested in. Consider using Slack for this.
    • Read the machine's wiki page, and see if it has good training materials. If not, help find some!
    • Talk to the trainer(s) and ask for pointers of stuff you should pay attention to while shadowing an existing user.
    • Ask the trainer(s) if there's anything you can do to help with the next training session.
    • Once you're trained up and making stuff, remember to brag a little! Share what you made, and help others learn.
  • Visit the web interface of each mailing list and play with the search function a bit.
    • Try looking at new-member intro posts. Do you notice any patterns among the ones that get lots of replies, and the ones that don't?
    • Can you find any topics that seem to come up regularly, dating all the way back to the group's founding?
    • Suppose there's something being discussed right now. Has it been talked about before?
  • Try searching for some of those same topics on this very wiki.
    • Do you find those words in old meeting minutes?
    • Play with the "View History" function on some wiki pages. Like this one, click it right up at the top. This can tell you a lot!
  • Get in touch with the zone coordinator of your favorite zone.
    • Since you're new, your perspective can be really helpful. Do you find the zone useful? Welcoming? Is it easy to find all the info you want?
    • If you've identified room for improvement, talk to the ZoCo about how you can help.
    • Something as simple as refreshing the zone-colored paint on some worn tool handles can really help.
    • Or spiffing up the zone's wiki page, hint hint...
  • Find an experienced member who would like to co-host a Friday Nite Tour with you.
    • Sometimes the #space-business channel can be a good place to find and coordinate that stuff.
    • This is a good time to revisit the waiver and sign-in procedure, since everyone who visits for a tour needs to sign in as your guest.
    • Did the visitors have any weird misconceptions about the space?
  • Check out that gorgeous calendar on i3detroit.org.