Minutes:Annual Strategy

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Annual Strategy

This page is for collecting information leading to a year-ahead "what do we want to accomplish for the space" plan. It also documents what has been decided and accomplished ... so far.

Meeting on Jan 17th 2012

  • Matt O. to pursue and foster relationships with other organizations
  • Nate B. to champion rebranding into Make * Meet * Hack ?
  • John ? to champion remodel of kitchen/craft area

Calendar Year 2012

A small group met on 9 Sept 2011 to talk about what we want to do in 2012 ... or sooner. The first thing we did was brainstorm the issues that we need to address. There were three key groups of issues:

(note that these are just the raw ideas - more analysis follows)

Issues

Group A: (12 priority points)

  • Get equipment working

Group B: (8 priority points)

  • Retain people during cold months
  • Drama - not getting along
  • Getting more artists, minorities, kids, and women.

Group C: (10 priority points)

  • People working on projects
  • More group projects and collaboration
  • Wheel truing stand
  • Bike shop revamp
  • Make bread (this was from a metaphor of us being a bakery that doesn't make bread, but just gathers bread making equipment)

Root causes

For each of these groups, we tried to understand the root causes. Here are the thoughts:

Group A: Get Equipment Working

  • Money
  • Time
  • Ownership confusion
  • Lack of updates / communication
  • Don't want / care about it

Group B: People

  • Classes
  • Better lighting
  • Cleaning / housekeeping
  • Lack of activities
  • Weather - hard to get here
  • Dark location (safety?)

Group C: Projects

  • Tool chains not complete
  • Lack of inspiration / communication
  • Intimidated by inexperience and people
  • Lack of clean work areas
  • Lack of follow-through on rules
  • Discouraging surroundings

Proposed Solutions

We picked four root causes to try to develop some solutions and make assignments. In the following, it's important to note that this is the raw list of ideas mentioned. We only agreed on implementing the ones with names attached.

  1. Tool chains incomplete
    • Have zone wardens tell us
    • Promote use of dream list (Matt) [Potluck scheduled with to-do list]
    • Develop tools chains and documents missing elements (Roger) [Working on how to document. See PCB wiki page sample.]
    • Moratorium on new acquisitions until existing stuff is functional or out
    • Post to group to look out for new joiner (Dave S) [Done!]
    • Make list of non-functional tools or tools we should dispose (Rocco) [No update]
  2. Lack of inspiration / Discouraging surroundings / Lack of clean working space
    • Get an intern to blog for us
    • Find project managers or coaches to check in on people about their projects
    • Encourage people to blog about their projects (Matt) [Started. Roger to post Wiki class.]
    • Merit badges [Done!]
    • Awards for best / most projects
    • Limit the number of tools to increase awareness when they are missing
    • Identify a location for each tool [Nate started this on workbench.]
    • Have more clean-up days / potlucks [Scheduled for 19 Nov]
    • Make a list of things to be done on the wiki (Matt) [Agreed to drop this one]
    • Develop a floor plan to make better use of the space (Roger) [No progress]
  3. Intimidated by inexperience and people
    • Tutorial videos (Dustin and Nate W) [Concepts together, need to script and produce]
    • More classes
    • Working group to develop scripts / videos (Dustin, Rocco, and Nate W) [See above]
    • Catalog / link to existing materials (Rocco) [No progress]
    • QR codes on everything (Rocco) [Added to wiki pages. Need to make sample to post.]
    • Put lockouts on machines
    • Class signups on each machine (w/ QR codes) (Rocco) [See above]
  4. Lack of follow-thru on rules and policy
    • Evalutate the rules: Are they self-enforcing? Enforceable? Economics driven?
    • Security deposits for using space (e.g., parking tickets fines) (Dustin) [Agreed to drop this one. Google Doc instead.]
    • Perp in the dunk tank for offenders
    • Own up to your violations

Use these tags around items that have been completed Completed