EMSBoDMeetingMinutes030322

Eugene Maker Space Board of Directors meeting March 3rd, 2022

Call to order

7:02PM

Attending: Karen, Ben, Michael, Piotr, Beata Also present: Dick

Approve this agenda

Motion: Ben moved that the Eugene Makerspace Board of Directors approve the agenda as presented.

The motion was seconded by Karen.

Motion passes, the vote was Unanimous.

Approve previous minutes

Motion: Karen moved that the Eugene Makerspace Board of Directors approve the minutes from the February BoD meeting as submitted.

The motion was seconded by Piotr.

Motion passes, the vote was Unanimous.

Reports

President's report

We received an e-mail from Elegoo explaining that their communications are backlogged due to Chinese New Year. Based on our communication, we seem to be doing ok so far. Shop seems to still be there.

Secretary's report

Nothing to report.

Treasurer's report

Bank: $2,615.08 PayPal: $24.01 Patreon: $61.10 Sum: $2,700.19

This is a difference of $.51 from the previous meeting.

On February 19, Karen posted receipts for deposits: $22 in donations, $35 from Sam Raimey. We also received Cybergrants emails and Karen approved them.

Shop status

No change reported. Dick reported that there was a cleanup on the first to take advantage of our garbage pickup.

Old Business/Action Item Review

COVID-19 status review - Open Hack closure status

The State of Oregon has re-implemented indoor mask mandates due to a big uptick in infections (largely due to the the Delta and now Omicron variant). Karen has updated the text on the website to reflect our new mask-mandate status in compliance with state rules until further notice.

Karen reports that the state intends to lift mask mandates within the next two weeks. We've had some discussions about what we do at this point without state, county, or federal guidance on how to move forward. Do we form our own path on this or do we take down the signs and hope for the best?

Ben suggested removing mask mandates when the state does and relying on the membership exercising good judgment both in how they protect themselves and others.

Piotr added that we should include language encourage wearing of masks indoors and that members respect the wishes of others when they're in the space and if others ask them to wear masks, that they do so out of mutual respect (or leave temporarily). This is an opportunity for us to lean on our status as a community to create a safe and respectful environment to create things and if that means putting on protection on request, please do so even if it's not a matter of law.

Karen offered as an adjunct to this her experience reviewing how other maker spaces are handling this situation. She found one that had a policy where they simply demanded their members prove vaccination status and to then have permission to go maskless in their shop. Dick shared his experience with other organizations locally looking to make similar rules that encountered tremendous resistance. Karen was clear that she wasn't advocating that we follow this as a mandate per the other make space, but offered the information about how some organizations like ours are handling this situation.

Piotr suggested that we consider what our goals are as an organization and what the calculus surrounding this (from both the perspective of those who are concerned with the pandemic and those who may resist vigorously) suggests in terms of our strategy as an organization. The local politics have many unexpected and unusual intersections on multiple axis.

Michael expanded on this, noting that it wasn't completely political; there are portions of our community who have diverse politics but are unified for and against vaccination mandates and that the situation is both fluid and complicated.

Karen recapped the above conversation and proposed that we seek wording that encompassed the high points of the conversation and included an appeal to mutual respect. She asked if anyone had recorded her proposal but the secretary was so busy listening that he neglected to type it.

In regards to the discussion about how to proceed on Open Hack, we discussed how to integrate bot-assisted scheduling to the calendar via Discord. Ben volunteered to handle the web integrations required to Google Calendar, FaceBook, etc. Piotr raised the idea of identifying folks who have 'hack scheduling rights'.

We discussed different ideas on how to integrate these tasks with Discord.

Karen suggested removing Open Hack from the calendar for the next month until we can find someone interested in hosting one.

ACTION: Karen will Remove open hacks for the next month (barring volunteers) and put something together asking for volunteers.

Karen will request a door replacement

Continuing.

Board shall review Piotr's proposed rules for electronic spaces in anticipation of the Discord migration

Piotr will post the #welcome rules to Patreon and invite comment

Piotr shared comments received in Slack from members (including questions about how Discord violations might affect physical membership).

Piotr suggested that we leave it the way it is because our governing documents already cover shop access and recommended that we leave the Discord rules to be on-line only.

Karen summarized our existing membership termination procedures for the purpose of discussion.

Piotr noted that the proposed online rules limit their scope to online spaces and explicitly separates electronic consequences from physical access to the shop.

Karen suggested modifying the final line to: "While access to EMS's online services is treated as separate and distinct from continued access to the shop, receiving a ban of suspension from EMS online services may trigger a membership review."

Michael expressed approval for the text as proposed and the concept of looking for reasons not to kick people out of the shop.

Piotr will make Karen's proposed amendment and requested a vote.

Motion: Ben moved that the Eugene Makerspace Board of Directors Vote to approve the proposed online code of conduct.

The motion was seconded by Karen.

Motion passes, the vote was {{{4}}}.

New Business

Discord Migration

The final showstopper was the change to the Code of Conduct. Piotr suggested that we enable the connection to Discord on Patreon. After this, he suggested that we begin a soft move to begin pulling existing people over.

Karen asked if there was a way to migrate data from Slack to Discord. It sounds like it would probably be pretty difficult. Karen asked if we should consider implementing some type of cross-posting technology to synchronize both systems during the switchover. Piotr argued that this would set us up for failure because some people would simply never make the move. He advocated for a hard cutoff and we formed general consensus.

ACTION: Piotr will Enable the Discord connector in Patreon.

ACTION: Karen will Begin swapping out Slack invites with Patreon invites on the website and social media.

New K40

Tom donated a K40! It's sitting on a chair in the CNC alley and ready to be installed. Karen asked Ben to set up the new laser and he agreed to take stewardship of getting things up and running.

Karen noted that the CNC Alley area has degraded in various ways and will require some extra work to bring back to life.

ACTION: Ben will Activate new laser.

Michael gives update on moving entirely off of Scaleway and consolidating on AWS

We are completely off of Scaleway! Our last statement from them projects a $0.00 cost for this month. AWS charges us about $12 a month for our internet presence. Half of that is snapshot data for backup purposes.

Website stuff

Karen has been updating the site since our last meeting. She's been attacking broken links and more and documenting her changes in Discord. She suggested opening her changes tracking channel to public review. In her explorations, she found evidence of past, very active blog presence for the EMS and then saw a dramatic drop-off in activity a few years ago. She also discussed some work she's been doing to increase the administratibility of the site as much as she could but there are technical limitations in the branch of Wordpress we're on. She feels that we should be able to start making inroads back towards improving our public presence and suggested starting with some pages describing the BoD.

She requested photos and brief writeups from the board about who they are for putting on a page.

Addendum

Dick asked about what the purpose of the website was and Karen described the opportunity it gives us to reach new members and to make a good impression on them and funnel interested parties into our Patreon, Discord, and other elements of the community.

Karen asked if we could safely point people to gatekeeper.eugenemakerspace.com and Ben said sure. Michael volunteered to check it from a security perspective.

Dick posted an inquiry about the Eugene Toolbox Project by Adams Elementary School. He summarized how it works (a tool library) and noted that it has a very active membership. He suggested some synergy should exist between them and the Maker Space. He suggested that we look for opportunities to reach out to their membership because there must be common interest between the groups.

Adjournment

Motion: Piotr moved that the Eugene Makerspace Board of Directors adjourn.

The motion was seconded by Karen.

Motion passes, the vote was {{{4}}}.

The meeting was adjourned at 8:46 PM.