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Eugene Maker Space Board of Directors meeting January 4th, 2024

Call to order

7:02 PM

Attending: Karen, Ben, Beata, Piotr, Sam, Andrew Also present:

Approve this agenda

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

The motion was seconded by Beatta.

Motion passes, the vote was Unanimous.

Approve previous minutes

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

The motion was seconded by Karen.

Motion passes, the vote was Unanimous.

Reports

President's report

Nothing to report.

Secretary's report

Nothing to report.

Treasurer's report

Money accounts as of 01/04/2024

Bank $567.82

PayPal $48.02

Patreon $1341.48

       --------

Sum $1957.32 (diff from last accounting in October -$5.30)

Shop status

Andrew reports that one of the lasers is working again!

Sam reports that the woodshop is functional. There's less sawdust in the air, he speculates that vacuums are being used more often. Sam bought some new tips for the wire-feed welder. It's burning through tips, we're not sure why, him and Dick Penney speculated it might be related to the feed line. Sam installed a light over the CNC Alley area and has improved the lighting situation. The electric panel was briefly blocked, the membership was informed, and the issue has been resolved. There are some materials stored back there, we will check in with the owner to let him know it will need to be removed if it turns into a long term thing.

The cleanroom has gotten cleaner. The printer area is largely clean. There's a little debris that gets moved back and forth depending on when people need space, but it's not a hugely blocking problem yet. There are things that need a home.

The loom will shortly be departing one way or another, this will help free things up a lot.

There is a light working at the top of the Pick a Part! Sam got it working. He discussed some plans for organizing the area to be more useful as a pick-a-part to identify things that are close to functionality vs things that are good candidates for deep scavenging. Karen described the idea of a 'Needs Love' shelf for putting things that might be close to functionality with a little fixing.

Andrew has a couple rack servers that might be useful for a virtual lab.

Old Business/Action Item Review

Loom update

Notice has been given to the owner of the loom, it will be either picked up or rehomed within a few days.

Installation of NVR

Andrew dropped off some cable, we need to get a meeting on the books. At least two people needed for safety & motivation.

Andrew and Ben will finish the last camera install next week.

Request for later access

We're finalizing our plan for this, will work out the last details this month and then present it to the group.

We could add 24 hour access to users at the $40+ level?

Sam expressed some concerns about the scenario of a person signing up and moving in.

We also discussed some possible new Patreon tiers.

Andrew will Contact Sanipac to give them the updated dumpster code

Done.

New Business

Vermont posters hack club

It's a Maker Space in Vermont that occasionally sends us their flyers and has asked if they can send a poster for us to put up. It's a grants program they have for teenagers.

ACTION: Karen will She will send the ok to them.

Business registration

The issue was immediately addressed once we discovered we were behind in our state business registration status.

Toner station

Keep or go? Andrew has expressed interest in cleaning it up and making it useful, he will decide in the next week.

TechSoup

Ben can add 'agents', interested members can get accounts via Ben.

Ventilation for the resin printer

No action required.

Discussion of dues and adjustments

It's been about 5 years since we increased the dues. We'd need to figure out how much to increase.

Given the amount we anticipate being short plus the unexpected expense of the filing, an addition $350 a month would help us get back to where we need. $10 a month would do that.

Sam asks if the supply side will also support this.

We can't adjust the amount for existing patrons, but we can change what access a patronage level comes with. Karen suggested changing the size of our time window.

Piotr suggested unpublishing our current tiers and creating new tiers and then setting a drop-dead date for people to move to to maintain access.

ACTION: Piotr will Calculate specifics on what we need going forward to inform our new membership rate.

Karen asked what criteria we should have to determine beginning the 'should we shut down?' conversation. Andrew suggested a 4 month's rent window.

We need to write an update to our financial woes post, while it helped us get out of the immediate hole we were in, it may have also scared off a potential member.

Andrew suggested a pre-buy option for folks to up-front pay a year at the current rate.

Karen suggested that we update the look of our Patreon page and add some additional tiers for folks who want to just make contributions.

We will finalize our new rates this month with a plan to make the final decision and pull the trigger at the February meeting.

ACTION: Karen will Write a New Years state of the shop blog post and will upsell our recent improvements.

Review upcoming events

Open hacks are planned going forward care of Sam's generous contribution of time. These are for Tuesday. There may be some additional openings starting next Tuesday care/of Andrew, he will be hosting open shop on additional days.

Adjournment

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