Election 2024 inaudible original stump speech

I know this is a wall of text but I'll whittle it down, but I have to help a member with the resin printers right now.

I've been a member here for a while and have been heavily involved almost since day one.

Within weeks of joining I started giving tours every Friday and soon after everybody else stopped giving tours. I got pretty good at telling who was not interested, who was going to join, and who was going to join right now, pestering the VP of Membership daily. I learned to recognize the "I'm home" look on the last group's faces. I'm sure I had that look on my face the moment I walked through the door for the first time.

Not long after becoming the "unofficial official tour guide" the board decided I'd make a good VPAC (Vice President of Activities and Classes) a position which had been somewhat neglected for a while and I said yes. VPAC turned out to be a lot of fun. I lit fires under people's asses to teach interesting classes, helped the people teaching classes with whatever they needed. I fixed the "wasn't PotLock supposed to be last month? Oh well, we'll do it next time" problem we had and set up the last Saturdays of July and October to clean the space for Maker Fair After Party and Halloween Party and third Saturdays of January and April for installing/fixing/maintenance of space equipment system.

My first full September as a member I was voted onto the board and served two terms, including the year that covid happened (that was a lot of fun 😒). Before COVID it was also when we decided to rent B side.

It wasn't all fun and games, we ended up having to ban a couple people, the discipline duties of being on the board is probably the worst thing about being on it but sometimes it's necessary and members of the board agree to do the stuff others don't want to do when we sign up for board membership.

Apart from my experience on the board I've also run the i3 presence at Maker Fair, a horrible and very busy job. I was stupid enough to do it twice and I would have done it again if it hasn't been cancelled due to covid. But everything that looked like it was going to blow up actually ended up going just fine.

Speaking of Maker Fair, we needed invites to the after party so I made those, with my uneducated amateur page layout skills. I also did the brochures and the MEDC fund raising cards.

I spent one after party stuck to Wolverine making tags for all the new things that were going to be exhibited on Sunday.

When the space's long running Member Advocate stepped down and the space needed a new one I stepped up when nobody else would. Then when Matt Carpenter left us for a job in Boston I stepped up and traded VPAC for VP of Membership when the people on the membership committee weren't doing what they signed up for.

To make the story short (too late) I don't think I've ever said no to do something than need to be done that I could do which means I've held most all of the leadership positions that exist at i3 and without any complaints because I love i3 and what it stands for and I can't just sit back and watch if flounder because something necessary wasn't being done.

Looking toward the future, I have several plans for i3.

One: I'd like to get more of the new members involved in leadership. i3 is always a work in progress and they have the fresh new ideas to make i3 into what it needs to be post covid.

Two: I want to get the expansion done, hopefully by the end of the year.

And three, the biggest one: I'd like to get i3 into a position where we can buy our own space. Owning our own space means we have to pay the mortgage but no property taxes which should make the monthly property costs cheaper, whereas renting means we have to pay property taxes as part of the rent. We can also find a space that has the things we want that the current space lacks, like a loading dock and adequate parking. But in order to do that we have to work on making our financials satisfactory to bankers.