Minutes:Board Meeting Minutes 20120814

2012-08-14 i3 Detroit, Board Meeting, August 14, 2012

Chair: Eric Merrill

Start 7:30pm, held in the commons

Attendees

Matt Arnold

Nicolas Anderson

Joe Bender

Nathan Bezanson

Hans Chen

Karen Corbeill

Dave Scholl

Steve f00f

Kevin Floyd

Rocco Marras

Eric Merrill

Matt Oerhlein

Adriane Patterson

Edward Platt

Richard Roy

Aaron Steele

Jenny Steele

Nathan Warnick

Dustin White

Madalyn Winans

Agenda

Harassment Policy

Steve f00f – If we have something in place, whether written or not, everything from suspension to banning.

Maddy W. – Is there a complaint procedure?

Eric M. – If there’s anything, bring it to the board.

Joe B. – If there’s a guest, a member can ask another guest to leave at anytime.

Ted H. – The board has to be the one to ban someone.

Eric M. – If a board member thought it was an emergency, any member can ask someone to leave.

Maddy W. – I work in HR, we have a complaint procedure, and we have a zero-tolerance policy, if anything happens, you’re gone.

Joe B. – The problem with zero-tolerance policies is that they aren’t followed because they are viewed as the ‘nuclear option’. Something should be put down.

Dustin W. – Our survey says they trust the board

Karen C. – I don’t think we need to a written policy, I think we should have it brought to the board.

Nate B. – We are dealing with two questions here, one is reporting, the other is reporting. I liked what Matt Arnold said (on the mailing list) that it’s ok to report, basically it cleared the air that we aren’t going to be ignoring any complaints. We haven’t had enough incidents to

Ted H. – We need a pretty clear statement, this is not a frat house, we are supposed to treat people with a certain amount of respect. We need a clear statement that states what we expect what level of expectation that we have for members and guests.

Joe B. – It does have to be objective, otherwise it may be viewed as favoritism if the board acts too lightly.

Maddy W. – The ultimate goal is the make members comfortable in the space, and comfortable in reporting it to the board. It would be good to have something up in the writing.

Ted H. – There are people that would assert that groping someone is not a big deal, making overt sexual comments, etc. There are not difficult to set standards here.

Rocco M. – Should we make an ombudsman to deal with issues.

Nate B. – I move that we adopt Matt’s reporting statement and Joe’s procedure.

Ted H. – Can we amend it, and write a proposal?

Matt A. – I will work on it.

Election

[Candidates nominated themselves]

Unified IT assets/CRM

Ted H. – We had a focus group meeting, wish list, to do, etc. Jon Anderson, Gary Morin, Adrienne, Matt Huber were interested in our collection of IT assets. We started a mantis project to start gathering the user complaints, etc. I would like to be here tomorrow Wednesday, issues we would like to tackle that don’t handle.

Nate B. – Jon’s intent was to appoint a single person to be responsible for it. Is it just a group person.

Ted H. – Currently it’s a group project, we are still open to the idea of an IT czar.

Eric M. – I know the CRM has been talked about to replace it. Ed has been coming up with work night for the CRM. I am worried if this is useless work.

Ed P. – I am worried that any other solution that we put into place will take a while to put into place. I think that the effort will not be wasted because it at least a good short-term solution.

Nate B. – I could move our data over to GroupSpaces, a cloud-based solution that allow us to put everything on it. On a bigger point, we could and should get better quality data into the CRM and getting our system in order.

Rocco M. – We should look at Google Workspace, it’s probably free for non-profits.

Ted H. – So all of these solutions are premature, since we haven’t written down the problems we are trying to solve. That’s the point of getting them into Mantis.

Nate B. – I’m really tempted to ask to allow me to explore Groupspaces, It replaces, wordpress, wiki, google groups, amazon, crm for key administration. We can download the data anytime. They went live two and half years ago. The risk is that they get acquired by some other company. There is another thing I wanted to ask, the Lansing crew wanted to get together for the development two weekends from now.

Taxes

Eric M. – We really need to file our taxes for the previous year. We have to come up with our total assets at the end of the year. This probably should be filed now.

Hans C – I’ve sent Kristine a text, I’ll get ahold of her.

Eric M. – We still have to file for michigan, do we?

Safety Policy

Nate B. – Move to table

Ted Hansen – I want to propose a safety policy, that’s why I put it on the agenda. All we have to do is put a number on a tool, 1-4. 1, Use with supervision 2, Use without supervision, etc. 3. May supervise others 4. May train others

And a list of people who are authorized to use the mill. It solves that problem of who knows how to use that tool, and . The purpose is to get a path to get them train.

Eric M. – If the goal is just to get people trained, all you need is a list of people

Ted H. – The owners are automatically 4s. It’s easy enough for high school kids, and it flexible for it. We have no method getting people trained.

Nate B. – Any system like that should be like this. There’s already a way to learn how to use a tool, contact that zone warden. The majority people will not contact the zone warden. We don’t have any system.

Karen C. – Most of what we do here is on faith. That’s how it’s going to have to be, that’s how it’s going to be used. We trust people to follow the rules, and people that don’t fade away. There are people that trust me to teach them how to weld.

Ted H. - The table saw, it has the greatest chance of how to use the table saw, every person thinks they know how to use it, but they don’t. They are getting hurt.

Nate B. – The system is failing, people are going to be off.

Ted H. – It needs to be on the tool, I’m proposing that we have a written system for certain tools, that are designated by the owner or that are dangerous enough to warrant it, that we have a system that on how someone uses it.

Rocco M. – Let’s put the rules on the mantis.

Ted H. – It solves training problem, and it prevents injury. I will write this down so and come back again. We need a safety policy that’s standardized, not a patchwork.

Matt O. – It’s always a problem when people ask for tools.

Karen C.– The problem is that people that don’t know how to use the class, they don’t ask.

Nate B. – I am now sold on the system, that it’s not applied wholesale to every tool in the space. I agree with point with the problem is that people are using tools that aren’t properly trained to use. I would still want it to have under the zone warden’s control.

Rocco M. – We need to work on this incrementally, the table saw.

Dustin White – The only problem I have with this, is that if you’re a level 4, then you Have to train everyone.

Nate W. – You could always train as few as people as you want, just ones that can train others.

Karen C. – I will volunteer to put vinyl stickers on everything that states that you need the appropriate level to use it.

Red Bull

Eric M. – Red Bull decided to chop apart the Detroit documentary, and there’s no mention of i3 Detroit. I spoke to the production company and the videographer, there MIGHT be a second episode that might come out.

Pay Rocco for Red Bull

Rocco M. – Put that on the next member meeting I wanted to be paid back for all the materials I bought.

i3 West

Eric M. – I need to meet with the landlord and get the lease. If anyone wants to help me build the card system. I’m good with the software, but not the nitty gritty implementation. We are going to the lock box idea. I want to work on this as soon as possible. I think we need to have a unified system.

Mantis Issues

[reviewed Mantis Issues]

End 8:31pm.

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