CommunityMeeting20180816

1pm @ Dinky (not event room), or Google Hangout

Attendees:

ZZ, JP, JMc, SG, AMc

Review of/actions from last meeting

Make Fest Volunteers (JP to find out numbers) - JP found that out and organised our presence at the event well.

JP to ask Ste Whitfield to create crowdfunder keyrings - Done. Ste created keyrings and they've been sent out. Yay!

24 hour access was to be discussed at the Directors' Meeting. This was discussed, still some action required from the directors.

Recent Events

Liverpool Makefest/Brunch. We had lots of volunteers at MakeFest which meant people got to look round rather than being tied to the stand. The Brunch went well, and gave a good chance for people to chat amongst makers. Main downside to it was cooking the bacon - could do with an alternative in future, but would be good to run the event again.

Birthday Party. Was rather spread out - in future make it evening-only. Catering was much cheaper (with it being assemble-yourself) and seemed to work okay.

Upcoming Events

• DoES Tastes Brownies on 23rd August.
• Modular Meet Up 8th September
• Festival of Maintenance. On 22nd September, in London, but hoping to stream it to DoES. Depends on kit, so waiting to see what happens on that.
• Get a Move On. Workshop day on 29th September to make
• DoES Epic Trip to the Science Park on 30th September
• Making It!? half-day conference about making and manufacturing, on Oct 12th

After-eights progress now at 66% left.

Finances

Finances are low (as we've just moved and are still ramping up). We might now be just edging over to break-even, as we've had a few more people join of late (yay!), as we had been running at a bit of a loss. Still lots of scope for more people to take desks, etc. to make us profitable!

The main reason for the loss was issues over rates, which is being dealt with, but is an unplanned expense.

Might be able to get a loan to cover the costs for carpets and blinds, while we build up

Equality

Didn't get anywhere with the HR person we were looking for advice on. We've got another option, which JP will follow up on. Directors have been moving it onwards

Fab Manager

Any update on this? Will hasn't had time to get it up and running, so Adrian is going to get it installed again as a first step. Being tracked (now) on issue #885

Self service

Might rely on Fab Manager but might be nice to use GoCardless (and/or PayPal) to allow more self-service where possible. I.e. someone can just fill in a form and be billed and/or pay for mailbox, flexidesk, etc.

GoCardless would let us set up direct debits for people, which makes recurring payments easier. PayPal also do that but are more expensive. General preference for GoCardless.

Maybe feed it into the requirements for FabManager (or the system we build that does the stuff we think FabManager will solve)

AOB

Crowdfunder Rewards.

All the keyrings have gone out. Mugs are made, chasing for addresses to send them out. SG to remind people about t-shirts and addresses. Maybe do another chasing email to tell people we won't be chasing them in the future. Need to work out the details.

How do we communicate about these meetings in future?

Comms is tricky. How do people want to find out about things? How do we do that in a way that scales?

Suggestions to hit Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, have a Facebook event and to start promoting it following this meeting.

Confirm time & date of next meeting

Thursday 20th September, 7pm

After eights progress now 49% remaining.