O/D Meeting 10/20/2020

Agenda

COVID-19

• Space Report
  • Supply report
  • Current state of the space

Digital Outreach

• Online Events
• Teleconferencing/Streaming Service for LVL1
• Hackathons

Metal Shop

• A/C

New Membership Discussion

• See the thread on the members' list

Pending Issues

• Solidworks makerspace license (September 28, October 5)
• Classroom A/C (September 28, October 5)
• Virtual meetings (October 5)
• Donation of old laptops (October 6)
• Membership request / jobs board (October 6)

Minutes

October 20, 2020

tl;dr meeting begins 9:17pm Jim presents the finances and membership report brief discussion about specific memberships discussion about a trickling loss of members discussion about supplies purchased Danielle tells us about her upcoming surgery discussion about taking over her tasks; Jim takes over the Covid report discussion of an Amazon-sending hackathon idea by Charles discussion of the Archer Hackathon being in early December discussion about digital outreach, like what other hackerspaces are doing discussion about procuring a virtual meeting software for LVL1, preferably Zoom discussion about metal shop air conditioner discussed fobs, Tiffany checked, they work discussed new members, how to do so within Covid regs, and what's expected of them discussed ideas for virtual presence and the importance of LVL1 having it discussed emails to the board not promptly answered; Madeline taking the slack on that discussion about LVL1 having a lease exemption for the air conditioners, thus being in charge of the repairs discussion about the 5 board emails and how each will be responded to meeting adjourned 11:18pm

October 20, 2020

LVL1 Board Meeting, via Zoom

attending: Hat, Danielle, Jim, Tif, Raj, Madeline

[Secretary's note: My audio was unavailable to the meeting, so I'm communicating with the other board members by text chat.]

begin 9:17 pm

Charles: Finance and member report. Jim.

Jim: Okay. Well, I sent them out; everybody should have gotten it. Looking at the first sheet, recurring expenses. In October, we paid 406.57 for the LG&E. We are in a positive balance for the year and will probably remain that way unless something goes bad in December. Congratulations to everybody who made effort and to the weather. This month's bill was 272, which is fabulous. We will come out way ahead on the budget for that. Rent stayed the same; haven't heard about any increases. We have a lot of annual subscriptions priced out by the month, to MeetUp, V-Carve and Flickr. And that was 16.50 because V-Carve -- MeetUp was twice a year which was why [inaudible] was getting all hot under the collar, because I had already paid it and I thought it was paid. And he said, "No, we have to pay it," and I didn't realize we had to pay it twice a year. We need to get that out of his name. I managed to get V-Carve into our name, and we're paying for the subscription now, so we'll be able to keep up with that.

The insurance is all set for the next year, until July 2021, at 134.48 per month. The consumer insurance seems to give small breaks, but I doubt if we'll get any break on ours. It's under budget, too. The credit card processing was 125, and that's a function of how many times they have to bill people to collect money. And that includes if payment doesn't go through and they have to be billed a second time.

[Secretary's note: My internet connection went unstable, so the next few items of the financial report are missing.]

Jim: -- for an expenses total of $2,488.65.

Sheet 2 gives us our profit and loss. We did pretty good for September. Came in with $3,173.90 in income, includes dues and interest on our investment. Expenses were 2,556, so we came out 617.90 to the good.

The checking account balance was 35,700. I looked at it, at least five times, because you never find round numbers in accounting, so that one threw me. But it's right. And the emergency fund is up to 9,180. PayPal, we had $1,494 in it in September, and I transferred some money out, so this month's PayPal will be down but the checking account will be up.

At the bottom, there were some questions about my work down at the bottom. I broke out the makership, which continues to go up; thank you to everyone who keeps their donations coming in. The emergency money was 9,166 -- I have two different numbers there. Oh, I didn't update that one; 9,180, sorry. And the reserve; I pulled money out to set it aside, so when we see how much money we have, we don't think we have a ton of money. So, the unencumbered funds, my arbitrary calculation was that we should hold back twice what the emergency fund was. And the reserve was 11,915, which is approximately the emergency fund over again. And then, the money to go spend on steak dinners and whatever else, is $22,849.58.

And on the final page, we talked about dues income; shows the dues. Last month, we didn't get any money from Amazon; we got some investments. And then, we only paid out $47.92 to Amazon. The 19.48 was a reimbursement to PayPal, and the 2.95 is the checking account. So we come up with recurring expenses plus that is 2,556.00. And so, that gave us the positive balance of 617.90.

Any questions? We still have $70 of the SBA grant, and $458 from the hat-making grant. And we still have three people that haven't responded to my requests because their payments didn't go through. So we'll have to look at that. At some point soon, we will come close to voiding the budget in our membership numbers, because we've been losing a few people.

I was really concerned because I sent one just the day before yesterday, [redacted] who was a founding member or something, he's been around forever and very reliable, and his payment didn't go through. And I'm not sure why, but I hope he doesn't give up on us.

Any questions? Wow, that was easy. Everybody is complaining about being an officer during the pandemic, but this has made the treasurer's job a whole lot easier [laughs].

Charles: And that budget only needs to last another two months [laughs].

[Secretary's note: Brief discussion about membership, losing members, payments being denied, suspending members, members not paying, by names, which names I'm redacting from the record.]

Danielle: As long as we're not having a mass exodus of members.

Jim: No, not a mass exodus, but trickling. They're trickling more as we get further out, and less and less ability of going back to where we were, for at least a year, it looks like, I don't know, it just depends how long.

Charles: And this has been brought up before, but the bylaws do give the Board the authority to suspend dues payments for up to three months if someone submits in writing that they're having some kind of hardship or something like that. I'd have to read the bylaw again to remember exactly.

But we do at least have that authority explicitly granted by the bylaws, so if someone comes to us, we have at least that, that we can do. And we can try to negotiate an alternative payment plan if we need, if someone [inaudible] tell us what's going on.

Danielle: Plus several of them have just said, like, "Hey, put my membership on suspension," as opposed to, "I have to cut this off." So, I've seen several of the emails like this, so that's good. It's obviously not ideal, but I was just curious about that [inaudible].

Jim: We should be okay on masks; I've brought some more masks, and we had masks down there. I put some more out at the table out front. It probably needs some tending, but I --

Charles: Is there anything else in finance and member report? Because we're moving into the Covid-19 section on the agenda here.

Jim: Oh, I was just mentioning that this is money I'd spent.

Charles: Oh, okay.

Jim: I keep my eyes peeled, and I managed to get Kroger to give me two big totes of wipes, so those will last us a while, but I can maybe see if I can go back and get some more.

Charles: Just go to a different Kroger [laughs].

Jim: I did it online; they delivered them.

Charles: Oh. Nice.

Jim: Yeah, we do the pickup thing. We did the delivery thing when I had my surgery for a while, and that was really nice. That was 10 bucks, though, for the delivery. [laughs] But the pickup is free right now; they've waived the $5 pickup fee. Some things can't be bought by delivery or pickup, such as spray can air freshener. You have to go in-store to get gift cards to get the extra gas points.

Got masks, some paper towels and will take those down there. David ordered his SteadyRest for the lathe. It looks really nice; he got a good deal on that. And that came out of the shop budget, and we're good.

Charles: Any questions for -- oh, Tiffany wants clarification on the name.

Tiffany: David ordered his what?

Jim: That's for next month. He did it this month. It was a SteadyRest, just like it sounds, for the lathe.

Tiffany: Thank you.

Jim: And that's finance. I told you the LG&E bill was really low. You-guys got my email.

Danielle: Yeah, that was astronomically low.

Jim: Yeah, Mother Nature took pity on us. I guess the FAP failed for the extra money to be sequestered, I don't know.

Charles: Yeah, that didn't really work out.

Danielle: Well, it's worth doing again, because for a FAP to really work, it has to be -- I want to say more verbiage. But when you have the word FAP in a sentence, I just want to say, "you have to really work it," like [laughs] no.

Charles: We need a different approach.

Danielle: It has to be more active. I know [redacted] talked about the two threads; and you have to be able to bother everybody.

Charles: I tried to explain where we were coming from, but [redacted] is going to be against anything that gives the board any power or authority that they don't absolutely need. If we take another shot at it, we need to come up with better justification. The way it was presented maybe wasn't the most effective.

[Secretary's note: My internet connection went unstable again, so there is missing content.]

Charles: -- those present said we should propose to the members that we do this. [inaudible] the members do it and not the board, and we just need to take into account how we present things like this.

Jim: Okay. If they want to get involved, they should be more involved.

Charles: That's also a fair point.

Danielle: But it'll all work out.

Charles: Is there anything else under finance?

Jim: That's it.

Charles: Okay. Let's move on to the Covid-19 section.

Danielle: I have been, but this is going to be a general thing I have to address. Normally, I go to the space and check up on things, but I had sent a prior email about how I haven't been feeling well. And really I've been -- you know, how I've sort of slacked off announcing this board meeting. I'm slacking off checking emails; I wasn't doing my things, but thankfully I don't have Covid right now. That was a good thing.

Jim: Yes.

Danielle: I got tested. But the thing is, I am scheduled for a surgery next Tuesday.

Jim: M-hm. Wow.

Danielle: Yeah, THE surgery, my brain surgery; it's a crainiotomy. The thing is, I'm pretty involved with that, which is why this has slipped my mind almost, and I don't know what's going to happen after that. This is kind of the state of Dani right now, this bullet point. It's going to be another one of the tests, like that one in March was. Instead of putting probes in my brain, they're cutting open my skull and putting a grid of probes on the surface of my brain, so they get a more-pinpointed location of exactly which is the troublesome area. After they do that this time, they will know what can be done. Because they will know the exact spot, they will know what can be done to my brain if anything for the final thing for my epilepsy. So if they can take something out of [inaudible] resection, or put a neuropace, basically a pacemaker for my brain, in my skull instead, they can do that. Which of those things they can do, but they're going to do that right after that surgery, while my skull is still cut open. It will start a week from Tuesday, and it could happen within that week, because I seize pretty fast when I'm taken off my medication, usually. There's lots of risks associated with this. I don't know what's going to happen. So it's a big deal, is what I'm saying, and it's been on my mind. Kevin is going to keep people updated.

Jim: What hospital are you going to be in?

Danielle: I'm going to be at Brownsboro; that's where they have their epilepsy unit. And I'm going to be in their ICU because they've got wires on my brain, and they're going to be monitoring it directly as this happens. It's going to be really weird.

Jim: Well, if you need any implants, we could have a hackathon.

Danielle: Yeah, right? The neural pace is really cool. It sends out electrical signals as soon as it detects potential seizure activity. And you literally have to every ten years go in for surgery to get a battery change. So that might be the only thing we can do.

Madeline: I'm super excited to meet Cyber Danielle, but in the meantime, would you like someone else to take over more of the stuff that you've been doing?

Danielle: That was what I was getting to. Mads, you are awesome. I was inferring that [inaudible] offload some [inaudible]. I was more concerned about this; I don't know what's going to happen after the surgery. I have more stuff to talk about in this meeting regarding the upcoming bullet points; but there, I would like to pass the torch and see if anybody is going to be able to, for the time being, make sure that people follow up, if they're willing, on some of these points, and I can give you the tools to do that, if I can. Is that cool and understood by everybody?

Jim: Yeah. We've got your back.

Charles: Yes.

Jim: We're on your six.

Danielle: Yeah, this is all just really weird. But man, if they do something about the epilepsy, I've been dealing with it for more than 20 years, that will be awesome.

[I typed a message to Danielle but didn't speak it, so I don't know what I said.]

Danielle: Thank you, Tiffany. I am really hoping, super hoping.

Jim: Fingers crossed.

Danielle: Fingers crossed. Anyway, now that I've dumped that on everyone, I was going to basically say, Jim, that all the stuff necessary is there and you're ordering more of it.

Jim: Unless there is something I don't know about; I don't know if anybody is using the printers or not. I could order toner cartridges. If it's something simple like that.

Danielle: Right. I don't know. I think people would have emailed the necessary people, whether it's broken or the board or whomever they needed to email to ask where is the such-and-such.

Jim: It all should be there; it's just a matter of where it is.

Danielle: Wow, that should be a sub-heading of LVL1, "It's all there, it's just a matter of where."

Jim: Yeah. I've been trying not to step on David's toes too much, but I've just been bringing in supplies. I brought in a big ton of them last month or the month before, of all the forks and knives and plates and all kinds of stuff like that, and I don't see them disappearing very fast. There's a few people down there. I cam in last week to get the mail and everything on Thursday or Friday and the place was amazing. Somebody has gone through and swept it and cleaned it and wow.

Charles: Are you sure it didn't just flood again.

[laughter]

Jim: Yep, I even went over to the classroom and it looked presentable, and the boneyard is a little stacked up but it was clear, and the doors were clear in the back, and I thought, "Wow, somebody's been in, or somebody's taken care of it." I don't know who we should give credit to, but they're doing a good job. There was somebody welding, there were two people out front, and another was in the woodshop.

Danielle: That's usually how it goes. When you have even a small group that are really trying to get something done, it's just enough for people to go, "Okay, well, let's just clean this crap up and take care of the place," so it's just enough to push over. Yeah.

Charles: Yeah. Right now, we've gotten to the point that the people that are there are the people that are working on something; and the people that just go there to screw around -- which is fine, that's what a lot of us did on Tuesday nights before this happened; we went to LVL1 [inaudible] -- but those are also the people that don't clean up after themselves as well, and they're just not going there to do that.

Jim: Then we've got to renew our cleaning regimen, show them how to take out the garbage and where to put it. They may not do it because they don't know what to do. Never know.

Danielle: Right. It was that thing where we basically had a bunch of people that came in to have fun with us, but there were other people that relied on the few people that have to clean there while we were all having fun. So now we're back to this sort of reverse effect to where just a few people are taking care of the space, it looks like. It's good to know that there is still stuff getting done.

The one thing that does concern me, as Covid-19 in general, but will also come up in other discussions, is the fact that it is now essentially accepted that Covid-19 is airborne and we are effectively the worst place to be for an airborne disease. It is basically that your best protection is circulated air, and we have completely uncirculated air, no air exchange, even if you propped open a door, which we can. There is air that will maybe come in but it won't be a flow of air, it won't be an exchange of the mass of air that we have. And we've essentially plastered up the windows. And we'll have this viral load increasing. So basically, it's droplets, sure, but it's no longer part of the game any more. LVL1 is now an extremely terrible place to be through this outbreak, and the place to avoid. That's an important thing to note when it comes to spreading the virus and an important thing to consider in wanting to responsibly engage with people, and about taking precautions. I mean, we just need not to let people congregate inside. So the mask is really just a courtesy, again, for our members to take that risk. But that it's airborne is a real game changer. So that's my Covid thing, right there.

Jim: Yeah, we could blow it out the front door and the back door, but we wouldn't want to blow it into the offices; I don't think that would be a good idea.

Danielle: But we would have to have a complete air exchange; not just letting in a little bit of air, but would have to be completely exchanging the air that's there for more air. Making it flow.

Jim: We could get one of those giant industrial fans to help. Set it in the front door and let it turn over some air for a while.

Danielle: Yeah, no, the best thing would be, if we wanted to do things in person, something outdoors.

Charles: Well, we mentioned before, when we were kicking around ideas for the birthday party, to just do it in the parking lot.

Danielle: And that's an idea.

Charles: Or mostly in the parking lot.

Danielle: It would really be wisest to do it in the parking lot. But wait, we're not going to shut down LVL1; that's not what I was suggesting. I was just suggesting not open it up to the public yet. But I'm just looking at Tiffany's note; I wish it would beep or something when she says something. There's got to be a setting here. Come on, Zoom, you're letting me down, here. Where are all the beeps and the notifications?

No, I'm not suggesting shutting it down. I'm suggesting that it's really dangerous to invite the public in here, and it's even more irresponsible to invite anybody from the public in here.

Charles: And also, as far as having public events, even if we're doing it outside, I'm not sure that's really a good idea, with the cases in Kentucky going up, and it's a crap shoot whether next week, they'll be allowing groups of ten people.

Danielle: Exactly. Yeah.

Jim: He's shutting [inaudible] down again.

Charles: Yeah, there's going to be a second shutdown to some degree, so it's not [inaudible] play around right now.

Danielle: That's a great segue into our online events.

Charles: Are we done with the Covid "state of the space" report, if we're going into digital outreach?

Danielle: I'm done . Does anybody else have any?

Charles: Okay. One more question, since we want to keep this on the agenda for the directors' meetings, who is going to report on this next month?

Danielle: All you need to do to prepare for it is head down to the space before the meeting --

Jim: I can do it.

Danielle: -- and see how everything is. Do you want to do it?

Jim: Yeah. What-all do you want me to check on?

Danielle: I usually check on the masks, make sure of how many there are, if there's enough for the month; and see what the cleaning supplies are like. Just checking on it all.

Jim: Oh, that's what I've do every time I go down there.

Danielle: Yeah, that's what I figure; it's like standard. Yeah, perfect. Thank you, Jim, I appreciate it.

Jim: You're doing more work than I am.

Charles: Danielle, I don't remember saying this in any of the recent board meetings, but you have been picking up a lot of the slack during the Covid thing and we all appreciate that.

Danielle: Thank you. I feel like we're all kind of depressed. Like, in general, at LVL1. And I feel like doing this is sort of helping me, in addition to everybody else, just get out of this funk that we're in.

Jim: Every time I go down there, I remember how much fun we used to have. It's really a bummer.

Danielle: Right. It is. It's depressing.

[Discussion about people's bourbon closets being better at home than what's at the space, which is now long gone, and how it'll be nice to socialize at the space again.]

Charles: Digital Outreach.

Danielle: So yes. Is Threadsday Thursday still going strong?

Madeline: I set up five sessions of it all at once, like Facebook events up and [inaudible] projects for it, and the last one of those was last week, and I haven't figured out what I'm doing this week yet, but it's still only been the same two people showing up each time, and that's fine ultimately, but there is also, like, in the beginning of this I sent out a Google forms survey for anybody who was interested in what Threadsday Thursday should look like. And I didn't get many responses, but one of them that I got in the last month, and I don't know who it's from so I can't return to them, but they said, "Can Threadsday Thursday please happen? The Zoom meeting is empty every Thursday." And I don't know where they're going, but I've been there.

Danielle: They're going somewhere.

Madeline: Yeah. But I'm debating the possibility of changing the format of it just for the audience that it has right now and turning it into more of an unstructured hangout, possibly with screen sharing a movie or something like that in the background while people knit and work on stuff. I think that attracts more people or a different group of people. I don't have anything as traumatic as brain surgery going on, but I have had to work overtime, so I have more on my plate than usual. But to me, it's still going; it's just kind of stagnated and I'm not quite sure where to take it. And I haven't been reading all of the emails that have been sent to the group. Are people setting up other digital events at all?

Danielle: Not that I've noticed. Have you-guys noticed anything? I'm really hoping; I really wanted to strike up more, but again, other stuff has happened, first I was ill and then I was planning this stupid surgery; but I wanted to push because there are places that are really moving forward with these events and this is the way to move forward if we wanted to go any direction.

The problem with the zoom meeting, the zoom meeting room continually changes, and I think one Threadsday Thursday post in the google group, I don't know if they're clicking on the wrong link or something.

Madeline: Maybe.

Danielle: I don't know. And there are some people that are on the google group; there were several that asked from the google group. There was at least one other that asked on the hangout, I thought. And we can still start a MeetUp group; I haven't done that yet. This might be where I reach out on the board and ask if any member wants to jump headfirst into this with coordinating all of this. I don't think I'll have the time. But the bottom line is that we need to push some events, somebody to just do anything on line, whether it's hosting a coding hangout session or a "let's build Lego robots" session, or we could have a Lego funtime session. Adult Lego session. Like liquor and Legos; I mean, seriously!

[Discussion is had about Kevin's injury and hospital trips and more.]

Danielle: As far as those events go, I'll have to direct somebody that can cover for a while, that might be the best option.

Charles: Anyway, Jason Latta had some ideas, so we can nudge him to carry that through. I have hackathons listed on here. For the past few years, I've done the Archer Hackathon in early to mid-November, and the White Elephant hackathon in December. The White Elephant is pretty much a no-go, since it involves people actually collaborating and exchanging physical objects.

Danielle: Unless we give shopping lists to everyone.

Charles: Oh! That is brilliant! We set it up so that you can somehow Amazon random things to random people that are also in the hackathon. [laughs]

Danielle: A bunch of little random Amazon lists that are $5 or less.

Jim: Perfect.

Danielle: And you can just click to buy. If somebody can figure out how to set that up, that would be perfect, wouldn't it?

Charles: That's interesting. Yeah. Okay. Think about it. Anyway, I may change my mind, but I was going to say the White Elephant hackathon wasn't going to happen, but the Archer Hackathon is probably going to be pushed back to early December, and I want to try to do that virtually. So have a Zoom or something set up for probably the 24-hour thing, and people can collaborate by whatever channels they want to; but at the end of the thing, we present our projects in the Zoom call. I'm still working out exactly how I'm going to do that, but that's something I really want to move ahead with, so probably early December, I'll try to make that happen.

Danielle: Okay. Sounds good. It would be fun to figure out some interesting, relevant hackathons that we can do virtually and share, like "solve the pandemic" hackathon, and it's just a bunch of parodies of what businesses are trying to pretend to do to solve the pandemic, or something like that. Just, stupid measures that don't actually work.

Charles: Well, I have done some work on the Archer hackathon. The theme this year is going to be "drink from home." I'm working on the judging categories. I think one of them could be "It's a ruse." Another one is going to be "Don't worry about it."

Jim: Has anybody contacted any other groups anywhere to see what they're doing or if they want to join or maybe they have people that might be interested in something?

Charles: There was a post within the last month about what another hackerspace is doing. No, that went to directors.

Danielle: Was that from Jim, about Hive13?

Charles: Yeah.

Danielle: Or somebody else? It was probably --

Charles: I can never remember which one it's about.

Danielle: -- but I don't know what makerspace it was about. We just really have to explore the possibilities in this virtual stuff. I think we would have a lot of fun if we get creative with it, and creative is what we are all about.

Jim: I wonder if we could get people for Threadsday Thursday.

Danielle: M-hm. The next thing on the agenda, a teleconferencing streaming service. Didn't Andy mention getting premium Zoom?

Charles: Andy has a Zoom account that he's let us use because Brian's Zoom account is no longer active. But we have talked about it before, we need to do something about it, getting a teleconferencing account that is under the control of the directors.

Danielle: How much does Zoom cost?

Madeline: If we only need one license with one account for one person to make the meetings --

Danielle: It is pricier.

[Discussion regarding Zoom price and features.]

Danielle: I've been trying out Google Meet with my dad, one-on-one, and I don't really like the style of it, but I haven't been able to try it out with multiple people. I also noticed a couple things. I talked to Chris when I ran into him at Kroger, and he said that Dream Host, that he buys the server from, hasn't gotten back to him about it. There was also an announcement that Google is dropping some part of what they offer, and this was what we were afraid of, them dropping their various services.

Charles: To answer a question from five minutes ago, the lowest non-free Zoom account is $150 a year. But I'm reading off another site, not Zoom's site, that there is half off for non-profits. The limits on that account are 9 hosts and 100 participants, so that's enough for our needs.

Madeline: And it's $150 a year? Even without the half off for non-profits, that feels pretty do-able with the way our finances have been.

Danielle: Yeah. Absolutely.

Jim: Oh, yeah. I think they offer expansions, too, for added bells and whistles, don't they? Some extra things you can do on the controls and ways to run a meeting and everything.

Charles: Now, with the non-profit discount, it's under that magical $100 thing so that gives us a little bit more option. I'm not pushing for Zoom here; I'm just following up on the price question, and this is what I've found as a Google alternative.

Jim: Yeah. I think we should bring things in-house, too, the subscriptions and everything.

Danielle: Sounds pretty straightforward. Sounds good to me. Do we need to contact a representative for the non-profit thing, or do we have to contact them or reach out?

Charles: I have not read far enough to know what the actual procedure is, and I'd like to find this on Zoom's website instead of a third party.

[Discussion about information on Zoom's pricing page.]

Charles: This is something we can do offline but we need to find a person to do it.

Danielle: Who wants to contact a sales person at Zoom and negotiate this price for us, by any means necessary?

Jim: Okay. I can do it.

[Discussion about Raj's superb ability to haggle.] [Discussion about the lawyer bill, haven't received another copy, Raj hasn't spoken with them.] [Raj leaves the meeting.]

Charles: We still have quorum, so pushing forward. Okay. Do we want to look into the Google thing or do we just want to --

Danielle: Let's pursue Zoom, I think. The Google thing was an entire suite, so we would have had to figure out email and more. Also they're changing it, too, so who knows what they are trying to do. We're already into the Google infrastructure enough, as it is, so. . .

Charles: All right. Anything else on digital outreach? Nope. Okay. The metal shop air conditioner. This is on here because it was on here last month. Did we resolve it last month or is it still a thing?

Jim: It's still a thing.

Charles: Okay. Is it a thing that we need to discuss or a thing that --

Jim: I think we're out of the season; maybe we should table it until next year.

Danielle: I mean, you're our metal shop guy, so I defer to your judgement.

Charles: Does it need to stay on the board meeting agenda?

Jim: Not for air conditioning. I think we're ready to worry about keeping it warm in the winter time. I'll check with David and see what he's got going on. And did Kevin resign as leader on this? Wasn't he trying to help organize it or something?

Danielle: No. He wasn't part of that. I think it would only be worthy of leaving on the agenda was if they needed resources from the board, that the board could provide.

Charles: So, it's going to be off the agenda. If it needs to come up in a future board meeting, then we can make that happen. Okay, moving on. There are posts on the members' list; people are asking about new members. You can read that thread for some context, but we have multiple members that want to bring in new members. We've discussed it before; one thing I want to point out is that these are not random people off the street. These are people that long-standing members are personally vouching for. It's a discussion I wanted to renew in that context.

Danielle: Let me see. Because it was mixed with a discussion about fobs and. . .

Charles: Well, I think the fobs were a separate thread, but I'm not sure.

Jim: Yeah, they were. Did we ever come up with any conclusions there?

Charles: With the fobs?

Jim: M-hm.

Charles: Tiffany took care of that.

Jim: Oh, good. Thank you.

Charles: And I think I tried to send an email to the members' list saying that it was taking care of, and it got bounced for some reason.

Jim: I think I got it.

Charles: Okay.

Danielle: Yeah, I think this is still just a discussion for the. . .

Charles: The bylaws have an explicit process for membership right now, and [inaudible] we've just been discouraging people based on the difficulty of getting the sponsors without any public events going on.

Jim: Yeah.

Charles: But if you can get the sponsors, and as long as we're not talking about people who have blindly stumbled into the space, that we are talking about people that know existing members and existing members are vouching for, more than just sponsoring, but actually saying, "I want to bring this person on." I think that takes care of a lot of that. I checked the bylaws; the only officer that needs to be involved is the secretary.

Tiffany: Yay, me.

Danielle: Interesting. It really does come down to a decision on who wants to vouch and why, because this is just our thoughts on a process that's already outlined. And to codify anything, we have to have a membership vote, because we are membership driven.

Charles: We can put a policy change up for a vote, but the way it's currently written is the default is you need three sponsoring members and two directors to check the identity. They're not sponsoring you, just checking identity. And the secretary is to process your completed membership form. And timely payment of dues, is all the bylaws says.

Danielle: Right. Yeah, because all that the board's role is is verifying the identity.

Charles: Right. Now, we've discussed how it's going to be more difficult to integrate new members into the community, but with online events, and existing members that are vouching for them, that's part of that. We should probably encourage any new members to be active on the mailing list.

Jim: Are we looking for a bylaws modification or an interpretation?

Charles: We don't need a modification to bring on a new member.

Jim: So we're just interpreting what the bylaws are saying about the rules to bring on new members, considering the circumstances.

Tiffany: Right.

Charles: We're literally just following the bylaws. We need to organize our wiki better.

Jim: [laughs] I've noticed that myself.

Charles: Okay. New members are provisional members and existing members in good standing can object to a provisional member if they don't fulfill the obligations of membership, which include contributing thoughtfully to LVL1's direction and policies. The point I'm trying to get to here is, if someone signs up for membership and ghosts us and doesn't participate in whatever we think is necessary to make sure they're integrating with the community, it only takes four people to object to the membership, and they won't become a full member.

Jim: Okay. I think if they're willing to put up with this situation we're in now and want to be a member with all the restrictions, we should welcome their boots. [laughs]

Charles: I think we should take a couple people to try this out with, make sure that we introduce them on the members' list. And we've still got a way to walk this back if they don't integrate with the community.

Danielle: When we say "integrate with the community," I think we have to understand what that means. I think we have to look at, we've always prided ourselves that we were different from [inaudible]. "So what are gyms doing during Covid?" And if we're doing the same thing as gyms are, then we're doing it wrong. We need to find out what is the LVL1 experience and how can we adapt it for Covid? Because until we figure out what "integrate yourself properly" means, we can't --

Charles: Like I said, virtual events, participate on the members' list; if they're doing that. We do need to set expectations up front.

Danielle: Then we need to establish those events. So, those events need to be established. And that's one of the first things that we have to do. What I was trying to do when I was encouraging those events was basically a way to say, "No, we can't really confirm you as a member right now, but yes, we can do this together," like, "yes, we're here doing this awesome thing, we're finger-knitting a bunny, we are doing some cool stuff, we're nerding out with Gary," all the fun stuff. That needs to be expanded; we can't just talk about it. That's why it needs to be pushed, needs to be the buzz. Just keep asking people, pestering, "What would you like to do?" It can't stop. So, before we have this membership conversation, our place has to be more than just access to equipment; it has to be what we're doing.

Charles: Well, this is the conversation right here that we're having. So, we've been doing a [inaudible] sort of thing for the last few months; this situation is going to go on until probably the middle of next year. So, we've had members asking about it on the members' list and I don't see anyone on the thread disagreeing. So at some point we have to do what our members want us to do here. I think if we talk to the people on the thread and set up some expectations and get some buy-in from them, that will help us move along more smoothly.

Jim: Yeah.

Danielle: Yeah. I think along those lines, because we were hit abruptly, and I think we're all still recovering because we're depressed and this is depressing. And I've even been asked about if we know when the space is reopening, and this and that; everybody is in a sort of state of limbo still, I think. I think we need to come up with a way to jointly announce that this is not going to be something that we open up to next month or even the month after that. We need to accept that it could be a year from now before we're back to what LVL1 calls "normal."

Charles: Just to add another data point to that; this is from NPR, reporting on the state's plan to distribute the vaccine. They basically said even if there were a vaccine available today, it's going to take a year to get everyone vaccinated.

Jim: And not everyone is going to want to be vaccinated.

Charles: Yes, but as soon as we get a critical number of people vaccinated, they'll open things up again and there won't be large-scale spreading of the virus anymore. So that's another data point saying even if what we're doing right now magically is done, it can still be another year before this is really behind us.

Jim: That's a best-case scenario.

Danielle: We look at it realistically, with these data points and this information, we should look at it as an opportunity to adapt and take the craziness that is LVL1 and evolve it to a new form of craziness and awesomeness that we can do something with, instead of just this state of limbo, where the bills are low and the activity is low. [laughs] So we can explain that we're going to invest in zoom and Threadsday Thursday is cool and we need everybody to come forward because we have cool ideas for hackathons and virtual stuff. I've even talked to people at the space and they had cool ideas for more video content, because we still have our YouTube account, and just making video things to publish, having a YouTube video feed and publications, all the goofy stuff we could put up. Yeah, there are plenty of opportunities; it's just about reframing. And I think there needs to be a statement from us that's going to be a wake-up call to everybody; we've got to rethink and understand that this space needs your virtual support.

We refuse to let the space come to a standstill during these times. We understand that we all own the space collectively, but we have to reframe, and technology allows us to be super crazy and have fun. So that's a statement I think that we need to issue, so that people aren't sitting around going, "Is LVL1 just a big TBD?" So, I think this would also help guide people's ideas of why they want to join and who wants to join and also shape their confidence on bringing in people to the membership.

Danielle: Does that make sense? So, just my thoughts.

Jim: Sure. M-hm. I think we hit this pandemic about five years too soon. If we'd had technology developed and integrated better, I think it would have been smoother.

[Funny discussion about whether we're technophobes.]

Charles: I will put this on my plate to try to clarify some communication we can have with our members and to follow-up with the two people on the thread that want to be part of this.

Danielle: Okay. Thank you.

Charles: So I think that's it for that item on the agenda. So next on the agenda, something we've all been slipping on: Things are getting sent to the directors' list, and they just fall into a black hole. So, I went through and looked at everything I could find that was sent to the directors within the last month that I couldn't find some kind of answer or resolution for, and I just want to go down this list and figure out what we can do with these questions.

The first three were from Andy, but he contacted us twice about them and I don't think he ever got an answer on any of this.

Madeline: I would be happy to take on the role -- I think is something Danielle has been doing -- the role of the person who responds to the emails or sends them to the person who knows how to respond to them, because that's what I do at work all day, basically, is follow up on emails with people. But, I have been trying to respond to them if I know the answer. So, I know if it's a woodshop question, I can forward it to Paul and ask him to talk to this person about the woodshop. If I know who should be contacted about a particular issue, I'm willing to do the work of paying attention to the directors' list and making sure it gets to a specific person who can help them; because otherwise, it ends up being a situation where I don't answer an email because I assume one of you-guys will, but you also all. . .

Charles: Right, and that's exactly what's happening. And that would be great, if you'd like to do that.

Madeline: The only thing is, if I do this, I'm still don't have as much knowledge of exactly who knows what; so I may be pestering the rest of you for guidance.

Charles: Feel free to pester away, because that's what we need to get on top of this.

Madeline: I can be a professional pester-er. That is a thing I can do. [laughs]

Danielle: Thank you, Mads. That is fantastic. Seriously. That is awesome.

Jim: We're lucky to have such a talented person.

Madeline: Finally, my skills from my office job are coming in handy, "per my last email," "following up on the below"; I know how to do this; I can help. [laughs]

Danielle: [laughs]

Charles: We've created a monster. [laughs] Actually, directors, in the past, looked at the directors at large as kind of the first thing you kind of test your feet in the water because people tend to be director first then run for an officer position. The bylaws explain what each person on the board is supposed to do and the job of director at large is to make sure the officers are doing what they're supposed to be doing. So this is actually the perfect thing for a director to be doing, getting on the rest of us and saying, "hey, do your job."

Danielle: Absolutely the case, yes. And thank you, Mads. Typically, these boards, I've been on it how many years now?

Charles: You were a director when I first started attending board meetings as a member.

Danielle: [laughs] Jeez.

[Discussion about the comedy of the term FAP and the need to find another equally funny term to add to our lingo.]

Danielle: Usually the way the directors email goes, for a little while when there's a new board, someone will send an email and nobody will answer them, and then one person will start answering them, and then everyone relies on that one person to keep catching the balls.

Charles: So what we really need is someone to catch the ball, pick a person, and ping them with it.

Madeline: That's exactly what I intend to do.

Danielle: Thank you so much, Mads.

Charles: I'd still like to run through these five items so we know where we stand on these. Does anybody know anything about SolidWorks makerspace license?

Danielle: I have no idea about it. Do you know anything about the SolidWorks makerspace license?

Kevin: They've changed the licensing terms. They basically gutted [inaudible] so you can only have a couple of open projects and [inaudible] the maker edition; I don't know about the makerspace edition. And they gutted the licensing for the maker edition.

[Discussion about this email from Andy regarding SolidWorks.]

Charles: Okay. It's from Andy, on September 28th, he said, "Can someone please fill out the paperwork so that we can obtain a makerspace license? I don't have access to all the information needed."

Danielle: Oh, their education edition.

Charles: Okay. That could be. I didn't see the version; I just saw that there is a license that we're able to get for the space for SolidWorks.

Danielle: How much does it cost?

Charles: No idea.

Danielle: Well, let's see what the paperwork says.

Charles: Well, he asked us about filling out the paperwork, so I guessed it didn't cost anything or it was decided at some other point.

Danielle: Okay. So we'll have to ask him about the paperwork. I don't know how much it is. They still charge out the wazoo for educational software.

Jim: [laughs] Kind of like they do for business.

Danielle: Yeah, right.

Jim: I'll email him and see what he's doing.

Danielle: Okay. And it looks like he talks about the AC in that, too.

Charles: So Jim, you said you'd follow up with Andy. Okay. Anybody know what's going on with the AC in the classroom, then?

Danielle: I have no idea.

Jim: We've been pestering the landlords for a long time, now.

Danielle: So who was the last to pester the landlord about that?

Jim: Andy.

Danielle: Andy. Okay.

Charles: Okay. What exactly do we need them to do?

Jim: Fix it. We don't know what's wrong with it.

Charles: Okay. It is not Cing the A, I presume?

[Kevin and Danielle have a discussion about the exception in the lease.]

Danielle: Okay. Kevin has something to add to the meeting.

Kevin: I believe the lease specifies that anything permanently anchored is the property of the landlord which normally covers the ACs. I thought that the lease exemption for those air conditioners so that we could take them with us when we left. So that means those air conditioners are ours; I'm almost certain. I do not know why the landlord has been paying to fix them, unless the landlord doesn't realize that they gave us a lease exemption and those units are ours.

Jim: That's it. Yeah.

Danielle: Is it?

Charles: Is the bottom line here that we just need to get it fixed ourselves?

Kevin: I believe so. And letting the landlord continue to fix it, I think may be a mistake, should we ever leave and want to take those with us.

Charles: Yeah, it definitely opens us up to the landlord saying, "We've been repairing it for the last x years, it's ours now."

[More discussion regarding this.]

Charles: Okay. I will follow up with Andy, and I will follow up with Raj.

Jim: If you need, let me know and I'll meet somebody down there.

Charles: Next is virtual meetings in an October 5 email, and I think we covered that with the Zoom discussion. October 6, we received an email about donation of old laptops.

Danielle: Somebody wanted to ask about donating laptops, right?

Charles: Does anybody know if anyone responded to that?

Danielle: I don't. Again, this was recently, and I've been lapsing off on seeing my email.

Madeline: I think we get a lot of those, "I have ewaste to drop off, what do I do," do we have a procedure in place for that? Are we just saying, "No, we don't need your crap"?

Charles: Well, the procedure was to show up and leave it in the boneyard, but

Madeline: Yeah, but we can't now.

Charles: I think probably, until we're open to non-members, you can say that.

Danielle: "We don't want your crap."

Madeline: "If you're not a member who can unlock the door yourself without emailing us, you can't come down."

Jim: We had a guy a long time ago who used to rebuild them and give them to needy families, but that went away.

Charles: Yeah, that was [inaudible] program, and it was really sad.

Danielle: Yeah, that was a long time ago, but they offered training and everything. I think we wanted to call it quits on donations anyway, since --

Jim: We've got the two gaylords for the e-waste, and they're almost full.

Charles: I don't know that we want to permanently call it quits on donations, but it's nice to have parts around, but now, while no one is actually using them, they're just going to accumulate.

Danielle: Yeah.

Jim: Yeah.

Danielle: Yeah, we're not permanently calling quits on donations, just for now.

Madeline: I'll write up a form email response that I can use for that, if that's going to be our answer.

Danielle: I love you, Mads, so much.

Charles: Okay. Awesome. You are awesome. And you can make sure that the email from October 6th gets that form answer?

Madeline: Okay. I'll send that, too.

Charles: Awesome. And the last thing on this list, a separate email on October 6th, said she was interested in becoming a member and asked if we had a job board. So I think this person just needs to use some equipment and is just trying to figure out if there is a way to make that happen.

Danielle: It looked like they were looking for a paying gig and also some equipment to use, and also looking to see if they could find some paying work. So it seemed like Maker13 might have something up their alley.

[Discussion about what Maker13 is actually doing now.] [More discussion about the email.]

Charles: So, last item on the agenda; does anyone want to take this one to follow-up on?

Danielle: What is Maker13 up to?

[More discussion about Maker13, and checking on their current availability.] [Danielle and Madeline discuss response to the email.]

Charles: This one is from a different person asking about membership, who stumbled into us and doesn't know a member, we can say that, "membership requires three sponsors, which is difficult at the moment because we're not having public events."

Charles: So, now we are at round table; is there any round table, new stuff that needs to be discussed? Once, twice, all right. Meeting adjourned, 11:18 pm.