Vision2011

LVL1 Vision and Long Term Planning

Mon Sept 12th 7pm BBC St Matthew's Attendees: Brad Lyster, Brian Wagner, Chris Cprek, Joe Pugh, Tim Miller, John Hicks, Mark Endicott, Jeff Johnson, Tim Hardin, and Cindy Harnett

We had a good discussion about where the maker movement would be in 5 years. Brad thinks is is a good thing to read "Homesteading the Noosphere." http://catb.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/homesteading/

LVL1 Mission

LVL1's mission is to provide a shared space for collaborative technical and artistic experimentation in the Louisville area. We are a non-profit organization following the hackerspace model currently flourishing in cities all over the world. Our goal is to create an open workspace where engineers, artists and educators can meet and collaborate. LVL1 is where we begin making amazing things.

Are we living up to our mission? Yes - but we need more community outreach in terms of workshops

Do we need to change our mission statement? Not discussed, but feeling is no.

Our Space

Size? Need more to combat entropy. Chris suggested making the loft more inhabitable. It sounds like we could get that space for free and if we could air condition/heat it, it could be used for workshops etc.

Jeff suggested to take a look at Bob Segrede's industrial space (20,000sft)

Utilization? Our current space has maybe a 30-35 person limit and if we want to grow beyond, we need more space. Our space looks better if it is cleaned up a put away.

Cleanliness? Cleaning groups do not work. Perhaps area hosts will. Chris is going to look at getting ORI's Cleaning service to get our bathrooms and kitchen.

Storage? We need more shelves.

Meetings? Too long. We are going to cut out the occulus pics and old business. See how that goes.

Our Leadership

Officers? Not discussed

Board of Directors? We need to have a strong board of directors that oversee what happens in the space.

Responsibilities?

Committees? Committee is a bad word. Instead we did discuss having "area hosts". Area Hosts are people dedicated toward maintaining a specific part of the space, like the lasercutter, makerbot or small tools. This is something we can put in place right now.

Membership

Grow? We really did not discuss the ideal size of the hackerspace, but we did all agree that the space still needs to grow more. The one concern is that we may be getting too big for the space. That is why Chris suggested fixing the loft so it is inhabitable. Everyone is in agreement that we should at least pursue getting a cost estimate for this.

Becoming a member? We were concerned that it is too hard to become a member and we may loose some who come in and leave. We are going to work on some trinkets and take-home things that visitors can get. Ideas are small solderable circuit board and laser cut things.

Equipment Needs

Chris would like to become a MIT Fab Lab http://fab.cba.mit.edu/. There are certain criteria to becoming one and we will figure that out.

It was agreed that we need to have a training system for space equipment.

There is a certain amount of frustration in finding tools and making sure you put things back where they belong. We would like to have an "Are Host" type system to give ownership to a particular thing.

Area Host area could be:

• Lasercutter
• Woodshop
• makerbot
• small tools
• etc.

We also discussed getting some metal shop tools such as mill, metal Lathe, welder and Plasma Cutter.

Community Outreach

Makership?

Workshops?

MakerFaire?