Robots and Dinosaurs monthly board meeting

 

Saturday, 17 October 2009 at 2pm 

Hackerspace, 662 Princes Highway, Kogarah

 

Attendees:  Greg Turner (President), Jeremy Apthorp (Treasurer), Kathryn Small (Secretary), Chris Beckett (Minister for the Interior), Gavin Smith (ordinary board member), Rebecca Owen (ordinary board member), Alex, Jon

 

Apologies:  Kean Maziels

 

Absent:  Marcus Schappi

 

 

 

 

Status of the bank account and membership

 

 

Our bank account details:

 

 

Robots & Dinosaurs Incorporated

Bank:  Westpac

BSB:  032157

Account:  235912

 

 

Greg, Jeremy and Kathryn have now signed the appropriate paperwork to become account signatories.  The account will operate as “any two to sign”. 

 

 

Kathryn will write a draft of the terms and conditions, based on the terms and conditions of other hackerspaces around the world.  She will take into account that other hackerspaces operate under different legal frameworks.  Once she has written a draft, it will be shown to the members for comment.

 

 

Jeremy will set up a Paypal account.  He will also set up a Google spreadsheet for membership tracking, which may use code to integrate with bank accounts, etc.

 

 

Pro-rated pricing would make the Treasurer’s life easier, but is more complicated for members (Jeremy). Maybe we should just let Paypal run monthly account payments (Chris).  Non-payers will be pursued with guilty feelings (Chris).

 

 

Pricing was agreed upon, as per the last meeting:

 

 

Regular membership

 

 

·      $40/month plan: 10% discount for a year or more.

Can pay monthly, or anually. The price is pro-rated to 1st Sept and 1st March, to make the treasurer's life easy

·      $20/month plan: Can only pay monthly, via paypal.

Open to students, unemployed or anyone who can demonstrate need to the satisfaction of the board

 

 

For this you get:

·      use of space and community equipment

·      use of junk in junk room

·      24/7 access after 3 months of excellence (BYO RFID key, or buy one)

·      warm fuzzy feeling

 

 

Single access membership

 

 

·      $12/single visit. First visit is free. Prices for special events are independent.

There is the opportunity to add a donation to these amounts.

 

 

For this you get:

·      use of space and community equipment for 24h

 

 

 

 

Workshop days

 

 

The Board decided to host two upcoming feature days at the hackerspace!

 

 

Talks, movies and Halloween party: 31 October

 

 

Jeremy will organise two to three speakers for the afternoon.  Suggested speakers:

·      Alex North on Wave

·      Chris on speeding up websites

·      Joseph Gentle on strong AI

 

 

Chris and Kathryn will organise party decorations/events (pumpkin carving, drinks, etc).

 

 

Rebecca will organise suitably scary Halloween movies.

 

 

Workshop day: 21 November

 

 

Gavin will organise a workshop day where participants can purchase a kit and make it at the hackerspace, with some guidance.

 

 

Gavin could use Eventbrite to collect RSVPs and organise purchasing kits.  Eventbrite allows participants to RSVP with options, eg “already own an Arduino”, “need to buy an Arduino with the kit”.

 

 

Our projected capacity is 10 people, but the Board will wait and see how many people RSVP before making firm decisions about capacity.

 

 

In choosing the date, the Board took into account Marcus’s Arduino workshop on 5 November.

 

 

 

 

Powerhouse Museum

 

 

Greg talked to Ali Gordon from the Powerhouse Museum (PHM).  They have two workshop days coming up: a gaming-themed day on the first weekend in February, and a weekend in May.  Greg thinks we could run workshops on both weekends if the first one is successful.

 

 

Greg suggested to Ali that we run a hands-on workshop.  She said it would be good if it’s aimed at the public and has a concrete outcome.

 

 

There are two good kit-making workshops that we could run: small-scale drum kits and Meggy Jr programmable game machines. 

 

 

PHM needs pricing information for each of these potential workshops.  They need:

·      Cost of materials price

·      Markup

·      Cost of lecturer’s fees

 

 

Once we provide PHM with these prices, they’ll break it down into a per-head price and work out how much they can afford to contribute.

 

 

Please work out pricing for 15 units (ie hackerspace workshop) and 50 units (ie PHM workshop) and send them to Greg by Tuesday afternoon:

·      Gavin to work out cost of drum kits

·      Jeremy to work out cost of Meggy Jr kits

 

 

People who help on the day at the PHM should register as PHM volunteers, which includes insurance.

 

 

 

 

Australia Council for the Arts

 

 

Gavin was approached by the Australia Council for the Arts, who would like to learn more about the hackerspace. Don't know what they want yet, whether to promote or collaborate or financially support us, but it's cool. 

 

 

 

 

Wave and Google Calendar

 

 

Kathryn will set up a R&D Google Calendar which board members and the general public can subscribe to.

 

 

She will also start Google Waves for hackerspace ideas.  Anyone who wants a Wave account should ask Kathryn at kathryn.small@gmail.com