Regular Member Meeting 2022 01 11

Time and Location

Date Tue 11 Jan 2022

Called to order at 7:35 pm by Tayeb

Members present: Mario, John*, Tayeb*, Kevin, Oby, John*, Dan, Brian, Michelle*, Gabe*

Members remote: (none)

Others present:

Quorum

Quorum met? Yes

Recognition

Matt - new member on-boarding process (payment transactions & TechSoup) Kevin - communications & risk management process (website and wiki backups) John - funding & relevant new programming (grant proposal acceptance)

Old Business

1. Zoom - want to switch from Jitsi; initially requested by Ethan; will use TechSoup nonprofit account; former person setup was Nicholas (secretary before Tayeb)
2. O'Reilly Community Partner - Kevin set us up; we need to add their logo on the website and add them to at least one of our newsletters
3. “Unified Data” Project (Phase 1) "Wiki-Website-Meetup-Google" - Michelle is interested in leading, already in discussion with Kevin on to spec out requirements to do this (as well as backup-and-recovery strategies) (potential other phases: instructor/member on-boarding, open data pilot project)
4. April 24, 2022 at Montgomery College at Rockville Science - "family fun" event; outdoors and free to host a booth; HacDC will host a booth (soldering class, robotics); Tayeb will follow-up; exhibitors setup is (April 23 and April 24 early morning)
5. John & Don - their grant for Amateur Radio looks good; will get $26k to improve antenna system - mostly goes to Aries (radio for emergency)
6. Trivia Vender Machine (via Dallas Hackerspace) - only way to get food is to answer science questions; Phil wants to build a portable one where students write the questions (can use coupons or others); would be interested in donating
7. PairsMathGame.com - Phil interested in helping share his invention during the Rockville event

New Business

1. Board Member Elections * - on Mar 8 during regular Monthly Members Meeting; decided during Board member meeting we had on Dec 21
2. Grants Project Committee * - start an email distribution list for members interested in pursuing grant-based projects for HacDC (needs: aggregate list of potential grants, manage future projects/hardware, partner with like-minded community partners, create business plans for consideration). Can merge with this matrix list for comparison.
3. Ham Club * - status on the grant and address any questions about the Ham Club initiative; bonus: with Ethan rejoining HacDC, we now have 5 licensed hams!
   1. One of members who moved to CA uses transponders and weather balloons called attention to organization interested in funding HAM radio activities to encourage "digital modes" of HAM radios and RF-propogation; another objective of theirs is to support HAMs as hobby and want to grow it to be real presence in DC and three specific initiatives: (1) bring back emergency comms capability through A2RLs (Aries) (?) program through -most states have multiple, but one in DC was dormant can be helpful when major events in city (protests, etc) and is a great way of engaging HAM radio (repeaters, stable comms, etc) to connect to emergency operations center for DC also connect to hospitals for Aries groups; Elizabeth Goodson (?) is leading this effort (2) second effort to license HAMs to develop various aspects of the hobby to a variety of things like activations in subtopics which they want to explore: on mountaintops, parks, people who like to communicate with satellites, people who like to bounce signals off moon (3) continue with upgrade of their radio station (all the equipment has been donated by members. NEXT STEP => they welcome new members from HacDC (will help get license and pass the test) and be included in their planning meetings going forward
4. Precious Plastics - global open source but community-level plastics drop-off, collections, shredder workspace, melting & molding, extrusion, and so on services. Similar to 3D printing outcomes but slightly more scalable and vastly more sustainable. Compared to another partner we've looked at before, PAR Recycle Works: PP is bigger community, more documentation/videos on how to get started. Can HacDC get a grant to become a Precious Plastics workspace? Can HacDC become pipeline to sell the final products regionally online instead? Reach out to new member Mario who might be interested in projects involved with recycling.
5. Unified Data - Website designs sent out for review, comments; Also questions: (1) what was the address of the old location in the header image on the designs sent out? (2) is there a higher quality version of our logo somewhere? (3) currently, only myself, Tayeb, and Kevin on the "Unified Data" team, any board member interested in joining should email [email protected] - first meeting will be later on this month discussing the Newsletter and the latest Website design changes.
   1. Diagram of data services, providers, features, and pros/cons

____ (*) = Address in first 30 minutes for full Board member attendance

Adjournment

Adjourned by at ??? by ???