Regular Member Meeting 2015 02 10

Time and Location

February 10, 2015

Called to order at 8pm by Travis B.

Members present: Travis, Enrique, mirage, Ben, Julia, Bill B., ... hm, should have kept track of names better. But 12 members.

Members remote: Hunter, ITechGeek

Others present: James

Quorum?

Quorum met? Yes, 12.

Approval of Previous Meeting's Minutes

Regular Member Meeting 2014 12 09

Recognition

• Julia Longtin, et al. - Much work on the 3D printer, space cleanup, equipment salvage, and other things.
• Ben "sitwon" Mendis and James - IR thermometers much appreciated.

Director Reports

President's Report

Shed Media contacted HacDC about a Television show on January 14 2015.

• Spoke to Shed Media about their interest in HacDC for a reality/educational television show on Feb 3 2015.
• Shed Media develops concepts for TV shows and sells them to networks and they want to explore a Mythbusters-type show (6-8 episodes about the same space) on Hacker/Makerspaces. They want to show interesting people making cool things in a way that will be entertaining and educational to viewers.
• They got our name from Mitch? at Noisebridge (San Francisco) and are talking to other spaces. I also gave them the names of Reverse Space, Unallocated Space, and Baltimore Node.
• If this goes all the way, it will require a large and long time investment by those involved and will be a huge disruption on the space for the duration of the project. However, the space and the people involved will make some money.
• The next step is for interested people to talk to Shed Media.

Thusfar, no one has expressed an interest in participating. If I don't see/hear from anyone by the end of the week, I will tell Shed Media that HacDC is not interested.

Treasurer's Report

• These are the financial logs of the HacDC enterprise

+ We have a Net Zero on memberships gain/loss for the month + We netted an additional $614.34 due to membership catch-up payments and donations

Will be looking into money saving through advanced payment of the Insurance. Look out for an email tomorrow morning asking everyone to either switch to Dwolla for their payments to HacDC (Lower fees 25¢-Dwolla vs $1.25-Paypal). If everyone switched to Dwolla that would result in about an extra $50. Sorry it's taken so long to get this out.

Project Awesome

There was an error in the Financials spreadsheet during the record transfer of Earmarked accounts from 2014 to 2015 that resulted in the cancellation of an order from Amazon being cancelled due to what seemed like insufficient funding. That error has been corrected and is reflected in the current Earmarked account statement.

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Teaching for Change made a donation to HacDC for $150 after a member, ITechGeek, stopped by and helped them sort out their phone lines. Julia (Juri) has requested some parts for the giant robot being built on the optical table downstairs. It has been stalled due to our recent funding woes. The current need for the project downstairs are at least 24 V-wheels from open build. They are $3.50 each. If anyone would like to either purchase the whole lot or sponsor a few of those wheels please send an email to the members list. Also, If anyone has any supplies from Amazon, that need to be ordered please shoot [email protected] an email. There is a Project Supplies order that doesn't meet the minimum purchase for shipping requirement at the moment.

Secretary's Report

The internet security workshop was January 24. About half of the 40+ RSVPs attended. Not sure if it resulted in any new memberships but several attendees said they would stop by later to check out the space. We covered a lot of good topics and went from about 3:45 to 8pm and then stayed about another hour after that discussing more. Thanks to Xavier for several topics he covered. See email for other details. He has put his slides online and I haven't gotten around to cleaning them up yet, so they aren't online yet.

I stopped by NoVA Labs recently to check out what they're doing. They're still in the process of moving to a very large space. Their front room is more or less finished but the classroom, kitchen, workshop, laser cutter room and more are still under construction. They have both a large CNC and a laser cutter but both are offline for now / still being installed. The workshop area is huge (they advertise 10,000sqft total, so about 10 times our upstairs space). They also have office space for about 5 incubator / start-up companies which are all currently rented out and serve as a source of income. The companies benefit from access to the space. I was told their membership is about 60 but they have a tiered structure so I'm not sure if that referred to $100/mo full membership or the $50/mo associate level (which we basically give away for free). They still have a negative cashflow, especially with the new construction. They also have a policy that nomination and fees are not enough to warrant membership; they expect some contribution to the organization first. They also charge cost-recovery fees for large tools like the laser cutter and CNC. Might be worth comparing/contrasting the two organizations to see if we can learn anything from each other.

Project Awesome Reports

Project KITBUILD

• No news to report.

Project SUPPLIES

• Thoroughly needed replacement soldering iron tips have been requested, and ordered at a cost of ~$70.
• Fresh cleaning supplies for the Rostock Max (and 3D printer glass generally) have been requested, but not ordered.

A "clerical error" was reported earlier today.

Project EXPANSION

Planning a ~$90 expenditure for OpticalTable V-Wheels.

Member Reports

mirage335

VP Candidacy

Would like to run for the Vice President position. Wrapping up a major project soon, and seems time I committed more time to HacDC's educational and technological missions.

3D Printer

Please, do not introduce food or finger grease to the 3D printer glass. Some unknown contaminant has proven extremely tough to remove from the glass. Additionally, the extruder is also dripping oil, suggesting ongoing contamination upstream. This is more recent, and definitely unrelated to, any CNC mill oiling.

Other Things

Although delayed a few weeks by another project, the RFID reader system is still underway. Have just constructed a new workbench at home, which should greatly improve my ability to clear off projects like this.

Optical Table Robot construction is apparently going well. Many thanks to other participants on this project.

New Business

Is this in the right section? This is my first time entering minutes here.

Julia reports we need 24 V-wheels at $3.50 each for the giant basement robot, donations towards that purpose would be very welcome.

Don is signing up for the April grant writing class; will report back next month. Don also reminded everyone of tomorrow's Amateur Radio club meeting, with a guest speaker from VOA, and the raffle of a handheld transcevier.

Travis will look into registration of HacDC as a non-profit in D.C., which is separate from our IRS status.

Ben expects a box of Project Byzantium gear, including a MacBook, mailed back to him / HacDC shortly. May also put together a HacDC camping trip this year.

Reminders of the upcoming Raspberry Jam (condew) and SpaceBlimp6 team (Travis).

Enrique received a hardcopy of the original HacDC bylaws with signature list from Dan.

Hunter (IRC) reminded everyone that Radioshacks are closing and liquidating inventory cheap.

We had an election for the vacant post of Vice President (who is also communications / IT organizer). Secret ballots were counted, including 3 votes via IRC and 1 via proxy. The results were: Mirage (7 votes), Shawn (6 votes), Bill (2 votes). Congratulations to our new VP, Mirage.

New Members

uberdog (on IRC tonight)

Adjournment

Adjourned at 21:18 by Travis