Regular Member Meeting 2016 01 12

Time and Location

January 12th, 2016

Called to order at xxxx pm by xxxx

Members present:

Members remote:

Others present:

Quorum

Quorum met?

Director Reports

Vice President's Report

Would appreciate seeing HacDC willing to trust and back its volunteers after a success like the OpticalTableRobot. If additional safety or convenience features were wanted, encouring feature requests might have been nice to hear. Instead, the response included 'not cool' from some of the more sane, senior members of the community.

Honestly, the extent of such stupidity at HacDC has exceeded my worst imagination, crushing hopes for the future. If not now, when will HacDC ever take appropriate steps to limit damage that can be done by people who don't know and don't care? This is why we can't have nice things.

Since the laser tube was found to be damaged or defective, fully re-commissioning our new OpticalTableRobot laser will involve:

1. Fix the policy around the basement so volunteers can work with less politics.
2. Replace the tube. Maybe try a cheap, expendable tube for the first few hundred hours.
3. Stiffen the joints between axes. Not essential, but nice.
4. Add OctoPi or similar web interface, for usability.
5. Add walls for safety, to keep the collimated beam on the table.
6. Add an acrylic lid, again for safety.

See everyone at the annual meeting. If good things happen then, maybe we can have a great year at HacDC. Please consider running for a board position, and dedicate some time to consider workable policy for shop areas.

Member Reports

• Enrique: I brought in a brand new ladder for the basement; it was about $94 and I'd like to be reimbursed either by Expansion or by member vote from the general fund.

• mirage335: Finally clearing my schedule. TazMega actually working. On the other hand, time will tell if bringing similar tools or anything else to HacDC is worthwhile.

New Business

• EdTechDMV, a non-profit that hosts educational tech events for DC teachers and developers in the education software market, wants to hold classes at HacDC during business hours later this year. This is a problem that's come up before: How to grant access to the classroom to other organizations when a member can't be around to open/lock up. For example, we could make someone from that organization (Bill or Matt Z) a member and waive their dues, but that wouldn't be a "hardship" waiver exactly, and they would count towards quorum and not really be an involved member of HacDC... so another arrangement would be good, preferably more official than just handing them a key. - Enrique

Adjournment

Adjourned by at xxx by xxx