Regular Member Meeting 2017 04 11
From HacDC Wiki
Time and Location
- Date
- Called to order at 7:45pm pm by Tom
- Members present: Tom, Matt Z, Andrew R, Xavier B, Kevin C, Enrqiue C., Ken K., Michael C.
- Members remote: mirage, juri
- Others present: Sanjay, Chrystal, Kevin, Nancy
- Quorum
- Quorum met? Yes
Approval of Previous Meeting's Minutes
February and March meeting minutes approved.
Recognition
- Andrew: brought & installed an awesome sound system and brought 40 cores worth of servers.
- Tom: Set up a print server (2D) with a Raspberry Pi, you can now print to raspberry.local I think.
- Kevin: fixed (unjammed) Nicks' Ultimaker and the Mini again.
New Members
Sanjay voted in as new member.
Old Business
- Ken's proposal that members confide in and authorize the Board to seek legal counsel and other administrative support to explore financial opportunities in grant sponsorship: HacDC would provide oversight of entities who don't qualify for non-profit grants effecting work using non-profit grants; HacDC would apply/get the grant and sub-contract work to the business who can do the work. Classes, for example. Proposal PASSED by 6 in favor, 1 opposed, 1 abstain.
- Bylaws amendment proposal: Change the threshold for future bylaws amendments from "more than three quarters (3/4ths) of voting members," to "more than three quarters (3/4ths) of member votes cast 90 days from the proposal approval date," and from "Notice of such petition must be submitted electronically to all members," to "Notice of such a petition must be submitted to all members electronically and, where electronic means produce no response, all other available means." (from October)
New Business
- We have a lot of non-free (paid) events on our MeetUp schedule now - 2 or 3 a week. They are software education events, which are in-line with our educational mission and which we've had people express interest in before to no avail. They are nominally run by High School Tech Services, a non-profit organization, not a business. But are they open to people who can't afford to pay? Are they open to HacDC members who pay rent and insurance for the classroom, the MeetUp fees, etc? Does HSTS have a current 501c3 non-profit status and insurance? Is HSTS deriving any net revenue from these events, and will it be shared with HacDC to offset costs, lower membership fees, etc? Our previous (expired) MOU with HSTS covered 9am-5pm on weekdays, which generally doesn't overlap with other members' events, but the new events are on weeknights and our weeknight schedule is now regularly full Monday thru Thursday with two free and two non-free events. Do current rules prevent members from charging for events, or from asking people who haven't paid to leave an event at HacDC? Should HacDC create some rules for paid events, or limit the number of events so some weeknights are open?
Project Awesome Reports
Project SUPPLIES
Nothing to report.
Project EXPANSION
Nothing to report.
Project HAMRADIO
Project Electron Microscope (SEM)
- Nothing to report. We should schedule one night if only to check the vacuum pressure. It would be nice if someone else who's done this before was around (Dan, Hunter). But few people seem eager to get involved and I don't have much time to invest in this myself, so expect little progress on the SEM. -Enrique
Project Optical Table Robot (OTR)
Project CRISPR
- Nothing to report; trying to schedule the next meeting. Maybe next week (it takes 2 consecutive nights to do it). The plan is to compare two different bacteria strains (do the CRISPR process twice in parallel) use freshly-made plates and check for ambient contamination (other species). We do have a water bath now that should make things much easier.
Project SpaceBlimp
- Nothing to report. Not sure if the jet stream is in the right position yet but nobody has resumed any discussion of Spaceblimp 7. I have a 'science payload' idea and parts but don't really have time to take the project lead. -Enrique
Member Reports
- Enrique: Went to a Metasploit workshop from the Beltway Hackers MeetUp group and am convincing them to host a similar free hands-on workshop at HacDC. Probably into May. Let me know if you'd like to stay informed and look forward to the announcement. The March for Science organizers are being rather unresponsive to offers for assistance; two "we'll get back to you," replies so far. Nevertheless I'll be here Friday 21st and the HAM club is looking to contact them to assist with communications also to little avail.
Director Reports
President's Report
Vice President's Report
I've had some moderately busy days at PC Rebuilds/Hardware [Des]pair. Still needs a better name. Sad Sundays?
to be filled
Treasurer's Report
- Funding is stable; we have over six months of reserves and total balances around $12k. I'd love to upload files to this someday...
- Paid March rent late and April rent early (eh, works out, right?), so we're $1,021 in the red for March and will have a big 'surplus' in April.
- We have 30 members in good standing after just suspending two for three months of non-payment.
- We have 21 members paying the regular $60 rate. ($1260)
- We have 7 members paying the old $50 rate, who I haven't seen around in years, so... thank you. ($350)
- We have 1 dues-waived member and 1 student-rate member. ($20)
- Theoretical income is $1,630/mo but there's usually someone who just stops paying (without resigning).
- Theoretically we could try to recover $180 worth of dues each from a handful of people, or not bother. (?)
- Paid Tom $33 for key copies - no other unusual expenses in March or February (just Rent, Insurance, Transaction Fees).
- Filed taxes with IRS (990N postcard).
- Registered as business with DC to file tax returns there, haven't actually filed yet.
- Totally missed the CFC deadline (Feb??). We got $550 last year but there's a hefty application fee - was it waived last year?
- Help wanted: To re-establish contact with Newark element 14 for sponsorship (got $600 of free parts last year, now emails bounce).
- Help wanted: Need to calculate individual project balances (HAM Radio, SEM, OTR, CRISPR, SUPPLIES etc) from overall PA dividend.
- Help wanted: Our Dwolla button is broken, so we are paying a few bucks a month more PayPal fees.
Secretary's Report
Director-at-Large Reports
Kevin
Matt
Still busy preparing some interesting things for the world.
Adjournment
Adjourned by at xxx by xxx