Regular Member Meeting 2013 01 08

Time and Location

January 8, 2013

Meeting called to order at 19:36 by Eric

Members Present: Eric, Tim, Timothy, Chris, Alberto, Jamie, David, Martin, Dan, David, Tim Slagle, Andy, Liz, Nadir, Philip Others Present: TJ

Quorum met? Yes

Approval of Previous Meeting's Minutes

Regular Member Meeting 2012 12 11 Approved.

Recognition

Matt Hines - Occupancy sensor getting better. Will be hooked up to twitter. Web cams exist and may be hooked up. There will be a switch to turn them on and off so as not to be creepy.

Director Reports

President's Report

Planning activities for the year

Meeting planned. Everyone may join. Standing rules will be discussed. 15 people limit joining online.

Working on non-discrimination policy and anti-harassment policy. Will distribute to list for edits.

Looking at other hack spaces to copy their ideas. Will report back on cool stuff.

Annual meeting is postponed to March to make room for rules and policy changes.

^^ the above will also be announced on the members list.

Ivy invited us to run a table at shmoo con. Security conference. Security capture the flag. Will bring stickers and brochures. Mentioned that we do more maker stuff. Our choice, but will be a bunch of geeks there, so whatever we do will be interesting, but may not be relevant. Will not hand out all our stickers. Also lobby con, no ticket required -- just hang out outside the conference and talk to everyone.

Vice President's Report

Ben is not here.

Treasurer's Report

Here is the financial summary spreadsheet for December 2012: File:HacDC Financials 2012 12.pdf. We gained two new members (Paul Commons and Christine Prefontaine), and lost two (Daniel Watson and Greg Rice). We had 53 paying members and 4 non-paying members (two are in transition between payment methods). This leaves us below the 57 we need to meet expenses with dues alone again. Members kicking in extra are keeping us positive again this month - thanks!

We had some extra expenses ($100 guard tip and $120 for a year of Clear internet service) so we finished slightly negative (-$12) on regular expenses compared to dues and non-earmarked donations.

Quorum remains at 14.

Project Awesome

Since we were net negative in regular income and expenses, there is no Project Awesome dividend for December. However there were a large amount of earmarked donations for Project LASER - thanks everyone! Here is the Project Awesome spreadsheet for December: File:HacDC PA Projects-2012 12.pdf.

Director-at-Large Reports

Martin

FCC radio certification. Could do a cram course and then promote that outside of hacdc to get more attention.

Andy

Nothing to report. No excuses. Not nerding out.

Cutting clear acrylic with a student and got hit with laser in eye. Guide laser. Freak accident, what. Spent 5 hrs in ER, sucked.

Project Awesome Reports

Project LASER

We received a total of almost $1900 in donations earmarked for Project LASER in December! That brings the total to $4459, which is enough to buy the Full Spectrum Engineering "newhobby" laser. More funding will be needed for the cooling pump, protective eyewear, and venting hardware however.

I continue to read (on CNCzone.com) some stories of shabby treatment of customers by FSLaser - not honoring warranties, not paying for shipping on defective parts, lasers arriving pretty trashed from China, etc. So I want to do a full search of alternatives before pulling the trigger. If we are able to afford a 60W from somewhere else I think I'd go for that instead - the 40W FSlaser needs multiple passes to cut 1/4" materials. --TMS

Project BYZANTIUM

Not much. Code sprint guy from the neighborhood who work with Sean came in and got him working with that, and that's about it.

Project KITBUILD

No action unfortunately. Being realistic, I probably won't have time to put a workshop together until the end of February. If someone else wants to do one they could use my collection of soldering irons and tools. --TMS

Member Reports

Tim Slagle

I'm hoping to set up [email protected] as our inbox for help and information requests. Google Groups has a collaborative inbox feature we will use to try and track the requests to make sure stuff isn't getting lost in the cracks.

I'm putting together a "Stuff and Space" committee to help write Standing Rules on how we manage and disposition our stuff, and allocate space. We have myself, Martin, DanB, and are waiting to hear from David Whiteis. With luck we will have something to vote on at the annual meeting.

Chris

Sound abatement panels completed. Do not squish them please. Will make it so the work area does not get so loud. If you have extra whiteboards, cork boards, plastic bins, etc, we would like these. Dry erase crayons are awesome. Dry-erase friendly paint? Board stuff is cheaper than paint. Other options discussed. Plexiglass. Glass also works. Diamonds. Gold. Terapin trader run anyone?

More free stuff = less buying of things. Contact Eric before bringing things in. This is a good time of year to get free stuff from dumpsters. We do not need more printers.

Alberto

Proposes repeating the Arduino processing class. Duplicate of Artosphere class from May. Crash course intro to electronics. Arduino, processing, then arduino processing. Supplanted by a kit build from sparkfun. Willing to teach that one. Three organizations from which to leverage attendees.

Andy

Learning software for dance music. If you are interested in electronic music with digital audio workstations, let's chat.

Adjournment

Adjourned at: