Decisions and Discussions


Our discussion and decision making process is a little confusing at first so this should help break it down into simpler bite sized bits.

 

Idealogically we fall somewhere between "The Board" and "The Members" on the 'how hackerspaces are run' break out.

 

First off there are three group of people: The Members, the Board and the Owners. Members refers to anyone currently paying membership dues. The Board is a more administrative group comprised of both owners and members (See bottom for further explaination of the board). The owners are the four people who established company that houses all of this. The owners want the members to make most of the decisions, and created the board to facilitate that.

 

Step 1: Mailing List

The primary discussion about any topic will happen on the mailing list. Questions and proposals will be sent to the list and all are welcome to contribute their thoughts and feelings on the subject. This will sometimes be heated, sometimes hectic, sometimes dead silent. There will often be too many opionions being thrown around to get any kind of clear view, but it's great for helping everyone to know which topics people really care about, and which ones they are divided on.

 

Step 2: Wiki

Some discussions will end with the creation of a wiki page to collect the info. Some will end with the creation of a group of people who are in charge of something, which will be organized via the wiki. If there is a topic you are curious about, check the wiki as it might already exist there.

 

Step 3: Weekly meetings

Every Tuesday night at 8pm there is a meeting at the space. The agenda for these meetings is generally Announcements, Updates on existing projects, Questions, Discussions. In some cases there will have been enough discussion on the mailing list for a decision to be made, those will be announced in the "Announcements" part surprisingly enough. In the event that more discussion is needed, well, guess when that happens. This is NOT the best place to introduce new discussions, see the mailing list for that.

 

Step 4: Monthly meeting

The last Tuesday of every month is the big board meeting. The board will announce any decisions it's made based on the discussions previously. The board will not make all decisions, mostly the ones with pressing deadlines or that involve the larger financial/legal health of the space. Other decisions will be pushed down to the members for a vote. Only paying members can vote, and all votes will happen in person at this monthly meeting.

 

Any decisions that can not be resolved with this process will be discarded.

 


The Board is currently comprised of the 4 owners, and over the first 2 months will appoint a member for a final total of 5 people. At 12 months the board will rotate, two of the owners and the member will step down and 3 members will be elected to fill those spots. From that point on the board will always be 2 owners and 3 members.