meeting:july_12

Meeting minutes: July 12, 2016

Regular items
- Attendance: 8 members in attendance, +1 by proxy
- Reading of previous minutes. Presented. Since we didn't have quorum, no motion to accept.
- Financials
  - $153.36 profit last month
  - $2339.42 in liquid assets, $910.0 A/R, $17.92 A/P as of June 30th. Has since been collected and paid.
  - A few payments that James didn't know about that had been due in June. Will be updated later.
- Membership committee:
  - Membership: 31 full members, 3 associates
  - Lost members: Patrick Ridley and Janie Rae Gaudet
  - New members: Randy Day, June 28; Karl Niedzielski, July 5
  - Jack Vu upgraded from associate to full member
- Tool committee:
  - John brought in a new metal blade for the small band saw.
  - Al has not spoken to Rob Phillips since last meeting about the laser cutter deal with Peachy Printer.
  - Al's laser cutter has arrived. He will leave it packaged until we move.
  - Randy diagnosed the problem with the function generator. It's an ASIC for which we cannot find a replacement.
- Space search:
  - We have found a promising space at 412 44th St E. The board is negotiating the final details on the new space.
  - Andrew is concerned about sharing the front entrance with the other tenant. He believes is it “sketchy”. He is also worried that the landlord may revoke access to that entrance in the future with a significant amount of time between removing the access and adding the separate entrance. The board will take this into consideration while negotiating the terms of the lease.
- Bylaw changes:
  - No changes to the bylaws yet. The board has been focused on financials and finding a new space.
- Corporate sponsorships:
  - The board agreed to a framework for corporate sponsorship offerings. Each level includes a paid membership, which would be the same as any other member. Lowest level is designed to allow some of our existing members to provide a bit more if they wish in trade for some marketing.
  - In regards to getting “access to the brains”, members are welcome to come in and ask questions and other members are welcome to assist them, but TechWorks will not be providing consulting services.
  - Do we need a single point of contact? Negotiations should eventually go through the board. We will handle it as needed.
  - We should put together a list of tools that are available for naming.
  - Randy forwarded the form from PCS for sponsorship to Scott. Scott thinks we will need to position ourselves more as a group that promotes maker culture in the public. Andrew Wright also knows somebody at PCS.
- Fundraising:
  - We had discussed a referral program. We would like to offer a free month membership to an existing member who refers a new member. They will receive the bonus when the new member has paid their third month. This isn't official yet; we will vote on it in the future.
  - We would like to add a store to our website for selling merchandise. We can use this to sell T-shirts, Arduinos, consumables for the tools, and other things that we might have on hand. Scott is starting to integrate this into our website. In order to do this, we will need a PST number, which James will be applying for. Send any suggestions for items to sell to the board.
- Events
  - Retro video game day this Saturday, July 16, at TechWorks. Open to the public. Starts at noon, goes until we get too tired to play.
  - Soldering workshop to be hosted by John. Will be some time in August. Al will promote at the next ETC event.
  - Rylan had offered to do host a kiln workshop. No plans yet.
  - Al is going to wait on the CNC training workshop until after we move.
  - Scott will host another soap workshop after we move.
  - Al is also willing to hold a combat robot workshop that includes building a FingerTech Robotics Viper Kit. Al will promote it at the next ETC event.
  - Andrew Wright is still willing to hold a CAD workshop.
  - Albert will be giving a CAD workshop at ETC in October.
  - James will be giving a talk in September at Sask Polytechnic on drones and quadcopters, which will result in a donation to TechWorks.
- Promotions:
  - John has put up a Kijiji ad for TechWorks. He plans to repost it weekly a couple of days in advance of our build nights.
  - Newspaper classifieds? Probably not worth paying for. The free ones may be worth the trouble. It would be even better if we can get an article written.
  - If we put together a group project that includes some sort of public work, we could get a grant towards it, and that work could lead to visibility. Need to discuss it further with JS.
  - Our website is out of date and doesn't reflect well on us. John will be creating new content for it. The front page is good, especially with the regular updates on member projects. Since we don't use the forum regularly, we have closed it and removed the links to it, (since we don't use it), but the forum is still functioning so that any existing links continue to work. We will also be updating the wiki.