This meetings blog is meant to keep everyone up to date to what was discussed at Velocipede collective meetings.
Collective Meeting Minutes - July, 2010
July 29, 2010
in attendance:
tim
anna
Lars
boson
doug
ben g
gab
dileep
noah
Carl P.
intro:
explanation of hand signals
review of minutes
Shop Report:
bought bunch of tools for travelling workshops, spraypainted in green toolbags. please don’t take them w/ you because lars needs to know where they are.
(suggestion to put sign out sheet to tell who has it out)
also, please remind lars when we are out of things.
also, we lost a big big ladder that belongs to charlie…. we need to find it.
Tim was in the shop today during the thunderstorm and video recorded the rainstorm dripping down. according to lars, they are certainly doing work on the roof but it might be to no avail.
Education:
turns out that the police didn’t get any bikes for us yet.
resilelvor hill: tons of kids: 8 - 12 kids…. first lesson, lars brought a bunch of wheels and tubes and it turned out well.
herring run : will start asap: will be getting 6 bikes ready hopefully by wed/thurs.
classes will start in august.
tim suggests doing classes in summer/spring would be good.
Finance
as is sale:
anna: people came as soon as the door opened, so there were advertisements. thought it went well… things were a little chaotic when reg. folks came into the shop mostly people gave. the goal of clearing out stuff was good. made about 70 dollars. we will be doing this on a as need basis.
Proposals
budget:
executive budgets were merged in w risk management costs. people talked about how we don’t need a phone at all. this is in order to determine when we need fundraising, and to determine our cash flow requirements.
exec: : $5800 a year (includes rent, insurance, utilites, etc)
pr : new banner (150), flyers (200), retreat(505), t-shirts(500) - fundraising expense (300) -$1655
shop : all 4q: (3856)
approx for year: 11300
we’re barely meeting the budget. in case of emergency we might run into trouble. we will need to revaluate how we run.
APPROVED!!!!!!!!!!!
phone:
Carl can donate internet, use voice over ip
Discussions:
staffing:
Tim: basically, two parts: wanted to brainstorm ideas, and also talk about the progress of supervolunteers. it’s becoming stressful to get people to staff. Need to prevent interpersonal problems.
boson: maybe we are understaffed for now? people have obligations.
lars: I think we have enough resources to make sure things are staffed.
noah: my problem is that there is no way to figure out do we really have staff enough… I just want to have a way to close the shop w/o having to get everyone involved.
gabby: we should have scheduling time set per meeting for the next two weeks. I also echo boson on maybe having to close… we do it so rarely. we do at red emmas when needed be… and we don’t have to make it a habit.
lars: we used to have one person pull people in, and that makes that person accountable. now we have it set up that certain persons would be reliable in taking one or two days that will get things covered…. if it is all possible, it’d be nice to have people have a day and cover it so they can be regular.
ben: if people have the time and stability to do so, it’d be nice… some people don’t. jumping on what gabby was talking about, at our meetings, perhaps we can we can pick one or two days that we will _for sure_ be there… so it can be on the calendar…
gabby: can I propose that we do fill out the calendars as part of an agenda for meetings.
noah: the problem is that it is impossible to inform our constituency about our absence.
tim: I don’t think we really have an excuse to close…
lars: if we don’t have people on the calendar 24 hrs in advance… we should be sure no one can do it… if we have our act together.
noah: this might be wishful thinking… we should be doing things but there’s still no answers for what if no one did sign up?
tim: the problem is in order to have shop closed 24 hrs prior to no one staffing, we will need to really diligent in scheduling.
proposal: set an agenda for schedule till next meeting.
if you can’t make it to the meeting, you should announce when you come in.
APPROVED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
proposal: if no one signed up in 24 hrs, we send email to co-op to close shop.
lars: the problem is someone needs to be responsible to announce the closing.
boson: the secretary’s job.
APPPPPPPRRRRRROVEEEEEEED!
supervolunteers:
noah presented application, we talked about it, giving hints and suggestions, due by next half meeting
bike bike:
-who is going
boson, lars, dileep, noah
-how are we going
rail:
flying:
driving:
-how much it’ll cost:
discussion:
anna: we should only fund a certain amount
noah: some of us might not be able to afford it unless its entirely paid.
proposal: 1000
approved!
operations:
gabby: we need to have a way little things at the shop can be discussed quickly at a meeting.
lars: I try to do this on general shop reports but we’re not getting results.
proposal: have an additional section of the meeting devoted to “operations” where we discuss something about the shop.
-do it after reports
APPROVED!!!!
new volunteers:
lars: gabby, carl and I had this discussion… we have great ideas and we tried to make it work ourselves and it doesn’t work. really what has to come out is a system to communicate what’s missing, where to go with info, etc.
Carl: I tried to volunteer for years and had problems until recently. Never in my history of volunteerism have I been turned away… I finally figured out why and the root cause is the misuse of the word volunteer. The majority of people here isn’t really volunteering. if we change the word so that volunteer is actually volunteering.
gabby: especially the biggest problem is we turn down people who are skilled. I think the questionaire is a good idea. we need to stop turning down people.
lars: the last thing we need is two more hopkins kids who wanna do work trade. some sundays we really don’t have any more room for some people to come in who wants to spend just two hrs doing something… I don’t know how to go about doing this
doug: the idea of a super volunteer is someone who will help us do more than just plain ol volunteering. I agree with you in that we turn away so many people…
tim: in essence the supervolunteers are staff members…. I do think we turn people away is because volunteers need a LOT OF supervisation.
anna: we haven’t really sat down and come up with larger tasks besides shop bikes. we occasionally have big cleanup days, etc… we do need to get to the habit of asking people about their skills.
noah: I htink the full sign has been used as a way to not talk to people… also often the sign is there in the beginning; and then there’s space later… we should be more dilligent in telling that. we need to figure out a way to not brush people off.
gabby: I just want to find a better system to prevent people from walking out w/o saying anything.
carl: the seperation does not have to be space or skills…
lars: these discussions are not working… we don’t have any way to collect information… one person can do this; 14 can’t. there are people in the collective who will be handling more volunnters and they are not here. how do we collectively do this?
noah/boson: people get paid
carl: not necssary:
anna: the problem is that we don’t have a way to collect this information.
Carl: that’s process on the backside. You need process… but you need to change your mentality to look at somebody when they walk in.
gabby: volunteer committee needs to get in touch with people who wants to volunteers.
Carl: You need to not refer people in the build a bilke program as volunteers
Tim: why split them up? I don’t see the point because both parties might do good work
Carl: if you put people who wants to do something to get something here with people who are just here to help devalues the latter.
announcements:
tax is coming!
doug is having a girl. her name is jasmine star. yes. it really is.
tim: my friend kelly had her bike stolen. This bike, lavendar, bike 715 was stolen.
eval:
doug: stacks is difficult when it comes to discussions
next meeting:
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