Revision as of 14:57, 21 October 2011

On October 20, 2011, we had a general brainstorming session on how to make KwartzLab more awesome. It was open to all members, and it was loosely structured like an UnConference. We posted ideas for topics, organized them into an agenda, then talked.

These are the rough notes that I took during the meeting. (Feel free to edit this, reorganize it, add anything I missed.)

How do we get more members?

Better new visitor experience at TON.

• TON goes up and down. Sometimes: people just talk, sometimes interesting projects are going on. A mix of these things is good.
• new visitor script. What do you tell people? Explain all the tools? What are they? Pamplet?

ought to have somebody at the front desk. comfortable chair at front desk.

We should have regularly scheduled talks and workshops, it will bring people into the space.

Getting more talks

• 5+5 is cool, but it is a lot of work
• 1 talk per month at a TON, as a regular feature -- need a design pattern, a template to offer the speaker, an elevator speech to recruit speakers
• informal is easier to commit (eg, 10 minute talk is okay)
• videos of talks posted on website? (optional, need someone to own it)

appoint someone to be in charge of knowing the talk schedule, and who can act as a point of feedback

Video blog

• James: need an easy work flow (smart phone to internet)
• can we get kwartzlab utube account back from Darin?
• get a kwartzlab flicker account
• gus and ed were talking about doing HeavyLab again, Darcy also interested

Member project demos

(see also kwartzlab tv, informal talks)

• self serve "project bell" to signal an informal talk ("look at me" button)
• TON blog posts, TON photos, tweet TON photos using a smart phone

More Workshops

James: design pattern requiring 3 people.

Other Ideas

Bring back hackathon (if someone wants to run it)

bring back kwartzlab TV (need someone to run it)

newspaper ads - "space for makers", kijiji

kids activities, parents come along

Tool room

• wish list on wiki, may need updating
• big tools are good
• but many of the core basics are missing
• hand drill, screwdriver sets,
• need to prioritize
• redit style upvoting to prioritize the tools we should get next

Don has a big air tank for a compressor

Getting people to run things

like herding big retarded cats

incentives

reducing the activation energy to make it happen, making it easy

design pattern for running an event. Eric put this on wiki for the junkyard.

assign titles and repsonsibilities to people (lab manager, press liason, event coordinator), to give people a sense of responsibility and motivation

• (Eric says: bus number = 1)
• encourage ownership

Keeping the lab clean

• is the board working? Maybe.
• bring back the schedule, with an email robot for reminders?
• how much would it cost for a cleaning service? $35 / hour - $70 / month == 1.4 members

Events

Google will give money for events that encourage girls in tech

Science demo day

Events for kids

• Ed wants to do music talks in November
• Don has some ideas for talks
• Fighting Robot Competition
  • challenge other hackerspaces
  • sell tickets
  • join up with roller derby girls
• Survival Research Labs
• revive the Space Program
• pumpkin launcher
• build a rube goldberg machine (team sport, different people for different segments)
• Stunt Projects - good for publicity
• Electronic Kit Night
• kitten launcher (diyode builds the kitten catcher)

Propaganda

We have mission statements/propaganda on the web site/wiki

James has some additional material he needs to upload