Future Gazing 20240929 - DoESLiverpool/somebody-should GitHub Wiki

On Sunday 29th September 2024 we had another Future-gazing session. It was more inward-focused than previous instances, looking at the rather pressing issue of our finances and then also more generally as to how the space operates and is managed.

These notes are an attempt to capture some of the salient points, but are a fraction of the useful, sometimes frank, generously given discussion.

Finances

We started with this, and some of the discussion took us through other topics as we discussed retention and finding more people to use the space, and looped back to try to reach some level of consensus by the end of this meeting as it's the most urgent issue.

We looked through this summary of the finances spreadsheet prepared by the directors. That link isn't just publicly visible as it has a few numbers we'd rather only share with the community; but any community members who want to check it out should click the link to request access. There are also the monthly Financials reports - search for "financials" in the "pages" filter on the wiki to find them.

  • We should advertise more and encourage more people to come to the space
  • We should make it more obvious at events and to general visitors that donations would help. (On a related note, we could make the Cost of Being Epic poster and put it up in the events room
  • Maybe local companies could provide sponsorship?
  • It seems like we have folk who use the space for a while and drift away. Are there underlying issues we could address that would arrest that?
  • Could there be a "pay it forward" option to let those who can pay more contribute more to allow those who can't afford as much to pay less?
  • It would be useful to know the extent of our "runway" (how long can we go on before we run out of cash)
  • There's a fairly high expense looming to replace the heating in the main space. We're waiting to hear back about a grant to cover half the cost, but even after that it's likely to be ~£2500. The consensus was that we should do it, as otherwise we're likely to lose users over the winter (and also in the height of summer). Maybe we could run a crowd-funder to help raise money for that as it's a specific ask.
  • Not all our users can afford a price rise, which would likely mean they'd drop down a membership level and reduce our income (particularly in the short term). There was some discussion of grandfathering in existing users but it was felt it would be better to let those who'd have trouble with a price rise raise it in confidence and address their circumstances individually to help out.
  • On the VAT front (we're nearing the threshold where we'd need to charge it), it seems slightly favourable to only register when we have to, but set our prices assuming we will absorb it once we do.
  • Make it clearer what newcomers should expect, to make attending less intimidating
  • We should have more people run workshops - brings in money (from room rental or attendees' "hot-desk" payment) and introduces new folk to DoES

How did people find out about us?

  • Exhibition in the TATE
  • Working with other groups/word of mouth
  • Repair Cafe
  • Wider media (on a YouTube channel) suggestion of finding hackspaces, with DoES being the local option

General consensus (though we're open to better suggestions from the wider community too!) was that we should increase the prices enough to ensure we cover our costs.

We should have another finances-focused community meeting in a couple of months to revisit and check everything is okay.

Managing the space

How do we manage the space? And the interpersonal relationships (and frictions) in managing the space?

  • We should restart the hack the space sessions (there was also discussion of renaming them as "mending day" or something else, but having them is the more important point)
  • Hack the Space days could be focused on one topic; or one area of the space; or working on a guide for a specific machine
  • We should restart regular community meetings (we'd also want to experiment with ways to hold people accountable for tasks from them, so they're not just talking shops)
  • Some (not an excess of) reminders and encouragement to tidy up, etc. signs in strategic places (e.g. reminders of what to do at the end of a laser-cutting session posted in the laser-room)
  • It's hard to know what can be used (or done) in the space without getting permission
  • It would be good for there to be more delegation of power to others, but that needs to come alongside trust being built

We should have a Doodle poll, like we did for this meeting, to work out when to have the hack-the-space and community meetings; and probably aim for monthly (particularly initially as we've somewhat of a backlog of work to tackle :grin:)