BoardMeeting202503

Board Meeting:

Time & Location

March 16, 2025, 4pm virtually via Big Blue Button

Minutes

• This year each person on the board will report on their individual projects so we can keep everyone on task

Issac: President

• Building purchasing situation
  • Someone contacted Spark to ask if KM was interested in buying the building. We are still wondering who the owners actually are
  • We have a meeting to talk to the person (he's a realtor) to find out what the deal is - he wants to represent us to buy
  • We have also been exploring different financing options and have some promising leads
  • We are in a position to actually move forward in a meaningful way finally
  • We were also encouraged to go look at a former Dollar General by KCDC, we didn't really like it much for various reasons (smaller, needs a lot of work)
  • We were still glad to go look at the DG and learn the process and possibly work with KCDC in the future
  • Issac is *also* looking at 625 Collective situation - maybe too fancy for our budget and possibly only a lease, but they are excited to talk to us so Issac is going to do that
• Documentary - they are done shooting and beginning editing, looking for photos
• Interview with Cityview Magazine - the writer visited last Tuesday and did all the things (even NMO) - she wants photographs and to interview a few people
• Maker Education Meetup - we hosted the last meeting and the group was excited to tour and made some connections
• Vestival is coming up on May 10 - we will be parking (they'll have a shuttle) and have demo booths and tours - little responsibility and good payoff
• Steps House - seems to have petered out

Sue: Treasurer

• Income looks less than normal but last month was a bit inflated for various reasons
• Expenses are pretty normal - nothing special
• The Board decided to cover the cost of welding gas and BS propane - do we want to continue that? It's a lot of money! We'll keep watching.
• Sue is setting up ACH (bank transfer) available for our members - will save a lot in bank fees to Paypal (last year we had over $5k in fees)

Tracy: Membership Director

• 351 members
• Tracy did her quarerly purge this month and only had a few - most of them just had not noticed that their paypal stopped paying and fixed it immediately
• If paypal fails once, it just dumps you so if people don't notice, they just aren't paying
• If you get an email from me about your dues - I'm not mad and she hates sending them!

Russell: Community Director

• Tuesday night talks and crafts - staying full at least a month in advance - good job Russell
• Tool instruction - Russell has made a few and is ready to put them out on Tuesday
• Newsletter... he's working on it

Jondale: Tech Director

• MeshCentral - All done yay - if people have machines in their zones and want access to them from home let him know
• Single Sign-on - it takes about 2 hours to do a migration to new Mattermost so some night, everyone will be logged out - so make sure you sign up for the SSO
  • The fix for people who have not registered, is to 1. Register 2. Jondale run a script to update them to new MM
• HaxDB refresh - have not started, but will work on after moving some stuff more locally hosted
• Mayor's Maker Council - Dogwood Arts Festival coming up (April 12th) - they've moved us to a different (smaller) location (boo)
  • Quite a few KM people to do workshops and demos - if anyone wants to help, talk to Jondale
  • Council now has two subgroups, Jondale is in the Makerspace group
  • Hey look its us - https://themakercity.org/maker/knox-makers/

Daryl: Communications

• Website situation - slower going than he'd like but he's working on it
• Took some photos with Michael Bellamy, need more action-y ones still
• Looking at making it easier for Sue and the website playing well with Qbooks
• Also trying to get SSO implemented - working with Jondale for a good plugin
• How much data migration do we want? (probably don't need everything)
• Exploring a plugin to expand payment options also

Sean: Creative Director

• Scholarship program - would Sean like to take this over?
• Sean will put his branding document up for the board for commentary
• Podcasts: Sean has contacted a few media updates around town but has not heard back
• Tomfoolery - Mr._Wrenchy and Nutso
• Looking at some accounts management platforms to streamline all of the socials
• Issac has a silly idea - selfie station in the shop?
• Future contest - make the best small thing to put in the Mystery Maker Machine

Billy: Facilities

• Tages and tickets are being given out and hung about the shop for czarsa nd members
• Sue submitted the proposal for the air compressor system - that is moving forward
• Has to get quotes for a power drop because it's more complicated than a normal thing

Other stuff=

• We have maybe had an uptick in people leaving the space unsecured, do we need more cameras
  • Perhaps a better lock system - it's kind of jank if no one has noticed
  • We have to be better at making sure people keep up on locking up and making sure the next person has a key
  • All good ideas but you can't use technology to solve people problems
  • Please think about it on how to encourage and push the importance to our members how vital it is to keep things secure
• Next meeting date: April 20, 2025
• Come to the cookout on Tuesday!