Weekly Staff Meetings/2015-01-13

Staff Meeting Notes 2015-01-13
Attendance: Lucio, Paul, Edward, Amanda, Lio, Berni, Kevin, Andrea, Mika, others

Xinchejian Meeting and Party

Trying to think about goals for 2015.

• We want to get more responses from the community

Who is XCJ Staff? / How it is managed?

• We should have a clearer board to show who the staff is
• Put the information on pictures volunteers -- on the wiki
• Explain who we are, and how Xinchejian works
• (But we're an anarchist, autonomous collective...)
• TODO: Make a board to show staff
• TODO: Make a board to show general rules (how the space is run)

Transparency for Finances

• Should Xinchejian try to show all of its finances.
• Some support for this

Donations

• Seems like people willing to put money to support projects and tools
• Should think of how to harness this interest

Proactive on holding Advanced Workshops

• Edward
• Interested in advanced more professional workshops,
• Finding experts
• Examples: Lathe, CNC, Welding
• Example: Czech guy -- this guy never came back
• Need more Workshop managers?
• Goal: To get people (our ideal members) to find us, join us.
• How to make the XCJ like it was when we joined.

Wednesday Open Houses -- Raise the quality

• No quality screening...
• How to improve quality / control
• Best of talks series (monthly basis)
• Some sort of polling / voting
• Accumulate good talks -- and then do a best of (at the end of the month / year)
• Film the talks
• Concern about bad audio...
• Staff will start to take notes on best talks.

Events, event calendar

• Maker Carnivals, big events
• Having a good calendar...
• It is a good initiator for projects
• SHOULD WE USE: Better Calendar System (Google is blocked)
• PROXY it out? Paul says it's possible.

Sponsorships

• More sponsorships -- more than 4 companies?
• It seems like people 10 sponsorships -- seems ok
• 1 year - If we can do more than one year

Media

• Replying to media -- want us to do a better job of building this
• Maintaning media relationsihps
• TODO: Create a PR Resource File
• Google Doc: Media relationships
• Rules around this? Need to understand who gets access?

Competitions

• Prizes: More money, will drive more people to participate
• Example: Sparkfun -- 1 year competition
• Possibilities: Open source air purifier competition

Active Projects -- Better Promotion / Group Building

• Maximizing use of Weixin
• Print out the QR code for the groups.
• Announcement board - show the groups
• Monitor with ads of the groups (pictures, advertising)
• Website: Also publish the QR codes

Project based Kickstarter / Donation -- Finances / Transparency

• Badges -- For donations
• Project Teams - Example: Air Purifier Teams

Donations from Corporates

• We are very positive on taking corporate stuff, with NO EXPECTATIONS
• Expectations - NONE
• Amanda - example: Air Purifier

==Projects: Idea: Awesome Foundation (?)

• Bernie
• Get a bunch of people together -- to donate some money to help one project
• Encourage building projects
• Example: Sofa car

Open Source tools to support projects

• Using OpenTilt?

Promoting projects

• Project of the month (POTM)

Improving - Documentation of projects in Xinchejian

• Not easy to create
• Not easy to find

Design a better Xinchejian Website

• publicizing what they are doing
• Asking for help for projects

Membership System

• Part of the website, Online
• subscribe online, pay online
• Xinfab -- Willing to contribute money
• Research: Amsterdam fablab site: http://fablab.waag.org/

Project Corners - Showing projects that are in motion

• People take over a part of the space
• Wechat group QR code info
• People can see

Marketing - expanding reach

• Example: Going to Zhangjiang
• Reaching out to people who don't know about xinchejian but are Like-minded
• Reaching out to factories (Ricky's original idea)

More space managers?

• Unclear