Weekly Staff Meetings/2015-02-03

Staff Meeting Notes 2015-02-03
Attendance: Lucio(half), Amanda, Lio, Berni(half), Andrea, Teacher Huang, The Kid

Welcome teacher Huang

• "Xinchejian is Li David? Not anymore."
• "Translation problem"
• "Many tools are not available"
• "Make stuff together? Not happening"
• "System to let people look up old projects, information"
• "Giving lectures at other places"
• "Two categories: 1. present innovation projects; 2. educational purposes"
• "Import projects from abroad and translate to Chinese"
• "Not enough volunteers to show people around"
• "Try: I come here and try a few things" OK!
• "Many small companies don't know how to do stuff. We can help them."

Solutions

• TEACHER Huang to bring some missing tools into XinCheJian
• TEACHER Huang to help people realize their projects
• AMANDA to help organize some workshops for Teacher Huang
• TEACHER to send us an explanation of his proposals

Bosch

• Valentines Day
• They pay for an event
• Tools
• Decide as soon as possible

Bosch Competition

• Edward and Qichen to donate 50%! (wooo)
• Xinchejian needs to issue fapiao WHO

Urban Planning Museum - Hackerspace Demo

• Xinchejian needs to provide projects
• 1 March - 19 April
• AMANDA to find out the details

Jing'an Activity Center

Feb 4 -- Workshop

• Badge soldering - Amanda or Lio to run it
• Insectobot - Lutz

Xinchejian Meeting and Party

Trying to think about goals for 2015.

• Party scheduled March 26
• 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...)
• ANDREA: Make a board to show staff.
• AMANDA: Make a board to show general rules (how the space is run)

Transparency for Finances

• Should XinCheJian try to show all of its finances.
• What about rent? Are we allowed to disclose the rent? KEVIN to ask Bob
• Berni: only positive/negative
• AMANDA to put the info on the wiki?
• LIO suggest to create a fund for "future", put X amount in the fund every month (this is by name only; will make our balance sheet more sane by having less "profit")

Proactive on holding Advanced Workshops

• EDWARD ??
• LUCIO ??
• Interested in advanced more professional workshops, finding experts
• Examples: Lathe, CNC, Welding
• 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.
• Need to take contact details of all presenters!

Events, event calendar

• Better Calendar System (Google is blocked) LIO: Outlook?

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
• Microsoft: LIO to follow up... Again...
• BMW: did not pay, has been two weeks. LIO to follow up.

Media

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

Competitions

• LIO: roborace was cool, do it again
• TEACHER: can invite people to international competitions
• Prizes: More money, will drive more people to participate
• Example: Sparkfun -- 1 year competition
• Possibilities: Open source air purifier competition
• TEACHER & LIO: organize competition

Active Projects -- Better Promotion / Group Building

• All the weixin boards are full!
• Project of the Month (POTM)

Project based Kickstarter / Donation -- Finances / Transparency

• Badges -- For donations
• Project Teams - Example: Air Purifier Teams
• Seems like people willing to put money to support projects and tools
• Should think of how to harness this interest
• Need "kickstarter for workshop/tools/projects"
• Using OpenTilt?

Projects: Idea: Awesome Foundation

• BERNI: Get a bunch of people together -- to donate some money to help one project

Project Corners - Showing projects that are in motion

• People take over a part of the space; ANDREA to drive

Marketing - expanding reach

• Reaching out to factories RICKY

UPS

• Lucio to pay now. Final counting after tax calculation.

Roger's stuff

• Some is for future workshops
• Need to clean up / install / setup / store / throw? AMANDA to contact him/organize workshop