Fire brick donation

How exactly is someone supposed to gleam that it’s not directly coming to the makerspace from the first post? The first sentence is -

I’ve procured a donation of a substantial amount of fire brick both soft and hard for the makerspace.

Nothing about your garage until this last post.

I’m for free stuff as much as the next person, but I think it’s also fair to ask questions about something that looks like 3-4 pallets worth of material.

1 Like

Devin, I understand that you have some issues with the procurement of the lockers, but I think you’re a bit off base here. Donations to the makerspace are absolutely a concern of the board (there are legal and other issues with incorrect handling of donations), as is the general storage of items on the property. Your original messages did not mention the intended destination or purpose of the bricks. I don’t think it is unreasonable to assume that a donation to MakeICT would be heading to be stored at the makerspace. If I were the President or a member of the board and the first few messages in this thread were the first I saw about this I would also want a lot more information.

2 Likes

Where would I drop 5000 lbs of firebrick at the makerspace.

I suppose I should have said for use as needed for projects approved by our supreme overlords.

Thanks for the perspective @Christian

1 Like

With all due respect, I think you’re inaccurately portraying both your response to this, as well as my own. I of course understand that there needs to be gatekeepers to the makerspace and that many things need to be approved prior to having people just drop stuff off. Although, I think you understand that I was in no way implying that MakeICT should be completely decentralized. For whatever reason–perhaps simply to make your own point–you made it seem like that was my intent.

What I’m actually disappointed in is your response as laid out in this post, which is what I stated. Your response was confrontational from the get-go, as you said it was “unfortunate” that the board hadn’t heard of this prior to a simple post asking about potential interest of acquiring some free bricks. The post assumed that Devin hadn’t spoken to anyone and was ready to offload thousands of bricks into the space without notice. That’s obviously not what happened and your response wasn’t constructive. I also think the decision to respond this way on a forum and scolding someone for simply thinking out loud about a potential acquisition, rather than reaching out privately to area leads, is a strange one. As I said before, it’s not a good look for an organization that is trying to grow its memberships and revenues. What you posted wasn’t helpful, and that really should be your central job as president. There have been discussions about outdoor firing since I started two years ago (and likely far beyond that). Really, it mostly sounds like you’re upset that you personally weren’t aware of this (even though he posted in our public forum for anyone to see prior to promising these would be delivered).

Here’s an example of a better response:

Wow! This looks like it could be a really cool opportunity for our makerspace. I wasn’t aware that there was any interest in such materials prior to this post, but I think leadership would like to know a bit more about what the intent is and where this brick might be be stored in the interim. What kind of conversations have you had with area leads? I’m happy to help in any way!

1 Like

Couldn’t have said it better Sean.

I know a lot of people were wondering if some sort of diplomacy would show itself or the typical double down from our president would happen.

DWH

I’d also like to point out that the Wiki for procurement/donations actually advises people to post on the forum about potential procurements and donations.

1 Like

Yeah, to me a lot of this thread just looks like poor and unnecessarily adversarial communication. Typically when people feel they are being attacked their gut reaction is to respond in kind, though that is usually a counterproductive response. I can definitely see how both parties probably feel the need to defend themselves here. Maybe it’s the years I spent doing phone/email tech support, but I find that being as generous as possible in interpreting a positive intent in the message and responding accordingly leads to both parties communicating much more productively. This is especially true with text-based messages, where people are much less adept at conveying and interpreting intended tone. This is not an issue particular to our community, but an unfortunate dysfunction of humans in general, myself included. Maybe we should find someone to teach some classes on effective communication, we could probably all benefit from that.

4 Likes

I agree, Christian. The last thing I want is for there to be any hostility whatsoever at a makerspace. This is counterintuitive to everything that we want to build. I will be the first to apologize–I’m just airing some general frustrations of what I see as a lack of connection between leadership and makers. I’m at the space 20 hours a week on average. I practically live there when I’m not at work or tending to the homestead. What I see many days and nights is a mostly empty building. I’m completely alone in the ceramics room 90 percent of the time. It actually genuinely concerns me as someone who wants this space to be healthy and awesome for decades to come. So when I see an opportunity that is genuinely exciting for many members of the space be instantly questioned and have it be assumed it’s simply going to be a mess for everyone else, it’s irritating. And the reason this frustration bubbled up so quickly is that this isn’t the first time I’ve seen stuff like this. This a makerspace built by a community of members all paying dues, until suddenly a decision has to be made and it’s up to a few people I’ve literally never met to allow us to even contemplate it. We’re makers. Be inquisitive, be supportive.

Outdoor firing is an attractive pull for MakeICT from a ceramics perspective. Outside of enrolling at WSU, there’s not a readily available way to do it in our city. It’s something that could attract people to our space and be a big asset. I also know that members of other areas, such as jewelry and metals, are excited for it.

I have an MPA and have literally studied leadership. When an idea is put out there, it’s best not to immediately remind everyone what the barriers are and all the bureaucracy that’s in their way. Rather, be constructive and coach people forward. That’s not what happened here. We’re currently forming a gardening committee–apparently it’s the first specialized committee that has been formed since the system was approved back in 2019. We should maybe question why that is.

Its particularly bad with us in the spring. We go through phases, and this is the start of one. Weird though because Mars just came out of retrograde recently.

These arguments ebb and flow and honestly, is my primary objection to two year board terms. The board has a stressful position it has to maintain. And the president even more so. Add to that that none of us are perfect and that miscommunication and misconceptions happen more with creatives like us.

There is no us vs them. I’ve seen board members come and go. Been close to most of them. None of them thought they were better than anyone else.

If I were to show up at home with 50lbs of kiln brick the first thing my wife is going to ask is wtf are you doing with that.

2 Likes

@SeanSandefur. I’ll be the first then to apologize and take your critique to heart. I was confrontational in my earlier post because I made assumptions from past experience that may not have been applicable.

1 Like

President of MakeICT is a very difficult position with little preparation. Many people come to you with many wonderful ideas for you to take on. Their intentions are good and their heart is in the right place but they can be at cross purposes with other objectives and as President it is your duty to make them mesh. It is hard not to have an immediate and visceral reaction to yet another project being foisted upon you, even if that is not what is happening, and as such the impetus is towards pointing at the hurdles first so that you can have time to get your feet under you and approach the problem.

I read this as a problem of where to store 5000 lbs of bricks showing up at MakeICT. Now I know that was not their intended destination. I can see that the use of the word ‘unfortunately’ overrode all of the others.

I do wonder at this part of your post because it’s a concern of mine:
“This a makerspace built by a community of members all paying dues, until suddenly a decision has to be made and it’s up to a few people I’ve literally never met to allow us to even contemplate it.”
How can we be better at integrating leadership then? Our board meetings are open. I’m there an hour ahead for discussion. We have an excellent framework for committees which are also open. The committees are in fact your first opportunity to make decisions. I can tell you honestly that I think MakeICT is one of the best organizations for integrating members into decision making.

1 Like

Short terms, lack of experience or time for parties to get comfortable in their role, and mass turnover contribute to this. Having longer staggered terms would actually elevate most of this. How many businesses do you know of turn their top leadership on the average every 2 years? A nonprofit is still a business.

1 Like

I understand COVID has driven much of this online and generally kept people away from the space more than usual. So maybe as the shutdowns begin to lift and we’re all able to gather normally again, I won’t feel so isolated. But my most immediate concern came when a question was asked about volunteer time and how to either get people more involved or somehow label those that volunteer from those that don’t. That discussion didn’t involve you, so I don’t expect you to immediately know what I’m talking about. I bristled with this for two reasons: as I said, I’m at MakeICT quite frequently and I want to help out as much as I can. However, I don’t even know where to begin when it comes to helping out with more substantial volunteer projects because I literally don’t see anyone around. Im not aware of regular meetings for makers to meet and interact with area leads so that we can tackle projects (such as this kiln) or talk about volunteer needs for each space. I understand I should probably tune into board meetings if that’s something that we can discuss, but I think that if we want to move our space forward and do even bigger and better things, we need more strategic planning than just referring people to Wiki pages for instructions on to form a committee. Maybe we can have quarterly strategic planning meetings where all area leads are in attendance and members are asked to join and we talk about the needs and desires of the space. Or maybe that’s already going on and I’m just completely oblivious…I don’t know.

The other reason I bristled at this comment was that it seems like we’re wanting to limit people who simply want to pay their $25, use a table saw and leave. I get that we’re a volunteer organization and that we need people to chip in…but we also desperately need revenue. Volunteering to clean the wood shop doesn’t pay hundreds of thousands in annual utility bills. So let’s not discourage people from joining who just want access to the laser printer twice a month and then go home. This kind of thinking will have people running for the hills. Hell, we actually make some money off of people like this as opposed to people like me who also only pay $25 and is there constantly using up resources :grin:.

3 Likes

The committee guidelines Committees - MakeICT Wiki was to address some of this and maybe Covid didn’t help. I believe the board should be making decisions put forth by membership and the Committes should be where things start. Yet, including the Committee I run, there’s a lot of overlap in participants (stretched to thin), meetings aren’t getting on the calendar, and minutes are not being recorded properly. In fact, as far as I know none of the acting Committee leads have been officially appointed in nearly 2 years, I’d have to verify that in board meeting minutes. Committee leads don’t really have a good way to solicit help or get training (not many people are great at creating policy and guidelines). Heck we’ve had a communications Committee for years but there’s very little guidance there as well. We have a lot of broken foundations. Those keep getting kicked down the road. That’s a problem.

1 Like

I think we should look deeper into extending the term limits. We need to do something different than what we are doing now, being on the board should be almost fun IMHO.

But not on this thread lol!

Let’s refocus this paticular thread on what’s going on with the firebrick, because now I’ve lost track of what’s going on.

Not entirely unlike me, but still…

What we have, imo is a need for a direct policy regarding use of “common space” for lack of a better word. The fact is we didn’t have much extra space on douglas that wasn’t under direct control of an area (lead). Now we have lots of common space. We’ve got hallways, admin rooms, and probably most importantly lots of outdoor space that is currently without rules. The garden committee will likely want to lay claim to some amount of the area, ceramics and jewelry apparently want to build a kiln in some portion of it and the idea of a outdoor market was floated recently which would also use some of that space. That’s just in the first couple of months since the space has reopened.

I can see why @jpalschauhan may have chosen to slow the conversation a bit and take step back to look at the situation. It is my opinion that none of the area leads should be “approving” something like this unless they are literally using/storing the bricks within their area. There should be approval required on something like this. At the least some sort of policy regarding these “common areas” use.

2 Likes

I’d be happy to research and help write policy. I’ll even bring it up in area lead meeting and schedule meeting for membership input. Just like we did to develop placement inside the space.

1 Like

Hey ! Wow ! What a heated topic (lol fire bricks )

As a side note, absolutely not getting involved with the previous comments.

I just want to ask and this is only after the maker space is done using what they need.
If there is any left over say a dozen soft bricks I’d like to purchase/donate a reasonable said amount for the procurement of said bricks.

2 Likes

We can make that happen Frank.
DWH

1 Like