Minor correction to my last email: in the vote I mentioned that ultimately died for insufficient votes, we were trying to get to 50% participation, not 25%, and we were only able to get to 40% after several weeks of online voting. At the time we had 350 total active members and now I think we are somewhere over 400 members.
I appriciate the explanation.
Are you aware of any other makerspace that has organized in such a way? Looking into it a little bit i found that Dallas looks to be the largest (by member count) makerspace in the world. Im not sure the exact member count but looked to be roughly 1400 @ $50 a month. A 10% discount is given for paying the year up front.
They elect a 5 member board yearly.
I assume they got loans or grants at some point because their space looks amazing. But they didn’t seem to need major executives or law firms to commandeer their organization to do it.
Has the idea of a board of trustees come up before? Are there others who support it?
I’m somewhat familiar with Tech Shop, which was one of the early commercial maker spaces. But I don’t know of any other maker spaces with our sort of offerings that is less than $50 per month. We could do a lot more if we had twice the income we have now. I thought David said Dallas is now over 2000 members at $50 per month. So they are raking in as much in a month as we raise in a year. That certainly would make a pretty big difference in what you could do.
Ultimately which way you go is a choice that MakeICT will have to make. When I was deciding whether to go for venture funding at the tech company I founded, I had to decide if I wanted to swim in the deep end of the pool or stay in the shallow end. Sometimes you don’t really get the luxury of choosing, because market dynamics force you to either go for the gold or let someone else grab it. Other times it’s perfectly fine to go either way, depending on your values and your goals. MakeICT probably has a lock on the $25 per month maker space market in Wichita, but there’s a lot of room between that and the $125 per month that GoCreate charges. Maybe that void will eventually attract some competition or maybe it won’t, I don’t know. But if having an experienced board seems intimidating to people and they would rather do it without the benefit of an experienced board, that’s certainly a choice they can make. For me, if I know there’s a better way to do something, I have a hard time settling for anything less. And I believe having an experienced board is the better way to grow a maker space. YMMV…
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Just to clarify, Dallas is the largest all volunteer makerspace in the country. Not sure about the world, but the distinction is that they are the largest with no paid employees.
After visiting at NOMCON, we are a rare breed. We were the only city delegation with no government or intuitional leaders along for the trip. We need to foster those relationships and get them involved in the maker community. Most maker spaces are tied to an institute of higher learning or some government entity. We do need to restructure the bylaws. I think a 66%-33% split would be good with a board of 12, 8 community leaders and 4 astute MakeICT members, just throwing out a suggestion. How we get there will take some research. I’ve just began to read Maker City. After a conversation with Down Town Wichita, who has a board 18 and believes it’s to big, 12 max with this mix came to mind. I hope we have the commitment, both in members willing to put in the time to make the changes and a membership willing to support the changes we need to continue to grow, and I agree with @David that we need to have legal advice to get this done properly.
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We nearly were attached to WSU. What you are saying makes sense. That’s likely the missing piece of the puzzle but getting there may be tricky.
This is going to be a very unpopular view. But I swear no political motive exists.
What if we replaced the at large directors with the area leads. Brought the focus of the board to the makerspace itself. This would alleviate the ‘institutional thinking’ that is mildly archaic right now, and it would reduce some of the redundancy we have. While that is going on, we form a group of twelve trustees. Makerspace community leaders, wichita community leaders, etc. Trustees provide the roadmap that the board follows. Nobody loses power, but we are just refocusing the board on the space and forming a legal entity to use as an interface with the city in general.
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So the focus of the board this year would be to lay the foundation of how this would look. Rewrite the bylaws and interview potential trustees. Meanwhile Christian minds the shop.
Next year we merge the director position with the president/vice president drop the at large directors and add the area leads. The area leads meetings become the board meetings and the board focuses on operations of the makerspace. The trustees are formed and evaluate MakeICT impact on the city, and works to optimize that and fit it into the city’s general plan.
I like this, and it makes sense to me.
But then, popularity was never my forté.
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