Talk:Big Meeting Minutes

''These are eBeth's notes. Should be incorporated into Laurel's on the main page.''

Meeting minutes, big meeting 22 August 2007, 7:15 pm big room

Richard introduced the goal of the Big Meeting as a brainstorm for the future of Free Geek. It will be a planning session with some back and forth questions and answers, where we are now and where we want to be. This will be looking at the big picture and not getting caught up in details.

What do we want to do? gadge between Reuse<->Recycling Producion<->Education Sales<->Adoption/Grants/Discounts Insiders<->Outsiders (who do we want to serve? people in our Free Geek communities or the greater community?)

SWOT analysis of external and internal trends External *Desktop->Laptops-> Wifi Access *CRT->LCD *Printers->All in One *PDA & Phones
 * E-waste Legislation
 * BAN Pledge
 * Change in tech:
 * More corportate donations
 * More Free Geeks
 * More Pseudo-Free Geeks
 * More recycling competition
 * Growth
 * Flattering growth
 * Cost of transport
 * More and better FREE

Internal Attributes
 * Messy
 * benefits for staff increasing
 * Two strong programs
 * Constant flow of volunteers
 * Diverse income streams
 * Gobs of hardware
 * Crappy at project management
 * Could be better at customer service
 * Vol Management Issues
 * Growth in paid staff
 * FOSS
 * Solid core of volunteers
 * Silly

Everyone is invited to edit this list on the wiki

There will be brief presentations and then questions and answers Build Production-Matteo Production Plan-build, laptops, advanced testing printers, bulk sales and every area that helps get hardware back into the community. Current and past issues: It is hard to start new programs and keep them going. Predict in the future desktops will decrease and laptops will take over. We will also start getting more PDAs and may want to start a program to reberbish them. Responses:
 * Jim Cox says that there should be a preformance check on items from production and build because much of the components are broken. Reinstitute better testing procedures to improve Build.
 * Marie asked why the testing stopped
 * Martin said that CD roms are not being tested because there are very few that are broken and not worth testing.
 * Phil are there gizmos that are getting into production that are not getting enough attention like Projectors.
 * Matteo-we don't focus on a lot of this hardware at the moment.
 * Matteo-we could have drop off sites around town.
 * Jim-Partnerships with other organizations around town like Good Will could help us get hardware and act as drop off sites.

Facilities: We rent this 15000sq feet. We are messy and things go all over the building but we are tacling this problem with space usage committee. We are trying to modualize the building and we have zoned the building in Dec 2006. There is warehouse, office space, production and more. Trends and predictions: look at the wiki for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats Responses:
 * the address here is so well known and the bus lines are so convenient that it would take a huge effort to move to another area.

Sales: Sales numbers are definatly up but it will stop because of the size of the store. There has been better implimentation of policies. Volunteer discount is the same but being implemented more evenly. However, we do not yet have a system to stop those who abuse this policy. The store is small and there is not enough customer service on Friday and Saturdays. Look on wiki for SWOT analysis. Responses: Luiz said that he believes that it is the because people are not comfortable with linux.
 * Jim-Are you saying that we can not sell as many desktops than we can sell?
 * Is it because we are getting the wrong machines?
 * How does someone volunteer in the Store?
 * Luiz this is a good question. We have to make sure that people are good at customer service and know enough about the equipment we sell.
 * Could we open a second thrift store around town?
 * It has been talked about but there has been no action on this issue.

Outreach: We split into several deferent work groups, Public Relations, Inreach, Community Builders, Events and Outreach Oversight. We are looking to build new partnerships to recruit more volunteers that could benefit from our programs and with businesses that can help us get SWOT is on the wiki


 * Sophia asked why we have not rehired an Outreach Coordinator yet
 * No-one can fill Oso's shoes.

Tech support: Our systems get used with free and open source software because it has been getting better and better in quality over the years. This has made life as a tech support guy much easier. There is a certain amount of hardware failure but the majority is just a need for better education. We have done pretty well with Adopters but we could use some education for grantees and customers in the store. Problems arise with trying to maintain laptops and tech support is having to ask Laptop department a lot of questions. There is education is every area area and beyond like consensus building. People often ask how to use linux and we don't really have a good answer for that yet but we hope that all such problems are solved once we hire an education coordinator.
 * Martin-Do we need more attention to education in our documentation on the wiki for current programs?
 * The wiki is a big help for our programs but we are looking at other software.
 * Will there be an education coordinator in 3-5 years?
 * Within the next year.
 * Are there opportunities to teach people who need this technology in halfway houses, just getting out of prison, ect.
 * We do this to some extent with grants but we also invite all volunteers in our Adoption program.
 * How do volunteers get involved in tech support?
 * We need a good system for this and keeping volunteers in general.

Recieving: Recieving is difficult to teach because things are coming in so quickly. Have two people at a time has helped. Theft continues to be a problem. We are going to get more hardware that has to be recycled than stuff that we can reuse.
 * What are the weaknesses in receiving in realation to the rest of the areas.
 * Printers info is murky and it is hard to identify wanted items.

Recycling: Overview Where stuff goes to die by 1) dissassembly or 2) gaylording Current Changing vendors and refining relationships with them is ongoing. We focus on quality of vendors over cost. More LCDs in...and there are no good recylcling 		options. Trends LCD disposal will be a sizable fixed expense. Cell phone are too much trouble for us to deal with. More small and embedded stuff will replace larger bulky stuff. Stregths Volunteers Weakness Lack of inputs Vendor verification Oportunities BAN eWaste bill Threat eWaste bill Q and A:	Q: Are we going to add new equipment for recycling (like balers and shredders) A: No, there really expensive Q: Can we publish information about what happens to our waste A: Its complicated, to a degree, yes Q: Do we have leverage on recyclers (to be responsible) A: Nope, we are drop in the bucket Q: Does FG intergalatic efforts include coordination of recyclers A: No, and that's a good idea Reports

Structural Evolution (Richard)
 * Would like to see programs where volunteers are trained about where to bring hardware, store
 * Chamas would like to look into buying a building in the next 3-5 years
 * Luiz would like to see us buy other buildings and keep this building. Expland and have other small hubs around town.
 * Aaron agrees with Luiz and also feels that we should closer to the people we serve.
 * Ali would like to see us have a vehicle and be proactive about the hardware we get. And would like to see more order and cleanlyness in Free Geek.
 * Shawn-would like to see Free Geek affect things in the coop world, government legislation and more.
 * Partner with oter reuse places (Goodwill).
 * Patrick-things we should have mobil linux classes.
 * Develop linkages to disadvataged communities (elderly, differently abled, prison)
 * eBeth answers questions...
 * eBeth Educating people about big-picture issues of reuse and recycling (field trip!)
 * Liane Start Officer Friendly - The eWaste story (go to schools, for example, and talk about eWaste issues) 5 years we will be the model (woohoo!)
 * Jeremy - How are we going to support education?
 * Michael's answer: "How do I run a linux system on a basic lesson?" is the most common question in tech support. We hope that the education coordinator will help this situation because they will have time.
 * Would like to see the museum established.
 * Matteo's answer-in the next month the museum will be on the wall.
 * Blaine-is not sure that the grants program is working.
 * Liane-they are feiled by staff members.
 * eBeth-doing a training on grants.
 * Kathie-revitalizing staff when they are being stretched to thin.
 * Phil-multilingualation. Classes and more.
 * Maria-heard phil say multilingualnudity. Within the next 3-5 years it seems that people do not want to abandon this location so we should explore buying this building and refurbishing. Which is what we are good at. We need to prioritize and raise the money to be able to do it.

Optimus Prime will look at this and do something with it If you have furter questions or conserns