State of the Onion

This is a list of Free Geek programs and functions organized by the staff committee that is charged with their oversight. We are asking each committee or person responsible to post a brief description of the state of each program.

(For more information on each committee see the Standing Staff Committees page.)

NOTE: When updating a section, please sign your work with the "four squiggles" syntax ( ~ ) so we can see when the item was last updated (and by whom). (In theory, reports that are unsigned were created by someone from the committee or responsible for the indicated program before this note was added. RfS 09:06, 26 January 2007 (PST))

Action

 * Recycling
 * Plastics now goes to Total Reclaim. GreenWall Industries is a new local company for further processing of ewaste. They are buying our cords/wire/ribbon cable and UPSes from now on. They also gave us full information of where their commodities go.
 * We have seen a slow down of systems coming to Recycling, partly because of Legacy, and not being able to staff Prebuild as much as is needed. Hopefully we can staff all areas more in the near future.


 * Receiving
 * Receiving has been semi slow this past couple of weeks. It has just started to pick back up this week. We recently resumed receiving meetings to discuss issues that have come up. We hope that through these meetings any issues that come up can be taken care of so please feel free to show up.


 * Maintenance and design of the physical plant
 * Currently Facilities Maintenance is responding to the fire inspection corrections. The Major ones are fixing holes in walls and ceilings, exit lighting, and exit door hardware. The majority of the work is complete and we are currently waiting on Oregon electric to complete the exit lighting by the ned of the month. The reinspection was scheduled for the 10th of January, and has been rescheduled until oregon electric is finished. The Other things of priority are replacement of the warehouse door that was damaged from the break in(waiting on bids). Next on the list is rewiring of the blackhole(Waiting on bids). There are more issues that need to be dealt with  these issues have a separate RT ticket. If you see an Item that is a facilities maintenance issue, send a ticket to todo at freegeek.org with action in the header.


 * Building security
 * (information needed)


 * General safety
 * (information needed)

C7

 * Policy development
 * Currently cleaning up the policy structure in the wiki, adding links and history. Wiki clean up mostly being done by volunteers. We are seeking volunteers to help with this. (See Matteo or anyone from C7.) RfS 10:43, 17 February 2007 (PST)


 * load balancing of the committees
 * All of the committees have enough people, but some committees function better than others, partly because some people are better at being committee members than others. Some committees (such as HR) may be overstaffed. Some committees could be broken up into different committees, but this might create too many committees to be practical. RfS 10:43, 17 February 2007 (PST)


 * liaison with Free Geek Community Council and Free Geek Board of Directors
 * Developing this page as a snapshot of information hopefully helps keep the council and board better informed about the state of things. Board members are coming to council meetings on a regular basis. Their is a new board member named Tim Collier. RfS 10:43, 17 February 2007 (PST)


 * nominations to the various committees
 * HR has a few too many people on it, but with Nathan leaving that will correct itself. Sergio will be affiliated with the Reuse Committee. With an expected influx of new staff members in the next few months, expect to see some shifting about. RfS 10:43, 17 February 2007 (PST)


 * proposals concerning changes to the committee structure itself
 * Propagation was restarted a few months ago. We are thinking about ideas expressed in Multi-Collective Free Geek as a starting point for a possibly different committee structure. RfS 10:43, 17 February 2007 (PST)


 * accounting and financial oversight
 * We plan on moving to monthly reporting of quarterly budgets and have a volunteer intern (Ashley) that's helping us develop the process. We have reorganized the expense categories to mirror the committee structure, have recoded the last three years of income transactions, are working on better income projections based on that. We need to review policies about handling money from time to time. RfS 10:43, 17 February 2007 (PST)

HR

 * Human resources
 * We are doing just fine, thanks for asking.


 * volunteer management
 * Rewards such as Steve's soup, core breakfast are covered by Outreach and are going strong. As usual, staff work to empower volunteers to take control of various areas like laptops and Macs.


 * volunteer and staff discipline
 * We have a Volunteer Discipline Policy. There are 5 tickets in our volunteer issues queue which is visible to staff only. Tickets in the queue are reviewed at HR meetings.


 * procedures regarding theft from Free Geek
 * This is handled mostly by our Volunteer Discipline Policy. There have been a few incidents recently that are still open.


 * mediation between conflicting parties
 * We do this as it happens. There have been a few formal mediates, but generally we try to get people to talk to each other to head that off.


 * volunteer and staff scheduling
 * Volunteer scheduling is done on paper, and works mostly. It'd be good to have monitor testing and cleaning added to that schedule. Staff scheduling is semi automated but last minute changes eat up time (and money). It would be good to have a program that makes this easier.


 * staff and intern reviews
 * We have a schedule in place for reviews but they tend to slide. Reviews generate documentation about goals. etc., which may or may not be being completed consistently.


 * volunteer acculturation and training
 * Trainings are not happening in a consistent way, but there are a few in the works. There has been a lack of people signing up in the past. We'd like to do a consensus training, a wiki training, a training in website admin.


 * health care and benefits packages
 * Staff collective members have health care, sick, vacation, and holidays. The health plan was just renewed and costs us approximately $345 per person per month. Some collective members use other plans and are eligible to reimbursed for most of their costs i n lieu of taking our plan.


 * employee manual
 * The Staff Handbook is on the wiki. It is a work in progress.

Knowledge Bees

 * Education
 * Adoption classes are happening every week. We're adding one more class on Tuesdays, to catch up. Martin has been offering Advanced Commandline classes on Tuesday evenings to builders. More Volunteer Adoption Teachers would be great.


 * documentation
 * Lots of documnetatiuon happens.
 * Matteo will teach a wiki class.


 * liaison with Distro group
 * There really isn't a distro group at this point


 * technical support
 * Tech support keeps increasing, partly as a result of more adopters trying to use their boxes for more things, but also a certain amount from supporting Whiz to Coho accounts. We should increase the hours devoted to tech support.
 * We have some new volunteers.


 * Computers for Kids
 * Pacific Crest Community school is starting a Build program again with 8 of their students. We also have multiple classrooms, and kids groups come in every week to get job skills, and earn computers.
 * (See Group volunteering for how groups of kids can volunteer.)


 * Free Geek library
 * Nothing much is happening here. We have books, but don't have a system to let volunteers take them home and keep track of them.

Outreach

 * Fundraising
 * The only funding we are currently seeking is through grants (as well as our regular ask at the front desk), although lots of word was spread through break in publicity, and we saw a marked rise in monetary and hardware donations.


 * grantwriting
 * Ali is our current grantwriting group coordinator. She is managing a few volunteers who want grantwriting experience.  A rough draft of an education coordinator grant proposal is in the works.


 * outreach
 * We are doing very well, thank you for asking.


 * advertising and marketing
 * We currently have no paid ads in the works, although we have a small budget to do so. One of our long-term projects is to re-make the brochure.


 * parties, festivals and other events
 * Our holiday party was a great time (as I bet you already know). We're looking forward to Geek Prom in April/May.  We're looking out for all-ages venues this year.  Another development: when the fire marshal came to visit, she informed us that we now need to procure a $100 permit for each event which will have over 50 attendees (this includes, at times, Third Thursday Theater).  This fee is in the budget, and we'll pay it while we see what other options we might have to avoid this fee.


 * community building
 * (information needed)


 * relations with the neighbors
 * Had some issues with upstairs neighbors & parking lot but it has been effectively worked out.


 * relations with the non-profit and social change communities
 * Have discussed potential partnerships with Portland Community Media and Clinton St. Theater.


 * membership development
 * (information needed)


 * the Free Geek website
 * We have a new press release section of the website at http://freegeek.org/pressreleases


 * the reception area
 * (information needed)


 * public email addresses
 * (information needed)


 * media relations
 * (information needed)


 * advertising and design of donation pickups
 * Volunteers sporadically pickup donations but we are still advertising that we do not pickup.


 * volunteer rewards
 * We recently brainstormed new ideas for rewarding volunteers including handing out $5 gift certificates and candy for daily hard workers, have asked for funding for Steve's Tuesday soup, and have re-implemented monthly core breakfast.

Propagation

 * Liaison with Free Geek startups (the replication of Free Geek elsewhere)
 * The franchise group has an email list with members from outside of the Portland area. There are two pending applications for name usage (Penn and Iowa). We are awaiting response from Olympia on whether they want to appeal our decision to deny them use of the name. People from Penn are scheduled to visit, but we don't know when. We are working on a formal trademark license agreement.


 * liaison with GAP volunteers
 * This program is pretty quiet right now, needing little hands on work. There are three public access boxes at the Red and Black cafe, one at the Redwing Cafe, one at the Acme, and another one (I forget where).


 * Hardware Grants
 * This is an active program that takes care of itself. It continues to approve around 30 grants per month, an estimated 20 of which actually go out.


 * liaison with NAP group (Nonprofit Assistance Program).
 * This is a nonexistent program and should be deleted. If it is not deleted, it is dormant.

Reuse

 * Freekbox, storebox, grantbox production (build)
 * Build is healthy and strong, emptying all incoming piles and filling all outgoing shelves. Our specs  are  higher than ever, as we ride along the wake of Moore's law.


 * testing maintenance and development
 * Advanced testing is running under the graces of a few very dedicated volunteers. In order for development and refinement of new procedures, more staff time will need to be allocated. Basic testing is part of the adoption program and volunteers test keyboards and mice.


 * Laptops
 * There is a healthy group of build graduates that have joined the Laptop build program. The laptops are dispersed as grants, and sold in the store.


 * retail sales
 * Retail sales has been on a steady increase for the last 5 years. The store is currently staffed full time by staff, and day to day there is usually 2-3 volunteers helping out customers, testing various gizmos, and stocking the shelves. There have been some bumps starting the new year with a new POS system, but over all our accuracy in bookkeeping has never better.


 * eBay sales
 * Ebay sales is currently not operating. There is no staff time dedicated to this program. In the past this program has earned money for Free Geek enough to more than pay for it's operation with staff supervision.


 * printer refurbishing and sales
 * Printers is running halfway with very little supervision. We have spent a great deal of time cleaning and getting work areas ready, setting up how-to documents and getting printers ready for the store. We sell some printers as-is or bulk besides store sales. Our goals are to have printers available for both grants and the store. If there were twenty hours a week dedicated staff time the income would pay for the staff time dedicated.


 * locate, evaluation, and put oddball hardware into reuse
 * This is done on a ad-hoc basis. The work is mostly being done by volunteers.


 * wholesale or bulk sales of to-be-recycled parts
 * Wholesale (or bulk) sales are surging ahead with new orders coming in. A few more hours of staff time allocated would make it less frenzied.


 * Legacy Systems
 * Legacy Systems is turning into a good alternative for Eval 2. The program is still in creation mode.


 * Classic Gaming Library
 * The existence of the CGL can neither be confirmed nor denied at this time.


 * Prebuild
 * We have recently added wireless cards to the types of cards we're looking for in card sorting. We are experimentally allowing prebuilders to work in Legacy Systems in lieu of Eval 2. We have started to get more corporate donations which means more identical systems, most of which are processed more easily and then sold in bulk. Currently we are a bit low on systems in both Eval 1 and Eval 2, but are able to keep busy.

Technocrats

 * Liaison with Coders group
 * The coders group does not function (as a group). Recently, Martin finished a project to rework the entire database to the point of rollout. He continues to add features and hunt bugs, but we are using the new code. We will need to train a core of staff and volunteers to maintain this code during the next year, because Martin has asked for an extended sabbatical for the year 2008.


 * liaison with ASS group
 * The ASSes currently meet several Wednesday nights per month and are considering changing their meeting time -- probably to Saturday afternoons. (This has not been decided.) Much system administration work is actually being done by Martin on staff time, pulling him from doing other work.


 * liaison with Distro group
 * The distro group does not function. Moving to Ubuntu on FreekBoxen made much of its work relatively less important. The technical infrastructure for imaging systems still needs to be maintained, and may be needed to be picked up by the ASSes or an on staff system administrator. The single, freegeek-specific package we install is being nominally maintained by Martin.


 * selection of software commonly used at Free Geek
 * We are looking at possible replacements for RT. Long ago we selected moodle as software that might work to maintain curriculum and tests for online classes. The Knowledge Bees are still determining whether we will actually use this. Lessdisks is slated to be replaced by LTSP, with a corresponding rework of our system imaging.  Gizmo IDs were recently ameliorated to only matter amoung the build teachers and students, and it is planned to soon remove the need for any paperwork in the build area.


 * computer security
 * Our ASS group is always looking for ways to improve our security, and occasionally endeavors on upgrades and renevations to this end. Nothing particular is bothering us at the moment, and we hope to keep it that way through this continuous cycle.


 * technical infrastructure
 * The "new" server room is a mess and needs some reorganization. The ASSes are looking at some technical options that might eventually reduce the physical number of machines needed in there. As it is, it is a bit crowded. Nathan recently spearheaded a group of TACS Interns (that are also Free Geek volunteers) to lay more network wiring. We are in the process of updating our systems to have more recent software (debian etch). Users should look forward to new and better software and plan on some amount of time to reconfigure their desktops, mail, &c. Look out for notices put to the core list.  We also want to increase our bandwidth (or effective bandwidth for our most common tasks).