State of the Onion

This is a draft of a new or in-progress document, and is likely to have a few people specifically working on it. You may wish to check in on the discussion page to see what the purpose of the document is and who's working on it; then feel free to give this article love and attention if have extra of those things.

Big list of programs

Here 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 to post a brief description of the state of each program.

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

Action

Recycling: Recycling has seen a vendor change again. CRTs are now being sent to Total Reclaim, which is costing us more money. However, Total Reclaim has been able to give us definite info on what is happening with CRTs downstream. Within the next couple of weeks we will also start sending our plastic to Total Reclaim, and actually get paid for it, too.; Every week we send about 3 tons of steel, and about 30 gaylords of different items to our vendors.
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.

(information needed)
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.

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.

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.

nominations to the various committees: (information needed)

proposals concerning changes to the committee structure itself: (information needed)

accounting and financial oversight: We have moved to quarterly budgets and have an intern that's helping us develop the budgeting process. We have reorganized the expense categories to mirror the committee structure, need to work on better income projections. Need to review policies about handling money from time to time.

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, 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: (information needed)
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.
membership development: (information needed)
the Free Geek website: (information needed)
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 (see Minutes Archive) 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): (information needed)
testing maintenance and development: (information needed)
Laptops: there is a healthy group of build graduats that have joined the Laptop build program. the laptops are dispersed as grants, and sold in the stoor.
retail sales: Retail sales has been on a steady increase for the last 5 years. The stoor is currentley staffed fulltime by staff, and day to day there is ushaly 2-3 volunteers helping out customers, testing vareious gizmos, and stocking the shelfs. There has been some bumps starting the new year with a new pos system, but over all our acuracy in book keeping 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.; (information needed)
locate, evaluation, and put oddball hardware into reuse: this is done on a ad-hawc bases. The work is mostley beeing done by volunteers.
wholesale or bulk sales of to-be-recycled parts: (information needed)
Legacy Systems: Legacy Systems is turning into a good alternitive for eval 2. The program is still in creation mode.
Classic Gaming Library: (information needed)
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.

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.

computer security: (information needed)
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.