Council 2005 10

• Facilitator: Richard (rfs)
• Scribe: revphil
• Place: Free Geek meeting room
• Minutes from October 19, 2005

Attendance:

martin, laural, seamus, leane, bill Shepard, wren, matteo, richard, Dave Hanskins, Robert, Berry, Dan, Marie, clout, matchew, bobby, debbie, steve, shawn, oso, revphil, rick

Old commitments:

Reports:

Financial

• richard, 3rd quarter over. reports are here: Financial Overview Sept was not as good as we had hoped. expenses are up, and income is down.
• marie - why does sept suck?
• deb - Is it a matter of quarters vs months?
• rfs - no, that's accounted for
• dan - what about hidden assets, like yearly insurance?
• seamus - do the quarters add up?
• richard - there are more numbers, ask me later
• marie- how can one get some action on this?
• rfs - staff q

Staff (I have no notes for staff)

build

• martin more productive than last month. more computers.
• revphil why was it weak?
• dave seasonal flow
• rfs system eval is big and we need more thoughput
• wren what about the evil dooers?
• martin we have the skulls of those who have failed us adorning our halls
• steve the store needs more systems, really
• clut failue rate vs people?

Board

• laurel we are gonna meet in early December
• rfs explains the duties of board: fiscal responsibilities, check on the power of the community council. read more here:- Board of Directors
• laurel does council have a method for filling the last 2 spots?
• tabled until later

Western Workers' Coop Conference

• shawn richard christian participated. learning about communication, fiances, conflict resolution, other crap,

PAWC

• shawn we had a meeting today. we are finally starting to figure out the structure. we lowered quarum to 30% of the 13 co-ops = presently delegates. if anyone wants to check it out talk to shawn or matteo
• martin we have cards for council
• shawn actually they were designed for core, not council
• laurel we have 30 cards for people who want to be involved. ask. maybe you'll get one.

Old business:

Sending people places committee and/or policy discussion.

• our friend martin is leaving us. nearly everyone wants to say something about it. he leaves after Xmas.
• rfs commits to making mailing list of those people on the list of people who said they would like to figure out how we decide who to send to other places to help set up FG-like stuff.

Expanding Free Geek -- (Richard) a discussion about being open more hours and physical renovation to keep up with the inflow.

• dave i think we should be open another day, but this is a really big issue
• matchew council should give staff the ok to alter their hours as necessary
• marie why is fg not enjoyable?
• dave processing, duty, expansion, efficentcy
• matchew stress: unloading a truck, big facility with big things to move
• oso demand exceeds capacity
• deb says yup
• shawn did that answer the q, marie?
• deb regarding the finical issues uh, i dont get it
• rfs it's complex and nobody knows the present state. We think we know is the past.
• deb i get it
• clout maybe our volunteers hate us. they are lazy too.
• rfs thank you clout
• shawn you can be a cheerleader, i have pompoms
• wren there are bottlenecks, chart the problems, systematically
• rick do we know whats wrong with processing?
• clout volunteers hate us
• martin staff and volunteer labor is short
• rick can we get more volunteers? stay longer raise the adoption hours needed
• dan make the volunteers feel like they earn more than just pizza, bread, and an education... point system? store credit?
• robert yalls calm down. Let's make Free Geek clean. I spent half of my time getting tools and materials, I want more culture of cleanliness. also i think more stuff should be sold. I see lots of things that can be on ebay
• steve re: motivation, build is different than adoption. re: store i would like to get more stuff, but the waves of entropy and interta crush me everyday.
• liane its up to the volunteers to take the initiative to be involved.

volunteer recognition is being worked on- awards, pizza, core breakfast,

• martin Saturday build is very productive, Sunday would likely be as productive
• marie i want some positive. you guys have now idea how remarkable and cool yalls are. i cant think of one onprofit that is basically a social service group that exists on earned income. so that you can do this is... it's beyond phenomenal.

everyone claps.

Craftiness

• We decided many months ago to work to make Free Geek more

livable. One way to do this is to do the VBC in May and use natural materials to spruce the place up indoors or outdoors. All are encouraged to brainstorm ideas. Phil proposes to work towards doing something for the VBC. Bernie wants us to get a backpack blower to clean the front. Richard will make a list and announce it to the council list for the working group that wants to talk about this. Those who are interested should sign up. Also, there's a craft night here every Tuesday night. Come join in! reference http://lists.freegeek.org/pipermail/council/2005-January/001166.html

Board Elections: when last Council met we were whittling down the number of excellent qualified applicants. Originally There were 8 applicants to fill 7 places. Council was able to fill 5 during the past meeting. 3 people were left with 2 slots to fill.

• laurel the method was slow (so i hear) propose a slate to fill the positions.
• wren I also have some input about how council should proceed
• rfs the slate was used when possible. a lot happened.
• revphil folks were drunk. or tired. or both.
• laurel slates rock! Let's decide on a process. In the course of this board election proposals should be made that fill all available positions. (ie we have 3 candidates, 2 slots, fill both slots at the same time)

our 2 available candidates spoke briefly. Pete was not present.

• seamus i have a long history, i like minutia keep the geek weird
• wren, i have also been with the geek, particularly into the geek

thriving and the educational, and Im a computer professional.

• pete (via martin's laptop) ive been with the geek for a long time. I have good connections with lots of nonprofits and has design skills.

• berry do you help train volunteers?
• wren yes some
• seamus kinda, though its not a big deal. I dont think that question bears on my being a Board member.

Candidates left the room

Current Board members

• Laurel
• Marie
• Joe
• Oso
• Bob Griggs

we like all the folks. We debated for some time. We decided that although any 2 of the 3 randomly chosen would be excellent, it is our duty to choose.

Council weighed the value of Pete's Business skills and connections to Wren's frequency of participation vs. Seamus's interest in wording of words (important for bylaws). After much debate Council chose to add Seamus and Wren to the FREE GEEK Board. Congrats! (Pete should know that this was a difficult decision, and we hope he decides to come to council meetings in the future, or any other way he chooses to be involved with FREE GEEK)

• dan stand aside due to lack of information

New business:

• rfs Amy from Homestreet is authorizing the final checks. jeff and nathen are getting paid. Homestreet is done. D O N E. done. Well, its done for us. Some software issue will be outsourced. But we are there.

The Warehouse:

• This is a spot on the agenda to put things that come up during the meeting, but weren't added to the agenda up front.

Meeting evaluation:

Each person may briefly describes something that was good about the meeting and/or something they think should be improved for next time.

• rick nobody does homework on meetings. wasupwitthat?
• matteo concur, we dont study up before meetings
• christian pass
• liane when we derail we come back to it
• clout i dont to homework
• laurel i think phil's notes may suck, i like marie's feedback
• martin i enjoy the meta Q,
• steve it was relatively unbureaucratic
• debi pass
• lookin to find my place
• oso council is getting better yeah
• marie i think i learned a lot, this room is stuffy
• dan i think it is interesting, and it seems to work
• barry i don't understand
• shawn the facilitator did a great job, allowing the sidetrack when it was good, bring it back when it was not. thanks rfs!
• revphil pass

next meeting:

• november 16th
• facilitator rick
• scribe laurel

long term election process. talk about how we did and where we are going.

Commitments:

• rfs commits to making mailing list of those people on the list of people who said they would like to figure out how we decide who to send to other places to help set up FG-like stuff.- Richard will make a crafty@ list and announce it to the council list.
• laurel will contact pete and tell him we want him somewhere besides board.
• martin and laurel will inspect the quality of these notes