Organisation/2013 Trustees Election/Candidates: Difference between revisions

I believe that our current low-hierarchy system is worth preserving, but it needs some tweaking to account for the growing pains we're experiencing. I believe I have experienced enough of the ups and the downs of the space to make a meaningful contribution to this. Some of our new members are used to having defined management and ownership of communities and find it hard to adjust to our way of doing things. I want us to work on the new member experience and look at modifying the way we do some core things (examples: storage of projects, loans of equipment, deliveries to the space, communicating between subgroups, donations) to fit better with our new membership count and massively expanded facilities and square footage. We're no longer a place where everyone knows everyone else, and that is a hard transition to make. I do not intend to propose more rules, I want to enable more communication. The trustees have been forced to the foreground more and more as we've expanded and that needs to be reversed. The space should be managed by members and I want to help to enable that.

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I've run my own company for 20+ years and have a wealth of experience I feel would benefit the HackSpace, I come from a technical and marketing background and have a good mix of both. I've only been a member for about a year, but I've been a geek since birth. My experience with the space, since joining, has been a mixed one. The IRC channel and email list can be a hugely valuable resource but they are also very toxic at times. I feel strongly about the preserving the ethos of the space and about recruiting new members, but as the number of members continues to grow, I feel we need some subtle changes in the way the space is managed; to reduce the toxicity of some of the channels, improve the experience of new members as they join and find their feet, and improve the space itself by amplifying the communal, friendly atmosphere and drowning out the abusive and shouty background noise. As a Trustee, I think I would learn more about how the space is currently run and get to know the founders better, and be able to improve the space from within. I'm already involved in the Robotics group, and I'm in the space every Tuesday, as part of that group meet. So, I already spend a few hours in the space every week. Hopefully I'll get to know more people, and more people will get to know me ...

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== Sarah Simmonds (chixors) ==

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