Techs and tool assistants? Proposal to reduce work load and involve the membership

#1

Because I had someone ask me the other day who can induct them on the Metal Lathe and I had no idea, or where to get the information. I thought I’d start this document and endeavour to keep the names up-to-date. I see it as helping members step up by seeing the gaps in ‘the system’ and help the tech leads on specific tools.

The idea: where the tech lead decides, certain members, become experts/owners of them to spread the load (perform maintenance, keep supplies up etc.) The wood and metal techs appear plenty busy already, probably due to the respective tool counts and this is only going to increase. So I’m testing to see if we need a system like this to help.

I do need a certain amount of initial tech lead to help complete the document and start the initial indication of what tools they might want to have support on. I.e. Do we want to add the dust extraction to the wood shop, probably.

Techs & Tool assistants.doc (129.5 KB)

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#3

Where are you getting these from?

#5

https://discourse.southlondonmakerspace.org/g

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#6

Thanks for starting this Fred - hope everyone will find it useful. I know I will! :smiley:
At some point, perhaps we can look at migrating this content to a Google Doc, which can live in the Drive with other SLMS docs - then we can just paste a link anywhere that’s useful to members.

#7

@lathetechs
@silkscreentechs (in transition)

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#8

Absolutely online, just wanted to propose more the process and concept.

#9

I did not know this existed. THANKS!

#10

Which is why part of the architecture proposed included a knowledge manager Quod Erat Demonstrandum …

#11

Your saying the same thing I proposed at the November meeting Fred. It was all agreed on… but the notes from the meeting were never published, so it is a bit slow at present.
There are a few contributions in different places now which I shall pull together.
Do you wish to be involved in developing this further?

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#12

Yes please

#13

@Iain9986 it’s missing from your list as @electrotechs :slight_smile:

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#14

We should perhaps start a conversation about how many Techs are still active, I haven’t seen @lewisss around in a while, but maybe it’s only me?

#15

Yes, and some of those members aren’t techs at all now (metaltechs group, for instance

Also: see @Frazer’s post. This is in hand as part of another piece of work…and that’s probably the best place to get these ordered…

#16

Hi, great idea!
Could you add knitting and textile craft to the textiles tech?
Thank you

#17

yes i absolutely agree, we should start this as soon as possible. There are lots of people interest in this subject so it should get wide backing.

Somebody will need to propose the idea on the the next meeting invitation and then start the discussion at the meeting.

Then start to gather input from the membership and start working on solutions.

The piece of work that is being referred to here is the Governance Review II.
I proposed we look at this in the last meeting and have started that process.
It’s going to be very slow going I’m affraid but we are putting a lot of work and hours into this behind the scenes.

We asked for volunteers in the meeting and several stepped forward. We are now trying to publish a post inviting other members to join in but there have been issues that have slowed this down.

Frazer has offered a solution / model / method / framework for dealing with the issues and we may very well put this to use in the future when we get to a place where we are ready to think about that. at the moment we are still just trying to get as many people involve in the Governance review as possible before deciding on our direction.

We don’t even have a full list of members that are going to work on this yet let alone a list of issues that we are going to tackle.

So, as one of the people leading the Governance Review II i would say that leaving this until that process is underway is not a good idea. It will be months or years before we tackle individual issues like this.

I would urge any member, that has the time and inclination, to step forward and run a review of the techs to do so asap.

Its a perfect piece of work that wood provide useful information for the Jobs Page work I am also working on.

It will highlight areas we where we need more members to contribute.

More techs will lead to more members feeling like they have some ownership / responsibility / say

It will lead to more people being able to use tools.

It will lead to more people being able to learn new skills.

It may even lead to a tidier, safer healthy ache if we have more invested people happily contributing.

A Tech Review is an excellent idea and is not dependent on Goverenace Review II.

It gets my full backing and i would help this whereever i can.

What do we have to lose?

#18

Is this a part of the larger issue with the membership system not syncing with Discourse any more for some reason?

#19

I do feel somewhat disheartened that there are so many good points which people take the time to include, but they get lost as they are not actioned for a (possibly valid) reason, eg temporal constraints, or the contributor becomes exhausted because, having made a productive addition, it is lost in the ramblings of the thread. This will have a negative impact on the individuals concerned and their inclination to contribute.
I wonder if too much democracy and unorganised discussion can, in certain circumstances, have a detrimental impact.
I therefore suggest that any thread to do with organisation should have rules.
For instance, what rules do we need when a proposal is made by a contributor?
I would suggest that any contribution should be couched in terms of a rule. The advantages and disadvantages are discussed, then a decision is made.
There should be decision makers that manage rules. There should be rules about rules.
So a meta-rule could be: If a rule is proposed, and the decision maker declines to accept the rule, and the rule proposer wishes the matter is appealed, then the matter is discussed at a meeting and a vote is taken on whether to accept / reject the rule. Thus implementing the democratic ethos of the organisation, but in an ordered and timely manner… I could go on…(But I also feel that one initial step is that a role is advertised for a tech called @minutetaker to stop wasting meetings!!

Thoughts?

#20

I guess I went slightly off topic there… apologies.
Yes, a tech review would be good.
I therefore suggest, as a start, we have an @woodassist to administer inductions for @Clix

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#21

I totally agree it’s a shame that so much energy and input is wasted.

In my experience this often happens by projects being starved of oxygen (support) and too often given too much negative feedback.

When members put forward ideas we need to support and encourage people to input positively.

I would love to see a member pick this item up. Come up with a plan to review tech roles. And take it forward. I would love to see the membership get behind them and support them in this. You just need some basic admin organisation skills, a couple hours a week to volunteer, good communication skills, a love of the space and a sprinkling of tenacity. Support from your members will follow.

EDIT: I would go as far as mentoring someone who is interested in doing this and has no experience running a project like this.

#22

Ild like to propose a new tech role for admin / project tasks.

projectTechs ? AdminTechs?

Members with the skills to move forward admin projects and reviews and follow them up, communicate them to the membership etc.

They would take on a review like this and follow it up from concept to implementation and review.