Which is why part of the architecture proposed included a knowledge manager Quod Erat Demonstrandum …
Techs and tool assistants? Proposal to reduce work load and involve the membership
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?
1 Like
Yes please
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?
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…
Hi, great idea!
Could you add knitting and textile craft to the textiles tech?
Thank you
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?
Is this a part of the larger issue with the membership system not syncing with Discourse any more for some reason?
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?
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
1 Like
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.
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.
OK what I get from this post is that rather than chipping away at low hanging fruit to keep moving forward, we’re trying to do a complete system wide redesign of how the space runs.
From working in Tech long enough, this doesn’t strike me as the effective play
1 Like
Can we sit and have a 5 min chat on what has been talked about before and proposals on assistance the techs might appreciate. Then I might be the person to help get that ball rolling.
1 Like
No. That’s fixed…it was that somehow the user ‘makerspace’ wasn’t being recognised as activated. All working as before…fingers crossed
I was just checking with Petra where she got the tech names from, as they’re different from the techs groups as shown on Discourse (which are pretty much up to date…with the odd AWOL)
1 Like
These threads are always packed with great ideas. To get them actioned the best move is to get them knocked into something we can discuss at a members meeting… then get them to a members’ meeting. It’s inevitable that they’ll get Lost In Discourse (LID) otherwise
If they relate to a particular tech area then communicate with that tech team – for example I believe @Clix has already approached a member for admin support…it might work to have anyone doing that contactable as a Discourse group, I don’t know…it’s certainly fits with ‘good enough for now, safe enough to try’ if that’s what they want to do, and doesn’t really need a members meeting to discuss it…
Sometimes obviously good ideas/valid points just get picked up from these threads…but no one should count on that
There are a lot of reasons that Discourse isn’t suitable to be a long open members meeting. The major one being that it’s impossible to judge the reaction to poropasals online…and very easy to do it in person. Another is bandwidth: we can’t deal with every issue as soon as someone types it on Discourse…critical issues take priority…other stuff needs to take its turn
EDIT: maybe this needs a ‘how to’ post
Exactly.
The Governance Review II is system wide review.
We shouldn’t let that get in the way of a Tech Review.
I think though you need to be sure that you are joining the right project.
There is no Tech Review currently apart from the positive feedback in this post.
I’m trying to say, badly maybe, that it would be good if someone takes that on. Separately from Governance Review.
I support both reviews and support them working separately.
I hope that makes it clearer and not more unclear
1 Like
This is not meant as a criticism but just information about another way this can be seen / done.
Discourse allows discussions to be handled in the open transparently. It’s great for communicating an idea to the whole membership.
Having discussions in private means nothing is written down, lots of people don’t know what’s happening and projects simple get lost.
Discussions in meetings and between members could be put online with updates so people can see progress and refer to it.
It can be a way of having opening and good communication.
It’s also good for avoiding misunderstandings about what is happening.
I think our issues are more about a ‘let’s get it done’ attitude that leaves many members feeling left out, confused and disenfranchised.
This is why companies around the world use these methods to help get things done.
I think culturally we have a fear here of project management as a tool for interfering, controlling and slowing things down.
It’s intention is the polar opposite.
Most organisations prosper from good communication and strategy with people leading projects and communicating things to the masses.
I think we would benefit from this.
Off topic?
If members are willing to try new strategies isn’t it worth trying them out?
Addition:
1 Like