[FreeGeek] General Meeting Minutes - September 2007

[Ifny]

Free Geek Contingency Meeting Minutes - Sept 16, 2007

Dates for upcoming meetings:

Communications Workgroup - Tues Sept 25 6:30pm
Content Workgroup - Sat Sept 29 6:30pm

General Meeting - Tues Oct 09 6:30pm
Operations Workgroup - Tues Oct 16 6:30pm
Communications Workgroup - Tues Oct 25 6:30pm

The monthly General Meeting will continue to be held on the second Tuesday 
of the month. Hereafter, unless otherwise stated, the Operations meeting 
will be on the third Tuesday of the month, & the Communcations meeting will 
be on the fourth Tuesday of the month.

Addtionally, all other workgroups are requested to have monthly meetings, & 
for open workgroups, the date and time should be announced on the General 
listserve. It is suggested that the *first* agenda at such a meeting should 
be to set the date and time of the next meeting.

Present for the contigency meeting: Ifny, Sim, David, Ryan, Ashley, Rusty, 
Joe B., Mike M., Simon, Mike (the other Mike), Scott, Terry, Jeff, Keith.

Facilitator - Sim
Regulator - Ifny
Scribe - Terry
Minute checkers - Ashley & Ifny
Pastry Chef - Ashley

The Agenda shifted throughout, but basically came down to:

- Money, and the lack of revenue from recyclables (particularly CRT monitors),
- The amount of space those items are taking up
- The need to focus on alternative ways of making money.
- A lack of people in the shop on a day-to-day basis meaning David's time 
is spent doing things that other people could do, such as answering the 
phone. David's time could be better spent doing things like dealing with 
customers.
- Free Geek Vancouver's mandate

Lack of revenue from recyclables:

The Electronic Stewardship Association of BC (ESABC) recycling program - 
where people can drop off old computers at Salvation Army or Encorp 
bottle/can depots for free has made FG's $10 CRT-monitor processing fee 
unsustainable.

Additionally, 36ZeroWaste has not yet opened their local facility, and has 
said that they won't be open until October. They have also suggested that 
the identity of some of their vendors may be proprietary.

The new disposal fee collected from people buying new computers disappears 
into a closed loop, and is currently only available to 3 Canadian recyclers 
(2 smelters and a grinder). None of it is available to FG.

FG's business plan needs to be readjusted; it is not currently feasible to 
pay for our monitors to be processed. As such, the monitor fee is no longer 
being charged by FG.

What to do with the skids of CRT monitors piled up on skids in the shop? 
Due to the trust the public has put in us, we will not be using the ESABC 
program for these skids. FG is pursuing 2 options at the moment. We may 
ship to 36ZeroWaste's counterpart in Alberta, or we may send them to Total 
Reclaim in Seattle, who have taken the BAN pledge, and are ethically and 
environmentally acceptable. We may get a possible discount if FG also sends 
along stuff they can make money from. Environment Canada says it is okay to 
do this, and Canada/US customs agencies will be contacted for their input.

;Business Plan
FGV recently expanded & articulated its business plan. It can be read at 
http://wiki.freegeek.org/index.php/The_Plan
The business plan will remain largely the same, but with no more recycling 
revenue, and no more monitor fee. This revenue represented approximately 
$500 - $600 per month.

Joe B. expressed concern that FGV is straying too far from FOSS promotion, 
& focusing too much on recycling. It was declared that free & open source 
software is integral to our raison d'etre, besides being awesome, and that 
in relation to revenue, it can be a good long term provider. It was also 
suggested that we evaluate immediate revenue streams.

Sources of immediate revenue are: the thrift store, data-retrieval/on-site 
erasing and pick-ups. Grants are bonus. Are there alternative ways to make 
money? Longer-term goals include expanding pick-ups, services and hardware 
sources; Ifny suggested cultivating ICI 
(Industrial/Commercial/Institutional) hardware sources.

David gave us a breakdown of FG costs: about $2,500 per month, plus 
interest on a $4,000 debt.

The thrift store revenue is down this month, primarily because no one is 
available to spruce it up and attend to it, and because there is no one 
available to deal with telephone calls, drop-offs, etc.

The feeling is that the thrift store could make a lot more money (as could 
sales of items plucked from the general stream) if there was more personnel 
around each day. Since the store is already up & running, we can optimize 
what we've got at hand.

Thrift store optimization:

The thrift store needs renovation and improvements to make it inviting. It 
also needs signage and pricing displayed, & demo systems up and running for 
people to look at and try. Demo systems could run on the store counter, or 
near the bottom of the stairs.

Even though the computer lab takes up a lot of space, it was noted that it 
still generates revenue (for example, during workshops & Windowsless Weds, 
people often buy things).

Ifny proposed "A month of Sundays" to get shop improvements done (see below 
under Commits).

At this point, we asked David what he needed to free up his time to do more 
productive things. He replied at some length:

- three people in the shop every day it's open (could include him) to help 
volunteers, run the thrift shop & answer phones.
- space reallocated (ie make the store bigger, get rid of the 300+ CRTs)
- someone to do accounting (or even just bookkeeping)
- laptops given priority to fix and sell (laptops are good sellers)
- signage and pricing in the store
- set costs to do things like data recovery
- eventually a cash register and POS system
- voicemail or bodies to deal with those phone calls from people who simply 
need to know where FG is located.

Our suggestions on how to do this:

- Wikify a schedule so people can see which blocks of time need filling, 
and so people can fill those blocks in on their own.

- People need to know how to sell things, and how to register such sales. 
The FGDB is not reliable, and is no longer desireable. Until the Software 
group can provide alternatives, we decided that a paper-based system 
(receipt books) will do; it has the added advantage of being easy to teach 
to people. All the transaction information currently in the database will 
be migrated to spreadsheets. We will continue to use the FGDB for volunteer 
hours/contacts.

- Store optimization (signage price sheets etc)

- We need more people helping at the Geek regularly!

;Free Geek Vancouver Mandate:
Our mandate/goals discussion yielded the following talking points. These 
are presented here the order they arose. We went once around the group and 
asked, "What does Free Geek mean to you?"

Linux / FOSS / Community
Education / Hardware Reuse /  assisting non-profit groups
Creating and empowering community, self-determination
Recording history of FOSS & computers in general
Innovation in software & hardware
The ability to influence or guide the political process

* Commits

Software group to rescue accounting data from FGDB, and store it in another 
database.

Volunteer list and schedule to be wikified: Jeff will do that, Ifny will help

Sunday construction: Sim, Keith, and Mike.

Contribute to building computers: Scott, Jeff.

Contribute to being one of three bodies in the shop: Sim, Mike, Jeff, 
Scott, Ryan, David, Ifny

Sim closed the meeting by announcing, "We're awesome!"