Free Ride! Meeting Minutes, Sunday August 5, 2007 at Scott's

Featuring the second appearance of the guest scribe who's comments are in []

[There are 5 pages of minutes. As some of them are relevant to things that will be happening very soon, I'm going to put up the major stuff now and type up the rest as I have time.]

Meeting Highlights

Miscellaneous

- There is no Simple Green left in the shop

- Stuart will fill in temporarily for Johnny while he is out of town (5 weeks, starting August 21)

CJ

- The hallway and entry area lights were not working last week (turning the circuit breakers on didn't fix it)

- Stuart has talked very briefly to Deb a couple times since the last meeting, but she was too busy to have a conversation. However, she said she had something important to tell him.

- Shaun set up the pseudo-escrow account at the coop, but so far we haven't told CJ about it.

- Proposal: Stuart will draft a letter informing CJ of the escrow account by this Tuesday, August 7, and put it on the wiki. People have until this Thursday, August 9, to review the draft and give feedback. On Friday, Stuart will send the letter to CJ in the same manner as the previous letters have been sent...Approved

- Proposal: Jake will be Stuart's replacement as the CJ liason...Approved

Meeting to discuss Words and coordinator roles

- There was an agenda point about setting a time to talk more about reaching consensus on the words and coordinator roles.

- Lots of discussion...several people are going to be out of town in August and September

- Mixed feelings about moving on down the agenda vs. discussing some high level stuff today (August 5)...decided to talk a bit more.

- General feeling was that there should be an extra FR general meeting shortly after Bike!Bike! for the purpose of making some progress on the words and coordinator roles.

- Also, people felt that the discussions of organizational stuff during Bike!Bike! will probably produce a lot of good and relevant ideas (implying we shouldn't get too excited about trying to decide much today)

Informal Consensus [or maybe it was a proposal...kind of chaotic]:

- People who have strong opinions about the words and coordinator roles should think them through, write them up, and put them on the wiki very soon (Stuart started a wiki page for this a while ago, some stuff may already be up there)

- During the relevant discussions at Bike!Bike!, talk/think about organizational stuff, take notes, etc.

- At the FR meeting after Bike!Bike!, the general format will be: review ideas from Bike!Bike!, work for consensus on values and high level goals for FreeRide, then move on to details of words and coordinator roles.

Proposal: Have a FR general meeting, just to work on words and coordinator roles, on Sunday, August 19 at 1pm not sure if we picked a location...Approved

Shop capacity and regulating the ratio of mechanics to people working on bikes

- Thursday was insane...too many people, lots of interruptions, not much getting done, lots of stress and grumpiness

- Saturday was much better as a result of setting up a waiting list, physically regulating the flow of people in and out of the shop, and starting with only 6 stands/toolboxes then adding more as additional mechanics and volunteers showed up (max was about 8 or 9 stands). A key thing was having the greeter check in often with the mechanics to make sure things were under control and only checking out more toolboxes when the mechanics were ready to accommodate more people.

- A cool side effect on Saturday was that lots of people ended up doing volunteer tasks around the shop while they were waiting to check out tools.

- People on Saturday seemed to be pretty cool about the waiting list.

Lots of chaotic discussion on setting policy for checking out stands, narrowing the entryway, having a waiting list for checking out tools, allowing exceptions to the waiting list, reorganizing the physical layout of stuff in the shop

Trying for Consensus (Check-ins):

- Should there be a waiting list for people to check out tools? ...Yes!

- Until a better solution is found, narrow the entryway to physically regulate the flow of people into the shop? ...Yes (some reservations, no blocks)

- Create a volunteer task to be the greeter's helper/gofer so the greeter doesn't have to leave the entry area? ...Yes

**- Should the greeter be able to let volunteers in without having them go through the waiting list? ...Yes (for the purpose of helping out, but not to work on their bikes*)**

[*Chaos on the subject of allowing collective council members to bypass the waiting list or get priority. The question came up of how to determine who collective council members are]

Proposal: Start using Erok's forms (see July minutes) to track hours toward collective council membership...Approved

[more chaos on the subject of apparent unfairness/cliquishness if collective council members, greeter's friends, etc. could be allowed to get priority in the waiting list]

Informal Consensus:

- This is a pretty new idea and we need some time to try it out and tweak stuff.

- For now, the greeters should try hard to stick to the waiting list without making exceptions.

- Greeters can use their discretion, but they should try not to be cliquish about it.

- This topic will be revisited later.

Calendar

- Website needs to be updated about shop being closed on Saturday, September 15.

Shop signs for this week

- Johnny and Stuart will make a sign for Tuesday explaining how the waiting list will work

- Jessica will make a shop map sign by Bike!Bike!

- The signs will go on the 2 ft x 4 ft piece of hardboard which will be mounted on an easel type thing at the front of the shop.

- Erland is going to make the easel thing on Tuesday from some 2x4's that are laying around the shop

- The topic of reorganizing the front of the shop and making more/fancier signs will be revisited later.