Meetings/FamilyMakers04-07-2013

Minutes from Meeting April 7, 2013

We met for one final time before our first official Family Makers meeting April 14th.

Attendees

- Brian Corteil

- Steve Upton

- Chris Voth

- Meg Westbury

Minutes

- Risk Assessment - We continued our discussion of risks that might be unique to a group of young makers. The kids are under the supervision of their parents/guardians and all must adhere to the general rules of the space. One role of the facilitator each week will be to let any adult makers in the space know about the presence of children and discuss options for keeping the children safe (e.g. barriers or obvious signs, if need be). Continuing to assess risks will be one of our ongoing main concerns.

- Fees - To help defray costs, we will ask for a donation of 3 pounds per family per meeting (members) and 5 pounds per family per meeting (non-members). We also discussed asking families for a voluntary donation of 20-30 pounds at the outset to have a pool of cash for larger expenses.

- Accounting - We agreed to set up a Google spreadsheet to track income and expenditures. Chris and Brian will help maintain the spreadsheet and reimbursing members for expenses. We may look into setting up a bank account in the future.

- Register - We discussed that the register each week needs to include: name of child and responsible adult; age of child; school of child; and photo release.

- Basic Rules - We agreed that the following would be our working set of rules:

1) Makespace is a place to come together and have fun making things

2) No idea is a bad idea and we want to hear your ideas

3) Respect each other, your ideas and the space

4) Follow all safety rules

5) No horseplay

6) Don't use equipment if you haven't been shown how

7) Always ask if you are not sure

8) Makespace rules trump all else

9) The facilitator of the day has the final say if someone needs to be asked to leave

- Ratio - We discussed that there should be a 2:1 ratio of kids to adults, unless the facilitator agrees otherwise.

- Facilitators/Backup Facilitators - We discussed that there needs to be a facilitator and backup facilitator for each meeting. Hopefully as Family Makers gains speed, we will have more volunteers to be facilitators.

- Facilitators - We discussed that the role of the facilitator/backup facilitator each week would be to:

1) Enforce the rules of the space and Family Makers

2) Come up with a programme of fun and educational stuff to do/make

3) Bring snacks and prizes

4) Make sure the register is signed and take money

- First Month of Projects

1) Paper airplanes (Steve is facilitator, Brian backup facilitator)

2) Egg drop (Brian is facilitator)

3) Paper cranes (Chis is facilitator)

4) Solar-powered robots (Meg is facilitator)

- Miscellaneous

1) Brian mentioned that he might be able to set up rocket demos for the group

2) We talked that down the line it might be cool to have badges made from whatever tool a child has been trained on (a bit like an apprenticeship)

3) Brian is looking into child-sized t-shirts

- Action Items

1) Meg get binders, register and paper airplane supplies

2) Steve get snacks, squash and sweets of some sort as token prizes

3) Brian look into starting blog and Google group

4) Brian look into rocket demo (Papworth)