I really don’t think “we” will ever do anything. I can’t think of a single
thing SkullSpace does except use its space or endorse something.
Our power comes from our members. Each of us do things, and each of us have
resources, and we’ve been known to pool those together to do some really neat
stuff. This is because any service will be tied to the people who supply that
service. SkullSpace can make the objects available, but the 3D printing or
anything like plotting or photo touch-ups will be done by members. As such, the
usual hackerspace rule applies: Do it. If you want to touch up photos, mention
it to people. We’ve got computers and scanners at the space, and the IT
infrastructure to set something professional up. Take people’s VHS tapes and
convert them to DVDs. Take some money and donate the rest to SkullSpace.
That’s how we should be doing things, and I think we’ve got to step up when it
comes to that sort of thing. We aren’t going to just appoint someone as
photoshopper just because people think it would be a good idea to photoshop.
We’ve always relied on our members to do what they love/want to do.
</diatribe>
From: Ace Tunes
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2013 8:23 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [SkullSpace-Discuss] Budget and Spending Discussion
One of things I was thinking of... was maybe trying to obtain a plotter (really
big printer) and offering printing services for banners and such. We have
sponsors who might be willing to up donations if it means we can underhand the
usual cost for getting large scale printing done. We could also maybe offer
BASIC photo touch ups, for a fee of course. I dunno it was just a thought, it
may or may not be feasible. I am not one to judge, I suck with money.
-
Meako
On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 6:08 PM, Mark Jenkins <[email protected]> wrote:
On 01/24/13 14:19, Justin Lacko wrote:
The "official" policy of SkullSpace currently is that until we balance
our budget
Even once we balance it via membership growth, we can't blow the new income
that's keeping it balanced either -- we'll be looking at what to do with only
the true surplus income and not the extra income that just filled the gap and
stopped us from bleeding.
And we may very well want to save some of our initial surplus to cover past
deficits so we can be in a better position of strength again.
(as Jay points out, we're a micro economic entity -- not a stable state with
the ability to sell bonds at negative interest rates like the USA can)
Plus, also on the micro thinking front, when member growth allows us, we may
run to run and retain some surplus to be better positioned to cover future
deficits if membership numbers and donation commitments wax and wane (as
hackerspaces.org promises us) -- once the core pot is stronger, then we can
think about spending new surplus revenue on non-essentials.
But it's all premature anyway as we can't conclude we're in surplus yet --
based on my conversation with Jay the other day about membership numbers, it
sounds like a no.
, we can't spend on anything except the basics - such as rent
and power. This is a fiscally-conservative policy.
I endorsed "the Justin plan" even though the regular member dues at $40, plus
the commitments that people made, expected additional donations (e.g. bake sale
like), and merch and junk sales were not going to be sufficient to cover rents
and utils. That plan had us burning money throughout the duration of our lease
and were only planning to not completely run out of money by end of lease (that
was the point where we finally were able to go ahead).
That wasn't conservative, it was a bold risky move we took where we allowed
for the possibility of hitting (almost) bottom at the end. It was such a big
risk we took that I've worrying ever since I made the wrong endorsement -- I've
worried about the strength of those commitments being a weak foundation and
that we over estimated the non-commitment style donations, the merch sales, and
the junk sales.
A conservative move would have been to acquire a smaller space (as other
cities have) with rent and util costs in line with our membership revenues.
All this being said -- the commitments people made aren't contractual --
anyone who wants to withdraw from the commitments they previously made to fund
the space's core costs of rent and utils can back away and do what they want.
But, if enough people do that, we'll going to have to take a new look at our
medium term (til end of lease) cash flow projections in light of the
commitments that are still there and the new members we have picked up. We
don't run to run out of money prior to the lease expiring (as will happen if
the commitments that were made dry up)
As for looking at things from an investment perspective, I would suggest
there are ways to invest in making space that aren't cash intensive, but labour
intensive. It hasn't been as visible as I'd like, but I've actually put quite a
bit of time into making the VM server a useful resource for example and hope to
grow beyond the current 5 or so active users to more.
Coming soon* on that front, I'll be launching a "skullhost" service I've been
working on, which is a shared web hosting service (not everyone needs a
dedicated webserver VM), and producing some filmed presentations (to be
uploaded online) showing how to use the libvirt/qemu-kvm hypervisor and how to
use the Skullhost and MUMD services hosted on the vm server.
Mark
*Soon meaning "when its ready", I'm working on a Debian style schedule now
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