We have a few updates to share with you. Please take the time to read through this blog post to make sure that you understand how these things affect you.
Non-member Policy
We have made the decision to relax our policy for when non-members can be in the space to allow members to get better use of the facilities. Since our lone working policy stipulates that "dangerous" tools can only be used when another person is present, we deemed it favorable to allow members to bring in one non-member to act as that additional person. The primary reason for this change is to allow members to use the equipment safely without needing to wait for another member to be present. This does not change the policy that only members are permitted to use the tools and equipment at the space.
We still recommend that people who are interested in joining should come along on an open night where a director can give them a full tour and answer their questions, but members are welcome to show a friend or relative around if they want to.
CCTV and Privacy Policies
One may have noticed that we have installed a handful of CCTV cameras alongside the existing cameras. To make sure that everyone knows how we store and use that data, we have written an updated privacy policy as well as a dedicated CCTV policy. Please read those if you are interested, and know that we take data protection seriously, so it will only be used where there is a legitimate purpose.
Social Nights and Open Nights
Due to the availability of directors, we are proposing to separate open nights from social nights from the first week of April. Currently non-members are welcome to come along for tours on Wednesday evenings 7-9pm, and many members have come to appreciate this as a social evening as well. Since fewer than half of the directors can attend on Wednesdays, we are going to change our schedule to move the non-member portion of open nights to Thursdays 7-8pm, but encourage members to continue to come along for a social evening on Wednesdays from 7pm. The social presence on a Wednesday is great and has never required the presence of a director, so we hope that this will continue, and directors will not be constrained to only attend on Thursdays, some of us will continue to come on some Wednesdays.
For existing members, this has very little impact other than having a different night to guarantee a director is present. We are all still as active on the WhatsApp as usual, and we can always make arrangements to meet people on other nights when needed. The main impact is to spread the load of tours and inductions between the directors. If you have ideas for making social nights more social, we would be very happy for members to organise things, and we can support as needed.
The first Thursday open night will be on 2nd April, but at least one director will be present on every Wednesday in April.
Website Blog Posts
Our website was given a bit of a refresh recently and we have added a blog-style "latest news" page to address new members who haven't previously been able to see recent activity on the website. We are planning to upload one post per month to talk about Hackspace changes, group projects, events, new tools, member projects etc. We would love to have members make contributions to these posts to show the variety of interests within our community. These articles don't need to be anything special, just a few paragraphs and photos would be great.
If you have any ideas for posts and would be willing to write them, please get in touch and we will assign you a month for your post.