Talk:2017 Board Elections

Discussion from candidates

What follows is a record of statements made by each candidate, either by email or via other mediums, and then copied here.

President

Adriana Garcia

If I were President, aside from leading the weekly member meetings (Justin's shoes will be difficult to fill), I look forward to learning about conflict resolution. I'd hope to help nurture an open and inclusive environment, where the softest voice has an equal opportunity to be heard. Since we are completely volunteer driven, I also hope to work on distributing the technical and emotional labor of a growing membership. I feel they are both equally important to the continued success of PS1. I would like for us to continue to make cool stuff, teach each other to make cool stuff, get more cool stuff to make even more cool stuff. These are things I am interested in happening as a member, regardless if I am on the board. Honestly, I wasn't seeking to be on the board, but with the current state of our country, it's time to put my money where my mouth is and get involved at the local level. I'd be more than happy to bow out if anyone else wants to take a stab at it. In the end, I'm here for the community.

Andrew Camardella

I would like to accept the nomination for President and would like to thank you for the vote of confidence. I greatly enjoy and appreciate being the CNC area host and getting to participate in all the changes and challenges that have been going on in the last year around the space. I believe I can bring that same enthusiasm and drive to the role of President. I’m also very pleased with the precedent the last board has set as well as what all the other nominees have said of their own roles. I look forward to achieving those goals and working alongside them.

There are a few things that I would like to work towards if I am elected as president (and would further encourage discussion and action on the following topics regardless of my role within the organization). For the most part, these topics have all are being discussed in other threads on the google group, so I won’t go into too much detail but to say that they are on my agenda:

• Continue the bylaws, DRC, and membership agreement work in progress
• Increase member engagement and outreach
• Improve new member onboarding and orientation
• Improve internal and external organizational communication

As for the state of the CNC area: It has come a long way in the last few months, getting better equipment and infrastructure, and I think that the new dedicated space will greatly improve the overall experience. There is still much that needs to be done and I would still like to play a part in working on the area alongside a new CNC area host, also distributing relevant information/knowledge and maintenance tasks.

PS1 is an amazing and unique place, and has made great strides in the last year towards accommodating more people and enabling more exciting and interesting projects to take place. I'm excited help grow our community in a healthy and productive way, regardless of my position this year.

Vice President

Jennie Plasterer

The role of vice president is in many ways a support role and the details of this are uniquely cued to the dynamic of each president and VP. A lot of the responsibilities of a VP are shared with the president, designed to ease the pressure and preserve the sanity (and the ability to have a life outside of PS:1) of the president. But I think one of the lovely things about the Board of Directors as a whole is the element of fluidity; past the bare-bone outline of the bylaws, you come to understand the strengths, weaknesses, and preferences of fellow board members so I think there is an element of nuance that changes with each new board, ideally, as you communicate with each other to make sure everything is getting done.

This year, I would like to put a lot of thought into doing PS:1 scholarships in a way that benefits both PS:1 and the greater Chicago community. I have talked a little about this with Lauren, who works for JARC, an organization which provides skills training for low-income and unemployed workers. In that same vein, there are a lot of great communities of artists, engineers, craftspeople, interesting humanoids, etc. around the Chicago area and I would like to work on collaboration and cross-advertising, hopefully inciting some exciting new events and attendees.

I learned a ton last year, and if elected, I feel very excited about the prospect of coming into this year comfortable in my role and ready to finish a lot of projects from last year, seeing through the completion of the build out, the new bylaws, and a slew of new thoughts on member on-boarding and integration.

Treasurer

Brian Chojnowski

I hope to fulfill the Treasurer role not only by performing the regulatory required Treasurer duties, but also by trying to lay more groundwork to insure that PS1 will continue to provide our particular sort of service to our our local community, well into the future.

My long-term goal is to find a way for PS1 to own it's own space, or some solution like that. This comes with downsides of course, but the major perk gained by achieving this goal would be enjoying a sort of immunity to the fluctuations in the lease market. We enjoy a favorable relationship with our landlord today, not only because we are dutiful tenants, but also perhaps more critically, because we let to a landlord who believes in our mission. I feel that we could easily find life very challenging should ownership change. As we share some similarities manufacturing, I feel it would be a real challenge for PS1 to respond well to whatever market conditions prevail when our lease is up, as willingness and ability to relocate is a major part of a tenant's bargaining ability.

Chief Technical Officer

Jonathan Bisson

Just to make a quick plan of what I would do as a CTO:

DISCLAIMER: I signed the http://neveragain.tech/ pledge. And my position is more extreme than that. I'll refuse to participate in any way on making a database or trying to use the actual data (including internet usage) of our members to profile, police/watch/survey, stalk, discriminate, sell/give to any other profit or non-profit organization any of our members or their usage of tools and resources at the space. That obviously doesn't cover infrastructure monitoring anonymous data requirements, but that will eventually imply working on what and how it is logged by our systems.

Now that it is said:

I want to pursue what Daniel started, making a clean plan (mapping what is used, where and why) and update the infrastructure (security, backups…). Then I would work on each different part individually to try to simplify and automate deployment (with systems like Ansible) so we can restore our systems in a working conditions easily even if someone drops thermite on the server rack and we have to buy new ones. I would also like to make a server monitoring system that would allow members to know what is working or not (even when space net is out, or almost out, there are solutions for that based on free/really cheap GSM systems that can send status when something gets bad), and have procedures in place so they know what they can do and how to do it. That would avoid some of the problems we had in the past. One thing that I would also like to see done is a clean up and eventually reduction of power usage from our systems, I noticed that our server rack runs really hot, and if we can find ways to reduce our power consumption and associated cost, that would be great. But I have no idea yet if this is something achievable or not, so that will require some digging first.

Obviously, that's not something that I can do alone, and would be happy to have Daniel transfer me his knowledge of the systems and even better work with me from time to time, Hef to help me with the historical aspect of the systems and anyone that would be interested in participating. The plan is not to do system administration courses in the first place, but once our infrastructure is cleaned and running, that could actually be the occasion to revive Hef's systems office hour.

Also, if you have anything you would like to know my position about, feel free to ask (in private to avoid messing with that thread: bjonnh...@bjonnh.net). I'll try to publish my answers on a wiki page for future reference.

Well again that's all campaign promises, trust me if you can ;) I'm not promising that I'll do all of that, but that I will try my best to do it.

Director of Public Relations

Patrick Callahan

I have been a member since 2010. I have served previously as secretary and vice president. I tour the country as an advocate and spokesperson for hackerspaces with the Power Racing Series showcasing the potential of groups like ours. I am also a charter member of the Nation of Makers, which is an independent, non-profit group that promotes the growth and diversity of the maker community. I am uniquely positioned to represent our organization not just here in Chicago but nationally through my current involvements.

The vast majority of new members find us online and I have a few ideas to promote us there such as video via youtube, and facebook live. I would like to take 360 degree photos as each of our areas are complete and have them posted on google maps. The small advertising budget we have I would like to spend on the few items that have been our most popular, stickers and T-Shirts. Everytime I wear mine, people always ask where did I get it and how they can get one too. They are always disappointed when I tell them they are 5 years too late.

I believe public relations are important to point inwards as well. I would also like to publicly acknowledge and thank our area hosts for their hard work. I know they can often times feel like their work can be isolating and sometimes boring. We can feature them online on our website or social media to show are appreciation outside these meetings. Small gestures like pizza, doughnuts, or awards go a long way and are a nice celebration for the completion of their area when build out is done. I also want to survey our members to gauge how we operate, what needs improving, and what they would like to do at the space.

Deanna Williams

Thank you for the nomination for PR. I have spent the last 10 months working with the Bylaws committee. We have learned a lot about how the organization works and the needs of the organization. One issue that we have addressed in great detail is the need for a DRC(Dispute Resolution Committee). More information to come. With the time spent with the other great individuals that volunteered: Ed, Andrew, James, Jonathon, and Will, I love the way we work together to make the organization a better place for not only us but future members and am very interested in becoming a more involved member of the organization. My plan if elected for the PR position would be to get us more publicity. Go figure. While our membership is strong at 435 members I would like to see more participation. We need to utilize social media in a more effective manor. We need our members to want to come join in activities and utilize the space. I would also like to get some outside organizations to give us some free advertising. I am aware that Justin has endorsed Eric for his choice in this position. While I do not agree with his reasoning he is the president so he has that right. I would like to see what we can do with some fresh leadership.

Directors-at-Large

Erik Funkhouser

For 2017 I'm going to start having a bit more availability of time to contribute to the space beyond my projects. Ultimately I'd like to help in the following areas:

• Help in supporting responsible management and collaboration within the space.
• Administrative tasks that help in continuing to run everything smoothly
• I'm personally interested in spending my time looking into how we can (or do currently) benefit from potential grants or non-profit support systems that exist.
  • Any opportunities here would be to help fund initiatives presented by members.
  • Often times grants might require 'new' developments or programs to be created in response to funding. If there were opportunities I'd enjoy working with the board and other members to discuss what these could be.

I am a project manager by trade, and this position does allow for a lot of growth personally as well that I am looking forward to.

Ed Bennet

I accept the nomination for Director at Large. My platform is to help update PS1's bylaws and associated structural documents.

In February Lyn Cole, Director at Large, Director at Purple and Wild Events 2016 formed the PS1 Bylaws Committee. Since March, six volunteers have donated approximately 300 person-hours to the cause. We used archived but unimplemented documents and formal legal advice together with an understanding of how PS1 really operates to craft a better description of how we get stuff done.

PS1's bylaws are defined in a document that lays out the administrative structure and basic rules of operating the organization. The bylaws are our "Constitution" and are basically unchanged since PS1 was an organization of 50 or so friends. (Our proposed new bylaws document is 17 pages.)

For instance. A common frustration is the bylaws' silence on the Board's role in discipline and conflict resolution. To address this we added a requirement that the BoD form a Dispute Resolution Committee that acts separately from the BoD as a whole. The internal processes and procedures of the DRC are outside the scope of the bylaws, so we wrote that as a normal policy to be enacted by a member vote.

The bylaws committee is still in effect. The committee's revision of the bylaws is currently with the lawyer for review. If there are changes that need to be made, we'll make the changes and if necessary have the changes checked. After that, we'll put the new bylaws document up for member review and vote.

The DRC is a normal BoD committee and can be formed without the new bylaws being in place. The bylaws committee would like for the DRC policy vote to happen asap.

The current BoD has not been directly involved in crafting the new bylaws, but having a BoD member as sponsor is a necessity. Lyn is not running for the BoD in 2017. I would like to join the BoD to serve as sponsor and facilitator to move the new bylaws and the DRC policy to a member vote.

The members of the bylaws committee are

Will McShane, chair Deanna Williams Jim Baker Jonathan BISSON Andrew Camardella Ed Bennett (me)

Carl Karsten

Note, Carl is in Hobart, Tasmania at the moment working on a sprint and a conference. We are off by 12 hours. I (sheila) asked him to talk a bit about a DaL position. Skm (talk) 11:07, 12 January 2017 (CST)

Why does this role exist for ps1?

DAL is here to help out the Ds that have specific duties. The board is a thankless job, and it can be depressing to think you are going at it alone. You can't expect the other Ds to cover you, they have their own responsibilities.

What types of things do you think people should do in this role?

Show up,

Care about PS1 and help keep it moving in a good direction.

What are your specific goals for the role?

Do my part to keep PS1 open for another year.

I (sheila) can try asking more questions, but the timezone difference and the conference he's working at might keep him from replying a bit. You can also ask questions. I can forward them or you can talk to him on irc (CarlFK in #pumpingstationone) or email. Skm (talk) 11:07, 12 January 2017 (CST)

Will McShane

I would like to officially accept my nomination for director at large here. I've been a member of the community here at Pumping Station: One since 2011, and have loved every minute of it. Along with Ed, Deanna, Jonathan, James, and Andrew, I have been working on the bylaws overhaul and Dispute Resolution Committee proposal over the past year as head of the committee. In the coming year, I plan on continuing this work and seeing it to completion, as well as reviewing and updating the Member's Agreement to reflect any changes in the bylaws, and make sure they are fairly and ethically applied to the board and membership. I'm also very excited over the upcoming Chicago Maker Faire, and plan on helping the PR director represent Pumping Station: One at the event. Finally, the city that was built for a maker fair gets its own! Thank you, again, for the nomination, and I hope to earn your votes!

Declined Nominations

The following people were nominated, but declined to run. I'm moving them from the main page for clarity, but keeping them here for historical reference or whatever. Justin (talk) 21:26, 11 January 2017 (CST)

President

• Justin Conroy - Declined

Chief Technical Officer

• David Koppel - Declined
• Daniel Tornabene - Declined
• Patrick Callahan - Declined

Director of Public Relations

• Eric Stein - Declined

Directors-at-Large

• Aushra Abouzeid - Declined
• Kathryn Born - Declined
• Lyn Cole - Declined
• Michael Skilton - Declined