Bristol Open Technology Lab C.I.C AGM
Date/time: 19:00, 11th April 2023.
Location: Bristol Hackspace, with online option.
Directors report
Revaluation of the premises means the Hackspace will be liable for some business rates from April 1st! (amount still pending outcome of several relief applications)
Will be rolling out more formal risk assessments across all major tools over the coming months, and producing an induction template referring back to the risk assessment to ensure the inductions are an adequate mitigation across all equipment.
Most equipment information appears to have been copied across, last call to copy any pages before I pull the plug.
Incidents and complaints review
Open proposals
The total cost is £3823
This proposal seeks to build a welding bay in compliance with all relevant health and safety legislation such that we can safely use our donated MIG welder. This will also enable us to to introduce further hot-works capabilities relatively easily in the future.
Proposal below: welding_proposal.pdf
This is a proposal for a higher powered dust extractor to replace our existing green machine. The proposed extractor is 2hp instead of 1hp, has a cartridge filter to catch dust as small as 1 micron, and uses a clear collection bag so it’s easy to know when to empty.
The total cost is £815.94 and consists of the following items:
The T joint in the corner will be removed as the replacement extractor has two 100mm outlets. The 45 degree angles are to provide a more gradual curve than the current 90 corner for the workbench wall.
Discussed on forum
Should we put a deposit down for a Prusa XL - Felix
Deposit is £179 and is refundable should we wish to withdraw from the queue.
Metal shop precision machining discussion - Drew
Drew cannot attend and would like to propose this next members meeting.
Updates to Fair Use Guide + Terms and Conditions - Felix and Matt
Adopting the folding of expected behaviour and information into the ‘Hackspace Manual’ to keep distinct from formal BOTLab policies. (Action point from previous meeting) Includes clarity updates to scope of fair use, consumables, repairs, recent changes to proposals and donation policies.
Updates for clarity of wording to formal policies.
Draft wording can be found here.
(Proposed changes to membership policy part of separate charity proposal)
Proposed conversion of Bristol Open Technology Lab from CIC (company) to CIO (charity) - Felix
Special resolution - requires 75% majority to pass.
The proposal is to begin the process of converting the community interest company that administers the hackspace to a charitable incorporated organisation, and provisionally adopt a compatible constitution based upon the Charity Commission model articles as well as update the Hackspace terms to codify public benefit. This process is not instant and will take effect upon ratification by the Charity Commission.
This change offers the following benefits;
As the CIO structure is similar to a CIC, and intended to reduce the barrier to entry to charity status, these benefits can be realised with minimal additional admin overhead. Additionally the proposed constitution has minimal practical material changes. The proposed document follows the Charity Commission's guidance where it departs from our current constitution in the following areas and these should be discussed at the meeting as they are harder to change later;
(See December 2023 meeting for documents)
Proposed change to governance structure - Matt
This proposal is to create a Management Committee empowered with the day-to-day running of the space, which is separate from the directors/trustees of BOTLab, and with the aim of realising the following benefits:
Narrative:
Currently, the directors undertake a combined role - both the running of the Company BOTLab, and the day-to-day management of the space itself. The majority of the director's time goes to the latter.
These role were combined several years ago, at a time when hackspace suffered from a lack of membership engagement. By combining roles we ensured we made the most of the small number of highly-engaged people who wanted to put time and energy towards Hackspace.
Since then, Hackspace has gotten bigger, it's got a lot more members, and it's got much more ambitious, especially the quality and breadth of facilities we try to offer. All of this means we would benefit from the structured input of more people in order to run as smoothly as we all would like.
Happily, alongside this growth, there has been a substantial rise in the level of enthusiasm from members to help run the space. However our current setup now presents barriers to harnessing this enthusiasm, because getting involved typically involves the bureaucracy, vetting, time-commitment, and potential liability of directorship.
Additionally, the current setup also limits our flexibility to respond to growth or changing needs, because changing the number of directors in non-trivial and we already have an anomalously large number of directors.
Details:
(NB: this proposal assumes the passing of Felix's change to a charity. IF this does not pass, substitute trustee for director above)
Election of new governance team
The following assumes the passing of the above changes to company and governance structures:
Members standing for a trustee role must be aware they will be required to certify eligibility to hold the office of a charity trustee in England and Wales (See eligibility declaration here), and make themselves aware of the responsibilities of a trustee (See the Charity Commission guidance here).
It is not a requirement to announce you are running for a position in advance of the meeting, however people wishing to may do so by adding their name next to a role below.
Trustee roles (5)
Committee roles (7)