[57north-announce] 2015 AGM Minutes of Meeting

[Dave Hibberd]

All, 

See in line below the minutes of meeting from this year's AGM,
consisting of the report from the board on their activities, the
treasurer's report and election of the board.

Thanks to those who came along, and the board would like to extend
thanks to all of you who've been a part of the space for the last 12
months - members, visitors and our extended family alike.

Hopefully we can continue to grow and improve over the next 12 months
and make our little community ever better. Once again, I'd like to
highlight it's the everyone's hackerspace, not just the directors - if
there's anything that you think can be done to make it better, email the
mailing list and we can all discuss it. If you're shy, you can contact
the directors privately on

57north-ctte-private at lists.57north.co

and we'll help get your ideas out there, or incorporate your comments as
best we can. 

Much Love,

Hibby x

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Meeting begins: 19:46
    
# Attendance
Tom Jones
Carl Anderson
Dave Hibberd
Iain Learmonth 
Shell Turner
Sean Reilly
Robert McWilliam
Ed Watson
Calum Craig

# Minutes
Robert McWilliam

# Chair
Dave Hibberd is elected chair

# Activity report

## Membership

At the last AGM we had a membership of 28. 

We currently stand at 25 members - 14 of which have joined since our
last AGM. 

For the last 6 months we're averaging a little over 16 members paying
each month.

Payment counts for 57North and hackerdeen that preceded it can be seen
at http://hackerdeen.org/api/membership/graph

## Meetings

The last AGM was 20th May 2014. 

We then had a directors meeting on the 18th July 2014. This covered
contacting the membership to get feedback on their opinions of the
space, the results of which can be seen at:
http://lists.57north.co/pipermail/57north-discuss/2015-January/001625.html
https://57north.co/w/images/9/96/57N_survey_summary.pdf 

There was also discussion of terminating members who were in arrears,
social media and diversity policies for the space, and the board being
in favour of delegating powers and responsibilities to members. 

This then set off the procedure of calling an EGM to make changes to
our articles of association and look at the make up of the board.

The EGM happened on the 13th of September 2014. Discussion covered
removal of unpaid members, where it was noted that this is up to the
board and not business for a general meeting, bringing in an
additional membership rate, where it was concluded not to. Changes to
the articles were discussed concluding that two changes were to be
made: the addition of "Space Corp. Directives" as an alternative name
for the articles and the modification of the clause relating to the
operating of bank accounts to allow one signatory for transactions so
that we can use online banking. These changes are now reflected in the
articles on github and have been filed with companies house. 

The election of directors was agreed to be conducted via opavote.org
and nominations were opened. We got 7 candidates and the election was
held electing Edward Watson (nordin), Carl Anderson (noodle), Dave
Hibberd (hibby), Robert McWilliam (ormiret), and Tom Jones
(adventureloop). 
https://57north.org.uk/elections/2014/

While the elections were in the nomination stage the existing board
met to finalise the termination process for members who were behind on
dues. This meeting took place on the 26th of September 2014 and
terminated 15 memberships, with a further two members having
surrendered their membership. 

The new board held its first board meeting on the 25th October 2014
and ran through a range of topics relating to the updating of various
systems to reflect the changes to the board and articles coming from
the EGM. There was discussion of our premises going forward - our
current space has issues with access (both locks and the many stairs
that need to be climbed). We are still looking for better
alternatives, please raise any possibilities you might find. There was
discussion of our policy regards keys for the front door to the
building, with the agreement that we would allow any member who wanted
one to have a key. It was also agreed to buy a new bin for the space. 

The final directors meeting happened on the 31st of January 2015. At
this meeting the board agreed to look for an accountant to make sure
we are doing our accounts correctly and file the appropriate details,
there was discussion of the management of the space servers with
agreement to do some sorting out of infrastructure services and to
separate these from members projects. There was also agreement that
decisions about changes to the space should be taken via discussion on
the -discuss mailing list and that the board would do more to
communicate the state of our finances to the membership.   

## Changes to the space

We have had some rearranging of the furniture over the past year: the
desks have been shuffled a bit, we've replaced the large rack with two
smaller ones and we have more shelves.

We have added some hacked together LED lighting to the space.

The network setup has been re-jigged and the space network is now
connected to chaosVPN.
  http://wiki.hamburg.ccc.de/index.php/ChaosVPN

The wiki has now been changed to be semantic mediawiki. The content
could do with some love.
https://wiki.57north.org.uk/index.php/Main_Page

The website is now in github and pull requests are welcome.
https://github.com/hackerdeen/website

## Fundraising

In September 2014, the space held a workshop for Aberdeen Techfest.
£240 pounds was collected from kit sales with over 25 visitors in
attendance.

Also in September, the space held a fundraiser auction. £175 pounds
was collected over the open Tuesday event.

The space plans to have a workshop and showcase presence at the May
festival 2015 event hosted at Aberdeen University. Members are
encouraged to attend as volunteers to showcase any projects.

# Accounts

Ed talked through the accounts. 

The summary is available at
https://57north.org.uk/stuff/2015_AGM_Accounts_summary.pdf

# Election of directors

The current directors are willing to stand again. No other
candidates were forth coming. The current board will continue.

# AOCB

There was no other business.

# End

Meeting ends 20:12
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