I recently met with a consulting client at the Dojo. We met one weekday evening and I was able to reserve the reservable cubby and it went fine. We came back Saturday and all cubbies were in use, and ended up going to his office instead. This got me thinking about the situation regarding events, cubbies, and private meetings. Clearly we all have occasional need to meet privately with clients, investors, partners, etc. at the Dojo, and the cubbies are fine for this, but it's hard to guarantee one will be available when scheduling the meeting. Currently the only ways to reserve space at the Dojo are to have an event or to use the paper sign up sheet on one of the cubbies. There is no way to reserve space to have a small meeting other than using the sign-up sheet on the cubby door. There are several problems with this system:

o Cubbies are too small to hold events in, so having them available on the events registration system is not useful (at least, not without also reserving a larger space, if the cubby is to be used as auxiliary space for some small part of the event)
o Sign-up sheet requires you to go to the Dojo to sign up, and cannot be done online
o Events are posted publicly and all members are welcome to attend; this does not make sense for a small meeting - e.g. meeting with a client
o Sign-up sheet only applies to one of the three cubbies - extend to cover all three
o Sign-up sheet needs to be printed out and manually posted daily - waste of paper and someone has to do it

Instead, I propose a new 'private meeting' type to be added to the events system. This would be subject to some strong limitations of course, such as:

o Meeting must include at least one Dojo member (the one making the reservation)
o Limited to cubbies and perhaps the small office rooms (upstairs & downstairs rooms in 140B, for example)
o Maximum 2 hours
o Some limit on number of such reservations per member per day?
o Some limit on how far in advance you can make such a reservation?
o Some limit on total number of reservations per day to leave room for some drop-in time?
o Private meeting should not be published on the events page calendar feed, or if published, should be clearly marked as private meetings
o Private meeting should be an exception to the "all dojo members must be allowed in" rule
o Perhaps install a monitor / laptop / tablet PC on the wall by the cubbies displaying the schedule of reservations? (This would be nice to have for all event reservations throughout the Dojo, really)

I think it would be great to have an app dedicated to projects happening at the dojo. It could provide a way for members to direct how the dojo grows by lending support (either physical work, materials, or donations) to the projects which are most in line with their own vision for the dojo. It could also have a voting system similar to the one here to help the directors decide what is most in need of funding from the dojo itself.

I am underwater with paid work at the moment, but once I have that under control I would love to start a small task force on this.

PROPOSAL -- September 2011 member Meeting: We should spend $1,000 from the general fund on LED lighting. This should be done because a number of older mercury laden light bulbs have burned out, and this affects members ability to do their work. Additionally the replacement of fluorescent tubes with LEDs will reduce the Dojos energy bill, but also mitigate the Dojo's liability. If you break a fluorescent tube, cost for hazardous materials cleanup and testing can run up to $2200. All spent fluorescent tubes have to be properly disposed of and this increases the burden to staff at the Dojo, who have to make a special trip to an authorized disposal facility. Fluorescent tubes can not be thrown in the garbage because of risk of permanent underground water contamination and county regulations prohibiting the disposal of fluorescent tubes.

An ideal linear LED tube should have a 90 CRI, be no less than 3,000k, and no more than 3250k. Additionally the linear tubes should be fully diimmable. Pendant lighting with similar characteristics should be installed in key work areas.

A number of LED products are retrofit, while others require new installation. We might want to sort out the space issue at the Dojo before investing additional funds. I too noticed the Dojo has become uncomfortably full. The location is good, but the building we are in may not be that suitable or scalable for the types of activities that we do.

Randal South