here we grow again: hackercrafts room.

[3ric Johanson]

I've decided to rent out a new space for a trial period of 6 months. The goal of this new space is to have a dedicated craft area to really help with active involvement. Also, I would really like to be able to use the RE lab for other experiments.

I'll get the keys on Monday, but I'm pushing for getting them sooner - we shall see; I'd love to get them before this weekend.

We've had some discussion around how to bootstrap something like this.  Here's what I've come up with:

- the monthly costs on this new space work out to be about 300/month.  I'm willing to give away 6 months of this in order to build some community around crafts and sewing. 

- At the end of the 6 months, we should see if there is enough involvement to cover the $300/month.  If not, I will give up this rental.  If it's really close to breaking even, I might extend the trial period. 

- Covering the $300/month means on average - I will still cover the rent if it's short one month, at the same time if it's over it goes into the rainy day fund.

- Rainy day fund is for equipment repair, or purchases if it happens to grow to that amount. Historically we've never had to solve this problem.

One thing to keep in mind here:  

I'm not going to be heavily involved in this space.  It's up to the people on this list to think up shit to do, promote it, make it happen and clean up afterwords. I view this as an $1800 investment into something awesome.  Please take advantage of that seed and help it grow. 

Please don't introduce liability for me; this isn't the place for a heroin den or underage drinking.

I'm really fantastically bad at keeping track of ledgers and balances.  This is in part because I'm just bleeding money on this space and I'd rather not know how much. :)  But for this craft area experiment, it might be helpful to keep track of how close to the $300/month we are getting.  To that end, if someone wants to sign up to track this for the group, I will happily help/empower them however I can.

Cheers,
-3ric

PS.  The $300/month is a rough average; the base rent is 200, plus a fraction of utilities/water/internet/insurance/etc/etc which I'm really guessing on and likely underestimating.

[Ratha Grimes]

Yay!

I can track the finances.