HYH April 25, 2026

[Rick Blake]

I was in the Lab for HYH this past Saturday, no others attended for HYH. One member ( I believe she is) came in but focused on projects, there being no meeting. I emptied trash and scanned the space for issues, nothing significant seen. 

This is the second Saturday HYH with no or minimal attendance, March 28 Andre and I were here and no others. 

While lack of an agenda and no proposals may be a reason for the lack of attendance, HYH serves to gather us to clean and organize the space. Attendance is encouraged for this reason. 

March 28 there was an event scheduled outside of the Lab, which apparently attracted many who would otherwise be here. When this change to a Saturday was discussed, I pointed out that while many expressed concern that their difficulty in attending on a Thursday night warranted an accommodation, I pointed out that my saturday mornings were already booked with events important to me, and attending HYH would require that I set one of those aside, including 2 to 4 events annually that were if significant importance to me personally. One such event will occur in June, conflicting with HYH on the 27th, and I will attend that one as it is an annual event. 

If Saturday HYH meetings continue to be lightly attended, I will submit a proposal to revert to Thursdays, with reasoning and argument to support it.

[Jay McGavren]

That sucks, Rick, sorry. Thank you for helping with cleanup!

I'm the opposite; I have a standing conflicting event on Thursdays. I'm one of the members that benefits from there being an option to attend on Saturdays. Only reason I wasn't there last Saturday is that I was out of town. That said, I'm just one of many, and people need to vote with their feet.

If people aren't showing up on Saturdays, then yeah, a proposal to move back to Thursdays is totally in order. Saturday-people, let's demonstrate that Saturday meetings are still needed by showing up! (And if a lack of proposals is the problem, let's get some proposals in here!)

-Jay

[Jay McGavren]

Also, the cleaning still needs to happen even if it was missed on Saturday. Please, folks, check the laminated sign by the whiteboard and claim a task (by writing your name next to it)!

[Moheeb Zara]

I was occupied that last couple of HYH, but I'll be perfectly honest I always forget there is a saturday HYH and still think its bonkers to try to get a community of hackers to show up on a saturday morning. 

A lot of hackerspaces will tell you that you can't accomodate a perfect day for everyone so you just gotta pick a day and commit to it, those that can show up will show up. 

That all being said, I am sorry for not showing up to help clean, huge thanks to Rick for taking it on.

I intend to find time to make a discord and slack bot this week to post auto reminders in general about HYH moving forward. 

[Brett Neese]

Thanks for being awesome and helping clean Rick. The lab can always count on you. That's very honorable and you're a fantastic, reliable person.

I always personally liked the Saturday idea but it became pretty obvious to me (as soon as my second HYH) that it doesn't work in practice. But, I'm not sure how much of that is really due to the date/time. We also struggle to get people to attend on Thursdays. It's a small miracle when we actually hit quorum. 

I'll be honest though and say as much as I've been the one encouraging people to attend I'm also feeling some pretty intense burnout w/ HYH, which is, quite frankly, why I intentionally skipped the last one. Rather than a moment for us to come together as a community and shine, it feels to me HYH has become an "airing of grievances." I've tried to do my best to help things run smoothly, particularly regarding the notes, but that effort has largely gone unacknowledged and at times has resulted in outright hostility with people pointing fingers at me if there's something I missed, or if, for whatever reason, I'm unable to attend or take the notes (I feel guilty when I can't!). To be clear, I want to serve and help the community be better but only if that effort is actually mutually desired.

The irony is that this is in spite of the fact that many many awesome things are going really well at the lab. Membership is up, finances are stabilizing, our event calendar is getting quite full, and lots of other great improvements have been made to the space, as Cpro recently pointed out on Slack. It's just HYH that needs a little work, IMO. How can we do better?

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[Linda Krecker]

Hey all, 

I also like the Saturday option. The last thing I want to do is anything in the evening (strike that one to getting old and being retired). 

Brett asks what can we do better for Saturdays, and Moheeb mentioned auto reminders. That is an awesome idea.

As far as my self, I am sometimes working on Saturdays, but since I'm the one who schedules my teaching gigs, I'll put Saturday HYH on the calendar and that will help to remind me to not schedule over them and actually go.

Linda

Sewing co-champion

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Linda S K Brett, Ph.D.

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