Governance

FabLab Governance

This page contains documentation related to how the FabLab Governs itself to support its members and the rest of North Forge. For now the two most significant groups that have an impact on the day to day operations of the FabLab are the Member Council and the Safety Committee.

Member Council overall

Historically, Member Council fulfills and number of different roles within the institution that is North Forge. It uses a mix of both paid staff, volunteers, and subject matter experts to conduct some the week by week operations of the FabLab.

Member Council Participant Categories

The member council consists of folks that fit into four very broad categories:

1. Compensated Volunteer: people whose membership fee is reduced in exchange for their efforts on the on member council
2. Members at Large: people who participate in the meeting(s) without direct financial compensation. Regular members.
3. Staff: people doing paid work as employees of North Forge
4. Invited participants: This could include guest speakers, other North Forge components, contractors and more

Member council agreed on this method of participant categorization via simplistic concent method.

Purpose of Member Council

The membership at large voted via Slack poll to use the following as the Member Council Purpose Statement:

“The purpose of the North Forge FabLab Member Council is to represent the diverse voices and needs of our membership, foster a culture of proactive and responsive problem-solving, by enabling a connected, collaborative community.

Through effective communications and hands-on operational efforts, the Member Council strengthens its support for North Forge at large, cultivating a dynamic environment where members are empowered to innovate, create, and grow together.”

The purpose of member council was agreed upon via Facilitated Concensus Modelling. A subject matter Expert, David Dorosz, was brough it to facilitate the discussions. {Insert Date Time Reference}

The proposed statement was carried forward via simple concent.

Member Council Methods

The member council operates based on the following methods.

Issue Categories

Member Council sorts issues requiring a decision into three broad categories:

Member Council Issue Categories

Issue Category	How hard is it to discuss
Simple	Doesn't Require a whiteboard to explain it
Tricky but not Complicated	Probably doesn’t need a whiteboard to explain it, but it may help
Complex	This is gonna need a whiteboard, possibly pictures/diagrams and some deep thinking on everyone's part

Decision Flow

Member Council uses the following decision flow to work through making decisions on issues. We’ll use each method one after the other until a decision is made.

Concent Based ⇒ Consultative Based ⇒ Consensus Based ⇒ Democratic Based

member council agreed on this method via simplistic concenet method.

Structure of Member Council

Member council consists of the folks described

Member Council Leads

Member Council consists of a diverse set of people as described above, but to assign folks responisble for specific tasks we need some folks to lead the way.

This section below should be represented by an inserted form or table

1. Co-Chair 1
2. Co-Chair 2
3. Tours Lead
4. Orientation Lead
5. IT Lead
6. Consumables Lead
7. Training Lead
8. Volunteer Lead
9. Build Lead

Member Council Minutes

Meeting Minutes Template