Attendance

For the General Meeting we set the capacity to 40. We also created a "New Member Meet Up" to start 1/2  hour prior to the general meeting. The "New Member Meet Up" was designed to get new members acclimated to the project in a way that didn't hinder the progress at the general meetings

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Then we set up two skill building sessions. Each would be 1 hour and cover the same material. Each would have a capacity of 12 people. We were really nervous about this session. We had created a small design of a mini mini house frame, but who would lead the cutting and measuring skill-building class?  I had put out a feeler to the general meet-up list ( 330 women) after session two. Marisa, a window designer, answered the call. She came to visit us two weeks before the general meeting. Laura was another attendee at the meet up in December. She had created an excellent document on how to use a miter saw. We thanked her for taking the time to do this, and it was decided that perhaps she and Marisa could lead the skill building class that would take place after the general meeting. 

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The general meeting was crazy! We had 50 people come into the room between 9:30 and 10:00. We were shocked; the room could not take any more people. The "30 percent no show" was not proving a good way to estimate population.  We also had over 70 percent of the people from the first meet up show up to this meet-up.

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The documentation coordinator did not arrive for 15 minutes, forcing me to be that person. The prior meeting's documentation team consisted of 4 inexperienced people. This time we had 3 new people, two of whom had a great deal of experience. One person who joined the team wondered if there was a place for her in research. We hadn't yet found someone to lead research. Could this be the person we were looking for? We scheduled a time to discuss this with her after the meet-up

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We also changed the format of the general meeting. The first hour was spent with people working in their teams.  Each person reviewed what they had done and was given new tasks.

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Agenda

1. New Meetup: Welcome and discuss teams/roles

2. Break into General meeting for 1 hour

3. have someone from each team discuss what is going on in their team. take questions.

4. Skill building

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1. New meet up

I explained the project concept. People seemed very interested. Some people who booked early enough were able to stay for the general meeting.

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Work in Committee

 

• Fundraising - It was agreed to do a 5k run and ask each member to raise $100.00. The committee chair discussed Crowdrise as an acceptable technology to use to hold each person accountable for their goals. The team agreed to set this up and try to raise their goal of $100.00 each so they would have a framework to share in the general meet up in February.

• Marketing - Marketing agreed to shift their goal from bringing in more people  to supporting fundraising with whatever materials they needed. They realized, by looking at the number of people in the room, that the project had already reached capacity in terms of member numbers. 

• Sourcing Expertise and Materials - Design gave sourcing the information needed to source windows and doors. Sourcing will look to find prices for these two things and additional materials as the project materials are given to them. Project material deadline is the next meeting.

• Design -  New members flowed into the design team.  It is important to note that the design coordinator and I had already designed a rough draft of the tiny house based on some things we wanted it to accomplish. However, we knew that once the design was locked down things might change a bit. The volunteer coordinator spent a great deal of time answering "why this?" and "why that?" questions because many of the people were new.

• Project Management - We still haven't formalized this team.  

• Skill Building - This team started off with 15 people in the beginning of the meeting. Many of the people had no skills in skill building, so it was agreed to discuss prerequisites for this team. We talked to two committed members of the team and asked them to lead the skill building training session. It is important to note that one of the coordinators here has a mini mini house design that we think would be a great way for women to learn construction skills.

• Research - We think we found someone to lead this. More on this next week.

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3. Additional notes

After the meet up the coordinators and I had a meeting and determined certain things:

1. If people cancel on the day of the meet-up, they must wait 2 months to attend the next meet up.

2. If people don't do what they have been allocated to do, they will be unable to attend the next meetup.

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4. Review expectations with Participants

1. Attend monthly meeting

2. Commit/participate 2 - 3 times a month in your working group (meeting, skype/phone discussion etc. totaling 6 hours a month)

3. Please think of two women you think would benefit from this project, and forward this PDF to them to see if we can bring on more women. Have a conversation with them and ask if they'd like to join the next meet-up.

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Next meet-up February 25th.

You must RSVP on meet up to attend

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How to get involved

To be alerted of a meetup date go here

https://www.meetup.com/NYC-Tiny-Housebuild-Empowering-Women-Girls-Meetup/For additional

 

Questions call 

RPGA Studio

718.433.4659