This letter is to serve as formal notification that I, Alex Rhodes, am officially submitting my name to run for election to the Board of Directors for Dallas Makerspace for the year 2017.
I believe in fostering a positive community and doing what I can to make sure that as many people have access to tools as possible and to teach them how to use them safely and effectively. In the past year that I have been on the board I have worked to make some of our processes easier and not be so burdensome on volunteers. This enables one of our most valuable resources, the volunteers, to work on things they’re passionate about.
- I have worked with the Infrastructure Committee to work on Maker Manager 3 to finally account for family members.
- I then worked on the calendar system to help not only with honorariums but metrics. We can finally get a better picture of things like class frequency, class attendance, how many teachers we have and much more.
- This past year I worked with Mouser to secure a donation of electronics equipment and have tried other avenues of funding as well.
- I was also lucky enough to visit the White House on behalf of the Dallas Makerspace and meet with many other leaders from different makerspaces for the Nation of Makers event and am still in contact with some of them.
- I have helped other committees with several projects from Open House for PR, processing honorariums for Finance, Storage Build Days for Logistics and I have taught roughly 85% of the CNC Router classes and quite a few Woodshop basics classes. I love this place, help out wherever I can, and try to set a good example.
In the next year I hope to finish two main projects that I have worked on since around the beginning of the year. The first one is a tool classification system. I hope to make it easier for people to identify which tools have training, what type of training is required and how to obtain it. This should make it easier for members to access tools.
The second item is to work with the online training system, Moodle. Depending on the tool classification a tool might be suitable for online training. I am working with several people to make this a reality. It should help people gain access to tools easier as well as focus instructors on to more advanced classes.
Most of all though I will work to make the Makerspace grow in capabilities and facilities.
As part of this Letter of Intent, I also agree to the duties and functions expected of me in this position that include, but are not limited to: Making every effort to attend the annual meeting(s) and regular meetings. Perform the duties and responsibilities of Director as outlined in the Dallas Makerspace Bylaws as well as the Dallas Makerspace Rules and Policies. If elected, I am fully aware and understand the importance of my full participation as a productive and effective leader during my tenure on the Dallas Makerspace Board of Directors, and I agree to the terms and conditions set forth above.
/S/ Alex Rhodes
Nominated by: Robert Davidson, Kent Bowling, Eric Brunner, Luis Ruvalcaba, Andrew Zalaket, Chris Marlow, Chuck Graff
