May 2026 - Board Meeting

05/13/2026 - Area 515 Board Meeting

05/13/2026 - Area 515 Board Meeting

Attending:

Absent:

Note: This meeting was held 1 week later than normal due to scheduling conflicts.

Vote to approve minutes of the April board meeting
Yes: 4
No: 0
Result: Passed

We still have money.
Meg will start transferring her Treasurer knowledge to John sometime after May 15th so that John can start picking up Treasury Secretary duties.

Board of Directors member Chris unexpectedly moved away last month. There is now an open seat on the board. After some discussion, the board decided that we would...
- Notify members of the vacancy
- Hold a special election at the next member meeting in July.
  - Note: Per our bylaws, whoever wants to run for that seat needs to do so at least 14 days prior to our meeting.

The air hose in the Auto Shop still needs to be fixed.
The dumpster situation in the court yard has been sorted out.
Matt got access to edit the tools section of the website.
We received an email stating that our .org domain will increase in price by $0.70. We currently have 2 domain names
- desmoinesmaker.space
- area515dsm.org
We checked, and the domains are on auto-renew through NameSilo.

Late last year, member Ward passed away. Ward's sister has been going through his belongings and offered the makerspace what tools and materials he had in his house. We will need to go to Ward's house and carry them to the space. Brad offered to send an email and organize a time for people to come and help out.

At the next Space Work Night they're considering cleaning out the stored wood in the Wood Shop. A majority of the stored wood seems to belong to member Charlie, but Charlie isn't paying his dues right now and he hasn't responded to emails.
Chris, the former board member who moved away also has some of his wood here. He said he'll be coming back for it. Brian also offered to buy some of it from him.
Matt suggested simply removing the storage brackets on the west wall.
Jake has also talked about a collapsible wood rack he found.
Cleaners will try to email anyone with their name on the wood being stored.

We got into a discussion about the numerous BeagleBone Black boards that are in those drawers. Matt has spent a lot of time trying to get them useable but has had virtually no luck. The problem is that the boards can be made to boot Linux from a chip, but then there's virtually no memory leftover to do anything useful.
To get them to load Linux from a chip you first have to cut the resistor on Pin 93.
Brad remembers that the boards originally came from John Deere. They were ordered for a thing but then the thing changed. They were no longer needed and so they were all donated to us.
Matt tried contacting Texas Instruments to figure out what was going on with the boards, and the vibe he got from them was, like, "Stop asking questions."

Did you know: Area 515 first filed with the state of Iowa on August 17, 2011.
Apparently, game-wise, "Table Thumb" serves the same purpose as "Nose Goes." The Secretary did not know this, to his detriment.

Last updated 1 month ago

Was this helpful?