- TheThinkTank - lists.bikecollectives.org

Online Collaboration Tool
by Jesse Doud 01 Apr '13

01 Apr '13

Hi everyone! During a bike tour of New Zealand over the past three months, I visited the collectives and kept hearing about this tool called Loomio. Now I've settled in Wellington and started working with the team building the software. Loomio.org started when members of the occupy wellington movement found that some individual voices were drowning out others in general assembly meetings and started making a free online tool that would promote equity and direct democracy in decision making amongst groups. A year later and they have 3000 groups signed up from all over the world, most recently Wellington city council. The feedback we're getting is that it reduces the amount of emailing to come to decisions. I think that could be a helpful tool for bike collectives, not as a replacement to meetings, but as an additional consensus building resource for the in-between, internety times. Here's the website: https://www.loomio.org/ Here's a demo of how the tool works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIEyNNcXbZA Anywho, I'm obvs really jazzed to be on the loomio team, just wanted to put it out there amongst you fine folks! Cheers, Jesse

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Help: The ULTIMATE program handbook!
by Chauncey Tudhope-Locklear 30 Mar '13

30 Mar '13

Hey there friendly people, I am in the process of putting together an internal program handbook that will provide any new instructors an outline/understanding of our programs. I'm looking for #1. Your general feedback of the table of contents #2. A copy of your organization's similar handbook #3. A list of additional fun games/activities that you think should be in this handbook. I'm looking to pack a dozen or so descriptions/illustrations of games and activities that instructors can use to teach classes. For instance, a bike scavenger hunt where you hide different bike/tools parts in a given area and they have to fine each one and do a certain task before they can move on to the next activity. Below is the table of contents-- * The ReCyclery Ultimate Program Handbook Table of contents-- 1. Overall mission and vision of The ReCyclery. 2. How programs serve our mission and vision. Program Values-- fun, safety, experiential, environmental stewardship, riding skills, 3. Program delivery philosophy (What is the ReCyclery way to teach cycling education? What is our method?) -Direct participation -fun games/activities that involve/use skills being taught 4. List of types of educational programs (safety and riding skills) and HOW TO DO IT! (Lesson Plans, activities, games, instructions, safety considerations) -2 hour workshops/classes -Day long classes -3-5 day long camp sessions (3-5 hours) -2-4 day bike trips -Series classes -unicycle -womens bike night -welding -DIY panniers class 5. Tricks of the trade for Instructors (other ideas, games, ropes course activities etc.) 6. Setting up and running programs (marketing, insurance, recruiting participants, registration, etc.)* * * * * -- Sincerely, Chauncey Tudhope-Locklear (Executive Director) The ReCyclery 1925 Blaine St. STE #500 Port Townsend, WA 98368 360-643-0734 (personal cell) www.ptrecyclery.org "Health and Sustainability through Bicycles"

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Re: [TheThinkTank] Policy on Profiteering from Community Bike Shops
by Vernon Huffman 28 Mar '13

28 Mar '13

This is the proposed policy we are now considering in Corvallis, Oregon. Pricing/Sorting Policy Only Shop Managers may set prices on bicycles and bicycles parts and decide whether bicycles should be stripped, recycled, or repaired. Discrepancies between Shop Managers' pricing and pricing techniques are expected. Shop Managers must use their best judgment, be impartial, and avoid making decisions where they may have a conflict of interest. We believe that bicycles are valuable and prices should be set which respect that value. We do not want collectors scooping up deals to quickly flip and resell. We are not a thrift store and we are not out to undercut the prices and profitability of the bike shops. They are among our best allies. We want people to come out and use our shop to build the bike they'll want to ride every day. We want to empower people to apply whatever they have toward obtaining a bicycle that fits well and works reliably. General Rules/Practices for determining prices: * Parts Pricing Chart * Range on used items; shop managers may use their discretion to go outside range * Fixed prices on resale of new items which shop managers may not deviate from * Free parts if the bike was bought from us and works on it in the shop * Limited to individual usedparts worth less than $20 * Excludes “as is” bikes * High-quality parts * Special, particularly high-quality or rare parts should be individually tagged with a price. * We don’t hide parts from the public, but special parts may be designated for a specific bicycle when appropriate. * Adjusting Prices * Any Shop Manager can raise or lower the price of any bike or part below $200. * The price on any bike or part above $200 prices can only be lowered by consensus of two shop managers * Shop managers may not purposefully over-value a bicycle to save it or because they are attached. INCENTIVE POLICY In order to promote its mission of increasing bicycle ridership in the Corvallis area and to encourage and reward its volunteers for their efforts, the Corvallis Bicycle Collective offers the following program for its volunteers: Any volunteer who has finished building, repairing, or overhauling two working bicycles for the Collective may take and keep the bicycle of lessor value or a different bicycle of equal value. The Collective, may permit a volunteer to offer the equivalent effort of shop volunteer duties in lieu of rebuilding one or both bicycles. No volunteer may take more than one bike per year under this program, nor any bike valued in excess of $300. The Collective, may offer free, used replacement parts to continuing volunteers as may be required for the operation of a bicycle owned by the volunteer. Anybody who buys a bike or receives an incentive bike, other than one marked “as is” from the CBC may add or replace any parts or accessories worth less than $20 each to that bike in our shop at no additional cost. This is to give incentive for people to do the work in our shop. As a learning shop, we all benefit from others working there. If you know what you're doing, we want to watch. If you don't, we want to hear your questions.

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Re: [TheThinkTank] Policy on Profiteering from Community Bike Shops
by troy neiman 28 Mar '13

28 Mar '13

We have had this problem over the years also. We have developed a 1 bike a year policy to try to avoid this with occasional exceptions for stolen bikes, etc. We also have a max on our work trade credit that people can earn of $160. We figure that people can get a good, quality bike for that kind of money but they cant work off the full price of really fancy bikes that we need to sell to help pay our overhead. We dont really have a limit on how much parts people can work for. We have such a high demand for our Work Trade program that we try to get everyone that needs a bike or a repair the opportunity to do so but if people seem to be abusing that then we will give others the priority for work credit over the abuser. We do also sell used parts on the super cheap. We have had minimal problems with this over the years. We have a few people that fix up bikes on the side and come to us to buy parts and bikes. The problem with this is that they often scoff at our already super low prices because they are wanting to make a profit which is not our problem. I will often times give people working on their bikes a much better deal than these guys that are repairing for profit but if they are willing to pay for the parts then we dont really care what they do with it. The other problem is these garage repair guys will come in and try to buy all of our best parts for rock bottom prices. For example, our kickstands are $1 but this guy would come in and buy all 10 of our long aluminum kickstands and then we have only crappy steel and too short kickstands for people that live on their bikes with all their gear and need a good kickstand. So now its sort of a one kickstand, 2 tires, etc at a time and nicer parts and better condition cost more (steel kickstands+$1, Alum=$3). Seems to work pretty well because its still a great deal for people that need to fix their bikes and we get a little more cash flow from these guys even if we have to listen to them whine about the prices. Then there is the ebay crowd which probably made a lot of money off of us for years but now we either sell it in the shop for a still cheap but more fair market value price or we will sell some vintage campy whatever on ebay ourselves and have more cash flow for our programs. ----- Original Message ----- From: Edward Kirkwood Sent: 03/25/13 07:51 AM To: thethinktank(a)lists.bikecollectives.org Subject: [TheThinkTank] Policy on Profiteering from Community Bike Shops I am curious if any of you have had problems with folks using community bike shops to run their own repair business? We currently have some folks who are abusing the privilege of purchasing parts with sweat equity volunteer time and then selling those parts to folks outside the shop. How does your shop police that? Allen Kirkwood

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Volunteer perks and parts
by troy neiman 27 Mar '13

27 Mar '13

Hey all, We are looking into providing discounts on new parts (special order opportunitys) for our long term volunteers. Does anyone else provide this? If so, how does that work for you? How do you track the hours and the volunteers that are able to have this perk? Have you had any problems or people taking advantage of this? What other kinds of perks do folks provide to volunteers? Different levels of volunteering get different perks? Thanks, Troy Neiman BICAS Tucson

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Liability Insurance up in July
by Eric Montgomery 27 Mar '13

27 Mar '13

www.brockvillebikeministry.com is now in our second year. We supply youth ten to twenty years of age the opportunity to do a complete rebuild of the bike of their choice. We teach them weekly all summer long, feed them and supply them with lights, bell, locks, and a helmet along with their bile for free. We would like to get insurance quotes for this year. Is their group insurance available to.us.

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Looking for some volunteer testers
by Godwin ! 26 Mar '13

26 Mar '13

Hey folks, we've been hard at work over the past few weeks putting together a new website for Bike!Bike! and we are looking for people to try their best at breaking it (or just come up with ways to improve it). The site isn't just going to be for this year's conference but is an organization registry and will help organizer and retain information from all Bike!Bike!s, annual and region, past and future. We're looking for a mixture of people who have experience testing and don't, and also have experience running a Bike!Bike! conference and don't. We really just need people to create fake users, organizations, and conferences, register for conferences, administer them, ect. We need people to find bugs, but also look for ways to improve the site in any way. If you're interested, please keep the weight off this list and contact me directly, I'll give you all details you need. Thanks!!.godwin

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Volunteer Coordinator Position
by Tim Buckingham 26 Mar '13

26 Mar '13

As you can see, Broke Spoke is growing like a weed, we have been hitting this list hard the last few days. We are an all volunteer run organization and have the opportunity to create a short-term funded position. We have kicked it around a lot and are looking at a Volunteer Coordinator who will do a lot of behind the scenes work. Including: - Volunteer Recruitment - Volunteer Communications - Volunteer Trainings - Scheduling - etc Shop that have a position such as this or outreach coordinator shop manager, can you send me job descriptions? Cheers Tim

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Policy on Profiteering from Community Bike Shops
by Edward Kirkwood 25 Mar '13

25 Mar '13

I am curious if any of you have had problems with folks using community bike shops to run their own repair business? We currently have some folks who are abusing the privilege of purchasing parts with sweat equity volunteer time and then selling those parts to folks outside the shop. How does your shop police that? Allen Kirkwood

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Volunteer Background Checks
by Tim Buckingham 25 Mar '13

25 Mar '13

At Broke Spoke (Lexington) we are working to improve our volunteer process and how we create shift managers and dull out keys. What type of checks (if any) do other shops use prior to handing out shop keys to volunteers? Any background, employment history, references, etc? Some of these might be barriers as we work with a lot of folks who are in recovery centers, shelters, etc. Any help is greatly appreciated. Cheers Tim

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