I'm guessing you're fishing for topic to include in future roundtable
discussions, but ima prolly totally fail at attending the next one just
like I failed at attending the first (also btw Zoom sucks), so I'll pose
both some problems I've seen and my thoughts on solutions as my
response.

I'd say funding, but that's the eternal challenge for us all, I suppose.
I wish there wasn't such a proprietary/hoarding status on the part of
people seeking grant sources.

I think we all assume these sources should be a business secret, since
we are acutely aware that each of these sources has limited funds and we
need to feed our programs. I'd rather there were a public and up-to-date
database of sources, for instance bikecollectives.org creating a section
similar to the shops listings, but instead being for funders. It might
list names, grant cycles and deadlines, contacts, tips about submission
processes, geographic or use-case boundaries, and amount requests
allowed.

I think we each harbor a fear that if we broadly proliferated knowledge
of where the money is, there would be be a mad rush for it, and we'd get
left out. In the meantime, I do not have time to hunt out sources of
funding while also running the day-to-day operations at the shop, and I
know many other community space startups that have fizzled because of
relatively small economic shortcomings. While in some cases funding only
has to be discovered once and updated yearly, in other cases it is far
more complex or intermittent. I think that it is absurd that there
basically needs to be a person at each shop whose entire job is being a
funder bloodhound.

The other challenge is our momentary one, the roundtable discussion of
which I have been reading the results of here and appreciating very
much. Thanks a lot for these thoughts and discussion, everyone, all the
discussion has been relevant and enlightening. Since I failed to
participate in the roundtable, I'll post my thoughts on it here:

If I had a blank cheque to create a program deferring to the pandemic,
it would be, simply, to have drastically more space, better ventilation,
and an unlimited supply of masks to give out to people who "forgot"
theirs or didn't have the means to obtain a well-fitting and usable one.

Programs could pivot to being staged in outdoor settings, choosing
initial or different property based not on indoor footage, but outdoor,
with the indoor area being used only for securing portable equipment.
The aforementioned would of course limit in-person programs to clement
weather. Or, it could mean much larger, warehouse-size spaces, bearing
in mind that the larger the indoor space, the more massive the amount of
air necessary to exchange, subsequently the more heavy-duty and
potentially expensive a ventilaton system would have to be. In extremely
cold or hot weather, when air cannot be brought in directly from
outside, or temperature cannot be wasted through direct air exhaust, the
air must be recirculated and appropriate (and possibly expensive)
filtration systems would be necessary.

This would also mean that well-regulated occupancy limits would need to
be part of standard procedure. Hands-off teaching techniques would also
need to be prioritized, and in general participants might be required to
spend more time alone with their project. Possibly this could mean
greater priority given to onsite use of teaching media, decreasing the
amount of time required for close-proximity instruction. For instance,
even before the pandemic, I often used a method whereby I set up the
repair process with the participant, providing a detailed description
and some examples, and then walk away. The goal was to increase the
chances of the participant having agency and authorship over their own
growth, but it has utility now for distancing purposes. When using this
method, it's necessary to keep an eye on them from a distance to make
sure they are on the right track and aren't getting stumped for too long
at any juncture, but it's still far more hands-off than standing beside
them the entire time.

These things are very basic, and probably not the revolutionized
methodology some of you may be trying to envision. I personally do not
think the models of community shops require a complete rewrite unless
they are based primarily on cramming as many people as possible into a
small space and coming into constant physical contact with one another,
neither of which should really be necessary in the first place for our
operations. We might be unduly tempted toward thinking a complete
rewrite is required because we exist in a progressive and
revolutionary-minded setting.

Also, we're often forced to operate out of fairly random spaces due to
financial constraints, but I think that is a separate matter.
Brainstorming how to run a bike program in an indoor space the size of a
single-car garage during a pandemic would be to take a single component
and classify it as critical, when ultimately a good solution might
require simply switching that one component out.

~cyclista Nicholas



On 2020-08-03 17:29, Robert Grossman wrote:
> Hello Everyone,
>
> If you were to look into the future to develop a solution to a current
> challenge, what would that challenge be?
> One that stood out from the Safe and Effective Operations Workshop is
> around the capacity to provide services where shops are facing an
> increased
> need from communities while facing internal challenges to be able to
> safely
> help.  In other words - An inaccessible resource is not a resource.
>
> I understand that there are some serious social issues around equity
> and
> diversity that may be more important to be addressed.
>
> What does your shop's team find to be the most pressing long term
> challenge
> at the moment?
>
> ____________________________________
>
> The ThinkTank mailing List
>
> Unsubscribe from this list here:
> http://lists.bikecollectives.org/options.cgi/thethinktank-bikecollectives.org
____________________________________

The ThinkTank mailing List

Unsubscribe from this list here: http://lists.bikecollectives.org/options.cgi/thethinktank-bikecollectives.org