I feel like we need a system where access to forms and other shop-administrative documents is limited to a people who run shops, and not available to the general public. I really do prefer openness, but I'm worried that someone with access to all our master documents might try to rip us off. Please tell me if you think this is nonsense, or how you would feel about having the .odt or .doc source to your forms freely available on the internet.

Currently our form-sharing is done by these means: http://www.flickr.com/photos/timandmegan/3876067295/

Lars Peterson

Velocipede Bike Project

Baltimore, MD

On Sep 3, 2009, at 2:07 PM, Urban Bike Project Wilmington, DE wrote:

Josh,

That is awesome, thank you for taking on the very big task of doing this!

The knowledge share part seems already covered with the Bike Collective Wiki, or would you be trying to organize the information a different way?

Have you thought about funding the organization itself through dues paid by member organizations or other means? Thunderhead works with a percentage of annual revenue and a minimum of $75, I think. The fiscal sponsorship and insurance offering would be huge.

An aside, I would love for some other organizations to "Woof" to us, haha. It would offer more specific and in-depth idea sharing than can be had in a classroom setting or bouncing ideas back and forth by email.

I can offer my help, as much as I can, during my paid job which sometimes has a lot of downtime. Let me know what specifically you need help with.

Brian

Urban Bike Project of Wilmington
-a 501(c)3 non-profit bike shop-
1908 N. Market Street (entrance is in the parking lot behind the building)
Wilmington, DE 19802

Hours:
Thursday 6:30-9:00
Saturday 1:00-4:00

Visit us online at http://urbanbikeproject.org

On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 1:01 PM, <veganboyjosh@gmail.com> wrote:
Hey Everyone,

Thanks for coming to bikebike! and being so participatory. I got home, went over my notes, and realized I have two lists of email addresses.

Apologies to everyone who's already on the thinktank list for receiving this twice. Just wanted to get this out to as many of you as possible. Please forward to those you think might be interested.

One is folks who didn't know about or how to sign up for the Think Tank email listserv. To do that, just click the link below this paragraph, and you'll be added. It's not moderated, so if ever you decide that you don't want to receive emails anymore you'll need to unsubscribe yourself.

To manage your subscription, plase visit: http://lists.bikecollectives.org/listinfo.cgi/thethinktank-bikecollectives.org

The other list I have, and I suspect some folks who aren't on ThinkTank will be interested in, is those of us who spoke about joining forces as collective bike shops into one big organization, or a federation, or something. The three big things this organization would do are:

Serve as a (501c3) fiscal sponsor for startups. Of course, this would only be offered to bike projects in the US, as other countries have other systems and requirements. Insurance also was mentioned as a possible benefit.

Be able to potentially approach tool and/or part manufacturers directly for lower cost for frequently ordered consumables like cables, brake pads, etc.
Offer some sort of structure for a "Woofing" type program, where mechanics and organizers from one organization could visit and stay with another organization to check out their systems and organization.

Lastly, and the most easily doled out benefit this group could offer would be startup help for burgeoning projects. Either in the form of money that's collected from existing projects, grants, sales of parts to for-profit shops, etc...; and/or wisdom through offering sample paperwork from other orgs, such as sign up sheets, flyers, curricula, etc.

The last one there seemed like the easiest place to start, since a knowledge share wouldn't require all that much infrastructure to establish. In fact, it's already in the works. There is a google spreadsheet here that hopefully will grow as folks add their information and add columns to track info for other shops, and we can use this to network with shops doing similar work, or with similar programs. Please add your project's name, and it's details when you get a chance.

I've volunteered to be the lead person in getting this process started, but I have no experience organizing a group of existing organizations, so hopefully someone else can step in and offer up some expertise and keep the momentum going.

Thanks to everyone who came to the workshops, discussed options and potential conflicts. I don't think any of the bulleted list above is out of our reach, but navigating through some of the trickier bits via email could eat up some time.

josh.

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