Official MTF Meetings

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June 22nd 2018 MTF Board Meeting

Meeting at Midsouth Makers, 5:30pm. Present board members: Claudio, Joe, Brad. Guests: George Spake, Tim Brownawell, John Hall, Mike Cochran, Bryce Sharp

Old Business

  • Find old meeting notes.
  • Brad: where to put notes? Github?
  • Joe: Doesn’t use GitHub, but noted that there’s a discussion GitHub issues as a way to track community-desired agenda items.
  • Vote: 3 votes to store meeting notes on GitHub.

Agenda / Open meeting

  • Claudio: We’ve sucked at holding meetings & being open; MTF has been a passthrough instead of driving efforts. New efforts from the community could reinvigorate MTF efforts.
  • Joe notes that this was the original purpose of the #mtf-contrib slack channel
  • Joe: MTFs most active community engagement was the FIT partnership.
  • George: Voiced concern over user group attendance, and encouraging participation from folks in the user groups
  • John: Free time & bandwidth doesn’t coincide with the meet ups. Looking for ways to participate that doesn’t fit user group meetings. Express desire for MTF to explicitly list the tasks that need to be take care of.
  • George voices concerns on problems: marketing issue, silo issue, apathetic community… need more that are like Code Coop / Ted Patterson.
  • Joe: Shared history of MTF & GeekMemphis heritage.
  • George & Joe: discussion on make up the community and what membership entails
  • John: expresses difficulty in fundraising for hackmemphis
  • George: Proposes counting & tracking user group attendance / metrics.
  • John: Is there enough in-house organization to help all the groups do consistent planning & scheduling and getting big talks organized?
  • Joe: Suggest demonstrating that process and how it helps you build a network and grow your skills. “We should write this up”
  • George & John & Joe discuss merits of different types of talks and difficulty levels of meet ups.
  • Joe: We need to tell the story (on the blog) about how meet ups help people level up.
  • Bryce comments on group attendees needing motivation. Not worried about silos, we’re a niche community.
    • Each user group should aim to open source a beginners tutorial.
    • All groups share them all at the same time and then share a show-up and drink here.
    • Memtech fundraising event / group cross-pollination events.
  • George likes idea of “getting started” pages for all groups, and an event where all groups do something in unison.
  • John notes that the MGD group has the same problems and talk about the same sort of issues.
  • Bryce: Likes the idea of an “intro course” & social events & networking.
  • Bryce: it’s hard to talk to college students… new languages are daunting. Maybe get them into a language-agnostic group / event / meeting.
  • JOE: FINANCIALS
    • About $7800 in the bank
    • About $2000 of that is GiveCamp money
    • Some is from TechCamp, while the rest has been collected or donated over the years.
    • Some recurring expenses include domain names and hosting stuff.
    • Bryce: suggests paid advertising to promote the user groups and community / generating some marketing collateral.
  • John: expresses desires to learn from past experiences and know what’s been done in the past.
  • Bryce: More ideas on marketing.
  • Joe: regarding marketing, wants to see metrics & outcomes from marketing efforts.
  • Brad: moves to adjourn. Others 2nd.