Are you familiar with the term "bike shedding"? If you have been a member of a club, committee or other community that tries to organize something, I am sure you have experienced it even if the term is not one you know.
Parkinson observed that a committee whose job is to approve plans for a nuclear power plant may spend the majority of its time on relatively unimportant but easy-to-grasp issues, such as what materials to use for the staff bikeshed, while neglecting the design of the power plant itself, which is far more important
Our local all-volunteer maker space devolves into bike shedding at every opportunity, and it is making me want to leave and join the forthcoming commercial maker space to escape it.
Symptoms not causes
It's not even political or malicious, it's just everyone has ideas but nobody takes action, and nobody is empowered to take action, because everyone gets a say and every say is equally weighted.
Unfortunately it means everyone also gets a veto.
I offered to buy a $500 USD large-format 3D printer for the space (buying it would avoid budgets/collections/yada) ... yes, even that was bikeshedded to death. Even if they could agree now I don't want to.
Holding out for a hero
(Aside: You like my Super Guy cartoon? I drew it on my iPad pro)
The problem is compounded by the fact it is all "ours". Our budget, our space, our tools, our time, our community.
Even though "us" is 20 diverse groups of overlapping Venn diagrams of interest, from sewing through to battling robots.
What we need is an empowered leadership but we will never get that because of the above.
Why do I care?
I joined a long time ago with a dream of making my own metal lightsaber (sans working blade of course). I am still not allowed to use the equipment that would take because the rare times the training is available ... I am not. I have paid for lathe training twice, been booked in on the CNC a couple times, but never happened.
This is our expensive laser that I can use but I am not allowed to because I wasn't formally trained ... hence I gave up teaching the old one because why bother?
My hope will be the commercial space, being a private, for-profit enterprise, will be forced to overcome these challenges. Either that or I will have to continue to buy my own equipment.
Lesson?
Don't allow your communities to get so big without having policies that prevent this happening, because it will.
Our directors are elected but are not allowed to make decisions. It's crazy.
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