[hackerspaces] Attention All HackerSpace Safety Directors And Those Interested In Space Safety

[Ron Bean]

Hank The Curmudgeon <hkrishman at gmail.com> writes:

>Safety Training
>Safety Policy Review And Development
>Incident Investigation and Response
>Safety Information
>Anything else safety related

One issue we've talked about is how to set up training and check-out
procedures for determining who is qualified to use a particular machine.
All of our equipment will be owned by individual members and leased to
the group for $1/year. But just because I can afford to buy a particular
machine and lease it to the group does not make me an expert on that
machine. So, how do I know I'm teaching people the right way to use it?
Do we have to go out and rent an expert (if we don't have one in house),
or are there standards we can borrow from elsewhere?

It would help to know what other spaces are doing, and what they 
recommend. I'd particularly like to know how Techshop does it, because
they have a lot of equipment and they teach regular "safety and basic
usage" classes.

This is in addition to a general "safety culture", which would include 
things like paying attention to likely failure modes.