[hackerspaces] payed staff vs volunteers

[Joshua Pritt]

At makers local 256 it's more of a everyone is a volunteer kind of thing.
If you put something in the garbage can that stacks above the rim then you
just take it to the dumpster and put in a fresh bag. I think everyone had
taken the trash out at least once. Then once a month or every two months
when it gets really cluttered and dirty they have a clean up day where
several members will volunteer (sometimes everyone pitches in a few bucks
to order pizza or whatever) and get the place tidied up. This works really
well as far as I can tell.
At melbourne makerspace in Florida we decided to offer a free membership in
exchange for extra help cleaning up. Several members also help mopping and
cleaning up from time to time too so it doesn't become a crazy nightmare.

The general idea is for everyone to clean up after themselves as a nice
rule. We keep saying, "your momma doesn't work here" to keep the idea
going.
On Dec 14, 2014 1:37 PM, "Overflo" <flo at tekstix.com> wrote:

> ohai
>
> we had this discussion before at metalab vienna.
> there is a makerspace in vienna where they have paid staff. the whole
> culture there is VERY different from ours.
> we decided we dont want this for our space and that voluntary engagement
> is a very important part of staying open and selfregulating.
> this works so lala for metalab, could be better, could be much worse.
> especially cleaning and maintaining all the hardware is a tedious
> struggle, but i doubt it would be more efficient  if people would be paid
> to take care of this tasks.
> in fact it would make everyone else not contribute anymore.
>
>
> we DO have a paid cleaning company coming in one day a week for 4 hours to
> clean the toilets and mob the floors.
> that was a very good decision.
>
>
>
> :*
> -flo
>
>
>
> On Sun, 14 Dec 2014 15:20:32 -0300, Florencia Edwards <floev22 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > What do you think, I believe it really changes how the whole space
> works,
> > and how members behave if you have payed staff or volunteers. Also it
> > changes the commitment in tasks. If anyone has had experience with both,
> > could you please give the pros and cons? Or if you just had experience
> with
> > one, it would be nice to know how it's worked for you and what was good
> and
> > bad about it.
> >
> > In our space, we had payed staff, but members behaved more like
> costumers
> > who wanted their services to be perfect, than  an active community that
> > does things not only with their own projects,but also for the space.
> Payed
> > staff was with a low wage, but they where happy they could get enough to
> > get by, and build a community, help around... But their was also the
> > feeling that it would be good to engage in the possibility of giving
> > rotation to the staff. For example: people that came in, wanted to help
> > .needed the money, and really wanted to be staff. Why shouldn't they get
> a
> > chance? So we thought that maybe voting for a staff and rotating it
> could
> > be a good idea. But we are not sure.
> >
> > All thoughts, links and opinions more than welcome.
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