Membership Phase 3

Purpose

First, congratulations on becoming a member, and welcome to i3Detroit!

It's been observed that once a new member gets their key, the field is so wide-open it can be hard to figure out what to do next. This is intended to serve as a guide.

Everything here is optional, but it's a good idea to do all of these things at least once. Everything here is intended to help you level-up your membership skills. Do 'em in whatever order you like, of course.

Now that you have your key

• Find something in the space with a parking permit attached to it, and examine the permit.
  • Why was the permit made that way? What can you infer about past problems based on the design?
  • Is the permit expired or about to expire? Can you help the owner wrap things up?

• Get your butt onto Slack if you aren't already! It's where a LOT of activity happens, and you don't want to miss out.
  • If you're on a laptop/desktop, the web interface ([1]) is pretty good, the desktop client isn't really reqiured.
  • But on a phone, the mobile app is way better. Trust me on this! Once you get it installed, you'll probably want to turn off most of the notifications.
  • If it's not obvious how to do that, ask around until you find a member who can give you some pointers.
  • Join ten or twenty channels. Heck, if you feel like it, join all the channels that exist.
  • After a week, leave the ones that don't interest you. Or don't, it's harmless to lurk.

• Get trained on some equipment!
  • Meet some people who already use the machine you're interested in. Consider using Slack for this.
  • Read the machine's wiki page, and see if it has good training materials. If not, help find some!
  • Talk to the trainer(s) and ask for pointers of stuff you should pay attention to while shadowing an existing user.
  • Ask the trainer(s) if there's anything you can do to help with the next training session.
  • Once you're trained up and making stuff, remember to brag a little! Share what you made, and help others learn.

• Visit the web interface of each mailing list and play with the search function a bit.
  • Try looking at new-member intro posts. Do you notice any patterns among the ones that get lots of replies, and the ones that don't?
  • Can you find any topics that seem to come up regularly, dating all the way back to the group's founding?
  • Suppose there's something being discussed right now. Has it been talked about before?

• Try searching for some of those same topics on this very wiki.
  • Do you find those words in old meeting minutes?
  • Play with the "View History" function on some wiki pages. Like this one, click it right up at the top. This can tell you a lot!

• Get in touch with the zone coordinator of your favorite zone.
  • Since you're new, your perspective can be really helpful. Do you find the zone useful? Welcoming? Is it easy to find all the info you want?
  • If you've identified room for improvement, talk to the ZoCo about how you can help.
  • Something as simple as refreshing the zone-colored paint on some worn tool handles can really help.
  • Or spiffing up the zone's wiki page, hint hint...

• Find an experienced member who would like to co-host a Friday Nite Tour with you.
  • Sometimes the #space-business channel can be a good place to find and coordinate that stuff.
  • This is a good time to revisit the waiver and sign-in procedure, since everyone who visits for a tour needs to sign in as your guest.
  • Did the visitors have any weird misconceptions about the space?

• Check out that gorgeous calendar on i3detroit.org.
  • Look at all those recurring events! See if you can attend one session of every single one...
  • Oh hey, it would also be cool to add i3's calendar feed to your personal calendar. Makes it easier to stay on top of things.