Member Manual

Last Edited: 04/6/2021

Welcome

Welcome to the Pumping Station: One, Chicago's premiere hackerspace. We do woodworking, software, metalworking, art, crafts, electronics, chemistry, power wheel racing, TARDIS building, green technology, nanotechnology, tinkering, dismantling of robots, assembling of robots, music, biotechnology, CNC, and the many ways all those subjects (and more) intersect and collaborate.

Quick list of things to do

Important Documents

Read the Bylaws
Read the Membership agreement
Read our Policies

Things to do

Sign the waiver
Join the mailing lists
Come to Member Meetings to see whats going on and meet other members
Build something awesome
Join a class and learn something new
Start a thing and inspire someone
Bring your friends/guests - some guidelines
Edit the Wiki
Ask if you don't know

Your Role (as a Member)

As a member of Pumping Station: One, you aren't just buying shared use of a workshop, you're joining a community of people who love learning and making things, and sharing their knowledge with others. That learning and sharing ethos is what makes a hackerspace great, so embrace it to the greatest extent that you can.

This hackerspace belongs to and is controlled by its members, so by joining up, It's your hackerspace. If you see something wrong or broken, fix it. (or if you don't know how, bring it to the attention of someone who does and offer to help; you'll learn something!) If you want something to work differently, make it happen (the board, area hosts, and other long time members can usually be of help here). You as a member are allowed to be at the space any time! Talk to a board member to get your keycode, fob, or key. We'll work out which one you get.

Member Meetings

Every Tuesday night at 8pm we have an open house. You probably attended one of these before you became a member. Everyone is encouraged to come on Tuesday nights to see what other people are working on and share ideas. It's always full of activity and lots of fun.

Before the open house, we have a meeting of our Board of Directors. It's mostly about facility maintenance, paying bills, and whatever other issues we're dealing with at the moment. If you don't want to attend but want to stay in the loop, you can read the meeting minutes.

Orientation Program

You're required to go to the PS1 Orientation class within 3 months of joining if you haven't already! Please see Orientation Program Policy.

At your first meeting

The first time you attend a meeting, be sure to do a couple things:

Sign a waiver - VERY IMPORTANT everyone who walks in the door must sign a waiver, including guests.
Introduce yourself at the meeting.
Get a tour - an official tour leader should be announced during the meeting.

Voting

Most decisions are made by a vote of the members. Here's how voting works:

All members may propose votes.
Only members in good standing may vote.
As a required step, the vote proposal is run past the board of directors for proper wording, etc. - this helps prevent people from disagreeing with your proposal because it's written poorly.
The proposing member places the item before the membership (BOTH on mailing list and during a meeting) at least 7 days prior to a meeting.
During this period, people may read and discuss the proposal, and offer their own counter-proposals.
At the next scheduled meeting, the proposal and any counter proposals are voted on.

Board of Directors

Pumping Station: One is a direct democracy of its full members, but most of the heavy lifting is delegated to the board of directors . They pay the bills and coordinate things behind the scenes. If you have any questions, you can talk to one of them during a meeting or email them at info@pumpingstationone.org.

Facility Operations

The people primarily responsible for the various shops in the hackerspace are the Area Hosts. They are volunteers who maintain their areas and frequently certify people on their area's tools.

Tools

You must be authorized before you can use many tools. A list of authorized members is listed for each power tool on the item's Equipment page.

If you break a tool, the WORST thing you can do is to make it look like it's not broken and leave before anyone notices. Someone could be killed. What you should do, in order of preference, is:

fix it, if you are capable
put a "broken" sign on it if you can't fix it, with notes about who you are and what you found.
tell the mailing list what is broken about the tool and figure out how to fix it.

Accidents happen, and you will not be called out or derided for a simple accident.

Interested in learning?

Come by any of the events on the calendar. A few things require you to be a member or to pay a parts fee. Read the fine print.

Interested in leading?

Pick a topic
Gauge interest from the membership
Pick a date
Talk to a Board member to get your event put on the calendar or email info @ pumpingstationone.org for help

For more extensive advice read New events

Login into computers and Wiki

Your PS1 credentials will be provisioned when you create your member account. These credentials are shared among all PS1 services.

You can reset your password by clicking "Forgot Password" when logging into PS1 services.

Managing my membership

How do I re-join Ps:One?

If your membership has lapsed or is suspended and you want to become a member again, first log into your account in Wild Apricot using your email. Once you are logged in, you can input your payment methods and membership type going to the Join Us section.

How do I get a key-fob?

To get a key fob you can:

attend a Member Meeting and asking a Board member for one - they will help you input your fob number into your wild apricot account.
take one from the bucket near the front door.
buy one from the gum-ball machine near the bathroom in electronics. You will need 2 quarters (please, leave the empty ball on top of the machine afterwards so we can refill it).
buy your own 125khz RFID token (rings, cards, implants...).

How do I activate a keyfob?

log in to the Member Database - https://membership.pumpingstationone.org/login
make sure you have an active PS1 user account
click "view profile" - https://membership.pumpingstationone.org/Sys/Profile
click "edit profile"
go to the "RFID Tag" field
find your tag number - the red tags PS1 provides have their numbers printed on them. If you have an unnumbered tag you can find a USB RFID reader around the space. Install the reader in computer, open a text editor, and scan your tag to get the number.
input your tag number including all leading zeros, separate multiple tags with commas.
click save
wait at least 15 minutes and test your tag on either the front or back door
thank Ron Olson for being awesome and getting this system running - if you have issues please email info@pumpingstationone.org, or get on the slack #systems-group channel for assistance.

How do I change my membership level?

If you want to change your membership level, please send us an email to info@pumpingstationone.org letting us know.

Can I keep my authorizations and ID checks if I cancel my membership?

We allow members to cancel and rejoin PS1 at their leisure. Generally we try to maintain user accounts for as long as possible, but in order to maintain our membership database we may remove accounts that are expired for longer than 6 months. Members that have come back after some time away are strongly encouraged to do an authorization as a refresher to get up to speed on new equipment and/or best practices. Having said this, if you haven't been gone for too long, let us know and we might be able to let you keep your ID checks and authorizations.

Whenever you are ready to re-join the space, you can follow the same steps you did the first time you did. This steps are described in the the Join section of the website. Please, use the same email you used the first time you joined.

How do I terminate my membership?

It depends: are you currently paying with Paypal or with your credit card in Wild Apricot? Depending on your payment method, you will have to read one of the options below.

Terminating Wild Apricot membership

To stop your membership, you only need to log into Wild Apricot, go to "Invoices and payments" in your profile and click on "Stop recurring payments".

If you do this, your membership will be terminated after the next Renewal due date plus the grace period.

Terminating Paypal membership

You have to log into your Paypal account and stop recurring payments from there. We can't stop them for you.

How do I change the credit card on my account?

To change your payment info, you first need to log into Wild Apricot, go to "Invoices and payments" in your profile and click on "Stop recurring payments".

Then, you can input your new payment method and membership type by going to the Join Us section.