20251129 Plenum

The Plenum is a regular meeting of all people involved with the space to talk about things and decide stuff. If you have any topics to add, go right ahead! Please sign your points with your name (by adding a "--~~~~" after your text).

After the Plenum, please follow the tasks outlined in Cycling the Plenum to archive the discussion.

Preamble

• The Plenum is an institution to decide what the space should look like, physically and in other ways, such as virtually.
• Things concerning the space should be discussed at a plenum.
• Everyone on-site can participate in that process, member or otherwise.
• Everyone can lead a plenum; no need for board members to do that.
• Topics should ideally be announced on the Plenum wiki page beforehand.
• The Plenum should be held in a language that everyone participating understands.
• Scheduling: Second Thursday of the month at 8 pm and the last Saturday after the cleanup (which starts at 4 PM)
• Plenums should be no longer than 90 minutes.

These are the Notes of the Plenum that took place on Saturday 2025-11-29 at 17:30

Topics for the Plenum

What are you currently working on?

• Francesco: Lasercutting Christmas Tree
• Karim: 3D Printing templates for leathercrafting
• Bira: Looking at 3MF addon for blender
• Iuri: Completing courses here at the lab and looking for a project
• Marco: Updating Safety Equipment
• Till and Heiko: Building a water turbine
• Hannah: Working on stained glass
• Wlad: Building Power Banks for Ukraine
• Brian: Curtains
• Niklas: Automatic bird photography
• Justin: Papercraft in Blender
• Aaron: Cleaning the Kitchen

Say thank you

• Chris B. for fixing the vacuum tube.
• Arthur for setting us up with a really powerful spot welder (see down below)
• Everyone that helped setting up the Christmas decorations
• Everyone who helped at the cleanup today
• Brian for making our curtains much nicer
  

Projects & Groups update

This is a quick update from group meetings at our space, other long-term space projects (e.g., Lasercutter, CNC, etc.) or of the lab internal projects.

• Kreativlabor Open Festival will take place again in 2026: Save the date 19-21 of June. Join #kreativlaboropen in slack for updates along the way.

The Spot Welder Discussion

We recently got new Kit added to the Makerlab: a DIY-ed Spot welder! It has enough power to handle just about everything that you would want to spot weld and has a Controller in it that can be configured pretty thoroughly to do any pulse pattern that you would need. Arthur and the others from EnergyForUkraine are using it extensively, but everyone else that needs to rework a battery pack or build metal enclosures for your projects can use it as well!

The handle however has a enscription on the side that is somewhat political. There is a lengthy discussion in slack that I don't feel unbiased enough to summarize objectively, so if you want to weigh in please read it yourself.

We (The Vorstand Team) have decided that it would be best to put our (The Makerlab as a whole) descision on the matter up for vote in this plenum. We feel that this occurence is indeed nuanced enough to not be caught by our general rules and the community should decide where we stand on this.

The Options are:

• Keep it as is
• Print a different handle for the time that the spot welder resides in the space

It is important to note here that this is not MuMaLab property, it is getting lent out to us free of charge long term by Arthur.

- AdrianM

Discussion and Voting results

• Everyone voted to keep it as it is
• But we also agreed that this is a special case with multiple factors playing into it, and that this approval does not mean that any similar (or even more bold) things are approved of here at our Space

Miscellaneous

• We have still a skin disinfectant dispenser left from Covid times. I think it would be a benefit to hang it next to the toilett key and buy some skin desinfectant. Especially with the shared tools and e.g. the toilet key, it has quite some super spreader vibes. We can probably buy something like this as part of the consumeables. Hot or not? -- Milian
  • everyone voted hot
• I added a new magnet board to the living room for more space for photos. Hot or not? -- Milian
  • everyone voted hot
• Last year, we organized a get-together at the Christmas Market for all course instructors to thank them for their ongoing volunteer work and to discuss plans for the coming year. I would like to continue this tradition and propose that the club invite the course instructors again this year. -- Milian
  • everyone voted hot
• I'd like to teach a small intro to stained glass workshop (I think people are interested). How do I go about scheduling it? What about supplies (a couple pairs of glass pliers- I could use mine for the class, but should the lab have some?, cheap glass to learn on, copper tape...) -- Hannah
  • everyone approved up to 100€ and continued consumabled for this
• Maybe we can find a temporary (3 months?) place where I could put the embroidery machine, I tried up on the Laser Cube but that is too sketchy -- Aaron
  • everyone agreed that Aaron can put it in the cellar until Feb 2026
• We should double-check during the plenum on winter management supplies, like salt, gravel, or shovels (and approve anything we need to buy). Technically the Hausmeister is supposed to clear the snow but that was always was late and not very thorough. Especially for our own yard area we should be ready so that we don't have huge plates of ice again -- Aaron
• 39C3 Streaming at the MuMaLab: Stream talks live at the MuMaLab during the CCC Congress (27. - 30. December 2025) for those who can't go to Hamburg this year. I (Karl) can be there almost the whole time except on two occasions. Are there people interested in joining me for the streams and is there one or more person to fill in for the two time slots I'm not available? Orga should be quite minimal: Some Glühwein, Snacks, maybe beamer setup at night. Not sure yet if the couch area or the desk area would be better. Needs to be discussed. Maybe small budget for buying snacks and Glühwein/Tschunk supplies. -- Karl
  • everyone approved of the following: Working in the space is still allowed, but we will put a notice for people to not do noisy stuff if possible, and to expect noise from streaming. Also the Christmas party will have priority on the day that it takes place.
  • everyone approved 50 bucks for Tschunk Budget

Vorstand updates

Outdoor area rules

I’ve summarized our official rules, especially regarding the use of our yard. You can find them here: Space/Yard. In short: The official rules for our yard are quite strict, and we don’t have any special rights to use it freely or make much noise. Nevertheless, the overall atmosphere in the area is very relaxed, it’s more of a “live and let live” situation. We just need to make sure not to disturb our neighbors. I’ve also added a note at the workshop gate reminding everyone to keep the doors closed when doing noisy work in the evening or at night, since not everyone knows that there are guest rooms in the neighboring building. -- Milian

New member mangement tool

We are looking for a reliable member management tool for long-term use. If anyone has recommendations based on their experience with another club, we would appreciate your input. -- Milian

Long-Term Renovation of the Building

Our landlord has started planning long-term renovations for our building, but so far they are only at the stage of estimating rough costs for the entire area. There are no concrete plans for the next few years, so we will need to continue working with the space as it currently is.

Cleanup event on the Kreativlabor

There is a cleanup event on the Kreativlabor area on the 3th of December at 12 o'clock. If you want to support just come to the meeting point at house 2.

Get Involved

If you want to be mentioned at the previous section as well, one of the easiest ways is to take one of our MiniJobs or to get involved in one of our Lab Projects.

This is a great way to participate in the Munich Maker Lab and contributing time helps to keep our space in a good shape.

Current key topics looking for additional support:

...

Stuff from the past

What was discussed at the last Plenum? What's the current status of those things? 20251113 Plenum

• The second desk light for the electronics corner arrived. After one weekend with a lot of people working in the electronics lab, I can't understand how we survived so long with just one desk light :-D -- Milian
  

Things to Buy

• 50€ for winter readiness stuff
  • approved by everyone

Request for online participation

- Karl (family stuff, hard to join on a Saturday)

If necessary, you can request to participate remotely (via jitsi). Please briefly describe why you want to participate remotely and what topic you want to discuss. (additionally to adding the topic on top!)