Talk:Laser Cutter 2013
Financing
I originally proposed that the laser cutter be financed with at least 50% donations, with the remainder being loans. The last time we tried to round up commitments (and it's probably not fair to hold people to those commitments now so many months later), that turned out to be very difficult. I estimate that it will be hard to get more than 25% donations.
This means that Hack Manhattan's general budget, which is in part financed by people who don't care about the laser cutter or may even be annoyed by the space it takes up, will have to bear some of the risk of the laser cutter. That could be quite a lot of risk in the worst case scenario.
I've added some scenarios here:
http://wiki.hackmanhattan.com/Laser_Cutter#Funding
I don't really mind running certain aspects of HM as a business, but we are also limited in our ability to do so, for example in staffing. --Guan (talk) 21:31, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
Pricing
Antonio: "We want to promote membership but at the same time we don't ant people to join for a month just so that they can use the laser for free or at a highly reduced price. Could have tiered prices for members that have been in good standing for more than 6 months? So really 3 tiers, member, long standing member, non-member."
Guan: "Maybe we could say that you have to commit for 3 months (or even prepay) to get the discount? I don't really mind people joining to get the discount, and getting that discount immediately, if they signal their intention to stay for a while. And I want new members to feel welcome. (Or maybe have a rule that you can't re-join for N months if you leave after less than M months?) I'm not sure it's such a huge issue though. If you get a 50 cent/minute discount, you would have to cut 200 minutes in a month for that to be worthwhile. Plus you have to show up for two meetings before you can even get started. We could also just make the member discount smaller, maybe 25% like we did for classes. The donor/lender discount is the only one that we really need to fix before we decide; member discounts can be adjusted along the way."
Chris: "Either delay discount to 2nd month of membership, or apply it only if 2nd month is prepaid with first probably could be sufficient to prevent joining temporarily to game the cutting prices."
