My apologies for taking so long to get a post up about our last meeting.  The shortest and sweetest description of it I can give is, it was excellent.  To note before anything is said, I have the pictures at home.  They just aren’t put up yet.  I’ll edit the post and add them as soon as I can.

[Edit] As promised, pictures are now up.  Check out the Flickr and Facebook postings to see the rest.

We had a record number of people show up.  Quite well more than I think any of us expected.  A whole seven new people showed up, nearly doubling our attendance from the previous meetings.  To top it all off, four of those that showed up knew no one in the group previously, and found us entirely based on our web presence.  So welcome to all those that were brave enough to drop in.  For those that have yet to come, the new people showed up and left with all limbs intact.  We seriously try not to bite, and those that do are kept chained in the shed out back as pets.

In all the meetings seem to be improving as well.  We spent a bit of time covering various portions of our agenda, and had quite a bit more time dedicated to goofing off.  A few of us even managed to pick a lock or two this time around!  There was a lot of good discussion about the non profit status of the organization.  Some suggestions on places to go and people to contact about getting everything up and going.  There’s still a lot of research to be done, but we are certainly well on our way!  The idea was only thrown out there, but everyone definitely needs to be thinking and brainstorming about our bylaws as we’ll be working on our draft soon.  So everyone please keep the ideas rolling, we need every bit of help we can get.  At the end of it all, we finished what business there was to cover and really had a great time speculating what the group can accomplish and directions for it to head in.  Pretty much it came down to the idea that there is little we won’t be able to do.

Woot!  The paperwork has officially come back.  We are now an official non profit organization within the State of Tennessee.  Keep in mind this is only within the Tennessee.  We have not yet filed for 501(c)3 status.

That being said.  Our next steps will be to file with the IRS for a tax ID so that we can make tax free purchases. Once we have all of that in place, and if the group is continuing to grow and do well, we’ll look into the becoming a national non profit.  From what I’ve been told that costs somewhere around $750.  So that will likely want to wait until we are a little more established.  If anyone knows of any good tax advice for such things, or anything else financially related to non profits, feel free to comment on it.

Well we have things together now.  We have a site up (with a wiki and forum), we have e-mail address being doled out, we have a monthly meeting scheduled, and we even have someone from a hackerspace in Chicago coming to the city for a trip that is interested in meeting us.

It is now time to work on our next step.  We want to obtain non profit status to provide us a few advantages.  The biggest one being an incentive for someone to let us borrow some space to use.  The other portion of this is once we are incorporated we will be able to have a bank account to collect money into to continue all our other plans with.  The tricky part is that we do need money in order to do this.  We need a total of $100 to file all of the paperwork (a page or two) with the state.  This will not hold things up for long, but I did want to offer everyone an opportunity to chip in what they can if they want to.  There is no specific amount that anyone has to donate, the more important thing is how many people are willing to help.

If you wish to contribute anything big or small, feel free to contact me here.