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=== Management ===▼

We are light on governance and have a level structure. There are no committees, no officers, and fundamentally no member is any more important than any other. Four of our members are directors of a limited company - [https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/07628386 Reading Makerspace Ltd] [[Media:Reading Maker Space Limited M&A.pdf|Articles of Association]] - that has been set up solely to provide us with sufficient legal identity to pay the rates, energy bills (which you can imagine are quite large), and buy things such as insurance. Our current directors are Andrew, Tony, Vance, [[User:Stever|Steve]] and Mark. Members often describe our governance arrangements as a ‘do-ocracy’ – things get done by people on the basis of consensus, those who put in the effort to get things done tend to form small groups and agree how they should be done.▼

=== How to help ===▼

rLab survives almost entirely on the donations of people who share our ideals and goals, mostly this comes in the form of the regular monthly contributions from members so the most helpful thing you can do for rLab is to join up! From time to time we also get donations, of cash, equipment, materials etc. from rLab members, the public, businesses and organizations that support our activities. Our [[donations]] page will list items that we've recently received and anything that we're currently on the lookout for. ▼

If you do join rLab then the most helpful thing you can do is just to be there, to help out keeping the space clean and running smoothly, and to share your knowledge and experience. Members can also share information on [[projects]] they're working on to help inspire others, as well as running or taking part in [[workshops]] to help spread the skills we have so that we can all work together to make cool stuff. The projects page will also list internal projects that we're currently working on and which might be seeking help, anything from trained professionals to simple grunt-work moving and lifting, anything that you're able to do to move these projects forward will be much appreciated around the lab. If you have special skills or knowledge in a specific area that you think others will want to know then you could write a [[technique guides|technique guide]] that we'll keep here on the wiki to help and inspire others to take on more creative and interesting projects. rLab runs [[Events|events]] sometimes, most common of these are the repair cafe events that we host every 2 months but there's also a selection of others. Most events are only open to members but the repair cafe and selected others might be open to the public so long as numbers aren't too high. If you've got something to showcase that you feel might make a good event then please let us know as exciting and interesting events are an excellent way of encouraging participation, previous events have covered topics as wide-ranging as CAD and lock-picking.▼

Most of the discussion between rLab members that isn't in-person takes place on our [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/reading-hackspace google group], you don't have to have to join the group when you join rLab, and indeed quite a few of our members either only read the mailing list occasionally or not at all. If you're not on the group though you may find it quite hard to get your voice heard when we're discussing things important to rLab like the direction that the group takes or how we spend money. If you'd like to join the mailing list without having a google account then the instructions [https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/15393/how-to-subscribe-by-email-to-a-google-groups-mailing-list-with-daily-digest-opti here] should help you.▼