Aloha Everyone! Chúc mừng năm mới! (Happy New Year!)
It’s been a while since I have sent a message out and a lot has happened… Wait, that’s what I said last time! We have some great news about our technology and our facilities and we wanted to be sure to share some details with you.
New Copiers are Coming
We’ve ordered three new copiers that will be delivered by the end of February. The current printers have (mostly) served us well, but as anyone with a Chromebook knows, it’s not perfect. The new printers will support printing from all current platforms and provide more reliable performance for all of us. These new printers will also add security and privacy of documents – you will need to enter a personal code to release the documents in the print queue. Additionally, the printers will be on a service contract which will ensure uptime in case our resident copier repair tech (ahem, that’s me) is out. And YES, these new printers will have scanning capabilities. Copies, printing, and scanning will remain free for members.
New Door Locks
We will be installing a new door lock system. August (the current app-based lock system) has been really good to us and was a great starting option. However, the time has come for a more robust system. The new system will feature an access pad – to gain entry, you just need to hold your smartphone up to the access pad and do a little twist of your wrist. The new locks will not have a delay, so when the door closes after hours, it will immediately be locked. This will increase the security of our members and our shared space. As usual, this is only applicable to Unlimited Members who have access 24/7.
New Member Dashboard
In the coming months, we will be rolling out a new member management system to replace our current system. The new system will have a web-based and mobile platform so you can choose whichever option is more convenient. Like any new program, there will be an adjustment period to learn the new system, but we are optimistic that it will be significantly better overall. The primary driver of this change was for improved backend management: as we have grown, the current system became increasingly difficult to manage. Finally, apologies in advance – everyone will need to re-enter your credit card information when the new system goes live due to credit card privacy rules.
New Thermostats
You may have noticed that we’ve been changing out all of the thermostats for improved energy savings and comfort. The old thermostats could not be programmed efficiently or easily, which meant that the inside blower units were running every Sunday even though the building chiller was not providing us with cold air. The new thermostats give us complete flexibility in scheduling and gives us control of all of the thermostats from afar – all 14 of them. We will be changing the thermostats in Suite 200 very soon. Thank you for your patience – we know, it is COLD!
VoIP Phones
You may have noticed the addition of phones in the Small Meeting Room and the Boardroom. These are voice-over-IP (VoIP) phones and are for you to use like a regular phone – there is no need to dial any codes to get an outside line. Do you want us to install phones in the red London phone booths? Let us know.
Internet Connection and Wi-Fi
We’ve upgraded our connection to a full 1Gbps/1Gbps (that’s gigabytes per second, and yes, that’s REALLY fast)! Previously we had a 100Mbps burstable to 1Gbps – this means that it normally operated at 100Mbps, but if there is a need to go higher because of usage or demand, then it would burst up higher. This was super confusing because when you ran a speedtest, it would not show 1Gbps causing some of you to ask me, “What’s Uuuuppp?” I’ve recently transitioned to cloud storage for my personal files and photos and have been uploading 3TB of data to the cloud, which would have taken me 733 hours to do at home, which is about one month! Instead, it took me a total of about 24 hours to upload everything at Impact Hub HNL! For the fastest speeds, you can use the wired connection downstairs and in offices.
We also have a 300Mbps backup connection that automatically kicks in if our main connection goes down for any reason. We were careful to make sure that the two connections do not share facilities upstream to provide redundancy. Which means if there is a power outage at one of the facilities it should not affect both connections. Super geeky, I know.
We recently needed to move the main connection to a new server rack which required us to take the main connection offline. The backup kicked in as designed and no one even knew anything was being done.
The Wi-Fi access points we use are stadium grade/carrier grade. Translation: it’s the same equipment many stadiums use for Wi-Fi to provide service to a lot of devices in a confined area. It will easily provide access to 500 devices concurrently in our space.
All of this for you, our valued members! As always, if you have any questions, or comments, please do not hesitate to reach out to me directly.
Nam, Co-Founder and Chief Geeky Officer