This page contains the final list of nominees with submitted bios and pictures for the 2025 Quelab Board of Directors' election.

The Election will run Wednesday February 14th, 2022, through 8:00 p.m. on Sunday the 18th.

Here are your nominees:

• Aaron Bumgarner
• Adric Menning
• Ed Shestak
• Rebecca Snyder
• Tim Torres

No bio submitted yet for Aaron Bumgarner.

I was born into a creative life in rural New Mexico on 10 acres of land My dad a jack of all trades, was a woodworker at the time, and my mom an editor & typist, and serious bibliophile. My older sister was a born teacher, and I often her subject. With plenty of land and left behind structures to explore and build and play on. Later on my mom brought me up the rest of her life in the non-profit non-traditional education world. While my dad did what he did best, making all the things… and that was to show me ideas and skills all around science and making. .

I was involved in Science fairs, Super Computer Challenge, and Peer Justice, as ways to get more interesting things to do than rural highschool natively offered. I was one of like 4 computer literate kids in my class.

In 1996 i started local 2600 hacker quarterly meeting here in Albuquerque, with the goal of attracting and networking the geeky tech enthused people around town, it worked, Manyrelated meetings and fieldtrips were made including several Defcon conference trips.

In 2002, I attended Hackers On Planet Earth conference, during that visit to NYC i visited my first Hackerspace, NYC Resistor. That made me really interested in having a Hackerspace/Makerspace in Albuquerque (at the time Makerspace had not yet been coined) 2008 Some friends met through the 2600 meetings. were on an online chat discussing the idea of starting a coworking or hackerspace. and i was a strong proponent for the latter. 2009 we started getting discussions and things together and by 2011 we opened the first location of Quelab.

I've been continuously involved in Quelab ever since, first serving as secretary, and then as a board member. In early 2020 I was elected as president of Quelab, I accepted despite being very busy with my own pandemic stuff and my fathers recent passing, I accepted for the good of the organization. I very much wanted to make sure stayed a resource for folks during and after the pandemic.

I guess nobody expects to have to deal with a pandemic and two building floods. But by the time the 2nd one hit, i was feeling strangely competent at trying to balance the demands of the members with the reality's presented by the disasters. And while i really didn't expect it to include finding us a new home and making all the decisions needed to try and move us and speed along things so we could get back to “normal”. But while its had its upsides and its downsides, It has been the community that has kept me going.

I hope over the next few years as we settle into our new home, to continue to build out our classes and workshops and clubs,. and bring together more from the dispersed Albuquerque maker world into our community. While at the same time staying true to our small roots.

I’m Ed Shestak, a retired mechanical engineer. My wife, Chris, and I bought our house in ABQ February 2017 and moved into it May 2019. (Our son and daughter-in-law lived there during the interim.) I had read a little about makerspaces as the concept evolved, and after our move-in turmoil had largely subsided, started looking into options. I joined Quelab December 2019, being largely drawn to the 24/7 access to equipment I can’t justify owning, and to the member responsibility aspects of the organization.

Now that my consulting work with my former employer has completely and officially ended, I look forward to spending more time at Quelab. I very much enjoyed my engineering career, and I’m more drawn to using and hopefully helping to improve the areas like the woodshop and the CNC router. However, my 16 years as a member of the Wells County Public Library,

https://wellscolibrary.org/library-history/, board of trustees has given me some exposure to policy/administrative roles. Some major events during my tenure on that board:

• Early during my tenure, I supported the efforts of the senior board members to replace an under-performing Director with one of the senior staff members who had management talent and aspirations, but not the state-mandated credentials of a Library Director (Master of Library Science Degree). We petitioned the state and received limited term approval of a non-traditional organization structure, with co-directors consisting of an Administrative Director (the candidate while she completed her MLS degree) and a Technology Director (the staff information systems specialist, who had an MLS degree).
• Later during my tenure, I was heavily involved in a library building expansion project. This spanned several years, starting with community needs and desires surveys, and then proceeding with feasibility studies, concept proposals, architect firm selection, general contractor selection, and finally construction. During the final two years of the project, another board member and I swapped places in the roles of Board President and Building Committee Chairman.

I’m excited about the new location, even though it is a little bit longer drive from my house than the old location (10 minutes vs. 3 minutes). Having separate rooms for all the major activity areas seems like it will offer a better opportunity to get and keep each area well-functioning. I look forward to helping this happen, whether this is as a Board Member or just a regular member.

No bio submitted yet for Rebecca Snyder, though she has submitted bio information for previous BoD elections; that info can be found on pages for nominees in the 2018, 2018 Special Election, 2019, and 2021 pages.

No bio submitted yet for Tim Torres.