Community Meeting 20191017

Attendees: AM (@amcewen), MG (@magman2112), VO, CH (@chris-does), ES (@epsaul), JP (@jackie1050), SG (@DoESsean)

Review of/actions from last meeting

SG to make media mailouts a quarterly thing (Carried over - 3 months)

SG to create a list of publications we could send things to - The list hs been created, and includes radio, tv, magazines, newspapers and blogs. Next step is to find relevant email addresses for those outlets and make first contact.

MG and SG to go through boxes on the storage shelves to get rid of any old ones and make sure everyone who has a membership has a box - (Carried over - 3 months)

SG to work with laser team to collate ideas for laser room tidyness and small scale maintenance after a couple of weeks, then create the poster - A github has been raised, but there hasn't been enough input yet to finalise this (Carried over - 1 month)

SG to update our mailing list of councillors and the like - An email has been sent to the talk mailbox inviting them to include people they think should be on there, remove those that shouldn't.

ZZ to buy whiteboard gaffer tape for people with long-running prints to leave their details on 3d printers - JP suggested using post-its, so we'll try that first.

JP to apply to Awesome Liverpool for funding for Festival of Maintenance - Ross applied, we were unsuccessful. ACTION - JP to find out why we were unsuccessful.

SG to "come up with options" re: adding copy to the mugs to say what we do - A list has been drawn up, although they're quite makery. Another pass will be made. ACTION -SG to create a github issue so others can join in.

SG to find out whether anyone would be interested in trying to sell makery stuff at London Road market - Email sent to Google group, no responses so far.

SG to email Jason and find out whether there are plans for the light on the landing, immediately outside our front door – ZZ and JP interested in making a statement lampshade for it, but only if Jason doesn’t already have any plans for it - Jason has said that's fine, so JP and ZZ can start getting creative.

AL to do a tip run with 'Fresh, Stale, Last Chance' items - (Carried forward - 1 month)

Recent Events

Festival of Maintenance - The event went well, Adrian and Laura James went on the radio to promote both the Festival and DoES. There is talk that the Festival may come back to Liverpool in the future. There was negative feedback regarding the availability of vegetarian food options.

CH spoke about the diversity of views on offer, and the variety of different types of maintenance.

Repair Cafe - MG spoke about the success of the event. 17 out of 21 items were repaired, which is a great return. It will become a regular event now, as the feedback was so positive - the plan is to do it on the last Sunday of each month.

Theory of Change - AM spoke on this. It was organised by Zarino and Helen, and thanks were made for their support. The idea of the event was to try and figure out what change DoES wants to bring to the world, and how we can go about doing that. There were extensive notes made, which will be put on the Wiki and then forwarded out to the Google Group. ACTION - AM to create a poster with the DoES Values for everyone to see them.

Synthesizer Meet - MG spoke. The last meet was popular, and Jason suggested it might be something that could be run as a bigger event for the Fabric District Festival. Aside from the meet itself, people were shown around the space and showed an interest in co-working or taking a desk.

Liverpool Open Studios - JP explained the idea of Open Studios. It was surprising how many people came along, given that you don't need a special day to come into DoES. It's worth being a part of as it's free to do, no matter what the eventual benefits are.

Upcoming Events

Ladies of Code Hackathon - LoC is set up to get more women into coding. This will be a two day event that puts the focus on that, and is tied in with Hacktober, with the idea of publishing some open source code.

Global GovJam - A service design jam, so people trying to work out how to design better services and make things easier for people. This one is focused on local and national Government services. It's free to attend.

Plastic Playgroup - Is a chance to recycle plastics and make things out of it, hosted every two weeks.

Repair Cafe - Will run again on October 27th, we're hoping for it to be as good as the last one.

Christmas Party - 14th of December, logistics to follow.

Christmas Decorations Workshop - 8th of December (light pencil), logistics to follow.

Finances

Financials201909

We discussed the rates issues. ES raised the point that we should be careful with any surveyor that the valuation could go up as well as down.

The idea is once again raised of opening a Patreon account, and linking that to a newly reinvigorated YouTube channel. ES suggested his kids might be interested in helping with that, and Ant told us that his brother is a YouTuber, so he can speak to him and see if he'd be interested in giving us some advice.

Promotion

Running basic skills classes - Julian suggests 3-5 on a Thursday, 'Get to Know' sessions. ACTION - SG to find out who would be interested in running classes and what type of things we could run them in. These could be live streamed on YouTube, with the videos also uploaded.

Promotional Pricing - Couple of open github issues regarding this. SG suggested we could try a 'Get your third month free' promotion, and JP reraised the idea of referral bonus - AM pointed out that the existing member would be free to reject this bonus should they choose to.

How would this work? CH suggested free membership (or pay for membership and your first month is free), SG had proposed a third month free offer, low introductory payments (ala Gym membership)

How do we better go about promoting what is on? At a very simple level, even just asking people to share our events could help a lot.

AOB

Helen Campbell to leave DoES - It was agreed that losing Helen is a real blow to the space. From the points Helen raised in her email, we discussed cleanliness as something that can be remedied by us. ACTION - SG to organise Hack the Space day.

Other items raised were the difference between the workshop - which is expected to be a little chaotic - and the co-working space, where the lack of uniformity makes it look less professional. This is something we can work towards remedying.

Reintroduce Github issues to Community Meetings - SG has suggested adding a couple of specific Issues per meeting. These can be bumped if time gets tight.

Ideas for sheet material storage - Ties in to the action MG and SG have to organise the storage space. Revisit after that.

An idea was floated to work with school age children on larger projects. We'd have to be wary of safeguarding issues, although that should be handled by the incoming group. The other issue is that it would require someone to lead it.

JP led the welcome to our new director, Laura Pullig, who we are looking forward to bringing a new perspective to everything within the organisation.

MG brought up the mailboxes, and how we should look to have controlled access to the boxes. CH has spoken to a company in Cardiff who make a variety of mailboxes, and, although the price might be a little high, it could be something that would work as a whole Tapestry solution. These can also be leased.