Hey folks, we’ve looked at our numbers and the current makerspace expiry/bankruptcy is this December! Please bring your ideas to improve this on Wednesday
If any one has any idears. Radical or not we would love to hear them all
which “market” haven’t we tapped fully yet? Would pay as you go for certain things be an option? like supervised wood working sessions up to five people. or for the crafting side?
There’s some ideas here: https://www.hackspace.org.uk/foundation/telegramNotes.md#Marketing
Maybe we could start a Meetup group? Happy to administrate it and keep it up to date with current events.
I would suggest that our website is the first contact someone has with the space. It needs an update since the acquisition of 34a and the building of the Mezz. Good quality updated photos of a tidy space showing the various areas need to be taken in order to sell the space to potential members via first impressions.
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The issue with meetup is that it costs to be an organiser, so we would spend money before we are sure we would get any in return
Wait when did that happen?
Maybe not then…
Steve, good point. Can bring my camera in tonight and get some photos.
Meetup only costs money once the number of people in your meetup group goes over a certain number I think.
Not really fund raising but cost reducing. Downsize by releasing 34A, not a nice suggestion but will the rent saved remove the shortfall? Kitchen and Lounge not essential imo, but losing the laser room will be a bummer, can the laser be relocated to the spray room?
Hmm, I did get/have an offer to join someone elses and thus pay less (you get 3 groups for one payment)… tho I forget now whose… will check
i doubt we’d get it up there… This is very much a last-ditch idea imo - plus we signed up for it for a year, we’d have to pay that out, so I’m not sure it works… unless we can wrangle finding a replacement renter
I think I have a spare slot in my meetup account now. Would be happy to help out with setting it up for you since I’m running quite a few, including my hackspace’s.
Generally that + events brought in a lot of fresh footfall when I was part of OxHack but you have to not be shy about charging for the events to non-members, especially if you have to prepare information and consumables (i’m looking at any type of intro to 3D printing events).
If we can get a meetup group for free that would be great, would need to track first visit is free a bit more thats not too hard.
We kinda need a huge overhaul of our social media
- Facebook
Needs more than just Wednesday open day events (events need to appear earlier too)
Posts about peoples projects (with permission)
More members need to promote the page (like, share, say going to the events) trivial stuff but facebook publicity runs on a snowball effect - Twitter
Same stuff as Facebook - Website
Needs new photos in Gallery (newest stuff is over a year old)
Articles - Nothing since March 2017, ask ppl to write one and nag them so we have at least on a month
The Space page needs to be updated, nothing about 34a or the Mezz - Meetup (if possible)
Put all our normal events on there - get as many regular members to say they are going too to help build popularity - Discord (new suggestion)
Telegram is rather limited with chats, its award to set up new ones for events, some people arnt aware of secondary chats like the antweight chat etc. I know there was the idea of having one for the redbull down hill thing but no idea if that has happened yet.
With discord you join the group and then can see all the chats (unless deliberately hidden)
This would make help with the cross chat in telegram right now and also supports audio channels and much more
Alot to take on but its needed to help promote the space
What we usually do is put up a link to the meet-up page since twitter doesn’t have an event format.
We don’t get much traffic through our twitter, but it’s useful to have. Mostly used for advertising events and happenings.
We also run an instagram account for dumping project photos, but it’s a bit of a pain to run since you have to do it from a phone.
We are tied into a contract for the next 11 months on 34A
You could subcontract part of it to someone looking for access to makerspace tools but also a bit of private space/storage. Local potters, artists, etc. are usually looking for small light industrial spaces.
Oh, that reminds me, another idea that we’ve talked about before, renting additional loft storage space to members - we should gauge interest and implement if it would bring in a few extra £/month for minimal admin overhead
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Mostly this seems to boil down to better publicity, which seems to be difficult (at least to me). Like the recent open day - while it was a good event for members, it didn’t feel like there were many potential new members who turned up. It seemed to be mostly just members, or friends-of-members who just came along for a day out - which is fine, I guess it might spread the word a bit, it just didn’t seem to bring in many new people.
As for Discord, I’m not sure adding another comms channel would improve matters - we already have this forum, but there doesn’t seem to have been a huge take up so far - at least not in terms of members discussing projects anyway.
We could collect a list of links to other makerspace related channels and I could add a bot command to query them. And possibly make it greet new main channel joiners with a message saying “hi” and these are the other Telegram channels we use that you might like to join.
All of these things sound lovely… what we actually need is people to volunteer to do those things / more of those things… ideas are easy…
We should list all the available Telegram groups sub groups somewhere obviously accessible, like the Contact page of the website - as well as the main group, that would help with info.
Something we could and can easily start doing (I will do now!) post things that are going on, eg events, inside the space. It seems several members don’t see all the telegram chat, and dont watch the forum… but do make it into the space.
This would be both for the benefit of said members (remaining happy members), as well as hopefully telling people about events going on.
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