OrganisingEventsAtDoES

Organising Events at DoES Liverpool

If you're thinking of organising an event or user group at DoES Liverpool then this is the page for you.

There's not a huge amount to do for a general user group event...

1. Have an idea for a possible user group (you've probably already done this step, congratulations! ;-)
2. Tweet or post to the DoES Liverpool mailing list to see if there's any other interest in the event
3. Find a free slot in the DoES calendar
4. Check with one of the organisers (or toot @[email protected])
5. Promote the event - If you're not sure where to start, ask on the mailing list or chat with Adrian McEwen.
6. Turn up and run it :-)

For more complicated events, then talk to us :-)

Things To Consider

For most events at DoES, people arrive around 6:30pm for a 7pm start and events with earlier start times have had people turning up late because they haven't checked the start time. So always be careful to promote your start time too particularly if trying something different.

The Tapestry Building can be accessed 24/7 but you will want to make sure that you are setup to access the building out of hours if that is when you want to run the event. We will generally prefer that an organiser is present to help opening up and closing up if you are new to the community.

Keep to a single signup system - If the event is on Meetup.com, you shouldn't add it to another service like Eventbrite or as a Facebook event as it confuses the process both from a user point of view and from an organisational point of view where it becomes more difficult to manage numbers and contact everyone if required.

You should have some form of sign up system so that you can keep in touch with people turning up easily, Meetup.com is currently the favourite choice for regular meetups, Eventbrite works well for one off events.

Some of the events are starting to provide pizza to attendees - American Pizza Slice seems to be the provider of choice at the minute (although the one next to the Bridewell also went down well and Dominos is just around the corner now).
You might find [calculator](http://calculate-this.com/how-many-pizzas-buy-calculator this how-many-pizzas-to-buy) handy...

Facilities in the Event Room

Our new events room can offer flexible layouts, depending on usage.

Conference Style Layout

Seating for up to about 30 people, a projector with HDMI, and a screen. At a push, we could squeeze in 40.

Social Meeting Layout

Group of tables plus seating around for about 12 people. We can expand on this for an extra couple of desks to 14 to 16.

Workshops

DoES Liverpool itself tends not to run courses or workshops for people to learn new skills. That's because it's often part of how our community members earn a living, so we'd much rather support them running courses and workshops!

We've had people run courses on laser-cutting, wearable tech, PCB design, CAD and more. There's definitely an appetite within the community (and it's good to bring new folk into the space) to learn new things and techniques for making.

It's not possible to exclusively book the makerspace; however access to the makerspace areas can be part of a workshop/course.

Costs

For community events, if your evening event is free to attend, the space is free to use if we can accommodate you. If you are charging for your event then we'll ask for an appropriate contribution which we can discuss. Weekend and daytime events are at our discretion and will depend on access requirements as mentioned above.

For corporate hire, please contact us to discuss rates.