The ball is definitely rolling - I’m working with the Crediton Methodist Church and we have our event scheduled for 10am-1pm on Saturday 17th November at Crediton Methodist Church, in the hall. Crediton is near Exeter, in Devon.
We are supported by CAG Devon who are helping with specifics (funding, insurance) and general guidance, and have applied for funding to Devon CC, so we are now looking for volunteers to help with the organising and running the event. Please get in touch if you’re interested in volunteering!
Great to hear things are moving along so quickly @Ian_Barnard!
It might be useful to create a new group on the Fixometer for yourself and anyone who comes to help out. That way you can officially create an event in the system, which you can invite people to and share more widely.
It’s also worth knowing that we’re trialing a new ‘find people in your area’ feature. Once you’ve created a group, click on the ‘Group actions’ menu on the group’s page and then on ‘Volunteers nearby’:
You’ll be able to see anyone in the area and invite them to the group
(side note: I’ve moved this to the ‘Repair in your community’ section)
Hi Ian, looks like you didn’t have ‘host’ permissions on the system. I’ve changed that now, so you should now see a ‘create group’ button on the Groups page.
And yep, I’ll set up a local group discussion section for you now
Just to say I’ve edited the event name slightly - we tend to encourage groups to use the name of the venue as the event name as this is the most important bit of info for potential attendees (especially when browsing the list of events)
Well we did it! Definitely not perfect - I got bogged down in PAT testing the extension leads brought in by the volunteers and didn’t do the briefing I had on my List Of Things To Do, so we kicked off with people not having a clear idea of the process the cafe was going to run. Sigh. I didn’t stop for five hours. Next event planned for 19th Jan. I won’t be doing PAT testing at the next event. Having got this ball rolling because I am interested in fixing, I would like to do fixing.
We had 31 items to repair and mended 18, I’m following up three failures to see if I can fix them myself outside the cafe, including hopefully using one to do a skillshare on electronics fixing (do or die - no scope for bluffing my way through that one!) with some of the mending volunteers.
Great event though - the mending volunteers and our hosts+receptionists did a brilliant job, and the chuch youth group provided great refreshments.
Got a couple of visitors - a gentleman from Saltash near Plymouth looking to set up his own Cafe, found out about us through this forum - and a lady who is interested in taking on facebook/marketing
Good job @Ian_Barnard!
Really cool to hear it went well overall! It sounds like it was a success
31 items is a lot for a first event; there’s clearly demand for a repair café in Crediton!
Being the primary organiser can definitely be a lot of work, so it’s great to hear you have an offer of marketing/Facebook support. Feel free to invite her onto Restarters.net too - perhaps she could also help with some of the event organisation here? The same goes for your team of Fixers. They’d be more than welcome to join the community!
Cool to hear too that you had a visitor who discovered the event through the forum! Again, if you’re in touch with him, do invite him in! Given Saltash is so close to Plymouth, I wonder whether he’d like to connect with @Sol_Moyano?
Hopefully our event didn’t put him off. I set him to work, so he got some fixing experience, and suggested he should join here, said there was someone in Plymouth, so hopefully he’ll follow that up.
31 a lot? I had no idea what to expect, and we could have done quite a few more particularly sewing and bicycles. One gentleman who I suspect of being a front man for a network of reclusive and reformed broken-thing-hoarders brought five items :-o
I haven’t yet used the group on here that you kindly setup for me, figuring there were enough hurdles without also asking my volunteers to do something completely different, but I think I will now try get them to join and we’ll use the group. Two of my menders aren’t comfortable internet users, and at least another two aren’t on facebook, which also reflects a challenge that while facebook is great way of promoting my Repair Cafe to people on facebook, I reckon a lot of my target market isn’t on there, so more traditional marketing is needed.
