What’s your favorite events calendar?

PR is creating several media lists, and we could use your help!

Where do you like to go for events calendars? It could be a print, online, radio or tv calendar.

Clarification:

Please include a link if it’s an online calendar.

Thanks very much, and we look forward to promoting more DMS events to the outside community soon.

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I’m just going to toss out here:
it’s at least marginally confusing for the membership (especially those of us with any history with DMS) to get correspondences like this from several sources purporting to represent the PR committee. It smacks of “someone with a good idea” that will go nowhere, at least partly due to lack of support from [the committee, the BoD&O, etc.]. Thus, this is a “weird request” that will likely receive less feedback than one might wish because, although it’s easy to witness your good intentions from your activities, there is no obvious support for this project from the PR committee, officially.

Having said that, what is the goal of this project?
As far as I’m concerned, THE events calendar is the only way to go:
https://calendar.dallasmakerspace.org/

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@Jast, thank you for sharing that perspective.

I can see how largely silent PR committees from the past would make our current crop of PR members look unusual. Under the leadership of @anonymous_bosh and @apparently_weird, we have a shared task list of things we, as a committee, want to accomplish.

We don’t have a central talk account, so you’ll see the requests come from individual committee members. Some of these things are going to require member input, which is why you can expect to see more posts like this, especially from myself and @noblegoblin.

Since the Public Relations thread is public, I posted here, but upon further reflection will move it to that category unless I’m given a good reason to make it private again.

The specific goal of this particular post is to create an events media list, which is a list of people and media outlets where we can send our events to get outside publicity to attract non-members to the space. Yes, the DMS calendar is the definitive internal event calendar for classes and events, but it is only viewed by members. That’s different from what I’m asking.

What I’m talking about is the kind of thing you see published in media like The Observer, D Magazine, etc. I can get those contacts easily.

What I don’t know, and what I’d like to find out from members, is where they personally go to look for craft fairs, special events for the family, etc. where we can post our events to the outside community.

This is important, because it brings new eyes and hopefully feet to DMS. For example, there’s chatter here on talk about a Maker Made Fair (or something like that) that had very low attendance numbers, and the previous PR committee was specifically mentioned as not being as active as some members thought they should be.

Both @noblegoblin and I (and probably @anonymous_bosh, though I haven’t asked him) have experience leading social media teams, and I have Public Relations experience with multinational agencies that live or die by their media coverage. I’m not promising I can do that here to the extent a regular employee could do, but I want to at least put some effort into it.

In the case of social media posts on @noblegoblin’s thread, we need permission to post photos of members and their projects. Many people have said they are fine posting to the show and tell category, but don’t want to end up on Facebook. Other people are fine with it. Her post gives us a way to tell the difference.

I hope I’ve clarified things, but if you still have questions or concerns, please let me know and I’ll try to address them.

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That is not the intention. Traditionally advertising would point the public to our event calendar. But I think I understand your goal, and I hope others weigh in on how they unearth the makery events outside of DMS and it can be leveraged in this campaign. :+1:

There’s also the fact (I’m sure I’ll be corrected if I misunderstood) that the sale was only available to the membership, i.e. only DMS members could sell, and only DMS members could buy… No point inviting the public in that case. I hope that can change, your campaign is a hit, and everyone, including The 'Space, is thrilled! :+1:

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That’s good to know! We can link to the calendar in our social media posts as we start to ramp up our content, and include the link in press releases.

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The first one, which I helped organize, was limited to DMS members as far as being able to buy a table. But that was mainly because: it was the first time we did it and was sort of a trial run. It was on the calendar, I think a few non-members showed up but wasn’t publicized.

As I recall we had around 22/24 tables. All proceeds were used for Fellowships funding, DMS made about $500-$600 that day for room rental. It was quite limited due to space: just Interactive. By the time we moved all the “stuff” out of Interactive into Lecture Hall, that was a was filled with everything form both rooms. Overall, most sellers reported it went okay, it had a low enough price point as to not be a killer if you didn;t sell much ($25/table) often several members shared the expense.

It’s big advantage to DMS at the time was: DMS rented space only, we weren’t involved in any of the sales or sales tax issues (Vendor responsibility) and it provided our members a way to showcase their creations. It went fairly well I think for first go.

From my experience, if you want to promote it to the public for people to come, you probably need to start planning 6-months in advance. We did it in about 60 days and it was rushed.

I know it wouldn’t have happened if @Julie-Harris had pitched in around 11PM on the night before when she helped me move things into lecture hall (there room was in use until about 10;30 PM all the other volunteers didn’t show up). The next morning some vendors arrived early and help lay the tape down to mark of the aisles and table areas.

I wasn’t involved with the next one, those organizers can speak to it and add their comments. One critical thing is to have a dedicated crew of folks that will prep it the night before. I would set the date for 2020 by the end of the year so people know when it it is, by six months have the team start to organize the promotion,

I think it is a wonderful event, we get to show off what we make, folks get a chance to “get their hands on some great goods”.

Open House has always been in the Fall since I joined. I’d suggest it be moved to the Spring. It seems there are always a ton of conflicts in the fall associated with back to school like home coming. Also, it can still be quite hot.

You defintely have enough time to make it work now if you move quickly. First thing is to get the rooms reserved on the calendar, even if not sure. If it won’t happened, you cancel an easily have month for others to book the room. But you’ll need to book the room for the event and know where everything will be stored.

I hope you can make it happen - it was a good DMS community event and get together. Hope this info may be of help.

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