Thank you VHS VMMF volunteers!

A big thank you to everyone that (wo)manned the booths at MakerFaire this year!

A thousand apologies for not making it out on Sunday, as I was stuck in bed with a cold, but all I hear is good things about VHS’ presence at this years VMMF!

I know that @jon is going to do a post-mortem, but maybe @SteveRoy and/or @KevMacD want to provide some feedback as well.

Again, thank you so much @jon, @SteveRoy, @KevMacD, @JohnC, @RobertButterworth, @Shane, @Gibbtall, @RedCardOP, @interlock, @Daniel_DeGagne and everyone else who helped out!

EDIT: And of course @ninetynein for organizing the after party!

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Sorry for the late reply…

Yes, a big thank you to those who helped with the VHS info booth at VMMF, working shifts and helping with load-in and load-out. Big thanks to Kevin and Ali for doing 2x 8 hour shifts. I know others did 2x 8 hours shifts at the learn to solder booth too - big thanks for that too.

As to the booth itself - as mentioned in another thread the interactive and demos were very popular. Kids and adults liked the Makey Makey game and making buttons. The 3D printed frogs we gave away were popular too.
Our focus while talking to people about cool technology and making this was to let them know they could come to VHS to learn about this cool technology and get to use things like 3D printers, laser cutters, tools, soldering stations, test gear, sewing machines, do crafts etc etc.

I would do a couple of thing differently/better next year (if I was the one organizing it), that being a bigger booth and having more interactive things. The only negative thing I have to mention is that more volunteers would have been nice, being a part of VHS means that a member should be promoting the space and helping find new members as membership fees pay the rent and keep the space open.

Steve

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One week out, ready for the postmortem.

First - some thanks:

  • to @TomKeddie for re-designing the kits, and ordering parts.
  • to @Janet for creating the instructions and co-ordinating loans of lamps.
  • to @Shane for working the booth the entire damn weekend.
  • to @RedCardOP for taking a hit in the line of duty, and still working most of the weekend.
  • to all those others who came out and did a shift on the soldering booth - thank you. We couldn’t have done it without you.

Rough numbers - we did just over 200 kits, split pretty evenly across the two days.
5 burns, AFAIK, none particularly severe.
I don’t know final numbers money wise, as I don’t know all the costs.

We ran 10 participant stations
Throughout most of the weekend, we had around 4 volunteers at the booth. 4 volunteers to 10 stations worked pretty well.

We brought 13 of VHS stations - the Hakkos, Wellers, and Clones. Having a couple spare worked well - when the tips dies on participant ones, we could swap them out and keep going while the station cooled down to have its tip replaced.

The participants where setup in a “C” around the middle space - with a few benches against the wall where we made up kits and had a “repair station”

I think that the repair station worked quite well - we had the VHS hot air pencil, which greatly simplified removing components, my personal station - more powerful than the VHS ones, which let us quickly reflow things and use braid. Tweezers and a panavise let us quickly pull transistors with the hot air pencil. (number one participant error was backwards transistors). I’d suggest bringing the hot air in future years, and if possible, a more powerful iron.

We had a waitlist for essentially the entire weekend. Throughput was certainly limited by available stations and volunteers. Time to complete the kit was generally in the 30-40 minute range, but with a high variance - if we had to remove transistors for them, etc.

I’ll echo @SteveRoy’s comment that more volunteers would have been appreciated.
I was also severely disappointed that several individuals who had volunteered didn’t show up at all for the weekend, and never dropped us a line, or made any other contact. I won’t callout specific names.

On the volunteer front, while I greatly appreciate @TyIsI’s work on the volunteer co-ordination, I think it would make things smoother in future years to have whoever’s co-ordinating the booth take this on, as well - it was difficult to know who should be where, and I’d suggest having it in one hat in the future.

The kit and instruction design worked quite well, on the whole - just a few minor tweaks for the next revision.

As mentioned, the number one participant mistake was putting the transistors backwards. the other really common reason for “why doesn’t it work” was just cold solder joints - reflowing the joints quickly with the repair station managed to fix a lot of boards.

One frustration was kids dumped at our booth - this was usually the children of other makers. In future years, I would be more aggressive about tracking them down - we had one kid spend 90 minutes, as he didn’t really want to do it, and would stop after every component. It tied up a spot for an unreasonable length of time.

I neglected to bring a big “VANCOUVER HACKSPACE” banner. We could easily have hung one, and it’s something I’d definitely fix for next year. I’d also suggest having business cards/stickers at the soldering booth - we had a number of people ask. There was also a number of teachers inquire about buying class sets of the kits, and one or two groups (ex. Scouts) inquiring if we come out and run workshops for them. It would be nice if we could have the booths nearer each other, in order to point people to where they can get more information.

I was also asked a number of times for advice on purchasing a soldering iron. I might writeup a one page “Buying a Soldering Iron” guide, in the future. (bonus points if it has referal links that benefit the space…)

Something we learned after the first day was that letting our chairs get “borrowed” by parents helping children at stations meant we wouldn’t get it back. We where much harder about this sunday, and it saved our feet. I’d suggest more chairs in future years - ideally 3/4 for every two stations on the participant side, and number of volunteers + 2 chairs in the back.

Having a planned “next step” workshop building a more complex project at VHS scheduled for a couple weeks after and taking signups at maker faire would likely do well for bringing people in to the space.

Thanks again to all who made the weekend a success.

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Another very common question was “if I want to take this further, where can I get other kits?” Which I usually answered with CanaKits.ca

Business cards ++++

EDIT: Some “Level 2” and possibly “Level 3” kits on hand for sale would likely go over very well.

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It would have been nice to have the booths next to each other - I wrongly assumed we would be and I think next year as well as a larger info booth showing more projects we should also make sure they are next (or very close) to each other.

I’d also like to add that I know a lot of people have other commitments over a weekend and therefore don’t volunteer - however personally I was supposed to have gone to a nephews grad on Saltspring Island and I also found out @jon gave up a weekend activity he waits all year for because it conflicted with VMMF.

We were also asked for business cards - something I didn’t have time to organize this year.

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Thanks guys, so good to have all this data. Sorry I couldn’t be there, sucks on many levels.

@JohnC, @jon I was thinking of buying a bag of switches here in China. Is this financially appropriate. I think $20 would get a lot. We could buy them on ali* but it is a lot easier to get right when you can try them in the pcb.

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Are you in China right now? If so, please grab a bag of switches; the kits were popular and we had some teachers asking if we’d sell class sets of kits to them (bulk parts of course; no way in hell I’d package each kit individually) If you can get the switches cheaper than we can through Digikey/Mouser then go for it. I trust your judgement on what price and quantity is appropriate.

Yep, until Monday. Not enough time to order more pcbs unfortunately (the shipping on them was like $100). We might be able to include a bunch in the Fraser Valley container if they proceed with that. The switches are 5% of the mouser price here.

That’s so crazy. I can’t believe the price difference. Thanks Tom!

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There’s a quality difference too but these kits are not expected to have a 3 year warranty :wink:

Done, 1c each, 1k for CAD10 - now to get them home…

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I’ve created a shiny new Talk Badge to recognize VHS Maker Faire volunteers, starting this year.

Please let me know if I’ve missed adding you!

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Could you make a post thanking them on VHS blogs?. We want people to get rewards for donating to us and helping us.