Co-Working

Accessing DoES Liverpool During COVID-19

26th June 2020
"Accessing DoES Liverpool During COVID-19"

A lot has happened since our last update on how we’re handling the pandemic at DoES Liverpool (including the community helping to keep NHS staff and key workers across the North-West safe by supplying over 24,000 visors!).  We hope you’re staying safe and keeping well.

With the visor project winding down (although still supplying visors to anyone who needs them) and the Government starting to slightly ease the lockdown we’ve been looking at how to reconfigure the space for better social distancing.

Our recommendation is still to work from home wherever possible, and only visit the space if you need to use the equipment which isn’t available elsewhere or collect post or other items.

Our landlord, Jason, has installed hand sanitizer stations in the communal areas for people to use on arrival.   We have handwash in the toilets and handwash and disinfectant in the kitchen area.  You should wash your hands immediately on arrival at the space, and wipe down any desk areas or equipment that you use at the start and end of your visit.

To help with social distancing we’re restricting access to some areas of the space.

Restricted Occupancy Areas

Everywhere is still usable, but certain areas where there is less room should only be used by one person (or people from one household) at a time.  These areas are marked with signs, like this one on the CNC room:

Door with "COVID19 maximum occupancy 1 person" sign

The restricted areas are:

  • The laser-cutter room (we have taken Sophia off the bookings calendar for now so that the room doesn’t get double-booked, but either cutter can be used)
  • The CNC room
  • The kitchen
  • The recess with the vinyl cutters and sublimation printer
  • The corner workshop desk and textiles area
  • The corner workshop desk and electronics workbench

These last two areas are marked out with tape on the floor, and are chosen so that you can either use the workshop desk or you can use the equipment (knitting machines, soldering irons, etc.), but there shouldn’t be someone at both at the same time.

Hot-desking

Given that our desks are too close together to allow people to maintain a 2 metre separation when sat at adjacent or opposing desks, people should stagger the desks they use relative to others.

To make that easier for people hot-desking, we have taped off some of the desks which shouldn’t be used.

Desk criss-crossed with tape to show it shouldn't be used

And have marked out the desks which are available for hot-deskers to work from like this:

Desk with a "Desk Available" sign

People with permanent desks are welcome to use their normal desk, and in most cases this fits in with the marking out of hot-desks that we’ve done.

However, in some cases you’d end up sitting next to, or opposite, another person at a desk.  If that happens, please work with each other to work out a sensible option.  Either using one of the other available hot-desks, or asking the person if they can move instead.

Finally, where possible open the windows to keep the space well ventilated.

If you have any questions about access, or any other issues relating to this, email hello@doesliverpool.com.  We are responding to communications, but only staffing the space on an ad-hoc, only-when-necessary basis.

Corona virus hand wash sign

DoES Liverpool COVID-19 Plan

17th March 2020
"DoES Liverpool COVID-19 Plan"

Following the updated government advice regarding COVID-19, and the need for social distancing, we have taken the difficult decision to cancel all DoES Liverpool Events, including Maker Nights and Maker Days, starting immediately and until further notice. We will not be supporting external events as we will not have staff available to supervise them.

The space will still be available for use, although it will no longer be staffed and we cannot guarantee that access will be possible without a fob. Anyone who has a fob can access the space as usual.

We realise that many of our members use the equipment at the space to do their job and so we need to support them at an already tricky time.  That means that if you come in on an ad-hoc basis and don’t have the out-of-hours access but do have a fob, you’ll still be able to come in as you do now.  As there will be nobody around to take payment, please email hello@doesliverpool.com with details of what you need to pay. 

You should only come in if you need to work on something or to collect something from the space.  Please do not attend purely for social reasons.

The membership of our community encompasses a broad spectrum of people, some of whom fall into the “high risk” bracket posed by this virus. Please do not continue operating business as usual; we all have a duty of care to manage the threat this virus poses, if not to you specifically, to other more vulnerable members of society.

Please do not attend the space if you are unwell, especially if you have got a new persistent cough or a fever.  

It is everybody’s responsibility to ensure that the space is kept as clean as possible; as such we are requesting that you wipe down all surfaces before and after use, as well as other areas such as the fridge door handle.  Surface cleaning spray is available by the workshop sink in the kitchen. The space will still be cleaned as usual, this is an additional precaution.

It goes without saying that one of the best ways to protect yourself is to regularly wash your hands and avoid touching your face, especially when you have been interacting with other people and spaces.

If you have any questions about access, or any other issues relating to this, email hello@doesliverpool.com.  We will be responding to communications, just not staffing the space itself.

DoES Liverpool Online

DoES Liverpool was set up to stop people feeling lonely from having to work on their own at home. As such we want to continue to help you feel less isolated during this situation. We have a few ways in which you can stay connected to the DoES Liverpool community and we’d love to hear your suggestions too!x

Obviously that’s just a start.  We know that the DoES Liverpool community will be working out all manner of ways to connect and cope and have interesting things to share.  As always, there’s the #weeknotes hashtag for letting others know what you’re up to, and let us know if there’s anything you’d like us to share.

Finally, look after yourselves and keep an eye out for any vulnerable members of the DoES Liverpool Community as well as in your local community.

The DoES Liverpool Three-step Plan for Success

11th February 2020
"The DoES Liverpool Three-step Plan for Success"
Mug showing the three-step plan animating through

Step One: Do Epic Sh**

Do. Lots of people talk about amazing things, but then don’t make a start on them. We want to focus on and encourage the doing.

Doing is hard. We’re a community that helps and supports each other to do. We understand that sometimes it’s you pushing forward while someone else answers emails or empties the bins, because next week it’ll be the other way round.

Everyone wants to save the earth, but nobody wants to help with the dishes.

Photo: Copyright Dr. Laura James

DoES Liverpool isn’t providing a service to customers who pay us money, we’re a community that spreads its costs between its members.  Recognising, appreciating and acknowledging that all that behind-the-scenes, less sexy support work is what allowed the epic headline-grabbing sh** to happen.

What do we mean when we say “epic sh**”?

Julian experimenting with new control systems for CNC mills; Hex Ceramic developing new techniques for clay-work using laser-cutters; Patrick helping social enterprises to thrive; Ross scattering card reading stations along Hadrian’s Wall to build a distributed RFID card text adventure; Baylee coming along to 3D print herself a new prosthetic hand; Jax helping others level-up at coding through Ladies of Code Liverpool…

As you can see, “epic sh**” is many things to many people. It matters less what everyone else thinks about what you’re doing, and more that you’re pushing yourself into new ground.

Step Two: Tell People About it

If you’re putting the effort in to do the work, you owe it to yourself to tell people about it. This is often as hard, if not harder, than doing the work but it’s important.

At the very least, post something about it to any social media accounts where you hang out (if that’s Twitter then include “#weeknotes” so it will get picked up and shared in the next weekly blog post).  If it’s something you can take a picture of, or film a short video of it in action.  Show the thing.

Social media is great for short-term sharing, but things quickly disappear into the stream.  The next step is to have some sort of home on the Internet where you can collect things.  That could be a portfolio website or a blog, whichever is easier for you to set up.  Having your own domain is even better because it gives you some protection for when you need to change the underlying service.  If I want to recommend you to someone, or show them your projects, I should be able to send them a link; not suggest they sift through your social media profile looking for the important bits.

Make the time to write up a blog post about the project at the end. Get into the habit of taking photos and videos of things as they progress. Write things yourself and find your own voice, or make room in the budget to pay someone to film it or write about it for you. Or both.

It’s not about Marketing, at least not what anyone imagines when they think about marketing with a big M. It’s just about talking to people about what you do. Don’t worry about repeating yourself, just find different ways to talk about and show what you do rather than posting the same tweet again and again. We’re humans, not robots.

We’re also a community. One full of people doing amazing work.

We should support each other in sharing our work.  Remind and encourage each other to post photos or write things up.  Shout about others’ achievements: it’s always easier to talk about someone else’s work than your own, so we should do that for each other.  It’s not about mindless retweets, but sharing good work and interesting projects when you see them.

Step Three: Go to Step One.

Success isn’t about discovering “this one neat trick” to short-cut the work.  It is built on lots of small steps and achievements.  The next big thing is a lot of small things.

Further Proof That DoES Is Epic

13th June 2019
"Further Proof That DoES Is Epic"

DoES Liverpool prides itself on being a socially aware, socially responsible organisation, from the things that are produced here, to the way we deal with unwanted equipment and other recycling, and the initiatives we try to spearhead in the wider community. We host multiple environmental groups, as well as providing a home for charity workers among the technologists and makers. On top of all that, fairness and equity of opportunity has been at DoES’ heart since its creation – the reason our prices are kept as low as possible is to allow as many people as possible to have access to the equipment and expertise in the space, and our completely free Maker Events make absolutely sure that no-one need be left behind.

 

Recently, we took another step forwards by becoming officially accredited by the Living Wage Foundation as a Living Wage Employer. This means that DoES pays all staff at least the national living wage, as set by the Foundation. This is higher than the government’s minimum wage, and is calculated using the basic cost of living with the aim of ensuring workers can have a decent life.

 

Although there is currently only one member of staff, along with a cleaner, this accreditation ensures that any future staff members, whether employed directly by DoES or through an agency, would have to be paid the living wage, and will ensure that that rate is tracked for existing staff.

 

We are absolutely delighted to be the first co-working space in Liverpool, and only the second Maker Space nationwide, to be have this accreditation, and to continue our history of trailblazing. We consider this a challenge to other spaces, not just in Merseyside, but around the country – come and join us in showing your users that fairness starts at home, and that people are the most important resource we have.

New Safe Spaces Policy and Grievance Procedure adopted

8th February 2019
"New Safe Spaces Policy and Grievance Procedure adopted"

It’s almost a year ago since we asked for the community’s input to draft Safe Spaces Policy and Grievance Procedure documents that had been originally been put together by the directors (past and present).

There was great participation and many useful points were raised which went on to further shape the policies. Since then, we’ve employed Anna from Liverpool HR to bring her expertise to the documents before they were once again sent out to the community for their final approval.

We’re pleased to now formally adopt them for the community. You can access them from the bottom of the Home page here: https://github.com/DoESLiverpool/somebody-should/wiki. Please take time to familiarise yourself with their contents (it won’t take that long!). Although we haven’t had many issues in the past, there have been some, and as the DoES Liverpool community continues to grow we need to make sure that everybody treats each other fairly, and that when people think this hasn’t happened they know they can do something about it.

We also recently asked for volunteers for a new Grievance Team, to support the Grievance Procedure and deal with any grievances that can’t be dealt with informally, and again had a great response (you can see who the members are on on the People page of the Wiki: https://github.com/DoESLiverpool/somebody-should/wiki/People – thanks to everyone for giving their time). The new volunteers, plus the directors, have had a training session with Anna, and the Grievance Team is now live. Although we’d rather issues didn’t arise, we would definitely prefer people to come forward with their complaints as soon as they become a problem, and certainly we want to make sure that people feel comfortable in the space and don’t feel that they can’t contribute or, even worse, stop coming.

In an organisation that relies on volunteers and people learning from each other, we need to have a strong community. It’s what’s behind all our success, including our recent “New Economy” prize at the Inclusive Economy Liverpool Awards.

Thanks to everyone who’s been involved in putting these policies together, and to everyone who makes our community what it is.

Jackie, John and Adrian

Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems

20th October 2018
"Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems"

What a difference a year makes. When I wrote last year about DoES Liverpool’s finances we were celebrating six years in business, we had ten thousand pounds in our bank account and were expecting to make a profit for the year. We were also in something of a precarious position regarding our lease in the Gostins Building and were considering a move that could be a great opportunity but would also be a bigger outlay. We also seemed to find ourselves in a real downturn in terms of desks being rented and were unsure of whether we could get ourselves out of that hole. So, where are we now?
Read More

DoES Liverpool Has Moved

2nd April 2018
"DoES Liverpool Has Moved"

 

DoES Liverpool has now officially moved to The Tapestry building.  When we re-open following the Easter holiday, on Tuesday 3rd April 2018, our new address will be:

DoES Liverpool
1st Floor
The Tapestry
68 – 76 Kempston Street
Liverpool L3 8HL

Thank you so much to everyone who has helped so far. There’s still plenty of cleaning and arranging to be done but if you don’t mind a bit of dishevelment then you’re welcome to come along and take a look. Our internet connection is active and the coffee will be brewing so you should be able to get some work done, although there’s a decent chance someone might offer you a paintbrush or mop!

This does mean that from this point our new pricing scheme is in action, as mentioned previously that is as follows:

Description Price Member Price
Single Day
(Workshop* or Desk)		 £12/day £10/day
Out of Hours Workshop £35/month £25/month
Monthly Workshop £65/month £50/month
Flexidesk £80/month £70/month
Monthly desk £180/month £165/month
Registered Address/Mailbox £99/year £79/year
Storage per cubic feet per month £3 £3

* – Gerald surcharge of £2/usage still applies

If you are interested in receiving the discounts mentioned above, or simply supporting our efforts, this page will show you how to become a member.

Any hot desk days you’ve previously bought are still valid in the new venue. If you have a permanent desk then we will work with you to determine where your new desk location will be. If you have monthly workshop membership then your storage box has been transferred and your membership continues in the new location.

If you have a registered address with us, please now update any records you have to use the following address:

Your Company
c/o DoES Liverpool
The Tapestry
68 – 76 Kempston Street
Liverpool L3 8HL

For the time being we will still be able to receive post at the Gostins Building but this will only be available for the next few months so we advise that you update your records as soon as possible.

As mentioned there’s still much to do so we don’t yet have glossy photos of our finished space, but below should give you a taster, together with the last moments in Gostins!

End. Of. An. Era. Goodbye Gostins, it’s been a fun 7 years. #weeknotes

A post shared by DoES Liverpool (@doesliverpool) on

APRIL FOOLS: UK Government Announces First Multi-million Pound Investment in UK Makerspace

1st April 2018
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"APRIL FOOLS: UK Government Announces First Multi-million Pound Investment in UK Makerspace"

Make sure you read to the end to find out full details of DoES Liverpool’s funding efforts, or TL;DR here: http://bit.ly/DoEpicFunding

Chancellor David Lidington today put in place the final building blocks of his “Northern powerhouse” when he announced the UK’s first Maker Enterprise Zone would be here in Liverpool.

The Government is putting £5m towards the DoES Liverpool move project – a collaboration between DoES Liverpool, The Tapestry and The Fabric District

DoES Liverpool will house and support new high-tech businesses around “sensor technologies”. It will also support new and existing businesses doing UX testing, public transit, wearable technology, home made 3D printed prosthetics, spoken language translation, social enterprise support, and basically any small business that needs their support. I mean, why limit yourself! 

Sensors are the crucial link between technological devices and the world around them, which is also incredibly important.  Capturing data on a whole host of areas such as temperature, humidity and pressure is really good, but then what do you do with that data? You interpret it, you present it, and you make sure people can understand it.

They can be used in everything from home security systems to medical technology and high-value manufacturing, don’t you know.

DoES Liverpool will help inventions go from the lab to the factory floor even faster, and act as a shop  window for foreign investment into Merseyside’s high tech start ups, as it has done for the last seven years


Mr Lidington told the ECHO: “The stuff being developed here is absolutely cutting edge.

It is better than anything else happening anywhere in the world, well apart from every other maker space. What’s the point in being ridiculously competitive and claiming to be the best when you can’t do it without the support of similar people around the world.

“We are all going to use the technologies being developed here and we are going to be able to say they were made in Liverpool, with massive support from the maker community around the world”

Mr Lidington is allocating £10.4m to upgrade the BT broadband provision in the centre of Liverpool, massively increasing the speeds available. A second 9600bps modem will sit alongside the existing 2400bps modem to provide speeds not seen anywhere else in the world, since 1991. Fortunately IX Liverpool and Baltic Broadband have independently installed a 10Gbps pipe which is available for use by people who actually want modern internet speeds.

Mr Lidington added: “I said I wanted to create a Northern powerhouse. You can link great cities like Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds together and create a real economic powerhouse.

“Alternatively you could pay people who have no idea about these things hundreds of thousands to build a big overpriced building that’s not fit for purpose, but who’d do that eh?!”

The Chancellor also denied Liverpool was being left out of the proposed high speed rail projects, even though it was.

However, Mr Lidington insisted the increased capacity would benefit the whole of the North West.

He said: “Liverpool is very much on the map. Not the one we have in Whitehall, but it seems to be on this one you just handed me. It says OpenStreetMap, what’s that? I’m confused, I’m sure we told Ordnance Survey to remove Liverpool back in the 80s”

“The geographical area isn’t that different to Greater London but they are separate cities. One is called Liverpool and the other is called London. Hold on did I just say I was funding Liverpool, no.. wait.. that can’t be right, who crossed out London and wrote Liverpool. Did I sign that?! Someone call the bank and stop that cheque!”

Provost Professor Stephen Holloway, who led the bid from the University of Liverpool, said:  “Creating a new space where ideas from our sensor research laboratories can be transformed  into new start-ups is a very exciting prospect for both universities and provides great opportunities them to skim the profits made by anyone that even walks past our buildings. We definitely thought we should have got the funding even though DoES Liverpool already did all this stuff on a shoestring budget.”

And Professor Robin Leatherbarrow,  who led the bid for JMU added: “This is a tremendous success for Liverpool and a superb example of how our two universities can work together in an area where we each have considerable complementary strengths. Wait, I thought we won the money?!”


ONLY JOKING! Of course DoES Liverpool hasn’t been awarded millions in funding, and we’re definitely not bitter. We do currently have a funding drive going to help pay for our move to our amazing new space in the Tapestry building. After seven years running and helping new high-tech (and low-tech) businesses get started we’re looking forward to the next seven years and hope we can rely on your help to get us there! Find out more about that here, and tell your friends!
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/does-liverpool
(And apologies to Tony McDonough for ripping apart his actually quite reasonable and well written article I found here: https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/business/liverpools-15m-sensor-city-best-7365286, also partly inspired by this article extolling the virtues of makerspaces: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/28/britain-ideas-factory-uk-industry-creators-economy)

Call to Action! – Volunteers wanted

3rd March 2018
"Call to Action! – Volunteers wanted"

Hopefully everybody knows by now that we’re moving to The Tapestry later this month. As you can imagine, there’s a lot still to do before we get there, so if you’re part of the DoES community, can paint, drive, or carry stuff and are available any weekdays or weekends during March or April then please get in touch (via email, Twitter, Instagram or in person).

We’ll then add your details to this hi-tech list so we can contact you about how you can help:

We also have a ‘Somebody Should’ issue tracker on GitHub, where you can sign up for at specific issues (and raise issues yourself for anything that you think needs looking at). If you haven’t signed up yet, then there’s some instructions here.

See you all soon then …

 

 

Announcing our new home, and DoES membership!

22nd November 2017
"Announcing our new home, and DoES membership!"

It’s been over 3 months since I last posted something about DoES Liverpool’s plan to move, and what a busy time it’s been. We’ve firmed up our plans to move and we’ve also managed to get some new people signed up so that we can be a lot happier about being able to afford what is looking like an exciting expansion of the DoES Liverpool coworking space and workshop. We actually announced this in person during our birthday party and have dropped quite obvious hints and mentions on Twitter, but somehow posting it to our blog feels more official. I am very happy to be able to announce:

DoES Liverpool is moving to The Tapestry, a newly renovated classic building in what will soon be known as The Fabric District.

This move should be a great new start for DoES Liverpool as we work through our seventh year. DoES Liverpool will be always be DoES Liverpool, but with double the floor space we’ll be able to do that much more. We will have a bigger, better events space; multiple meeting rooms; quiet corners to take a call and a nice space to hang out, drink coffee* and have a chat. While still offering the best coworking and workshop facilities in the city! (* other beverages are available)

The Fabric District is across the city between London Road and Islington. The map below illustrates our old location (red) and the new (green), we’ve also highlighted Lime Street Station to show the great transport links we’ll continue to have in our new location.

Jason Abbott, one of the owners of the Tapestry, and a number of other stakeholders are really pushing to develop the area into a great place to live and make things. They’re trying to do it in such a way that doesn’t push out the great people who are already running businesses there now, hoping to embrace their work and bring more people, and customers, into the area!

They’re still working to finish the building, and once that’s finished we then need to get in and get the space ready for our own purposes. We’re expecting to have the keys at the beginning of January and will then work to get the space ready as fast as possible. We’re working on the plans for this but we’re really hopeful to get things done as fast as possible and to be in by February.

The move to a new space is such a large change for DoES Liverpool, our first move in over 6 years, so this seems like an obvious time to make some changes to our pricing structure.

One key thing we’re doing is making membership an official thing. We’re ever thankful to Francis Irving for suggesting the “Friends of DoES” scheme and now we’re bringing that in as part of our pricing model. If you setup a monthly £10 payment then you are considered a “Friend of DoES”, we truly appreciate the people that do this and we know that people like having this option to signal their support for DoES Liverpool and our mission to support a vibrant community of makers in Liverpool. See this page for how to sign up.

This restructure does mean increasing our standard prices but we’re going to take this opportunity to offer discounts on these prices to our members as well. The larger size of the new venue and the ability to offer 24/7 access means we can add a few more services to the list as you’ll see below:

 

Description Price Member Price
Single Day
(Workshop* or Desk)		 £12/day £10/day
Out of Hours Workshop £35/month £25/month
Monthly Workshop £65/month £50/month
Flexidesk £80/month £70/month
Monthly desk £180/month £165/month
Registered Address/Mailbox £99/year £79/year
Storage per cubic feet per month £3 £3

* – Gerald surcharge of £2/usage still applies

There’s a few new things on that list I can tell you about. The first is the “Flexidesk” option. This is somewhere between the hot desk day and the full monthly desk option. We really want it to allow people to pop in for short periods without having to stress about paying a half day for a few hours, or rushing out before their half day turns into a full day. It’s similar to our “all you can eat, but don’t take the mickey” workshop option that lets you come and go as you please but reflects the fact that we expect Flexidesk users to be in more often. We’re not going to be stressing about how often you’re in and we don’t want you to either, we just want to see more of you!

We’re now splitting the workshop offering into two, one for people who are likely to be in during the daytime and one for people who are more likely to be in “out of hours”. We’d expect this to be like peak and off-peak and have priced it accordingly, it’ll be interesting to see what changes when we have much extended opening hours.

Finally, we’ve come up with a price to cover general storage. We’re hoping this works out and is a fair price, considering our biggest outlay is rent – i.e the physical space – we really need to be able to recoup that cost and if you’re storing stuff at DoES you’re definitely making use of the space. All of the monthly costs already include some storage but if you find you need more, you can now pay us for it!

These price changes will help to make sure we can cover the running costs but getting the space ready in the first place and getting everything moved over is going to stretch our current finances so we’re also planning to run a crowdfunding drive to help us to cover that. There’ll be more information once we have a better idea of the costs involved.

We’re keeping the old prices until we move into the Tapestry but if you want to take advantage of the Flexidesk option you can do that straight away, just get in touch at hello@doesliverpool.com! Similarly if you have any questions about the move please get in touch. There’s so much more to tell about this story and we will continue to update you but hopefully we can alleviate any concerns you might have.

Finally lets close out with the current plan for room layout and some photos from within the (unfinished) space. This layout isn’t final yet and the furniture shown is just a guide but it’s still an exciting glimpse at the future capabilities of DoES Liverpool!

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