coworking

"Launching our next Boost Membership Applications"

Our first pair of Boost members are only a month into their membership but it’s already time to announce that applications for the next cohort are now open!

The DoES Liverpool Boost Membership is our way of trying to grow our amazing community, and give more access to people who might otherwise struggle to afford a full time membership. As a reminder what is on offer is:

  • Either a six month Workshop membership, meaning you can come into the space and use our equipment as much as you want for six months.
  • Or a full time allocated desk in our coworking space and access to the workshop, again for six months.

We launched the DoES Liverpool Boost Membership at the end of last year to celebrate ten years of operating the best coworking maker space in Liverpool. In this time DoES Liverpool has gone from a single small room with a basic 3D printer to taking over an entire floor of The Tapestry building in the Fabric District. We now have a dedicated coworking space, far more workshop equipment including many 3D printers, laser cutters, a CNC mill and various sublimation printing technologies. We have a whole room of textile equipment along with multiple meeting rooms and one of the fastest internet connections in the city centre!

What do you get with a DoES Boost membership? All the benefits of a standard membership. A “desk” membership gives an allocated desk for a person to store their belongings and access to meeting rooms, whereas a “workshop” membership only gives access to the space and use of the workshop area with a “clean desk” policy. What they both provide is:

  • A storage box in the workshop area to store belongings
  • Access to all of the equipment in the space, with free inductions where necessary (with the usual booking and availability constraints)
  • Access to our incredibly fast internet connection
  • 24 hour access

All of this will be available for free to two lucky people for six months from April. We’re opening applications today and will close them at 11:59pm on February 28th. Click here for the form. We will then do a random draw and announce the successful applicants on the 2nd March to give them as much time as possible to prepare for their membership starting on the 1st April!

To clarify, the following is not included with membership at DoES Liverpool:

  • Materials (e.g. 3D printer filament, plywood or perspex for the laser cutters)
  • Mentoring – people in the community will of course be very interested to hear about your projects and may offer their help but we do not employ support staff or technicians.
  • Access for all your friends and extended family – we would be happy to meet your friends and understand that sometimes a project might need a helping hand but this offer is for a single individual and needs to be treated as such.

It was great to see so many new names in the applicants for our first Boost membership but we want to spread the message even further this time. If you know someone who has an idea for a project but doesn’t have the equipment to make a real go at it then let them know! If you know a community of people who would be interested in DoES Liverpool and maybe haven’t heard of us, then spread the word!

"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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