Create a "Cost of Being Epic" poster for the space (and online)

[amcewen]

It would be useful to help people understand how DoES is funded, what its costs are, and how they can help with that.

Other hackspaces, etc. often have a "Cost of Hacking" poster, that shows income/outgoings, and what people can do to help - for example (although it's an online version) see https://london.hackspace.org.uk/cost-of-hacking/

The (current) figures for DoES are in http://doesliverpool.com/business/building-a-self-sustaining-community-space/ which also gives some thoughts on how to help.

If someone designs the posters, there's budget to get them properly printed somewhere, so we can do something ~A2 size (bigger than A4 definitely), and then put them up in each of the rooms at the space.

Ideally the design would be one that's easy to update, as we'll need to reprint them when the numbers change significantly (as the income is going to be the most volatile, I wonder if there's any easy way to make that particular number simple to change?)

[johnmckerrell]

I was wondering if this could be posted on the website or even on the doorbot screen. We could still perhaps do a poster but have the figures updatable, either using whiteboard pens or plugging in some digital displays.

[amcewen]

The guys in room 13 (the photography studio just through the double-doors towards the toilets) popped in earlier this afternoon. They've just got an A0 (IIRC, maybe A1) photo printer, so can do nice big glossy poster prints... and would charge £10/print. I don't know how that compares to other prints we could get done (or if glossy photo paper is the right finish we'd want)

[johnmckerrell]

The guy on the corner by the toilets has an A3 printer which might be more what we're looking for.

[amcewen]

@jdcormack How are things going with this? Anything we can do to help?

[ghost]

Static graphic done... may be worth updating the figures?
Otherwise, I will go an speak to room 13 and get some coppies printed.

Going to look at implementing a digital version using d3js...
http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/4063582

[ghost]

ermagawd the colours

[amcewen]

Change the "Make a Donation" to "Become a Friend", add something about the workshop, update the numbers (talk to @johnmckerrell for that, probably), and add a URL for a call to action - doesliverpool.com/help

[originalfoo]

There's been no direct activity on this issue for over 2 years - I've labelled it as "stale?" and will close it in a month if no further updates.

Tip: You can remove "stale?" label to prevent this ticket being closed.

[amcewen]

I'd still like us to have this as I think it would be good for us to be more up-front(/visible) about the costs of running DoES. I had been wondering about asking Steve H if he'd be up for having a crack at it, but he left just around then :-/

Maybe we need to more actively look for a dataviz person?

[originalfoo]

I agree that there needs to be transparency/realism over the costs - is this something that could be automated? If we can get the data from accounts package (does FreeAgent have suitable API?) then we could potentially pump that in to a web page - it doesn't need to be super-pretty to start with; future iterations can deal with that. I'd very much like to see a dashboard on a wall somewhere that shows the health metrics of DoES.

[amcewen]

Organisers' meeting notes: @huffeec to chase up with Kate to see if she can run at this.

[johnmckerrell]

I also pointed @Red-Violet at this recently

[DoESsean]

With the move, our costs are going to go up, which means that this is more important than ever.

@huffeec, did you have any luck with Kate?

[amcewen]

Kate has produced one, and it's stalled with me getting back to her on it. I'll dig out the email and chase things up.

[huffeec]

I've spoken to her again and she's happy to do more on this. Trying to convince her to come on Saturday too.

[DoESsean]

Did you get in touch with Kate, @amcewen?

[DoESsean]

Just came to say that this is now SUPER important, and noticed that there is currently an action outstanding.

@amcewen is there any movement on this?

[DoESsean]

Have just spoken to @amcewen about this, and it's been suggested that I liaise with Kate directly.

I think it is worth, either as a stop gap or even as the final design, getting something put together that at least shows how much the space costs to run each month (taking an average since we moved in, maybe discounting the expenses such as carpets and blinds, which would be classed as moving costs, maybe not) and how that is funded - ie, 100% community, 0% outside funding.

[johnmckerrell]

Might use the financials report as a source of data. https://github.com/DoESLiverpool/somebody-should/wiki/Financials201901

[johnmckerrell]

It would be good to have at least a version of this ready for GovJam on the 23rd.

[amcewen]

@zarino and I have been chipping away at this. Generating it all in SVG is a pain because SVG doesn't do text very well, so we're looking at SVG for the chart and then HTML for the remainder.

We want a version that can be printed (at A2 or A1? size) and also go on the website, so generating a print version is the main stumbling block right now.

weasyprint looks promising, or xhtml2pdf might if that doesn't do the job.

[amcewen]

Now that we've got clip frames to hold these (see #1644), @Robotorium and I picking away at this again. It'll be printed at A1 size, and need to be portrait orientation.

This is the terrible first draft SVG - CostOfBeingEpic.svg that I've got some code to auto-generate. The graph itself maybe isn't too bad — could do with better colours, but it's the surrounding text, etc. that needs most work (and possibly not to be in an SVG?)

[amcewen]

Having gotten the financial-report code up and running properly on my machine today, I think extending @johnmckerrell's existing reports will be a better way to generate the poster.

I've opened an issue over there to track it

[amcewen]

Just a note to point to the update on progress that I posted over on the financial-report issue.