[Noisebridge-discuss] Fundraiser at Cellspace October 9th

[Naomi Most]

Hello!  I <3 fundraising parties. I'm good at them, and I write much on this
topic.  Behold my less-than-3-ness in the following reply.



> What I'm proposing is a night of entertainment at Cellspace.  I'm thinking
> something like $10 in advance and $15 at the door and selling snacks and
> drinks.  We won't be selling alcohol, but there's no restriction about
> having alcohol in the building, if you must. This will allow the event to be
> all ages, and we won't need to be checking IDs or anything like that.  I
> have numbers that I'd rather not post to the list for costs, so contact me
> if you're interested in that.
>


Cellspace is RIGHT around the corner from Pirate Cat Radio at 21st and
Florida.  It's very worth trying to arrange some collaboration.  I'm writing
to Pirate Cat staff right now about it.

Hell, we can probably set up a coffee table there.  Maple Bacon Lattes
anyone?  We sell them for $5 regularly in the cafe, and we make at least 40
of them a day.

We also have a great hook-up with some local Mission vendors of cakes and
cookies. Including a guy who makes these awesome gluten-free carrot cakes
(great for broken people like myself).

And it wouldn't truly be a Mission party without involvement from one of the
local taco trucks, now would it??  There are a couple of neighborhood
vendors that'd be overjoyed with the semi-captive audience for their tamales
and tacos.




>
> Miloh has some interesting soft drink ideas and VonGuard has volunteered
> his wife's cupcakes.


Cool.  May I point out that there is a "cupcake bubble" economy going on
right now, and many people are attracted to those mini-cupcakes that sell
for $1 (and cost maybe 5 cents worth of materials).



> I'm hoping to talk people into making other stuff too.  I know it would be
> odd to be selling books and whatnot at a party, but if we're selling
> t-shirts, collecting orders for discounted books might also be something we
> can do.
>

A small stack of books would be a good "filler" and give people sort of a
stylistic grasp of what's on offer, intellectually, from Noisebridge.

I volunteer at the Oakland Public Library and can get my hands on a couple
boxes of soon-to-be-discarded books.  Most of these are in the political or
science or science fiction categories, but it's "something".  Don't see a
lot of technical books in the discard piles.



>
> Other help that will be necessary:
>
> putting together the entertainment lineup (so we can advertise it) - I
> talked to San about this, and have a number of names of volunteer
> performers.  We just need to solidify
>


My friend Rich Risbridger does a "weird storytelling" kind of act that might
be really fun.  I can probably trade him some unused yoga teaching credits
to get him to do it.  :)




> Figure out a theme - While "noisebridge fundraiser" sounds OK, something we
> can tie different elements in with would be preferable.
>

Hmm. it's in the middle of October, so Halloween comes to mind.  Also, lots
of Burning Man decompression activities will be happening around then.

Also, lots of "Apocalypse" themed stuff has been happening lately, at least
that's been coming to my attention.  At Pirate Cat we recently held a 'zine
release party with an Post-Apocalyptic Film Fest.  This went over quite
well, and I can only expect that, around Halloween and as people from
Burning Man revive a little bit, that kind of theme will only grow in
appropriateness.

(At this point I feel it necessary to say I'm highly biased towards "that
sort of thing" -- my favorite game of 2008-2009 is and has been Fallout 3,
and I run a science cafe about end-of-the-world scenarios called "The
Periodic Apocalypse".)



> producing flyers - graphic design anyone?  I know we have some
> super-talented people.  Were Ian and Daniella interested in this?
> Working out all the things we can incorporate to make money (which does NOT
> include corporate sponsorship. I know other tech activities do that, but I
> don't feel that's appropriate for our mission).
>


> Promotions - Naomi had offered up some things here, but we can't have too
> much promotion.  Cellspace is over twice the size of our new space, so the
> more the merrier.
>


The best promotion is a fully integrated approach -- flyers and web pages
that promise the right things, made up of language that's crafted and
standardized across platforms.

I'd of course recommend interviewing on Pirate Cat Radio!  Listeners vary
across time slots, but Pirate Cat fans all have in common a loyalty and
enthusiasm and penchant for giving great feedback that I don't see a lot of
other places.  So it's worth going on a 2 or 3 different shows to announce
the same thing.

Crafting a few good sentences to spread on the flyers, to say on the radio,
and so on makes all of these things very EASY to do in the moment.  It's
basically like writing a function that converts an unstructured thought
pattern about a specific thing into a structured piece of writing or
speaking about that specific thing.

Programming in English...



> Coming up with ways to decorate the space according to the theme.
>

Assuming we can get any objections resolved, I'd like to have an
> organizational meeting Sunday evening at 6:00 to go over everything.
>  Hopefully we can hammer out a theme at that point and folks can go home
> with ideas on what to put on the flyers.  I'll bring a list of all the
> entertainers who have volunteered so we can go over that too.
>
>

Sunday at 6pm would be fine for me.  Sunday at 6am would be absolutely
awful.  Just to be clear!

--Naomi


-- 
"All we are is dust in the wind, dude.
Dust... Wind... Dude."  --Ted

Naomi Theora Most
+1-415-728-7490

skype: nthmost

http://twitter.com/nthmost
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