Real Nappy Week - Auckland

[karmiec]

Ok so who is interested in doing something? and what.

I know an expo would take the , but realistically it would have ot be small... more like a market day/evening. (maybe looking at a hall or community centre that is central and close to the motorway if such a thing exists... or maybe an outdoors event at a park?) that would also involve advertising (antenatal classes, other websites, local paper?)... bookings and deposits taken from retailers yada yada yada.

Regionwide Napacino?

Some kind of competition? Something for non-clothies.

[nova]

well the grey lynn community centre (where we had it last year) is central, close to mwy, has some off street parking, and an enclosed playground (if only people would close the damn doors behind them!! sorry..) etc etc.. its just a bit small if you wanted to have more than the 6-7-8 wahms we had last year...

i can probably help out a wee bit, (i am NO good making phone calls!) and transport & kid depending of course but my only real field of knowledge is DIY (which i did last year), i have my two nappy fabric booklets made up that are available for use too.. and i'll probably be in the middle of stash sewing too..??

[sb]

well the grey lynn community centre (where we had it last year) is central, close to mwy, has some off street parking, and an enclosed playground (if only people would close the damn doors behind them!! sorry..) etc etc.. its just a bit small if you wanted to have more than the 6-7-8 wahms we had last year...

i can probably help out a wee bit, (i am NO good making phone calls!) and transport & kid depending of course but my only real field of knowledge is DIY (which i did last year), i have my two nappy fabric booklets made up that are available for use too.. and i'll probably be in the middle of stash sewing too..??

Grey Lynn was good last year, we could have more wahms if we had the main hall, instead of the smaller garden room.

I can organise booking the space. Is there a budget for the room rental? Do we have a date?

Sandringham Community House (my local community centre) and Mt Albert Rec Centre are also options.

[nova]

or there's the new lynn community centre..sort of central, heaps of parking, next to the bus & train station!! very near to lynnmall if people wanted to go for lunch or coffees too... the big room on the corner would be great, it has a kiddy gate (of sorts..) and is right next door to plunket (they're in the same building, so people visiting plunket would see us!)

one thing to think about, is if we use somewhere without a proper playground it would be really useful to have a play area set up.. maybe loosely fenced off & just with some basic toys, like i have a box of mega blocks here i'm happy to lend

[karmiec]

I had a really fast look at last years thread...

My first question is was it just the expo at Grey Lynn or was there also nappacino/s etc... Does anyone want to organise one? Were any retailers doing promo through their contact/customer lists like running competitions?

Expo:

Venue:
SB last year the garden room was booked for $20 (due to being incorporated society) I don't know what the price difference would be. Could you just make a general enquiry about availablity for the weekend of RNW and cost?

Exhibitors:
Depending on the size of the space... who exhibted last year and who would want to exhibit? Space also needed for hirekits, diy etc

Expenses/Budget:
Hall Hire
Other Hireage (ie: if we need extra tables or equiptment)
Advertising - flyers, newspapers, signs
Cleaning

CC, Nova and others from last year was there a thread with the expenses etc or was that done in a meeting? Rather than completely redo everything we can start with the info/contacts you guys already have. Since I didn't know about it last year a brief run down of how it went on the day would also be good.

[karmiec]

LOL Nova I had almost the same idea... it doesn't matter if the spaee we hire is too big, indoor kids playing area would probibly be a bonus! Why don't you find out about prices/availablity?

[mygirls]

What about Waitakere? They are very pro-cloth, I wonder if they will give us a hall for free in their new building (where they held the cloth kit opening)? I wounder if we should do one big one or a couple of smaller ones?

[beccahv]

What about Waitakere? They are very pro-cloth, I wonder if they will give us a hall for free in their new building (where they held the cloth kit opening)? I wounder if we should do one big one or a couple of smaller ones?

The WCC will have a RNW promotion although I'm not sure what it will be?? In terms of where the Cloth Nappy Kits were launched......that was the Council Chambers and was only used because what we had orignally planned to use fell through. I nearly had kittens about the use of that space as I know how important etc etc it was (it also has custom milled carpets) and there was quite a large cleaning bill that we had to pay for afterwards, I was panicing the whole week prior that something would happen. I honestly do not think they would allow it's use for this type of event, not because they don't support cloth....just because it's a huge headache. However, the Cloth Nappy Education Centre is located in Te Atatu Peninsula and is adjacent to a large hall that has a playground next to it (it's not fenced but it is a nice playground)....that may be an option??

[nova]

CC, Nova and others from last year was there a thread with the expenses etc or was that done in a meeting? Rather than completely redo everything we can start with the info/contacts you guys already have. Since I didn't know about it last year a brief run down of how it went on the day would also be good.

ummm i think CC was in charge of money?

re nappucino's we organised a public one at the western springs playground.. but i think it was rather quiet

re wahms, i think we had (apologies to those i forget!!) fuzzis, snazzis, designer bums, napnaps, organic island baby, mothers instinct... umm....?? but it was organised pretty last minute & i think we would have had a lot more people interested if we had had more time to organise it & more space to fit em!

re new lynn.. i think you need to have dates, times etc to get a quote..? we'd need to at least know whether we wanted it for the morning, or afternoon, or all day... i'd imagine that would be the same wherever? $20 for the day is awesome tho!


i'm afraid i'm really not much use, cos all i did was put together the DIY table

erm... from what i remember we had people waiting to come in while we were still setting up in the morning but it mostly tapered off after 3pm... the coffee guy was useless but it would have been really nice to have had some kind of drinks available (even a water cooler would have been fab) and somewhere comfy to feed babies too and the sewing demos with angie were really popular

[kb]

I was a part of the organising committee last year, and was also there all day from set-up to pack-up.

My personal thoughts on the whole day were:
* This year, to make it a success you really need to promote it!
Last year we tried to use the AkCC public noticeboards, but they were booked out months in advance - so no go. Some flyers were put up around various places, but from memory they were just plain B&W photocopies - so not 'noticable' at all. We managed to secure a deal with a Radio Station to talk about cloth nappies over RNW, and do a BIG giveaway, but I don't think they really plugged the event (however this was a freebie, organised by an employee who no longer works there unfortunately )
You need to come up with innovative ways to get the word out there. The event itself can be fabulous, but if no-one turns up, then it will be a flop. This is the one area where I think the most work needs to be put in.

*You need a bigger venue than the place last year
On reflection I remember looking in the room at the GLCC last year and thinking how intimidating it looked! It was a small room jam-packed with tables all set up in a semi-circle looking at the door. So when you first walked in all you could see was a nappy demo table in front of you, with 6 or so tables surrounding the demo table with nappy retailers eyeing you up Ok, so it wasn't that bad, but you get the picture?

*You need more people for pack-up/cleaning than you do for set-up
We had too many people there for setup imo, and not nearly enough for packup. Pack-up is always going to be difficult as it will inevitably co-incide with dinner (even bed time for some kiddies), so people will not want to help out with this, but rather be at home (and fair enough!)
The other thing was as Nova said, I don't think we had any visitors after 3pm? Perhaps one or two? You would be better off having it from 9-3 instead of 11-5 or thereabouts.

*Make sure the people you have helping out are passioante about cloth, experienced in the different types, not affiliated to one specific retailer, and have enough cahoolies to chat to visitors
I struggled in the cahoolies department, and felt emotionally drained at the end of the day (was on the nappy demo table for most of the day)

*Would be cool if there was food for the helpers there (even if it was just a bunch of grapes, packet of chips, or heaven forbid - chocolate biscuits) and drink.
Perhaps even just a reminder to your helpers to bring food/drink with them on the day. I was so busy that I forgot to bring stuff, and was ravenous and thirsty(and being 4months pregnant didn't help!).

Hmmm, lots more to add, but mind is blank. Perhaps one of the others from last year can add something???

[karmiec]

I'm guessing we enquire about either weekend day for the whole day whenever RNW is (can't remember off the top of my head) and at this stage check availability it might change but gives us an idea but if it is super cheap we should snap it up as soon as we can. Open hours? given that we have to set up etc maybe 9 or 10 till 3pm, give an hour or two either side for set up / clean up.

I'm just scared that if we leave it too long it won't be easy to find large enough halls for the right dates and price.

Once we have the dates I'll give Just Water (water coolers company) a holler as they used to offer a free month trial to businesses, maybe they'd do something for us. The other thing to do is to have someone like Mr Whippy booked to come at a certain time (or two), or Donuts (I shouldn't think about this while hungry! must go make a sandwich)

[karmiec]

But if we can find the space and work out how many exhibitors we can fit into it (without scaring off the public, and keeping some spaces for BF, and a space for talks/demos), then work up a budget based on how much each stall would be worth... taking into account that they need to cover some of the advertising cost as well.

I think what would work is setting up the hall with market type area (wahms / retailers / hirekits) and the other end of the hall being set up for demo's and talks... would work in an old fashioned hall with a stage too. Demo's on the stage kinda thing.

[LaraB]

You know what would be really cool - i remember coming as a cloth newbie last time and wanting to buy DIY stuff there. I would have bought a starter kit or two if they had them.

[mygirls]

A meet and greet the day before or something so everyone knows who everyone is and what they are doing (name tags are a must so we know who is a helper and who needs some help ).

[Happi]

DIY starter kits? for sale?


thats a thought.