Starting an Evansville Dojo, help?

[Christopher Griffin]

Hey, I'm hoping to communicate with you guys a little bit about how you got started a few months ago.  I've done all of the website registration steps, I'm working on a date and venue now.  I think I can easily get our central library onboard for a venue (maybe even some additional support).  I realize direct email might be a better channel to use for this, so by all means I'd love to hear from you guys!

Thanks!

Christopher Griffin

grif...@gmail.com

[Jon Nolen]

Hi Christopher,

We have been going for almost two years now and here's what has been working.

• commit to a day/time once a month (we probably have demand for more right now but I'll talk about that in a minute). ours is the third saturday of every month from 10ish to 1pm
  
• get a group of mentors  together.  we did a general call through our networks which consist of user groups, coworkers, twitter, etc. (you'll get a lot of people who have a passing interest but your goal should be to find two other people that are pretty committed).  We have a core group of 3 mentors with a couple of more becoming more involved recently and that allows us to ride the fluctuations in schedule with out having to completely drop the ball, I know that there seems to be a consensus that we don't want to add another night/day because this has been sustainable and no one has really burnt out.
  
• for getting kids to come:  we basically just started telling everyone with kids that we know to bring their kids and have them tell the people they know.
  
• if it's possible secure a venue that provides access to laptops or computers for kids who may not have a laptop at home.
  
• after you have a couple of dojos under your belt reach out to the local paper and see if they'll send someone to do a story.  That was huge for us.
  

As far as running the dojos:

• you'll get a broad range of interest, experience and background.  we try to get everyone started with scratch.mit.edu building the game breakout and then help them figure out what they want to focus on.  we have kids who are scratch grinders, kids who want to build web stuff and other kids who are working on minecraft plugins using scriptcraft (a js bridge)
• We don't generally have a "lesson" we just wing it on a per kid basis.
• We also have had luck getting companies to sponsor lunch for the kids, parents and mentors every month.
  

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[Christopher Griffin]

Thanks for the amazingly quick response, Jon!

Man, that sounds excellent.  I just setup our Google group, despite not having a "core" set of mentors or kids yet.  I just set a date of August 30, 2014.  Our biggest library has meeting rooms and computer labs, and this is exactly the type of thing they would normally sponsor, so I'm going to check with them about using their facilities for a venue.

Thanks so much for reaching out to me so quickly!  Is it alright if I keep your email handy for any future questions?  I joined your group, to get the fly-on-the-wall perspective about how you're running things up there.  I'll probably be paying attention to it while I fumble through my own setup.

Thanks again!

Christopher

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[Jon Nolen]

this is probably the most use we've gotten out of this google group.  

a lot more interaction is captured at github:

https://github.com/orgs/coderdojoindy