Booking

Currently, many CoderDojos are over subscribed and over populated. The current record for largest CoderDojo session to date was on Friday, 27th of January 2012, where 103 people attended CoderDojo Kinsale. Since not all Dojos have space to accommodate such large numbers, it is recommended they have a booking system in place, to ensure an appropriate session size, while also allowing multiple mentors access and ensuring there are spaces available for regular attendees.

A recommended tool is EventBrite as first put in use by CoderDojo Dublin (Ben Chapman). EventBrite allows a user to:


 * Gives you an accurate number of people who are attending (as each attendee is assigned a ticket).
 * Their app allows us to quickly check-in people using a QR code (on a printed ticket) and a phone (using Eventbrite's Entry Manager app for Android or iPhone/iPad). No more having to go searching through lists for bookings.
 * It allows people to control their bookings, so if they know they can't make it they can cancel themselves.
 * It has a built in waiting list feature that you can use to automatically assign tickets if others cancel.
 * It also sends out confirmation emails and tickets which make it very obvious to the user whether their registration has been successful or not. Failing that you're able to manually check.
 * It can automatically schedule the tickets to come online at a certain time in advance, so you can tell parents that tickets will come online at 7pm on a Monday evening for example. This could also let us do tickets in batches so that the distribution doesn't disadvantage those who are unavailable on a Monday at 7pm.
 * Subusers can be appointed to also manage the account and events (eg other mentors/volunteers)
 * Special tickets can be created and given to regular attendees

http://www.eventbrite.com Please see here for how to Set up an Eventbrite Account

Tips on Using Eventbrite
Here are some notes on how different dojos use Eventbrite:

Science Gallery

 * We have two people in the dojo with access to the account, so that if one is away the other can do it.
 * We always give people the URL https://coderdojo-dublin.eventbrite.com/ rather than the URL for this week's tickets.
 * We put ticket descriptions up sooner but only make them 'live' from 7pm on the Monday before the dojo.
 * When we take a break in Summer we still put an event up, but with no tickets, so that people know when we intend to resume.
 * We use the 'promotional code' to provide Ninja tickets for children who mentor or whose parents do. They can book even when we're full.
 * We've reduced the booking time-out from 15 mins to 10 mins.
 * We put the times on the ticket descriptions, e.g 1pm-3pm, 1pm-4pm, so all tickets can be on the same overall 'Event' which is 1pm-4pm.
 * We copy old events and modify them rather then recreating from scratch each time.
 * We ask ticket bookers whether they are on the Google group for parents, to remind them that e-mail list exists.
 * We don't use the waitlist.
 * We don't issue tickets for multiple sessions.