Scheduling a Class

Note: these instructions were composed in November 2010 and involve creating a new advanced-maintenance-class posting on Eventbrite, based on the current (December 2010) Advanced Maintenance Class posting. The steps should be generalizable to other types of classes. If you have any questions about setting up a class, the first thing to do is email the Education Coordinator.

Give Yourself Some Lead Time

Post a class as far in advance as possible! At least two weeks is necessary for a class to fill up, but four or five weeks is a better lead time, especially if the class is a one-off or idiosyncratic one, like touring or wheel-building.

Creating a Class Page on Eventbrite

1. Log into Eventbrite.
   • Login email: classes@bikekitchen.org
   • Password: bkclasses
2. Go to the "My Events" page if you aren't directed there automatically. You will see a listing of Bike Kitchen events, grouped into "Live Events," "Drafts" and "Completed." These categories should be self-explanatory.
3. The easiest way to create a new class is to copy an old class that's similar. Imagine for the moment that you want to post a January 2011 Advanced Maintenance Class. Click on the link (Either in Live or Completed) for the "December 2010 Advanced Maintenance Class at the Bike Kitchen"; you will be taken to that event's page, where you should see "Manage," "Edit" and "View" tabs.
4. You should also, on the right, see a set of buttons labeled "Unpublish," "Cancel," "Delete" and (most importantly) "Copy." Clicking the "Copy" button will pull up a page titled "Copy this event." You should put in your new event name (Here we'll use "January 2011 Advanced Maintenance Class at the Bike Kitchen") in the provided field and then click the "Copy Event" button. BAM. You'll now have a page for your new event, with all the relevant information cloned over from the old event.
5. Why do it this way? All of the ticketing information, the class description and the like will already be filled in. Thus to make this a January 2011 rather than a December 2010 page, we need to do just xxx things:
   1. Change the "Event starts" date and time on the right-hand side of the page. (Note that we use the start date and time of the first session of the class.)
   2. Change the "Event ends" date and time on the right-hand side of the page. (Note that we use the end date and time of the last session of the class.)
   3. Change any date and time information that is mentioned in the "Add Event Details" box on the left-hand side.
   4. Create an easy-to-remember link for the event. Notice that below the "Add Event Details" box there is a field where you can personalize the link for the event. A nice way to do it is to set up "http://bkmonthyearclass.eventbrite.com"; in this case, then, the link would be "http://bkjanuary2011advanced.eventbrite.com. (Note that you only have to type the "bkjanuary2011advanced" part; the rest it fills in.)
6. At that point, your new class is ready to post. You might want to "Save As Draft" and preview the page to make sure everything looks right; once you're sure, click the "Save & Publish" button to take the event live.
7. Once you have done this, you need to send some emails. Go back to the Classes page to see who needs to get some information about the class!

BrownpaperTickets Instructions From The Bike Kitchen Jump to: navigation, search [edit] How to Post a Bike Kitchen Event Using Brown Paper Tickets

Post a class as far in advance as possible! At least two weeks is necessary for a class to fill, but four to five is a better lead time.

Note: If it is your first time posting an event, take a moment to look over a previous event. These can be found under "Ended Events" on the main page after you have logged in as 'bikekitchen'. Be sure to read step 4 at the end of the this document, which explain how to advertise the event. If you just post it without advertisting, it won't fill up.

1. Log on to Brown Paper Tickets (BPT). Login: bikekitchen, Password: bkmember

2. On the left side of the screen, click on "Post a New Event". It will guide you through a series of pages, as described below. Remember that you MUST fill in everything with an asterisk.

3a. Event Details

   * Event Name, Short Description, and Long Description can all be copied from a previous event (for example, if you are teaching a Repair Class, just copy and paste from a previous repair class). If this is a new class, the instructor should generate the long description and the class name. The short description can be a simple summary of the class.
   * Category: "Other"
   * Website: www.bikekitchen.org
   * Venue Information: fill in only the city and state (San Francisco, CA)
   * Contact Information: fill in only the email address: info@bikekitchen.org
   * Event Notes and Messages: fill in only the end of purpose message. Again, it's easiest to just cut and paste this information from a previous class. Be sure to change the dates and times as appropriate! The message should let people know that this is the only confirmation they will receive, and to arrive at the Bike Kitchen ready for the class. If they need to bring anything, add that as well.
   * Event Settings: THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT TO SET RIGHT, A MISTAKE HERE WILL CAUSE THE EVENT TO BE REJECTED. This is actually very simple, just leave most everything at the default setting! The only thing to change is set "Submit to BPT's Media Pool" to "No". Check the "I agree" box at the bottom of the page and go on to the 

3b. Venue: Choose "General Admission"

3c. Add a Date

   * Event Start Time: Add the date and start time of the first class
   * Event End Time: Add the date and end end time of the last class
   * Max Sales: Enter the total number of people allowed in the class (usually 8 for a repair class in the shop)
   * End Will-Call sales: enter 24 hours before
   * Admission: Choose "will call only"
   * Click on "add this date" and then "done adding dates" 

3d. Add a price

Since we offer sliding scale prices for most classes, you have to enter multiple prices within the scale. For example, if you are posting a three week "Tune Up Class" that costs $40-80 for members and $70-110 for non members, you will add 10 prices total. First enter ticket amounts of 40, 50, 60, 70, and 80 under the name "Already a Member". Then enter 70, 80, 90, 100, and 110 under the name "Class + Membership". You will have to enter these names in the "Price Name" field. Set the Max Sales to "0" so that people can choose whichever price they want (the total number of sales will still be limited to what you set on the previous page".

Keep the remaining settings to recommended-- the ticket buyer pays the service charge, and the other options are moot since we have will call only tickets

3e. Media Pool

Choose to release 0 tickets to the media. We don't need media to take bike classes

3f. Verify

Verify and Confirm the event details.

3g. Confirm

This page shows that you have submitted the event. It will also give you the url to the page under "your event's public page". BE SURE TO COPY THE URL. You can even click on it first to see how it will look and then bookmark it. Usually events are confirmed after one or two days. Be sure to go back a day later and check the page to see if it's confirmed. If you think there's a problem, contact Brown Paper Tickets or email info@bikektichen.org to see if they have sent out an error message.

4. Advertise!

If you just post the class, but don't advertise it won't fill up. In order to fill the class and keep everyone in the loop, send an email out to the following people-- the email should contain the event name, description, date(s), price, and link to the url

email the class description to:

  info@bikekitchen.org
  calendar@sfbike.org
  the BK website manager
  the teachers of the class

Here is a sample email:

Bike Kitchen Basic Tune-Up Class

Our next Tune-Up class will meet for the first three Mondays in October, from 7:00-9:30pm each night.The exact dates are October 1st, 8th, and 15th.

Here are more details about the class:

   * It will be limited to 8 people, and will be held at the Bike 

Kitchen, which is located on Laskie Alley off of Mission St between 8th and 9th.

   * Class will be hands-on, so bring a bike and get ready to get greasy. 

Over the 3 weeks, it will cover what is included in a basic shop tune-up: installing and removing tubes and tires (i.e. fixing a flat), installing brake and shift cables, adjusting brakes and gears, chain maintenance, truing wheels, etc.

   * The fee for this class is sliding scale, and is $40-80 for current 

Bike Kitchen members, or $70-110 for non Bike Kitchen members (although a year-long membership comes with the class).

   * No previous knowledge about bikes is required or expected. But a 

willingness to learn and have fun is a must!

   * Class space is limited to 8 people. To sign up, go to: 

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/producerevent/20127?prod_id=4603 [edit] Can we get around the $100 limit that we can charge for an event through BPT?

For us to accept over $100 on BPT, we need to upgrade our BPT account to a Merchant Account. To have a BPT Merchant Account, we need to have a PayPal Business Account (if our current PayPal account is not a Business one, we can change it, no charge. Also, Google Checkout does not seem to be an option with BPT). Once we have this set up, we would have to pay the normal PayPal fees to receive payment (2.9% plus $.30 per transaction). The BPT ticket purchases would then be deposited directly into our PayPal account, including the $1.99 that BPT charges our patron per ticket purchase. Since we would now be collecting these $1.99 fees, we would be invoiced for them monthly by BPT.

Currently, we pay no fee to use BPT, and the buyer of the ticket pays a $1.99 fee.

So the questions are: would this end up being easier or harder from an accounting standpoint, and would we bring in enough extra money in classes to merit the PayPal fees?

An alternative: use BPT to charge only for the class, not for the membership, and put a note in the ticket sale explaining that a person who is not already a member will have to pay for a membership at the shop before taking the class. For those of you who have taught classes -- would this be a pain / not work? A possible other alternative would be to have two BPT postings for a class -- one for the actual class, and another for buying the membership.

Another thing we could try is seeing if anyone knows someone who works at BPT (based in Seattle) and could hook us up.