Away from the day job: A story about how G Suite helped transform a community project.
Aside from being a teacher for 20 years, some of you may be aware that I'm a keen sportsman too. I've played football and cricket for many years and took up field hockey around 6 years ago, having never played before. It's a great game and I was quick to immerse myself in the clubhouse culture just as much as on the pitch. With myself, my wife and my daughter all playing - it's like a home away from home at times and we've made great friends.
It was at the end of my first season at Witham Hockey Club that I was told about our annual Witham Beer Festival. As people explained about the event and how it was started to help raise money to maintain our clubhouse building I was impressed and excited. I love a good ale and I was really looking forward to coming along.
That was year 3 of the festival and our volunteer organisers from the hockey club and Witham Cricket Club had done a great job of sourcing tents and marquees, a range of around 30 beers and a few wines local to East Anglia. While some volunteers served the beer. others ran the BBQ and more played in cricket matches to entertain the visitors.
It was really good fun, we have around 500 visitors and raised some much needed funds so I decided to get more involved in Year 4.
Year 4 I went along to my first beer festival committee meeting and it was packed. There was a terrific range of experience and ideas but it was hard to keep everyone informed of what we were trying to achieve and where everyone was at. It was after this meeting that I spoke to our chairman and mentioned Google Drive. We'd been using it a school for around a year really effectively, thanks largely to the drive of our then Learning Technologies Manager, Dean Stokes (you might have heard of him).
The chairman Lee and I spoke and I showed him G Suite's capabilities and a plan was formed to "Go Google". With an 'experienced' committee we knew there would be some resistance/ scepticism but we also knew it would take the beer festival forward.
We designed a created a 'matrix' of job roles and tasks on google sheets to project manage the whole things, set up a messaging protocol so that we didn't need to rely on long-winded meetings every month and gave everyone the trust and time to get on with their jobs.
We began using google slides and drawings to create advertising posts for social media, we used sites to redevelop the website and docs to create our programme. We kept all our documentation in Drive, with access to those who needed it and did away with reams of paper. We also used forms for volunteer sign up and feedback on the festival.
Overall, the first year was challenging but the committee embraced the new methods (with a bit of training and support from yours truly) and we are now heading towards our 9th festival from 22-22 August 2019.
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| Things grew rapidly, even the marquee! (2013 -2017) |
The festival has grown massively in popularity and size since those days and it would not have been possible without using G Suite and the support of our partners, especially Paul from Harwich Town Brewing Company. We now welcome over 2000 visitors to the event, have a range over over 100 beers, ciders and wines, have live cricket and music as well as professional caterers. This year, using Glide and google sheets, we'll also have our own App
It has become one of the most popular community events in town, supported greatly by sponsorship of barrels by local businesses and people.
If you're in Essex over August Bank Holiday, why not pop in for a pint?
