Plans for 2025

James HancockJames Hancock

Adding more groups

This year it's time to start combing through Meetup, Eventbrite and Facebook to make sure we're not missing relevant groups from those sites. As always, if you have suggestions, please recommend them and I will add them to the site. Hopefully this year we'll have a much easier way of adding groups, due to...

A proper website for adding groups

I'm experimenting with adding a content management system (PagesCMS) so that volunteers who want to contribute to the site more meaningfully have an efficient method. It's a free CMS which doesn't cost anything to host, hopefully workable without too much maintenance effort. If it doesn't work PagesCMS will only be used for blog posts, and I'll have to think of a better submission form.

Blog content for common questions

While lower priority than adding social groups, blog content would still be useful & interesting for site visitors. Here are some questions I've notice come up recently.

  • How can new parents in Bristol connect with other new parents?

  • What are some great, free or low cost locations to host events for your group?

  • Just how many run clubs are there in Bristol, exactly?

Keeping social channels up to date

I'll try to update social media channels once a month with the latest groups added. This does take time away from adding groups / development of the site, however the network effect of social media is very important. It's good to have multiple ways of sharing groups, as most people won't visit the main site.

Scaling to more cities?

I'd like to scale the current platform to 100 groups and get feedback on how useful people find it, if there are ways we can refine the site experience to make it better. Then it's time to consider how this sort of initiative could be scaled to support thousands of groups across the UK with plenty of volunteer editors and community contributions - not easy, but doable!

Working with awesome volunteers

In 2024, there was one contribution to our GitHub repository by Mayank Mehta, as well as a dozen group suggestions in the Google Form. Thank you for your support and help!

If you'd like to volunteer and any of the above sounds interesting, please get in touch via the social media accounts linked below.

Best of luck for 2025, James.