Ope, summer got busy and I didn’t post an August Meutch update. I made some good updates in July, then got pulled away by vacation (good) and illness (bad). Now school is back in session and work on Meutch is steaming along!
Work on the application: Meutch gained many new features since my last post. The CHANGELOG has the details but here are some highlights from July:
- The messages inbox looks nice and you can archive messages and mark them read
- There’s now a “Contact Us” form so that users can report ideas or bugs to the admins without needing a GitHub account
- Claimed giveaways are hidden from the feed by default
- There’s no more “I want this” button, simplifying the process of assigning a giveaway to anyone who messaged
Plus some bug fixes and backend work. I’ve done a lot in September, but that’s for the October update.
Usage: activity on the app got a little quieter, dropping to 41 active users in July, then rebounding to 48 in August. I am still donating a dollar for each active user in each month, this time that went to Fed Up Ministries and the Mutual Aid Network of Ypsilanti (MANY). Go list an item or post or answer a request to keep these donations growing!
Between long weekends, vacations, and spending time outside, I’ve had less time for working on the site and for using it. I’m hopeful that’s the case for other people too and that usage will pick back up now that fall is underway. Let’s share Halloween costume accessories! I just posted a request for some Thor accessories for my 6th grader.
I continue to personally benefit from using Meutch. One highlight: In August borrowed tubes from two different people who responded to my Meutch request and took my boys tubing on the Argo Cascades. I lived here when the Cascades opened in 2012, how had I never been?! It’s definitely a top-things-to-do-in-Ann-Arbor attraction.
These two loans were not tracked on Meutch (I’ve since added an “I have this item” button in replies to requests to make it easier to get these items into the site). This illustrates how the Meutch activity numbers I see are under-counts. The public canoe livery charges $14 for a 2-hour tube rental; the Meutch loans saved me $84 that weekend.
Outreach: At this point the site itself is thoroughly ready for use. It needs one thing: more users. To that end I’m looking at more ways to make people aware of it:
- I had a MEUTCH summer game code on my bike
- I will be tabling at the Ann Arbor Zero Waste Festival on September 27th, 12-3pm at Kiwanis. It’s the only time all year you can shop Kiwanis resale on a Sunday! Come say hi.
The Meutch Outreach Committee made these sweet flyers to hand out at events:
I’ll carry a few with me for impromptu conversations, I’m bad at plugging my own stuff in person but want to get better.
Onward!