Bay Area Designers, You Are Invited
I’m happy to announce that Bay Area designers will soon have a monthly meetup where they can share their ideas, receive meaningful feedback from peers, and improve their skills practically and directly.
We call it Chromatic (formerly The Drawing Room*), and you are invited to attend!
- – -
The first Chromatic will be on Saturday, June 6 at Hot Studio in San Francisco.
Please join the wiki and Google Group if you’d like to attend and shape this event with your suggestions and resource help. We solemnly swear we won’t get email-happy — just the important stuff, like an invitation to the first planning meeting this week!
Want to know more before you join? Read on…
- – -
The Motivation
Some have asked why we created Chromatic and how it will be different from other events and meetups. That’s most easily explained by the story of its conception….
Chromatic began with this tweet by artist and student Sasha Volynets:
(referencing both HackerDojo and SupperHappyDevHouse )
This short message made an obvious need undeniable. Timoni Grone, Sasha, and I quickly jumped into an IRC room to discuss the issue with other friends and thinkers. The consensus was that it was true; there isn’t an equivalent (that we’re aware of) that provides resources and benefits for designers.
So we made one!
- – -
The Difference
Most design-related events tend to fall into one of three categories:
- Those for networking
- Those for listening to speakers
- Those for coworking (which, let’s face it, often means checking Google Reader or FFFFOUND!)
There’s something lacking here, and that’s direct engagement with peers on a project-specific basis.
Developers and physical computing geeks have those sorts of opportunities through events like SHDH here in the Bay Area, and hacker spaces worldwide. It’s our feeling that designers should, too.
- – -
The Mission
We aim to bring the Bay Area a workshop-style environment where ideas can grow into living, breathing projects, and existing work can be improved through peer critiques.
Chromatic will provide opportunities for designers and those in closely related fields to spread ideas and improve their skills and knowledge base through activities like:
- Presentations of design work, open to Q&A and critique
- Open, collaborative brainstorming sessions
- Constructive critiques and redesigns of existing popular work
- Other sessions that we haven’t dreamed up yet, but that are all yours to create!
- – -
The Chromatic crew gives big props to SHDH and BarCamp for providing us with inspiration in spirit, though not necessarily in structure. We see Chromatic as distinct from those formats, but we absolutely encourage anyone involved with those events to check us out, participate, and share their thoughts. Feedback is always, always appreciated!
- – -
Disclaimer of sorts: As I’ve said elsewhere, I myself am not a designer. I’m a lover of good design and a community manager — the kind of person who’s compelled to connect like-minded folks toward a common goal. I can think of no better use of my interests and skills than this event, and I’m *so* excited to see that some designers that I personally admire are already on board. I hope you will be, too!
If you have any questions about Chromatic, feel free to drop me a line at: heather dot rasley @ gmail dot com
* Why the name change? Because it’s sexier. Don’t you think?
