Seattle Creative Meet Ups

After the Biz Lady meet up in Seattle, I left my email addy on Design*Sponge to see if anyone wanted to continue meeting up.

And lo and behold, one of the people who responded was John Tusher of Velocity, who wanted to keep the inspiration going and was offering the new Velocity store as a location!

So on Monday I had tea with John to have a chat about the format such meetings could take. 

We thought that it would be good to aim for monthly meetings and we would get a guest speaker or panel of speakers for each one (John's obviously got some great contacts he can tap).  We also wanted to set aside a bit more time for socializing and networking afterwards.

We thought it would have more of a general design focus rather than just a business focus, though we might touch on small business-related topics at some point.  Oh and given John's involvement, and the general design focus, we thought it would be odd if it were exclusively for women, though it would probably have a preponderance of women attending given what it has sprung from.

So I really just wanted to open this up to get people's thoughts and ideas on the above.  I've sort of ended up doing this by default and am keen to create something that everyone feels a part of and will enjoy.

All ideas, comments and suggestions are hugely welcome - either via email or in the comments below.  We'd particularly love to hear from you if you've got good ideas for a great name; know someone who would be a good guest speaker; can point us in the direction of wine/cheese/bakery sponsors; or want to get involved in any way.  If you're a Seattle-based blogger and think your readers might be interested it would be immensely helpful if you could point them in this direction.

Most importantly, email me if you would like to attend the first meet-up, which we're aiming to have organised for mid-April. 

The bad news is that John doesn't like the siting of the new coffee table either.(How weird is it when someone you've never met before, can tell you all about your interior decor? Sometimes this blog thing freaks me out.)

Editing to say that we've set a date and managed to line up an absolutely FANTABULOUS first guest speaker.  However, I'm going to leave the announcement until Monday, because no one comes here at the weekend.  I promise it's exciting though!

Comments

[kim]

Yay! Let's do it. Thanks, Paola. And I definitely think it should be open to men & ladies. No guest speaker ideas jump to mind but consider me in! (and sorry, but have to agree with john on the coffee table thing!!) ;)

[Uncle Beefy]

Grace from design*sponge pointed me in this direction and, as a man, am very happy that this would be open to me too :) !!! Since I haven't been to a biz meet-up prior, not sure what you'd be looking for by way of speakers...? But what I can tell you is that I could arrive with plenty of curiosity and some killer cupcakes.

I'll try to think of possible names and refreshment vendors...? Keep me posted about this exciting venture!

[anonymous]

The coffee table is diminishing the beauty of the rug. Better to go without the table altogether. (Plus, the white part looks plastic-y.)

[paola]

Anyone who goes by the name of Uncle Beefy is fine by me....

As for the cupcakes, unfortunately John believes there would be health & safety issues for Velocity if we bring our own food (which is sad as that worked so well for the last meet up).

That's why we thought of just having wine, cheese and crackers and thought maybe some local wineries, cheesemakers or bakeries may want to sponsor us. Do let me know if you can think of anyone who might be interested.

Oh and for the sake of neatness, could any more comments about my coffee table be added to that blogpost only :)

[Dina Baloyan]

Paola,
I think it's a great idea to keep the meet ups going! Count me in!
Perhaps Bre Pettis of brepettis.com and www.imakethings.com can be a good fit for a guest speaker. I don't know him personally, but saw a podcast from this year's SXSW conference where he talks about Video Blogging. Might be an interesting topic and he is based out of Seattle.

[paola]

Hi Dina,

Bre sounds fascinating - we were kicking round the idea of having a panel about blogging for one meet up, so he would fit right into that. Thanks so much for the suggestion!

[cally]

You're too cool, Still an organisational guru madame
Hope you are well, I've not been up to doing proper reads, but saw a link to this and thought I'd not been here in over a month. xxx

ps, i've been on a holiday! so new sunny pics on my blog