Dribbble Roorkee Meetup
Introduction
Being a part of the rapidly growing global designer community is very exhilarating. Sharing our thoughts and ideas with people has given us a great sense of what design means to the industry and how we can grow and co-exist as a professional. Also, we have realized that networking is a key skill to facilitate growth in any community and hence conducting networking events such as a Dribbble Meetup is essential to help a community which is off the map and make them aware of the industry standards.
Thus, to provide exposure to the designer community at IIT Roorkee and promote the culture of design, we organized the “Roorkee Dribbble Meetup” on February 2nd, 2019. This was the second edition of Dribbble Meetup in Roorkee which was organized by Design Studio in collaboration with E-Cell IIT Roorkee.
This being our second time hosting the event, we wanted to make the event interesting and scale it up but faced a lot of problems in achieving the same. This is a frequent problem faced by many organizers, especially in the meetups organized in India.
So, I’ve decided to compile all that I have learned from organizing such a meetup into a guide about organizing and managing a Dribbble Meetup of a scale which is similar to the ones organized by corporates.
Planning
Phase 1:
The first and foremost thing about hosting a meetup outside the U.S. is that you should start planning your meetup at least 2 months prior to the date you decide to organize the event. This is because it takes two months for the Dribbble Swag Kit to reach you after you have applied as the host for the meetup. Within the U.S., it takes around 2 to 3 weeks to reach the organizers. And believe me, one of the most fascinating things about a meetup is its swag kit. It adds to the creative vibes that you would love to have during the event.
So when you start thinking of hosting a meetup, the first thing you do is log on to “dribbble.com” and under the community section select “Host a Meetup”. Fill all the required information and bingo! You are all set with the plan and now should proceed to arrange other logistics. Some of the information asked can be tentative like the number of attendees, et cetera.
Phase 2:
As you know, most of the meetups are intended to socialize and share experiences. So your next move should be to spread the word about your meetup and try to get in RSVPs from the designer community around you. This will help you gain recognition within the community and also would help the dribbble team to ascertain and send the required number of swag kits for the meetup.
Now, to make the meetup more informative and add some learning value to it, you could also try bringing in some quality designers working in the design teams of good companies and startups. This will be very encouraging for the designers in your area and might as well help you in getting more participation.
Bringing in a reputed designer is a big challenge but you can expect a good response from many of them. Try connecting with as many as possible and tell them about your event and share stories of designers around you and how the community is fostering in your vicinity. Even if some of them are not available, stay connected to them. This might help you with future events.
Phase 3:
Now it’s time to start planning the fun events or sessions you want in the meetup. On a general basis, people try to decide a theme and all the events according to that, but this is not compulsory.
The events should consist of:
Ice Breaking: to get an idea of the people attending the meetup.
Knowledge Transfer Session: to let people share their experiences and discuss design practices prevalent in the industry.
Fun Event: to let people socialize and have fun while they tackle a design problem during the event.
You can add anything else you feel appropriate. But extending the meetup to more than 6 hours is not recommended. After all these events, end the event with a closing note and share the swag kit with the participants.
Roorkee Meetup and its events
Roorkee Dribbble Meetup 2019 was organized at IIT Roorkee campus in Sattviko Idea Cafe which has got a great ambiance and has the perfect vibe for an event like this. Around 50 people attended and participated in the meetup.
As the keynote speaker for the meetup, we had invited Mr. Abhinav Chhikara, head of design at Unacademy. As a product designer, he specializes in mobile UI/UX and growth and also has a youtube channel where he shares content related to design and his experiences in the industry.
The meetup started by introducing the speaker to all the designers followed by a talk from Abhinav. He talked about:
His story of going from an engineer to a professional designer.
Future of design in startups.
What’s the next big computing platform?
What happens when we hit the singularity?
The talk was very engaging and insightful. It not only covered the stuff we regularly hear as designers but also a lot of new things which caught the fantasy of all those present.
Then we started with our Ice breaking session, which was divided into 2 parts. Team Distribution and Pictionary.
The theme we had was an amalgamation of fiction and design. The teams were named as House Montserrat, House Poppins etc., a blend of fonts and the T.V. series “Game of Thrones”. The participants were divided into 8 teams consisting of around 7 members each.
After the teams were formed, we started with the Pictionary part of the Ice-breaking session. Each team had to send one volunteer who would pick one chit, read the word written on it and try to make his/her team members guess that word by drawing something on the board. These prompts were the terminologies of design which are essential for every designer to understand. For example Navigation bar, Mockup, Responsive etc. The constraint was that they had only 2 minutes to explain the maximum number of words to their team and guess them right.
The session was fun and served well as an ice-breaker for the participants. The maximum number of words were guessed right by “House Poppins” in which they guessed 5 words in 2 minutes.
The last event which was planned to let the participants socialize and network amongst each other while working on a design challenge. The challenge was to think over products that were twisted in some way or the other and then to make a presentable outcome of whatever they had come up within the given time of one and a half hour. Some examples of the options provided were Myntra for Minions, Airbnb for Ghosts, SBI for Squirrels etc.
During their 90 minutes of activity, many members of the teams took out some time to interact with the speaker and get answers to their questions related to design, career opportunities and how to assure incessant growth in the field. Abhinav responded well to their questions and was really open to talking about the core principles that they should inculcate in them.
All the teams did well in pondering over their ideas and had really interesting and creative solutions to present. They had unique solutions to the problems and their presentations were quite intriguing.
After all the presentations, the final results were announced and the winning team was “House Montserrat”. Their topic was “ SBI for Squirrels” and their solution was very well planned, designed and presented.
Concluding the event, the winning team was rewarded and the participants in the meetup received some exciting goodies from the swag kit. Everyone got to tinker over great ideas and network with other designers present at the event. Each participant took back something with them which was worth their time.
I got the chance to escort Abhinav and bid him farewell with a token of love. I took his suggestions on how we can improve at organizing such events in the future and also how to improve the design culture on our campus.
I hope we keep on having more such interesting events and also expect to see more people in the third edition of Roorkee Dribbble Meetup.
PS: Thanks Ishir Chatnani for helping me in editing the blog and Anchit Shukla and Jayant Mishra for your suggestions and helping in organizing the event.
