Dribbble Design Talks : Cebu Meetup 2016

A creative comeback for Cebu’s design community

Francis Alturas
Symph Stories
6 min readFeb 3, 2017

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This is sort of a late post. I got slammed with life in general, but here it goes:

A Brief Background

So back in 2015, We had our very first Dribbble Meetup in Cebu. Special thanks to Edzel Rubite for organizing it. (He had organized numerous creative events here, like DesignUbec & Behance Portfolio Reviews) For more details, here’s a nice write-up of the event by the awesome Karl Adrian Aguro.

Our mini Dribbble Meetup Cebu back in 2015

I’ve always been passionate about design and I’m looking out ways on how to give back, contribute and help build the local creative community. I wanted to change people’s perception of the local creative scene to make it into something better.

Starting From Nothing

So I decided to do a simple meetup. And just to let you know — I’m just a normal guy, nothing extravagant. I’m not even one of the notable designers here. I’m just like everybody else — grinding daily to improve their craft and trying to make ends meet. I just want to give back by doing something for the local design community :)

The Dribbble Kits, ready for the taking.

I only had 2 crazy weeks left before the meetup date! (You just gotta love the Christmas rush) To tell you honestly, organizing events isn’t really of my core strengths, but I’d like to give it a shot. I realized I needed help. And there’s no one in Cebu who’s more killer in organizing these type of creative events, than Seph Mayol.

Enter Seph

He has been organizing and moving really big creative communities and events here in the south, most notably Visual — the biggest graphic design conference in Cebu since way back 2009. And now, he’s the founder of Hoy! — a brand placement social network, you should totally signup on his app! :)

This event really inspired me to be where I am today as a designer.

So we met over coffee and chatted over my plan of organizing a meetup and initially asked him to speak on the event. But instead, he generously offered to help me organize the event instead. We mapped out the venue, started calling for speakers and looked for sponsorships. We got all the help and support we can get from the local creative community. And in just a week — we’ve achieved a solid line-up of speakers, a nice venue, a few sponsors for the printed promotional materials, pizza and booze. And the best part is, the event is completely FREE.

A Solid Line Up

Now this was really amazing, because you just can’t call people around and ask them if they are available by next week to speak in front of a crowd. But we did anyway, and the response was overwhelming! They were actually more than happy to help us out.

Top — Bottom: Stephanie Tudtud, Janot, PJ Ong & Dave McVeigh in the house, yo!

We’ve got Stephanie Tudtud to talk about her love & travels with Papercrafting (We even got to see the first unveiling of her CalendarProject, you should totally get one). Janot and his crazy Calligrafitti on the streets (Grab a Lettereater Sticker Pack, too). PJ Ong / Inodoroto give a deep & insightful talk about his branding work and experiences in Graphic Design. And Dave McVeigh (The DMC) to amaze us with his breathtaking showreels on Motion Graphics (And it was made locally by his incredibly talented team here). Now, we’re all set!

Registration

I wanted to build a custom site, but I don’t really have the luxury of time, so we just utilized the platform used by most Dribbble meetups, Nvite. Feel free to check it out. You can the event updates on our Facebook event page.

Just 3 days after announcing it, the event was full at 50! A lot of people were in the waitlist, emailing me for more slots , so we adjusted it to 75. And Just days before the event, the waitlist grew to 67 — giving us a total of 142 registrations!

Some were still asking if they could attend, even if they are in the wait list. And since this event is really for the community, I wanted everyone to come. So, “Of course — by all means, you’re free to come by” :)

The Meetup

The crowd was early and excited. We had beer and pizza for the whole night.
L-R: That’s Stephanie sharing her traveling experience with papercrafts and Dave McVeigh preparing for his talk.
L-R: PJ Ong aka Inodoro starting his talk & Janot aka Lettereater, taking about his journey to calligrafitti.

Sorry guys, I was so busy at this point during the event, that I missed a couple of things from their talk :/

You can check out the pictures here tho.

Our Secret Surprise Speaker

We were really hoping for this guy to come, but weren’t really sure if he could make it due to his conflicting flight schedules. But luckily, he was around town!

It’s Eugene Gauran from The Mill! We were already so stoked with the creative inspiration from everyone in the house, and this guy just killed the meetup with another round of motion design reels! It was nothing short of amazing!

All Is Well

Everyone was happy. We were all high with the creative talent and inspiration from the speakers. Everybody was overdosed with their passion for creating awesome work.

Now that’s a whole bunch of artists, designers and makers, stuck in a single room :)

Credits

Special thanks to Ashley for co-organizing. Chris for the emblem. Gian (GrafikNine) for the printed materials. Edzel for bringing this together. And to Seph for his never-ending support in the local design community.

Everyone at Symph for helping out & supporting the event.

To our speakers: PJ Ong, Stephanie Tudtud, Janot, Dave McVeigh & Eugene Gauran, and huge thank you for sharing your valuable time with us.

To our sponsors: GetCre8tive, Rise, PhotoUp & Happy Garaje for making sure nobody went hungry. iiOffice for giving us a nice cozy venue.

To Dribbble and it’s partners: UI8, Stocksy & Stickermule for the freebies & inspiring design communities via meetups.

And to everyone who came, thanks for supporting the local creative design scene. Till next time!

P.S. If I missed anything, let me know. I get too busy with work and being a full-time dad to my 3-mos old son :)

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Francis Alturas
Symph Stories

🦄 Product Designer ✨ I love startups, design sprints and CSS