March Dribbble Meetup Wrap‑Up

March was a great month for Dribbble Meetups—with 20 meetups in 13 countries. Almost 2,000 of you attended meetups around the globe!

Each year at SXSW, we award the Silver Bucket to the most active Dribbble community. It was first awarded to the Austin Dribbble community for 2014 and then last year, we awarded it to the Washington, D.C. Dribbble community for 2015. We’re excited to announce we’ve awarded the Silver Bucket for 2016 to the Cape Town Dribbble community, for their meetups organized by Isoflow.

We’ve loved watching Cape Town’s enthusiasm for Dribbble and Dribbble Meetups over the past year. Isoflow has planned consistently awesome Dribbble Meetups with fantastic speakers and a welcoming community. Read a quote from the Isoflow team here.

The Dribbble Meetup schedule doesn’t seem to be slowing down, so keep up to date with the latest upcoming Dribbble Meetups or think about starting your own!

Cape Town, South Africa @ Isoflow

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“We kicked off our Cape Town Dribbble Meetups for 2016 by shaking things up a bit. Our events are usually held at an art-deco traditional theatre with the focus on 3 lightning talks and an analogue playoff but this time we decided to make the best of the great summer weather and made it a rooftop event at the Isoflow offices instead.

Ruan Vermeulen and PJ Offner from Cape Town based studio, Am I Collective, presented an inspiring talk on the interaction between characters and their environment in the context of illustration and animation. Designers could then choose to take part in either the analogue or digital playoff competition with the theme ‘A designer’s worst nightmare.’

A big thanks to our sponsor Yoco. It was a great evening of socialising, networking, playing table tennis and enjoying drinks, pizza & cake whilst watching the sunset over Table Mountain. We’re looking forward to the next one!”

See all the photos from the meetup here.

Austin, TX @ Public School

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The 5th annual SXSW ATX Dribbble Meetup was a blast! Over 400 Austin locals and SXSW-goers attended. We celebrated with designer friends new and old and snapped some photos with the Silver Bucket in the amazing Smilebooth. See all the silly faces here. Thanks to our Global Meetup Sponsors Sticker Mule and Stocksy for their support. Read more about the meetup here.

Lisbon, Portugal @ Hotel Florida

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“Really proud of the strong community we are building here in Portugal. Dribbble has been amazing on the way we—as a small country—expose ourselves to the world. My life changed 5 years ago, only a couple of months after I joined Dribbble. I started traveling around the world, collaborating with great teams on amazing projects. The need to give back to the community is what makes Dribbble so incredible. That’s why I saw everyone really interested listening to the speakers sharing their experiences.”

Mexico City, Mexico @ Clementina

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“Mexico City’s first Dribbble Meetup was interesting to say the least. A group that included digital designers, graphic designers, developers photographers, UI designers, UX enthusiasts and agency directors discussed over cold beers Mexico’s current situation in the Design world. A hot topic was why digital design was lagging when industrial and textile design are fields where Mexico is becoming an icon. This led us to discuss the status of current design communities in Mexico and why none have really taken off—from ego to ambiguity in naming conventions (everybody invents a fancy title for their area of expertise).

After talking about the issues, we set ourselves to accomplish one goal: create a community of digital designers that becomes a point of reference and a standard around the globe.

We then proceeded to talk about UI and UX in Mexico City, leading to a very interesting topic to be discussed in next month’s meetup: ‘Is there such thing as localized UX? And why do e-commerce solutions that appear to be the next big thing don’t seem to work over here.’ We’ll keep you posted on our conclusions after the April 21st meetup.”

Davao City, Philippines @ Dreamwork Co-Working Space

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“The 1st DGDC x Dribbble Meetup was a huge success. It was held at Dreamwork Co-Working Space in collaboration with Davao Graphic Designers Community. Around 40+ attendees joined the event. It was a very fun meetup. We did an activity on creating an icon for our city. Our speakers talked about getting started on painting, mascot illustration and UI design. We also invited two designers to have a quick show and tell about their shots.

Huge thanks to all our sponsors especially to Dribbble by supporting local community events, Dreamwork Co-Working Space for our venue, Harvy’s team, Sevenseas and Ninesigns for our food, Eric and Resa for stickers and to all who joined the event and lastly to all our speakers who share their valuable inputs. We are hoping to host again another Dribbble Meetup in Davao City.”

Rotterdam, Netherlands @ Awkward

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“The Dribbble & Sketch Meetup took place in Awkward agency in Rotterdam on March 10th. It was a really nice spot, since from the balcony there you could enjoy the view of lined up cargo ships. We had around 120 designers attend and three presenters. First one on stage was Benjamin den Boer who presented Framer and its features. Next one was Christopher Downer from Sketch, who gave a glimpse into all the newest improvements of Sketch. After the break, Erin Weigel from booking.com gave a very energetic presentation, encouraging to really think of what ‘mobile’ actually is, and encouraging to assess all the WHYs before you or your client goes ‘mobile’.”

Amman, Jordan @ Fann Wa Chai

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“We had our second successful Dribbble Meetup. We talked with our Jordanian designers about working with product managers, amazing projects and UX and branding. We would love to thank our sponsors, speakers, and all of the awesome attendees. We hope to see you again in our next Dribbble Meetup.”

Orlando, FL @ The Iron Yard

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“In partnership with The Iron Yard and AIGA Orlando, Dribbble Orlando held it’s first Speed Mentoring Event—illustration series. We hosted an exciting panel of local professionals who took a few hours of their busy schedules to share their life/work experiences with younger illustrators in our community.

Our March Meetup brought 30+ attendees together; including 12 mentors, 6 volunteers, a lots of cookies. Our Analog Playoff winner took home a coloring book and a 1-year subscription to Skillshare, courtesy of AIGA Orlando. See photos from the event on Flickr.”

Follow @DribbbleOrlando on Twitter to learn about upcoming Dribbble Meetups. The next one is coming up in May 2016 with a focus on UI and Prototyping.

Lincoln, NE @ FUSE

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“Everyone had a great time at the NE Dribbble Meetup! We partnered with Nebraska UX and AIGA NE for the event and had 60+ people in attendance. FUSE co-working was gracious enough to host the event, and Hudl sponsored the food and libations. A big hit were the prints of the invite along with dribbble NE totes that Nick Evans made for everyone in attendance. We were honored to have Kelsey Janda speak about the importance of “Off Screen” observation in UX design. As a finish to the night Alexander Russell won our Analog Playoff. We are eagerly looking forward to hosting our next event sometime this summer!”

London, Ontario @ Olio Digital Labs

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“We had a really good time at the London Dribbble Meetup at Olio Digital Labs. Roughly 30 designers got together to talk about Sketch vs. Photoshop and Illustrator, motion design, and the rise of automation (and how it didn’t worry any of our attendees). We also had an Analog Playoff that was a lot of fun! Two designers also showed off logos they had recently created, and one person talked us through the process of building a UX standardization grid for websites that millions of Canadians use each year. It was a great event, and at the end of the night people were asking me when the next Dribbble Meetup would be happening!”

Read the full recap here.

Greenville, SC @ Dapper Ink

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“Greenville’s first Dribbble Meetup was a huge success—there was a great turnout. We had about 35 people come through the door all night and everyone was able to walk away with their own poster they screen printed and a handful of free shirts they learned to screen print themselves as well. Greenville’s design community is growing more and more and this was a great kick starter to all of the collaborations to come. Dapper Ink is looking forward to hosting more Dribbble Meetups in the future.”

Auckland, NZ @ Vend HQ

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“Our third Dribbble meetup at Vend HQ rounded up some of the best creatives in the scene. The theme this time was ‘The Creative Process’ where we invited guest speakers:

• Jade Tan (Product Designer @Vend) shared her process of ideation through doodling where she ran a quick 10 minute workshop with the audience.
• Roxy Huntington (Head of Design @Trademe) shared her process on leading a design team by encouraging diversity.
• Deanna Yang (Chief Cookie Officer @Moustache Milk & Cookie Bus) shared her creative process on starting a business, and how she transitioned a brick & mortar cookie store onto a school bus.

Everyone enjoyed the evening and left feeling inspired to start something, which is the purpose of these meetups. Better yet, there were plenty of Milk & Cookies for everyone to munch on. Join our Auckland Dribbble Meetup group to stay up to date for our next event!”

Cracow, Poland @ Hubraum Krakow

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The Cracow Dribbble Meetup was a success with over 150 attendees. It was organized by Miłosz Klimek and Damian Watracz See photos from the event here and check out the recap video below.

Detroit, MI @ Ponyride

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“We had a great little meet up at Ponyride in Detroit. About 25-30 people showed up for drinks, laughs and great stories. Some people drove all the way from Ann Arbor to attend! We will definitely be hosting another one in the future.”

Brasila, Brazil @ Universidade de Brasília

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“The idea of bringing the Dribbble Meetup to our town came from two students who wanted to improve the local creative scene. After designing and thinking about how to really impact the community, we brought a Dribbble Meetup to the University of Brasilia where professionals, academics, and students joined for a 4-day event!

During the event, we focused on three distinct areas that mix with design: fashion, coding, and architecture. The program included lectures, insights, workshops and guests artists. Also, there was an exposition that was opened to the public, with works of local artists and Dribbble members.

We had about 300 designers at the Brasila Dribbble Meetup. Attendees had an opportunity to interact with market professionals from a digital studio and have new experiences provided by Casa Thomas Jefferson, which featured a 3D printer, virtual reality glasses and other fun technologies. The event was a success and we are very excited about the impact our community!”

Fargo, ND @ Drekker Brewing

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“The first-ever Fargo Dribbble Meetup couldn’t have gone any better. For the main event of the evening we had attendees participate in a contest to design a new North Dakota license plate (because the new one is incredibly terrible), and at the end of the night we had Nathan Yoder do a live judging of the work from his office in Seattle. As you can see by the North Dakota license plate playoff currently happening, some really great work came out of the event.

When it was all said and done we had close to 70 designers in attendance, and the designers who were unfamiliar with Dribbble definitely see the benefits of participating. We can’t wait to plan another meetup in the future. Much thanks goes out to the Dribbble team—you made it extremely easy to host a killer event!”

Toronto, Ontario @ Format

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“Format hosted designers and creatives from all over over the city for an evening of art, ping pong, GIFs (some literal Tequila Rose Dribbble shots) and great conversation. It was a great opportunity for Format to highlight some of the incredible work from our users and celebrate young talent making waves in their careers.”

See all the photos by Mohammed Asaduallah.

Hyderabad @ Lambda Software Innovations

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“The Hyderabad Dribbble Meetup was awesome. Nearly 25 designers attended from all different parts of the city. We really had a wonderful time and had long talks, competitions, music, pizzas and much more. Designers shared ideas and interacted with each other and we all felt that it was an incredible evening.”

Meetups

The following Dribbble Meetups are happening soon. For the full list of upcoming meetups, visit our Meetups page.

Find more Meetups stories on our blog Courtside. Have a suggestion? Contact stories@dribbble.com.