With February being the shortest month of the year, we were so impressed by how many Dribbble Meetups were hosted! Over 1000 designers gathered at 18 meetups in 14 different countries around the world. Our team here at Dribbble even hosted a meetup in Portland with a few of our very own team members attending! For some, this was the first time hosting a meetup and for others, it was another great event for the books. A few highlights include hilarious ice-breakers like designers sharing their most embarrassing moment and also fun challenges like redesigning a household object. You won’t want to miss the recaps below!
Interested in attending a Dribbble Meetup? It’s not too late to join one near you this March in places like Port Harcourt, Des Moines, Tokyo, Charlotte, and more! No meetups happening near you? We’d love to help you get started in hosting your own.
Portland, Oregon @ Modern Times
“A few folks from the Dribbble team were going to be in Portland at the same time, so we decided it would be a perfect opportunity to take a note from our awesome community and throw a meetup of our own! Even Dribbble’s co-founder Dan Cederholm made it to the event, so naturally we put him to work pumping dozens of basketballs.
“The turnout was amazing. Designers, both fresh-faced and established, made their way to Modern Times’ Portland location, The Belmont Fermentorium. This location was actually designed by Helms Workshop, and has a vintage tech vibe to it, with floppy disks lining the walls and a giant Randy Savage hanging from the ceiling.
“Fun times were had and friendships were forged. Let’s hang out again soon, Portland!”
Noida, India @ Quovantis Technologies
“Our first Dribbble Meetup at Quovantis was a hit. We couldn’t have asked for a better and more enthusiastic audience. The meetup was a mix of UX/UI Designers, Graphic Designers, and Interaction Designers. We kicked off the session with a quick ice-breaker activity where we asked each person to introduce themselves to two random people and share their life’s one embarrassing moment. Later we asked people to share what they thought about stranger’s moments and had a riot of laughter listening to them.
“In our first session, Tarun Kohli, our CEO talked to us about the 7 Design Principles that we follow at Quovantis. He also shared how Design Principles form the backbone of a great design organization and why every design group must formulate their own. Post that, we took a break for lunch. We had arranged for some delicious finger food and soft drinks. Everyone had their fill and then we moved to the next session, which was a UX challenge.
“We asked people to look at the WIX’s onboarding flow and share their opinion on what can be done better. This was an hour-long session and everyone was hooked. We loved the energy in these sessions as people were brimming with ideas and suggestions. Overall, we had a fabulous time interacting with people and we would love to host more such meetups in the future.”
Cincinnati, Ohio @ Gaslight
“This was our first Dribbble Meetup at the Gaslight offices in downtown Cincinnati. Joe Leineweber, a local Art Director, shared a talk on how common design principles can be applied to many other disciplines. We enjoyed pizza and time getting to know one another and finished an evening with a team exercise. Each team redesigned an everyday household object and shared their creation with the whole group.”
Tehran, Iran @ Amir Kabir University of Technology
“In our second Tehran Dribbble Meetup, we set a new trend in Iran’s digital design community. We do believe in that only being able to create something cool does not make you a great designer. So with that in mind in this meetup, we wanted to talk about a new idea of: “The Business of Design”. During the event, we had the famous Dribbble design competition and the question was “What is the fuel of a designer?”. People made some really amazing and cool stuff. We had 8 winners. They won Sketch, Framer and Avacode license and a discount code for Sympli. We gave all participants a discount code for Zeplin and Avacode. We also had a job posting board which had two sections, one for the companies and startups that are looking for talent and the other was for talented designers looking for a new job.
“In this meetup, we had 3 speakers who spoke about the communication and necessary soft skills that every designer must have. Mohammadreza Sobhan who is basically a hero when it comes to the startup ecosystem of Iran, Ali Shahi who is the current Art Director of Snapp (a leading ride-hailing startup in Iran), and Nejdeh Hovanesian who is not only a great designer but an entrepreneur helping many companies in Iran and abroad.
“For our panel discussion which was about the “business of design “ we had with us two studio owners—Masoud Garousiyan and Masih Moqadam, a designer as a CEO, we also had Asma Karoobi and a Marketing Director Parviz Aria of a famous and well-known multinational IT company. The main focus of the panel was about soft skills and how designers act and feel about different kinds of clients. With this formation, we were able to bring in a discussion that triggered the most important questions designers have about marketing and business. How they have to approach and educate their clients, how to get the project when there are other competitors, and the coolest part was the disagreement which made a lot of great points.
“We are glad to say we had 200 attendees come to our meetup. Our hashtag, #TehranDM was used more than 350 times and almost 3000 people watched the live stream of the meetup on Aparat. With the support of our lovely sponsors, Basalam, which provided the snacks and nuts for the break, Zoomit, Click, Digikala Mag, and DigikalaNext helped us to broadcast our voice in the society with help of their media.
Bogotá, Columbia @ Platzi HQ
“We had around 36 attendees and hosted a master class from Ruben Avila. He spoke about the 10 principles of good design (by Dieter Rams) applied to what we see in UI, in addition to how to create innovative products thanks to these principles. For the first time in the meeting, we had an extensive session of questions and answers that allowed us to connect more with the community.”
Cairo, Egypt @ The Greek Campus
“We hosted the Cairo Dribbble Meetup as a part of IrisX 2019 which is the biggest UI and UX related event in Egypt. The keynote was given by Dr. Elizabeth Churchill, Director of UX at Google and there were also talks given by Business Leads in Egypt. We also had a panel discussion about UI/UX career paths. The event was organized by Babel which is a media production house.”
Rzeszow, Poland @ Niezla Sztuka
“Together with Dribbble and SoftwareTalks we held our 1st design conference ever in Rzeszow! About 90 participants joined the event. Three different speakers talked about making a creative career, the art of selling ideas, and the creation of design systems. During the evening we held a Dribbble Shots Showcase on the screen. We chose the best designer at the end of the evening based on the links sent. Great people, great time, and great design!”
Pune, India @ AFour Technologies Office
“The Pune Dribbble Meetup was loads of fun. This was the first meetup ever that we organized. We played a couple of warm-up games along with a big group game. Every one of us enjoyed the event a lot and shared loads of interesting thoughts. There was also a talk on “AI First Design” which was quite interesting and insightful. Overall we had a blast and built up a local network of passionate designers.”
Dhaka, Bangladesh @ Local Government Engineering Department, Bhaban
“We had over 400 designers gather for this event. We had the IDEP President with us and he gave a mind-blowing speech. The program was a whole day long from 9 am - 6 pm.”
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.
