Challenge

There are numerous designers who live, work, and play in Brooklyn, and plenty of meetups that are hosted within the confines of Manhattan.

But we felt like there wasn’t a consistent platform to allow for our design community to have a voice to connect with each other locally in Brooklyn, NY.

Finding Our Voice and Purpose

I have never been a big new year’s resolutions kinda gal, but I wanted to do something purposeful with my free time that can make a difference to the people that are around me.

To get set up, we needed to:
  • Establish a meetup group and clearly state our mission and purposes
  • Master email account for connect with members or interested speakers
  • Slack communications to chat, post jobs, seek advice and share events
  • Establish a website and online social media handles and hashtags so newcomers can find and tag us @bkproductdesign
  • Create a strong personality and branding to get our name out to the design universe, promote via other partner groups
  • Recruit and collect a roster of diverse speakers, sponsors, and allies in the industry to spearhead sharing their stories and hosting us in their spaces (Small Planet, WeWork, Adobe, Brainstation)
  • Set up youtube video archives for members to relive the experience, and for speakers to showcase their talent and stories
  • Recruit passionate volunteers and organizers who share the same mission as us; Set up onboarding, overview decks, and templates to enable them to contribute their strengths within their roles
  • Allow for ways to ask our members for feedback to continuously iterate on our experiences
Each of us has a voice. Our meetup is the platform and stage to feel empowered to teach others what you love to do, learn with curiosity, and make connections that our members otherwise wouldn’t have discovered themselves. And with that circle for trust, and play, and learning… our community was born.
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Event formats

We started small and leaned on our inner circles to get local speakers to sign up for a variety of topics. As we grew out our speaker base, we started to notice themes across the board – inclusive design, user research & data, mixed reality platforms, interaction design and principles. We have also expanded virtually during the pandemic to continue supporting our community in need of connection safely from the comfort of their own home.

​Speaker talks (6/year)
● Lightning talks
● Stories & Experiences
● Portfolio Reviews
● Workshops/Panels

Social events (6/year)
● Happy hour socials
● Artwalks/exhibitions
● Mindfulness/Local spotlight
● Joint meetup events
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Design Hackathons

UXPA PrattUXathon

One of the biggest events we hosted was a full day design hackathon in conjunction and partnership with the UXPA PrattUXathon in Feb 2019, with over 50 participants, 10 teams, and 10 mentors, judges, and volunteer/organizers and behind the scenes sponsors and social media to generate buzz around the event. That was a project in itself!
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Outcomes

Since establishing ourselves in 2017:
  • We went from awkward strangers to now having repeat faces who have also expanded their roles to run the group with us
  • Orchestrated volunteer roles and involvement, and enabled our speaker's personal growth; Pushed on their comfort zones to provide opportunities for members to practice public speaking
  • ​I have been recognized and featured in a meetup.com live event panel and held a panel convo with 500+ meetup organizers to offer advise on how to homegrow, market, create, and grow their own community groups
  • Kept our members safe and strong when they need it the most virtually during the shifts in pandemic
  • Celebrated our anniversaries with an opener lightning talk on how we rooted with a small idea through to expansion
​Rock on! Check us out at bkproductdesign.com ✌️
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