IxDA Chicago Local leaders and New volunteers meetings

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Comment by Aislinn Dewey, IxDA Local Leader on April 2, 2010 at 1:21pm

Hi everyone,
We had a great planning meeting on Wednesday and had a lot of ideas for how we can really grow our local chapter and make our events as inspiring, engaging and community-driven. We got a brief introduction of the four volunteers that showed up, several others interested responded but we unable to make it, so its important we follow up with them to keep them involved.

We developed a list of volunteer roles (more task-based) and leader roles, more long-term commitment that address our goals for the net 6-12 months.
Everyone will be involved as much as they want to commit, but it would be great for those that have the time, energy and interest in being involved more consistently, to come forward so that we can keep things moving forward and not operate in such an ad-hoc, event to event fashion.

We are planning to re-convene following the April event at Critical Mass for about an hour to talk about next steps based on what each of you are interested in taking on.

Some higher level issues that we discussed were the idea of having a theme to craft events around for a 6-month period that focuses on creating meaningful impact in the Chicago area, whether it be partnering with an organization that needs design support/guidance, finding a specific local design challenge to work on by year end or offer our collective knowledge and service to a small business...

We also talked about having every third event be participatory in nature, and end with a happy hour/drinks/connecting time. Could be a studio tour, a concert, a bar meetup that is by a gallery/opening, a museum tour, a backstage access at a theater, a hands-on design charette or critique, pecha kucha, vizfarm, etc.

To allow us to have discussions openly, I have created a Volunteers group on the ixdachicago.org page. For those interested in committing more time and taking on a leadership role (not as flexible as task-based volunteer roles), let me know by email or at the April meeting, and we will get you access to our local leaders basecamp site.

Volunteer tasks and areas of focus that were defined were:

Event Faciliatation:
Tasks
- technical setup (projector, video streaming, photogrpahy, securing equipment, audio)
- meeting with event host before event happens, communicate during planning what is required of them (event capacity, refreshments/alcohol/food/space, signage) update them on numbers (rsvp), printing and bringing sign-in list (downloaded from ixdachicago.org event page)
- event communication online (twitter, facebook, ixda.org national list-serve, ixdachicago.org)

IxDA Chicago Strategic Planning:
Tasks
- plan in advance themes and topics for future events
- share event organizing with community, get their feedback at events and online
- define long-term strategic goals for our chapter that events will align/build to
- identify sponsorship opportunities, work to get longer term corporate or organizational or local business sponsorship of the organization

Community Outreach:
Tasks
- coordinate with other local-area design groups
- reach out to get involvement from non-design groups that we can learn from or may be interested in our themes/topics
- connect with local area student groups, establish student coordinators to communicate events across campus or departments

Some event ideas we brainstormed were:
-seeing what the hot topics/top 5 debates threads on ixda.org to inform at topic
- design competitions local/national
- workshops/learning new tools
- studio tours/bar outing
- internal member defined events, no outside lecture, we craft the night
- goal to solve a citywide problem by end of year
- address the needs of underserved by using event to learn more about them, addressing change (behavior change, etc.) to build to final goal at end of year
- have non-profits around design, education, technology share their work and challenges


We're aiming to get a blueprint for the June, July and August events while also defining a 6-month and end of y

Comment by T. Annie Nguyen on March 31, 2010 at 7:48pm

sorry I couldn't make it tonight. Please keep me posted on future events.

Comment by Chris Ina on March 28, 2010 at 5:41pm

I will not be able to attend the meeting, however please count me in to help out.

Comment by Dennis Schleicher on March 8, 2010 at 4:16pm

week night would be good.

Comment by frank gruger on March 1, 2010 at 12:30pm

Can we move this to a week night?