In October we gathered at General Assembly to exchange ideas between the AIGA board and members. After board members shared plans for the coming year, the crew got into clusters to consider some essential questions:
-What inspires you?
-What are you looking for from your design community?
-What is your favorite type of event?
-What do you wish you could learn more about?
Takeaways
Birds of another feather should flock together.
The group agreed that it would be great to seek collaboration with groups of other expertise, and to support the designers working across the many disciplines a city like Boston offers, such as healthcare.
We’re all just looking for some real connection, baby.
Members expressed interest in programming that fosters some more lasting connections, rather than the more easily found exchange-job-titles-pass-card-off interaction that most events allow for. Long-term mentors, enthusiastic designers, new friends, and creative role models are some of the characters we’re hoping to connect with.
Let’s get our hands dirty.
We want to be hacking, visualizing, judging, marathoning, volunteering, making, and doing. The lecture format is tried and true, but some of these other events are better at fostering some of the interactions mentioned above.
So what’s up for this year?
We focus on various initiatives that reflect needs in the Boston design community, and the passions of our board and members. These initiatives, along with the feedback gathered from members, will be used to guide our programming for the year.
Design & Business Initiative
Community Building
Education
Design for Good
In-house designers
Mentorship
Partnering with other Boston-area organizations
Were you unable to attend?
We still want to hear from you! We are always open to new event ideas, comments, questions and concerns. Please email our Membership Experience team (Emily Hamre and Lauren Yanko) to share your thoughts.
