Vancouver Does United Graphic Design Meetup Day - December 2010

THE SHORT VERSION:
Steven Luscher is relinquishing the organizer-ship of the Vancouver Graphic Design Meetup on December 13th, 2010. Please come and join us to celebrate over 5 years of memories, and to meet the new organizers!

THE LONG VERSION:
I moved to Vancouver in July of 2005, and joined the Vancouver Graphic Design Meetup shortly after, on July 27th, 2005. I was simply looking to meet a few of my new local colleagues, and to make a few connections. I had no idea of the adventure I was about to embark upon.

After attending a handful of Meetups, then-organizer Reva stepped down as organizer. Otherwise having nothing else on the go, and being eager to establish myself on the West coast, I stepped up as organizer on October 11th, 2005. This would later prove to be the single best career move I've ever made.

As the new organizer of the group, then 320 members strong, I immediately moved the Meetups to Waazubee Cafe on Commercial Drive. I then instituted a monthly theme to its regular Meetups, such as "bring the oldest design artifact you own," "show us the first thing you ever designed," or "share your best client proposal with the group." I started a monthly series called "Vancouver Redesigns" where we would take a poorly designed object from everyday life, and brainstorm how it could be made better. One of our Meetup members donated his printing services, and we had member ID cards printed up. I later took those cards and shopped them around to local Vancouver businesses, asking if they would like to offer discounts on their design products and services to card-carrying Meetup members. We met up at the art gallery, at Hemlock Printers, at the Empire 7 for the Helvetica film, at VanUE events, at GDC/BC events, at New Media BC events, we went to lunch with the Forest Stewardship Council, and we even brought designers together with the federal and provincial governments to talk about taxation issues for self-employed designers and small firms.

I can trace every single great moment of my design career back to the Vancouver Graphic Design Meetup.

Less than a year after I assumed the organizer-ship of the Meetup, I received an email from Meetup member Mark Busse, then president-elect of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada, BC Mainland Chapter. Among other things, my connection to Mark led to a position on the GDC's executive council as their Web Communications chairperson. There, my most significant achievement was having instituted knowledge sharing infrastructure to facilitate communication within the council, and to ensure knowledge continuity between council-years.

A little known fact: eager to be a part of everything, I also started Vancouver's very first Flash Meetup. Our first member was named Ross Ladell, then a contractor for local web agency Blast Radius. My involvement in the Flash and Graphic Design Meetups earned me a personal telephone call from a recruiter at Blast Radius. Within two years of that phone call, I climbed to the role of Technical Experience Director at Blast Radius, with a specialization in Javascript application development - a role that I proudly shared with my now-dear-friends, Cary Newfeldt and Loyal Chow. At Blast Radius, I directed the interface development of the American nintendo.com, jennycraig.com, proactiv.com, and a news aggregation application for Microsoft. I also contributed to palm.com, and to numerous video game microsites for Electronic Arts.

Every other friend and colleague in this industry that I have the pleasure of knowing can be traced either to Blast Radius, or to the GDC, but ultimately all the way back to the instant that I decided to become the organizer of the Vancouver Graphic Design Meetup - a responsibility that I have assumed proudly for over 5 years now.

Today, it's time to pass the group, founded on November 6, 2002, now 940 members strong, into new, capable, and enthusiastic hands.

Graphic Design is my first love, but my focus is drifting; having felt that a radical career change was imminent, I have returned to university to pursue another love of mine. What other love, you ask?

I suppose you'll have to join us on December 13th at the Irish Heather, and ask me to find out.

See you there, and thank you as always for participating.

Follow this link for a map pinpointing The Irish Heather.
https://ow.ly/3aHvh... (https://ow.ly/3aHvh)

Take Public Transit! Visit Translink's Trip Planner online to find the best way from you to The Irish Heather (212 Carrall Street).
https://tripplanning.t... (https://tripplanning.translink.bc.ca/)