Sketch&Design

Company Sketch
Busines Type Community
Year 2017 - 2020
Rol Organizer & Speaker
Website Sketch&Design ↗

In 2017 I moved to Mexico City and being new it was difficult to meet more designers to chat with, share experiences, learn from them, and even know their perspective on product design, I told this idea to a friend, which he loved and immediately joined to plan the first meetup.

Challenge

Meet a bunch of people interested in sharing experiences and knowledge around digital product design.

The idea was to meet other designers and learn from them, but there were several things we had to contemplate for this meeting, on the one hand was where we would meet, what would be the topics, who would give the first talk, how we would convene designers, etc. etc..

@elnodos + Jay speakers in Sketch & Design Mexico — @elnodos + Jay - S&D Beta

Why Sketch?

In 2017 Sketch was a very popular tool and for many people, for many designers the main tool to design interfaces (my main UI design tool from 2014 to 2020).

Sketch was pushing their community to create meetups, it was just a matter of following the guidelines they had to run the meetup with their sponsorship, and they even gave advice for the organization of the talks and topics in the meetups.

Abstract of Sketch Meetup Mexico - Beta

After getting the Ok from Sketch we announced the first meetup. Unfortunately Sketch's swag had gone astray, so we wouldn't have it for the first meetup, but we went ahead and nothing would stop us. For the second meetup (a few months later) the Swag arrived, with pins, t-shirts and of course Sketch licenses to give away to the community we were building.

The 1st Meetup

The idea of holding a meetup was very exciting and from the beginning we were committed to make it happen. One of the first challenges was to get the place, after asking in several places, I was able to get a space at WeWork (where my work offices were located) for the date we had in mind.

With the Venue ready, it was time to find out who would give a talk and what topic would be addressed. But being the first meetup, we liked the idea that this first meeting had the objective of getting to know each other, for which we did some activities and games with the attendees, where the participants were telling us a little about themselves, their background and their work.

At the end of each meeting, we gave away a couple of Sketch licenses which had been authorized to us, as well as books by 23 Design sponsored.

Iteration

This first meetup was very important to see if there was interest in creating community, the participation of the attendees (+100) and even if we ourselves wanted to continue doing these meetings later. We used a small survey, asking for their feedback, what topics they would like to address and even if they had something else in mind for the next meeting, which would help us to improve this first version.

Some Sketch Meetup Mexico topics

During the time we organize the Sketch&Design (face-to-face and online), we relied on some friends as speakers addressing various topics related to the design of digital products such as: collaboration, design methodologies, design systems, development, prototyping, version control and handoff.

All this was possible thanks to Jay who joined the initiative and other friends who also supported us, organizing, as speakers, taking pictures or simply sharing the event and let others know about it.

Many thanks to all who attended and joined the Sketch&Design community, the official Sketch Meetup in Mexico City.

+500 registered attendees for 3 years doing Sketch&Design.

/// CONCLUSION
Sketch&Design was a challenging project that made me grow as a designer and as a person, which I hope this initiative will return in the future.