Bristol is home to thousands of talented designers, developers and marketers with many using all three disciplines in the creation of new apps, websites and more.
“One of the most important strengths of the creative industries is collaboration through combined knowledge”
Making the most of these local talents and the South West’s passion for collaboration is Nic Alpi, Director of web development studio CookiesHQ, who has launched the new meetup group Design / Build / Market to help people learn and share knowledge across all three roles.
Keen to find out how he hopes this group will help people to achieve more in the digital sphere, we got in on the action and caught the inside story from Nic himself.
TechSPARK: What is the Design / Build / Market meet up and who is it for?
Nicolas Alpi: Design / Build / Market is a quarterly mini-conference that aims to promote discussion between disciplines to devise better solutions for all aspects of the creative process.
“Our first theme will focus on crowdfunding, with three more to follow on VR, startups and e-commerce taking place early next year”
Focusing on design, development and marketing, it’s for anyone who works within or studies these core topics and all that they entail. One of the most important strengths of the creative industries is collaboration through combined knowledge. This is one of Design / Build / Market’s core values.
Building a community: Nic Alpi with the
CookiesHQ team of creatives and developers
We wanted to start something that builds community and strengthens relationships within teams, as well as creating more links between each other, with opportunities to learn and grow.
TS: What themes will you be looking at?
NA: Our first theme will focus on crowdfunding, with three more to follow on VR, startups and e-commerce taking place early next year. The idea is that the themes we explore will cover a wide variety of subjects whilst still fitting within the core disciplines of design, development and marketing.
So, with this first event, we’ll be exploring how to design a successful crowdfunding campaign, how to build a platform to facilitate it and then how to market your project to reach a maximum audience, and so on.
“Our aim is to encourage people to work more closely with one another and to have an interest in what their colleagues and peers are creating”
These themes have the potential to be relevant to everyone in attendance, so we thought it would be good to capitalise on that and bring people together. By doing this, we can help them to learn how to collaborate effectively. Our aim is to encourage people to work more closely with one another and to have an interest in what their colleagues and peers are creating.
TS: Why are you doing this in Bristol?
NA: Bristol has one of the fastest growing creative, digital and technological economies in the country. Every day, new startups are opening up here, as well as across the South West. As such, there is a huge audience for this kind of meetup. It’s a very collaborative community and Design / Build / Market should hopefully play into that.
We’re also based in Bristol, which helps…
TS: What are you covering in the first meet up?
NA: Our first meet up is about Crowdfunding and our speakers are all focused around that topic. If you’re looking for a way to fund a project or are someone that would like to create their own business, then this will be an evening for you.
The speakers for the night are:
– Rob Wilson from CrowdReach – an advertising service that provides target Facebook ads, putting your crowdfunding project in front of a highly focused audience.
– Derek Ahmedzai, Co-Founder and Lead Developer at FundSurfer – a hybrid crowdfunding platform and community that provides a range of funding options for projects and companies.
– Kirsty Ranger, Founder of Crowd10 and IdeaSquares – a support service for startups that offers tools and accelerator programmes to help them achieve funding.
There will be time to mingle and network throughout the evening, but we’ll leave some time at the end particularly for this. Ultimately, we want to facilitate collaboration between disciplines, so one of our goals is that Design / Build / Market will offer a space to be able to forge new relationships between people.
TS: How can people get involved?
NA: If you’d like to come along to the first event, sign up here on our Meetup page. We hope it’ll be an evening in which everyone will learn a lot, find some useful ideas and also meet some great people.
If you’d be interested in sharing your experiences and giving a talk at a future event, then get in touch. If you’ve got expertise in VR, startups or e-commerce, we’d particularly love to hear from you!
If you want to get in touch to ask a question or discuss some potential topics, you can drop Nic Alpi an email.
Join the Design / Build / Market meetup group to reserve a place at its first event on 27 October and stay in the loop about future events. To find out more about the Cookies HQ, head to the CookiesHQ website or follow them on Twitter: @TheCookiesHQ.
