We did it. From thought to action, the first session was a huge success.
Thank You’s
First and foremost a thank you to our Sponsor Fuel Brand Network. We are glad they thought we had creative merit and put their name behind us to propel us into the future. A huge thank you to Kyle Steed for doing the leg work, Chris Wallace for all the WP theme help on such short notice, David Leggett for moderating and letting us use his TinyChat Pro account, Design Community Twitter Hours for being in association with us and helping promote.
HUGE THANKS TO everyone else that showed up, RT’d it, blogged it or gave us a thank you or thumbs up. We really appreciate how much support we have received. This was an awesome first stride for having a panel live to answer questions and provide feedback, for you the community. We learn as we do this as well so its a win-win for everyone.
Feedback
We really want to hear from you what you thought and how we can improve. We have our own ideas but we want to hear what the community wants after all this is community driven. Tell us what you want to see, what you would like to see, what you hated. Tell us the truth it helps us grow as a community.
Whats Next?
We are currently working on the next Chat. We are trying to work out some bugs for the next one so please stay tuned via this blog, the twitter account (@chatcreative) We hope you enjoyed this evenings first panel we know we did, and we will see you in the future.
Again, I want to give you all a big thank you for putting something like this on and giving the community at-large the opportunity to interact with you.
One suggestion I would have would be to use a couple of moderators. I would suggest having one moderator with a list of predetermined questions who then asks them of the panel and keeps the conversation moving and another moderator who watches the chat window and gathers interesting and relevant questions from there that they can then ask the panel as well.
I still want chatcreative to be like an open forum but I think a little more structuring of the questions and how they’re presented would be a good way to keep things on track and get through as much discussion as you can.
Overall, this is an outstanding idea and a great opportunity for the design community to get together and discuss important topics. The first go at it was a little rough but I think most people expected that and were understanding of it. Even with the technical difficulties there were good nuggets of info and I would consider it a resounding success.
Great work, everyone. Thanks for taking the time to do this and I can’t wait for the next discussion!
Thank you Good Dog Creative for joining us. And yes, we are already in the works for adding true moderators to our next design panel. You hit the nail on the head with pointing out the need for two as well, one to keep the conversation moving and one to watch the chat feed. Good eye. We too want to keep the format open, as we feel that is a very important part of what we’re doing, but adding moderators will tie the loose ends up. Thanks again and see you next chat.
I thought it was great, the effort you guys put in and all the hustling you guys did to make it work. I really think it would have been awesome had Adelle, the Perels, and Graham been able to contribute… as it was it seemed a little awkward. But I’m sure you’ll work that all out.
It seemed to me there were too many people in the chat for it to even be a quality chat (not talking video here, just the typing part). I don’t have any suggestions to improve that, because it makes sense that you want a lot of people… but then… you want a lot of “quality” people, if that makes sense.
Great job though. Looking forward to the next one.
Meredith, thank you for your feedback. We love to hear what our community thinks and take that in to account for making each chat better than the last. See you next month.
Hey,
Just wanted to say thanks for the opportunity to be apart of this… I was very humbled to be on a panel with such talented, and awesome people.
I think that even though their were a few technical difficulties, things still went very well. I really agree with the Moderator suggestions that we discussed after the panel.
Looking forward to seeing what is next!
~ Aaron I
Aaron, we were overjoyed to have you on the panel. You are such an inspiration to the design community. You have a lot of heart and soul, and you’re not afraid to speak your mind. Thanks for being a part of this, and look forward to future endeavors.
Overall I think it was great, amazing job Kyle and everyone on the panel.
I personally would like to see a more in depth discussion instead of just hitting points. Maybe even limiting the number of questions to 2-3.
Anthony, thank you for your feedback. I think you make a valid point about going deeper in to the discussion instead of just skimming the surface with a lot of different topics. This first chat was a little hectic, and we are already in the works to make some drastic improvements for next time. We hope to see you there in the chat next month.
@kylesteed Kudos to you for pulling something like this together! I signed on for the first hour and saw the chat numbers skyrocket. Thought it was pretty incredible to have 8 designers in one place at one time, accessible to all, not organized by some huge conference or company, but by networking via twitter. Hopefully you will consider doing this again, maybe with a rotating panel even. //
Hi There,
Ive been self employed for about 3 years now. It can be a lonely business especially working at home and not very many people to interact with. Im not that big on the social network, although I do enjoy twitter, but thats about it. I found out about chat creative on twitter and logged in to check it out.
I was a bit intimidated at first but quickly found everyone was friendly and had the same questions about things as I did. I have to say, Congrats! to all of you for doing such a good job getting us designers together.
My only suggestion would be to have topics in mind before you start and then go through each topic. It was hard to tell what was going on at times. I would like to know the future of web design. I code by W3C standards and Im wondering if that will be replaced by WordPress and Drupal? I’d like to know how coding from scratch and CMS will work side by side? Will they? Will coding from scractch be replaced with CMS?
Thanks for listening and making a very shy designer, comfortable in your forum.
Namaste,
Talya Jackson
Studio TAJ
Enjoyed the chat, you guys did an amazing job wrangling with technology demons. With 300 users logged, it shows the event is very popular with the design community. Having said that I do feel the session is a little chaotic. Would be better to have some topics discussed in greater detail. I agree with GoodDog that it may be better to just discuss 4 or 5 topics, with subjects decided upon ahead of time. May be better to limit chat to just 3 panelists. Every 2 weeks would be ideal for this chat.
As a solo designer, you guys are great company and a true inspiration to us. @gariphic
I thought everything went great for a first attempt. There’s nothing like jumping right in, it show’s confidence and commitment which are important characteristics for leaders like yourselves.
In hind-sight, I’d suggest having one host that directs questions directly because nobody knows when to talk, or who should be talking. The host might be the one with the least experience because they can relay questoins easier than answers when compared to the rest. Also, the slight inexperience will help with follow up questions. The questions come from feedback and necessity to cover criteria; the follow up questions will be related to the topic, but helps pull more detail from responses.
Watch some interviews and talk shows, maybe that will help a little.
I had fun…Can’t wait till next time.
Love the chatcreative. I would really like to see less panelists in one set. Maybe limit it to 4, no moderator broadcasting either. This would give more time for actual content discussion, lower bandwidth requirements, and let us get to know each panelist better.
The moderate can be on skype or whatever to direct questions, and order responses. There is great potential here. @kylesteed is a stud for launching the idea.
Sad I had to take off just before it stated, but i’m so glad you guys are doing this. Putting faces to names and interacting with people makes me realize this world is alot smaller. I think this is a great way to connect with other designers and learn from eachother. Keep this up!
One suggestion though – looks like you guys were missing someone
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2453/3704759671_4f004d39e5.jpg
hahaha – maybe next time we can for real put you in there.
I’m glad it went well for the first run. I couldn’t make it this time around, but maybe catch another session down the road.
I think it’s a great idea and appreciate all the efforts involved to make this happen!
Patricia, thanks for your comment and support. We hope you can make it to our next event. Please subscribe to our feed or follow us on twitter @chatcreative to stay up to date with us. Thanks again.
Why don’t you guys make an Adobe Air app just for these chats?
Nate, thank you for your suggestion. Sorry we haven’t replied to you sooner. Did you also post this on our FB page?
We would like to eventually develop something custom, but right now we are focused on establishing a good structure for how the chat runs. Then we can move on to looking at other platforms and so on. Thanks again for your comments and suggestions and we hope to see you next month.
[...] Obox Design launched their theme store this week. I’m really digging their hand done ‘left handed’ theme. Go check it out! Great work guys! [...]
[...] Obox Design launched their theme store this week. I’m really digging their hand done ‘left handed’ theme. Go check it out! Great work guys! [...]
Thanks for setting up the Chat Creative. Good experience despite the little lag, but what I really liked also was the after glow of meeting new people that where chatting and watching. Looking forward to the next one. I would really like to see you guys have a speaker a week or every month from the chat creative crew, each of you having a different topic. example: One speaker would have a subject like Typography or CSS and speak on it for 10, 15 20 mins. and then have a Q & A or then allow other Chat Creative’s to expound or give their input. I know you guys are working on some new and great stuff for Chat Creative, so keep up the great work.
I for one had a great time, even I seemed to be stuck in some Stargate time dilation field. Most of the time I was just watching and listening as I soon found out that I was not able to contribute vocally. Which was frustrating as I actually had a lot to waffle on about.
But so much potential for greatness here. Lots of valid points made in earlier comments and I really feel that with some tweaking, some session scheduling, even solo video chats at other times, we can offer a bit of something for everyone.
I would love to do the odd solo chat, at times which would ‘better suited’ for the UK and European community.
So lots of ideas planned,
Graham
as things move along, it would be great to hear from a range of people. Perhaps you could start a user voting system for guest panelists…. have your twitter followers hash something like #chatcreative with ___.
I only got to peek in for a few minutes, but i LOVE the concept! Cant wait to see more!