As a new year kicks off once again it brings with it a sense of reflection and the desire to gain focus and plan for the future, learning from the lessons of the past.

Shortly before The Christmas Meetball one of our founding butchers, David Burton, made the tough decision to step away from Meetdraw to allow him to focus on other personal projects. David has been an invaluable part of the team over the last 2 years, in many ways holding Meetdraw together, helping to shape it into the event it is today. We cannot thank him enough for his hard work and commitment. Although we’re saying farewell to David he’ll still be propping up the bar at future events and I’m sure he won’t be able to resist helping out on the odd occasion, if we ask nicely.

Choice cuts

With 3 becoming 2, and the start of a New Year, it gave Dan and I a good opportunity to rethink the way Meetdraw works and how we can best plan for the future, ensuring Meetdraw continues to grow and improve.

Before Meetdraw8 we invited a group of 20 digital animals from across Dorset, all passionate and regular supporters of Meetdraw, to a half day workshop to help us set out a plan for the next 12 months. The sessions, facilitated by ThinkPublic (thanks to financial support from iNets South West), generated some great ideas and we all carried our renewed enthusiasm into the evenings festivities.

Once the dust had settled and the new year arrived it was clear that, before we could instigate any of the projects, we would need regular and consistent help from like-minded people to keep Meetdraw going. We’ve never sought to personally gain,  financially or otherwise, from the events and everyone that helps does so as a volunteer, but with David handing in his butchers apron and Dan moving on to pastures new there’s only so much we could achieve as things stand.

2 become 5

The first step for us was to increase the number of Butchers, so we invited a small number of enthusiastic, motivated people from a variety of backgrounds and agencies to help us strengthen the core of Meetdraw. Our intention is that the new Butchers will act as a Board of Directors allowing us to register Meetdraw as a Community Interest Company so that we can better represent you, the people who have helped us make the Meet sustainable.

The new Meetdraw Board consists of:

• Dan Hills, Digital Media Consultant, No Second Prize
• Paul Seys, Head of User Experience, Redweb
• Matt Desmier, Head of Creative Industries Partnership Development, South West Screen
• David Ford, Chief Executive, Bright Blue Day
• George Beverley, Managing Director, Clockworx

Meetdraw needs you

But involvement doesn’t stop there. We’re all really keen that Meetdraw is pushed forward by the people that matter the most and although we can help provide direction, without the support of the community, we’ll still struggle to achieve everything we want to this year.

This is were you come in. The next step is for us to form a committee to help organise and run the events and tackle some of the awesome projects that came out of the December workshop.

We’re looking for 8-10 willing volunteers to join us. You need to be highly motivated, enthusiastic, available to meet up at least once a month (usually Thursday afternoons in Bournemouth) and ideally live or work in Dorset.

Call for Volunteers

The call for volunteers is open until 12pm on Thursday 17th February 2011. The successful applicants will be announced on Thursday 24th February 2011. If we’re inundated with volunteers we’ll open it up to a public vote to decide which candidates form the final committee.

If you’d like to be a part of Meetdraw please submit your nomination before 12pm on Thursday 17th February 2011.

…and finally

Personally I’m very excited to see what 2011 has in store for us. As always I’m really interested to hear what you think. Do you have a question you’d like to ask us? Is there anything you’d like to say about our plans for the future or the new committee? If you do please leave a comment below.

About the author

Paul Seys Paul is Head of User Experience at Redweb and one of the original founders of Meetdraw. Dorset born and bred, Paul started his career in London but soon returned home. He love's surfing, snowboarding and mountain biking. Oh and he's a closet vegetarian. Follow him on twitter @paulseys or read his blog.