We started the year in a period of transition, the founding Butchers were ready to stand down and we needed to pass the running onto a new team of Butchers.

Having worked incredibly hard and been very successful in creating Meetdraw it was time for the guys to stand back and earn a well deserved rest.

So in quarter one we assembled a team of new Butchers from across the digital spectrum to guide Meetdraw forward.

Fantastic Free Events

It has been an exciting year with three regular quarterly Meetdraw evening events, all free and each with a different theme and venue.

First we were the Dorset link for Twestival back in March at 1812 Cocktail Bar.

Then to celebrate summer we went to the Cumberland Hotel for a Beach and Pool Party.

For the end of summer/back to school event we tied in with Silicon Beach Conference and went to Aruba for free beer in the sunshine.

The Fabulous Finalle

Our forth event we took a risk and went big organising The Lonely Christmas Turkey at The Print Room. For this event we took a risk and asked our supporters to pay in return for a more formal evening with drinks, dinner, raffle and entertainment provided.

All events have proved successful with in excess of 100 attendees – our finale at The Print Room attracted over a 120 paying guests – our tweet board, over 330 tweets that went out to an audience of over 12,000 and we generated a large number of hangovers!

We’ve achieved a lot in or 3rd year

For the first time this year we also leant our brand to Silicon Beech and teamed up to hold the first ever digital conference in Bournemouth – which was an amazing success – with some excellent speakers, great venue and lovely cupcakes.

So what have we achieved:-

-        Successfully passed on the running of Meetdraw to a new team of Butchers

-        Ran our four quarterly events very successfully

-        Supported a Digital Conference attracting huge publicity and interest in and out of the Region

-        And hopefully connected and entertained a large number of digital enthusiasts in Dorset

All this is built around our core principles of building, supporting and connecting the digital creative industries in Dorset.

2012 – Better than ever in our 4th year?

So what for 2012 – well probably more of the same with some differences! Last year we have evolved the formula and tried some new things – this coming year we will adopt the best of 2011 and continue to try new things. And we will listen to feedback and criticism and provide you with the sort of organisation you want offering the events and services you enjoy and like.

We also want to help connect members of the herd with jobs at good local agencies, so we’ve launched the #meetjobs page check it out and let us know your thoughts.

As you are no doubt aware Meetdraw is a not for profit organisation and everyone who helps make it happen does it for fun and no material rewards. So a big thank you to the Butchers and everyone who has helped make it possible in 2011 – from you the members, through to the sponsors, venues and companies that have lent time and resource to making it happen.

Taking place in Plymouth in November, Extended Play Bootcamp is a unique opportunity for the South West’s most promising and established digital companies, to come together over a period of two days to explore and create new products and services that will be leading the interactive, digital and games industries of the future. The two-day residential will feature exclusive mentoring by some of the country’s leading technologists, entrepreneurs and investors providing established and emerging companies with knowledge to enhance their businesses, allowing them to successfully compete in the games industry around the world.

Mentors from Eidos, Adobe and Sony are being complimented by the some of the most successful indie games development studios in the UK, all sharing the tip and tricks you need to make your business the next big hit (don’t worry if you’re not a games development company or have no desire to be a games development company, innovative digital agencies with a desire to grow are just as welcome, if not more so)!

If you are interested in Extended Play Bootcamp and feel your company could benefit by being involved, please register your interest on the website and you will be contacted with further details – http://www.explay.co.uk/bootcamp.php or email korash@explay.co.uk

Have a sneaky drink with Adobe…

… and Skype and Virgin Media, and Ogilvy. All on us!

The Meetdraw X1 wagon rolls into to town on the 28th September at 7pm.

Conveniently sandwiched between The Meetdraw Presents conference event on the 28-29th, this is your chance to nobble the speakers and ask them how and why they did what they did – FOR FREE.

So you can go behind the scenes and chat to the people from Demand Media, Grape Digital and Made by Many. ALL FOR ABOSULTELY NOTHING,

NADA, ZERO, NIC.

If you’d rather have a drink then go to a conference, then this event is right up your street. Click here to register yourself for a backstage pass or find out who else has one

Along with the usual herd of digital animals, Meetdraw is the right place to network and celebrate Bournemouth & Poole as one of the leading hubs for the digital and creative industry. If you’re a Meetdraw novice, there’ll be folks on-hand to steer you in the right direction – towards a new contact, a new supplier or just towards the bar.

Event details:

Venue: Aruba Bar & Restaurant, Pier Approach, Bournemouth BH2 5AA

Tel. 01202 554 211

Time: From 7:30pm onwards

Admission: FREE

For more information on the Meetdraw conference click here

To find out who else has got a Backstage Pass click here

If you’re not aware of The Digital Hub or what services the University can offer you – and there are a lot (don’t forget Bournemouth University is internationally renowned for the work it does across the digital media sphere) – then you should definitely take advantage of an event they’re hosting next Tuesday: http://bit.ly/nG0EUc

For one day only, only the 19^th July, they’re throwing their doors wide open on and inviting local (regional, national?) creative businesses in to have a look around, play on a few things and generally find out a bit more.

And what’s more they’ve secured a terrific keynote speaker in the form of Tiffany St James http://bit.ly/pkfyFI – herself a previous Bournemouth University graduate, but now a much sought after Digital Strategist.  Tiffany’s services are currently retained by The Government, Microsoft, Channel 4 and The Guardian, but she somehow seems to have found the time to give a talk in Bournemouth – which in and of itself, should be well-worth the ticket price alone.

Oh, did I mention this whole event is FREE courtesy of Dr Phillip Alford of The Digital Hub?

Check it out here and book your ticket: http://bit.ly/nG0EUc

Registration Closed at 210 attendees!

Sorry for those of you hoping to register for tonights event but we have taken as many pre registrations as we can allow. To those south coast creatives who still want to attend, please just turn up on the night! Its still free and you will still be able to get in… we’re nice like that!

If you were hoping to get your prime cuts out at the Pool Party event of the year then feel free to get in your meaty costumes and take a dip! We have the largest outdoor pool in town at the Cumberland Hotel as the fantastic venue.

Any questions please @mention or DM @raddougall or @tomwittlin on twitter

An update from the MeetdrawX team…
We now have over 100 south coast creatives signed up to get their prime cuts out at the Pool Party event of the year! We have the largest outdoor pool in town at the Cumberland Hotel as the fantastic venue, however this does mean we have a, all be it high, limit on numbers! Boooo I hear you say, but it doesn’t have to be so, get yourself on the list at meetdraw.com/register and you too can party in the sun with some of Dorset’s top chops.

Discounted Rooms at the Cumberland

For those of you Coming from further afield and those who are planning to get marinated we’ve negotiated a special room rate especially for you all!

You can stay at the Cumberland, one of Bournemouth’s premier three star hotels for just £56.50 per person, per night including full English breakfast! What’s more if your staying on you own, they will upgrade you to a double room for no extra cost!

All you need to do is call Lisa or Brian on 01202 298350 and tell them your attending the Pool Party event of the year!

Any questions please @mention or DM @raddougall or @tomwittlin on twitter

…be honest, why would you not want to stay here…

The conference is a collaboration between Cyprus Well (www.cypruswell.com), Media Futures (www.mediafuturesconference.com), the Creative Industries iNet (www.creativeindustriesi.net) and Bournemouth Borough Council.  More details will be forthcoming over the coming weeks but on 14^th May a one-day Book Hack Day is taking place at the Free Word Centre in London and a limited number of spaces have been reserved for SW-based businesses.  Not only that, to support South West businesses (and yes Bournemouth IS in the South West) to take part in this event, Cyprus Well, supported by the Creative Industries iNet and South West Screen are offering up to £50 towards the cost of travel for five attendees.

Book Hackday is an event which will help innovate the form of the book.  ebook apps are scratching the surface of what both books and technology are capable of.  What if you could develop something that represents the next step in the evolution of the book?

The event is the first to bring together designers and developers with publishing professionals, under a shared and united agenda: to co-create something that takes books forward.

The structure of Book Hackday offers something for everyone with sessions covering the development of new ideas, along with ‘lightning talks’ from key thinkers and do-ers.  It will be a thought-provoking day that will conclude with prototypes that demonstrate the potential book futures concepts and the results from Book Hackday will be showcased at the Conference in October.

Get involved

Send your name, business and email address by Tuesday 10 May to tguiry@cypruswell.org and you will be put down for one of the reserved places for South West businesses and individuals, subject to availability.

This is a great opportunity for Meetdraw attendees to get involved in what promises to be high-profile and innovative conference that could have a game-changing impact on an industry in turmoil.  Plus you’ll get to network with some truly innovative ‘folk in the smoke’.

The Competition

Compassionate Dorset, the local supporter group for the leading farm animal welfare charity Compassion in World Farming, have teamed up with South West Artwork and Meetdraw to look for talented designers and artists to design more farm animal themed t-shirts to add to our online t-shirt shop. We are hoping to select at least 4 winning designs and 100% profits from all online sales (that’s at least £3 – £5 for every product sold) will be donated to the charity. Our #1 mission is to end factory farming and promote compassionate living, and we’d like more creatives to join the herd…

The Brief

The brief is simple – design a supercool, funky or beautiful and attractive t-shirt on the theme of ‘farm animals‘. Sheep, Pigs, Cows, Goats, Chickens, Ducks – even Game Birds and Fish are often farmed! Or you can do a whole farmyard or something more abstract or text based on the idea of ending factory farming. Take a look at our current online shop with designs by Illustrator Stu Jones. The current bestseller is our ‘Highland Cow’. You can enter as many designs as you like.

The Prize

The winners will be announced as we launch the new t-shirt designs on our online shop for 1st June 2011 – just in time for Summer! All designers will retain copyright and be credited on the relevant product pages in our online shop and on our winner’s page on the Compassionate Dorset website, and will have the credibility of having designed apparel for the leading farm animal welfare charity Compassion in World Farming. Compassionate Dorset t-shirts are also stocked in the new What Alice Found vintage art and fashion shop in Boscombe, Dorset by South West Artwork.

The Deadline

The deadline to send your designs in by is Monday 16th May 2011. The judging panel will be:

• Anna Celeste Watson – Founder and Web Designer at Compassionate Dorset
• Stu Jones – Resident Illustrator at Compassionate Dorset
• Laura Mulhern - Co-Founder of South West Artwork
• Paul Seys – Board Member of Meetdraw and Head of User Experience at Redweb

The Details

Email your artwork to: info@compassionatedorset.co.uk no later than Monday 16th May 2011. Artwork must be sent ready to upload to the online shop, to the following specifications:

• Save vector graphics as .ai (up to version CS2)
• Save pixel graphics as .jpg, .bmp, .gif or .png (png is preferred)
• Size of pixel graphics: max 10 MB and at least 300dpi
• All designs must be able to sit on a transparent background to be printed on any colour

(Please Note: some products such as hoodies and organic options are only currently available in white)

• If the file is over 4MB please send it via a file sharing client – we recommend www.yousendit.com.
• We’ll confirm receipt of all entries received.

Winning designs will be printed on t-shirts by Spreadshirt using their print-on-demand service (they keep the rest of the money from sales for this service and we donate all our commission to Compassion in World Farming). There are 3 main printing techniques available; Flex, Flock or Digital. Please Note: Due to printing costs we would prefer Digital (full colour) or Flex 1 colour (otherwise we’ll get less commission to donate to charity or will have to price higher). If you wish to send two different versions to sit on either a black/dark/colour t-shirt and also work on a white t-shirt please do so.

• Digital – full colour (no limits on number of colours)
• Flex – up to 3 colours max
• Special Flex – 1 colour max
• Flock – up to 3 colours max

Take a look at Spreadshirt’s Printing Techniques for further guidance: www.spreadshirt.co.uk/help-C1328/categoryId/9. We look forward to choosing our winners on 1st June 2011! For full details visit the Compassionate Dorset competition page.

Competition produced in partnership with:

The feature this time was Twestival local. An initiative to raise money for charities across the globe where different people gather to raise money in their own meet-ups for their own designated charities, in their own countries.

Mowgli UK was the selected charity for Meetdraw 9, which is a not-for-profit mentoring organisation set up to make a difference to entrepreneurs, through the power of mentoring. Given that many of the attendees of meetdraw are either owners of their own businesses or design agencies, we felt it was an extremely worthwhile cause, there’s always times when we could use a bit of a push in the right direction.

In total £145 was raised on the night for Mowgli, this was largely raised through a not-at-all-un-digital-like raffle that saw the top winner strolling off into the sunset with a years subscription to NMA magazine (thanks for that guys!). Other prizes included a night’s stay and dinner for 2 at the rather lavish Hotel Du Vin on Poole Quay, kindly donated by the chaps over at Bright Blue Day, and a copy of ‘HTML5 for web designers’ (well worth a read) from Mr Toby James Pestridge.

With around 130 folks attending it was a pretty successful turn out by all accounts, we think it could well have been more too. The evening started with the carefully planned sign in form that we were hoping to maintain throughout the evening with a rota of people, needless to say, drink was flowing, so there may well have been a few unaccounted for. Best laid plans and all that.

Many thanks to all those who attended, photos from the evening can be viewed over at our Flickr group. We’re all looking forward to the tenth Meetdraw, lovingly nicknamed MeetdrawX, taking place towards the end of June. Plans are afoot as we speak and details will be available soon.

Hotbed of creative talent

We all know it – Bournemouth,  Poole and Dorset as a whole is a hotbed of creative talent – but it seems the rest of the country, the industry and most importantly the buyers, have recognised this too and I think it’s about time we collectively gave ourselves a slap on the back and revelled in the success. I’m talking about awards. I’m talking about the fact that Meetdraw members are generating a real buzz and seem to keep winning everything. And that’s good news for everybody. Winning agencies attract the best clients. Agencies with the best clients attract the best staff. Great staff inspire those around them. And inspired folk make for great Meetdraw events.

Even if you’re an agency that hasn’t yet won an award – and I can’t believe it’s because you can’t; maybe you’re a newbie, maybe you’re too darn busy keeping your clients happy that you don’t have time to enter or maybe you just didn’t think they were your thing; whatever the reason, we should all celebrate the success of our peers and bask in their reflected glory.

Recognition

Like Bright Blue Day for instance, being considered by a panel of 413 professional marketers no less, as the 3rd BEST integrated agency in the UK…  In the entire UK. And they’re based on Poole Quay.

What about Thinking Juice? Based smack bang in the centre of Bournemouth and voted Most Creative AND Most Effective in the RAR Awards 2011. That happened this week along with Bright Blue Day’s news. Those awards get added to ThinkingJuice’ long list of awards which just happens to include Marketing Industry UK Advertising Agency of the Year 2010.

Did you hear about Strange and The Walker Agency? They won a Chartered Institute of Marketing gold award ‘Integrated Campaign of the Year’ at this years CIM Travel Marketing Awards. GOLD, for best integrated campaign of the year.
Not to mention Redweb. They deserve a cheer because Econsultancy, the World’s leading source of independant advice and digital insight awarded them the coveted title of Most Innovative Digital Agency earlier this year.

A small community achieving big things

For the size of the population we have down here – Dorset doesn’t have a motorway or a City within it’s county bourdaries – that’s quite an acheivment within such a small community, but I’m sure it’s just the tip of the iceberg…

Have you won or been nominated for an award in the last three years? Comment back and tell me and your peers about it. Let’s shout about and celebrate the success, you’ve earnt it!