 action for designers of all different kinds your designer front-end developer you you design you work But you're also working with clients you're handling business decisions You're managing teams working with teams all kinds of different things different ways that you connect in the world And that's what I wanted to talk about in here And it's you know I didn't want to talk about you know which photoshop plug-in do you like and things like that this is going to be You know really tangible things that I hope you can all take away from this that you're going to have to work with all the time So I'm going to introduce everybody here, and well actually I'm going to let them introduce themselves That's much easier and since you're closest You get to go first Hey guys, I'm Nick Romanos. I work at status forward. We're a web centric branding agency here in Asheville I'm really bad at talking into a microphone So if I start like pan of miming of an ice cream cone, I apologize Yeah, good to meet you all we gave a talk yesterday. Hope you were there. Hope you enjoyed it Hi, I'm Katie going with the theme I work for a company called market connections Yeah, that's what I figured It's a full-service marketing agency in Asheville and we do web design print design PR radio video kind of a lot of different things and I'm an art director there graphic designer, so I also do web print logos billboards that kind of stuff Okay I'm Dean a rudder. I went out on my own about two years ago And I do a one-man shop I probably freelance 30% of the time and do a small business and nonprofit for the other 70% It's been great because I think like connections wise I've gotten a chance to connect with a lot of the great development team Because that's not my cup of tea and I just think that it's really great to be at word camp and see all the familiar faces I'm Cliff. I'm immediately bothered because I realized we're gonna have to like pass this mic back down like five people once I stopped talking and I Do you think if I threw it and we nailed it the first time we could okay? That's fine. All right. Oh She is actually hiding her face. I won't do that. I'm sorry. Okay I am a user experience engineer at a company called partot, which is part of a much larger company called Salesforce But I have been doing WordPress related stuff for seven or eight years at this point a lot of Contract work for a long time and have started a couple of WordPress specific companies So yeah, so I get to do something a little bit different than websites Yeah, we got back into the past the baton in high school Yeah, so these guys are amazing at what they do. They all come I really wanted to have a diverse panel too That was a really important to me you I'll bring different things to the table You do different things you work on a day-to-day basis differently, and that's what I wanted It was lots of different input about this because everybody you know We work in a generally similar world, but there's so many different ways you can approach it and different things you can do So, you know the first thing I wanted to talk about well No, let me set it up too is also this is open-ended. This isn't a lecture I want questions when you have them feel free to interrupt. We may only get down one topic, but that's okay And you know this is open-ended. This isn't like the rest of word can't wear someone's just talking to you So please just raise your hand Immediately I Have something first. Oh, no. No. Oh my question We're into it and this is kind of anybody who wants to talk just Just woke me up like my blood started boiling My personal number one like if the client says it I want to murder the client is make it pop that particular phrase and If any of you have your own website and you promise clients that you're gonna make stuff pop You you're setting the precedent for bad behavior Like if I if I never heard that phrase ever again, it'd be too soon I don't know if it's a particular saying but I think the thing that irks me the most is when clients don't meet their own Homework deadlines and then expect me to make my deadlines and crack the whip And I even recently had a client sit behind me sit behind me for eight hours and edit over my shoulder and Had me correct spacing every time. So that was like definitely my tippy-top Yeah, I was gonna say like if they asked to watch me work over my shoulder or need to see me do it or something I try to keep that a little mysterious I'm glad you brought that up. I mean, I'm gonna jump around in topics That's I was gonna talk about setting up and managing client expectations as a big part of communication and what we do You know, you have to set that up early and reinforce it often or else you'll get steamrolled and things will get off track You got to talk about What their responsibilities are in a project and when things are due when they expect them to keep it on board? I would like to just hear from you guys how you manage client expectations and things like that You know, what's your process, you know for each of you and setting it up or throughout the project? Just anything any insight like that would be really good I think you got to do your homework with them up front and that almost starts with just like Googling them and finding out a little bit about them before you even have the first sit-down meeting with them Like try to understand their industry try to understand where they're coming from Sometimes you can you can even snoop on them on social media depending on what their settings are like kind of get into these people's heads A little bit and then try to frame the expectations in a language that they understand so you don't confuse them and So you're you're you're perfectly clear with them and be sure not to over promise because we've all fallen in that Trap where we sit with a client and they're really excited and we're really excited and we see dollar signs in our eyes and They start talking about I want this this this and this and then you're like yeah sure absolutely of course But at the end of all that you got to say what I work with a developer So not implementing any of that code myself. I have to say well, you know what I'm gonna have to get back to you On that I think those are great ideas But I'm not gonna tell you that you can have this for this much money right here because that's not realistic without having that other conversation and I think it's important to meet face-to-face and kind of go over your workflow with them and how you prefer to work And what you're expecting because I realize a lot of times I assume that they know how it should work or know more about design like I if I go to the mechanic I don't know anything about cars, and I don't expect them for me to know that either. So I think a lot of it's Also a part of like teaching and training your client how you want to work with them because if you let them You know do rush jobs all the time they're gonna expect that all the time and you just kind of have to Open up that conversation in the beginning Sad to that I think in the like onboarding process there can be a lot of talk about communication I think if you have a really in-depth conversation with your clients up front I find if I just kind of lay out what expectations are for both of us on turnaround with email and things that just are daily Communication There's not that like worry if I don't give back the hour after they send an email It kind of says like this is what I promise to do and they equally say like don't bother me with text You know I need to know kind of what they want and in return. I told them what I prefer communication-wise and that just makes the whole Community like just working with someone it just makes it really strong I have a little bit of a different perspective I guess because I've never worked as a full-time freelancer or for a full-time agency So any of my contract work has been basically outside of normal business hours And so I normally don't get to do as many of the sit-downs and chats and things like that with folks And so I have to be doubly explicit by email, which is also fun Because the more explicit you are by email the more you sound like an ass Yeah, see everyone's nodding because it's so true. So Yeah, that's that's fine. Whenever I say ass, please tweet Don't tweet that though. Okay. Anyway yeah, and proficient use of smileys will help in that situation too when you say something really hard You can throw in a nice smiley at the end of it But but seriously the the one thing I have found that's that's helpful at least in that arrangement is You know people have people come into this very emotionally invested in their project And so they have completely unrealistic expectations of what parts of the design will actually matter to anyone ever And so it's really fun to be able to talk to someone after things get launched And it slowly occurs to them that actually like no one except them cared about any of those details at all It's a website that people are going to to do something or find something And so there's something about you know making it a great website making it a great experience all that and that shouldn't be discounted But a lot of the minutiae that gets tossed around it ends up pushing projects back Are over things that just end up not really mattering at all and it's really hard to tell somebody that when they're emotionally invested So the best thing I've found to do in that situation is basically they get They get like a free-range playtime with the design for a while like we're gonna go back and forth I'll entertain your weird ideas for a while like I'll show you different examples I'll make a lot of changes and then unlike this date. We're gonna stop doing that You're going to pick certain things and certain things are gonna become like non-negotiable at that point Like not even if you pay me right so you can't just bribe me into doing more work Like at some point it has to stop and you have to make a decision And then if we're going to do something different past that point like we need to talk about it and have a real conversation about it So that I can help you know as a professional Whether what you're worrying about is even worth worrying about at all or whether you should kind of get on with your life And let's finish the project and get the thing launched. Yeah, I think so I want to repeat the question just for the video and so and let me clarify it From you can you ask it one more time just so I can get it really clear So she's asking about outside agency collaboration and how do you approach is that correct? and What is it really? I'd like to know what that looks like when you start collaborating outside of yourselves or your agency or your group or Anything like that. Is it I want to be on point. I want to misrepresent you feel bad going first every time I Think I really value being able to meet the client I know that some people will do work and don't have to meet the client But I think it's really important if I were to be freelancing for an agency that I really like the project and like the client And I think being able to work and have those initial meetings with the client It's like it shows kind of that we're taking a team effort and I really Respect that and in my approach of hiring people on and and I just think if an agency came to me With just like a piece of paper or you know like no background on the story I'd have a hard time emotionally connecting to it And I think I feel like getting the background at least with a person and it's just who I like to be approached with that I don't think I apply because I'm I'm in an agency, so I'm not really Agencies aren't coming to me. Do you have any input? Oh, yeah Yeah, we we seek out video production people and For radio we we look for voices for radio and I'm kind of on I'm on your end too Or we're we're looking for illustrators sometimes and video people But yeah, it's important for I prefer when they can come in and We've collaborated people where we don't meet face-to-face and I've found that really difficult Working with them, but getting together and having a really good initial meeting and kind of you know Doubting all your eyes and crossing your teeth beforehand. It's really helpful I'll just add that we've done some work with outside agencies and we've had different relationships We'll like do white label work for them or we'll you know, and if you don't know what that means It's like they basically put their brand on it. Even if you're doing practically all of it or Alternatively, you know, we'll just take the project and roll with it and communicate directly with the client I think the key thing is establishing up front with the agency you're partnering with your kind of communication How that's going to work? especially with the client Because you're going to really irritate the client if your agency and their agency are asking them for the same stuff for the same Questions at the same time So as long as you have kind of a good Establish practice with whoever you're working with for project management the it usually works out pretty well Like setting up baselines really early on and kind of keep reinforcing those because sometimes I know with my client work things Get out of hand and expectations get out of whack and you got to kind of keep Going back in a nice way not like trying to be a dictator about it But just keep reinforcing like this is what we've set up We've agreed to this and this is the workflow that's gonna You know, we're gonna be able to facilitate get this project done on time So any other questions kind of related to just generally working with clients There's probably there's a ton of things that you could go into and a ton of rabbit holes that you could go down to Yeah, the question was just how to manage payment with clients and all that that entails so which is Probably you could have a whole conference about that Yeah, like actually getting paid. Yeah, which is fun Well, I fortunately don't have to deal with that yet because I'm not a freelancer. I Don't see the dollar sign, so I Think I just came across this for one of my first time so I might not be the Well first in this but I do think that someone recently told me this kind of changed my perspective if If you're trying to enforce a deadline, I always put it on my invoice But if for some reason it doesn't get paid for a while If you are in good terms with your client offering a payment plan could be kind of a way to like Get some money and keep things going That way if you feel like they're kind of ignoring you you could offer them like well Do you want to just pay half now and pay half later and and it kind of like starts a conversation again? But for me, I think just being kind of aggressive like trying different methods I've had to call you know try not just emailing and pick up the phone and try to get someone on the phone But that's only happened Yeah, I think I think one thing that helps I know that this is unavoidable sometimes, but you should probably never be in a situation to where if someone doesn't pay you money You're actually in a troublesome spot That puts everyone in a really awkward position, but that's kind of your fault for doing that. That's not their fault the other part that's kind of interesting which I I Again, I haven't had to be a freelancer full-time and so it's easier for me to say this I guess but I am pretty surprised constantly by people's tentative nature when it comes to getting paid You made something and you probably have a piece of paper saying that you would make something in exchange for money your owed money In almost any other situation other than when we're kind of like creative and tentative types Everyone else demands their money or takes their stuff back And so I know that you don't want to be rude You don't want to create situations where you can't get referrals because everyone lives off of referrals But remember if you're getting a referral from somebody who doesn't pay you they're probably gonna send more people who won't pay you So you might not need that referral at all like sometimes. It's much better to just say that like this is enough Please pay me and if not then I'm never going to work with you again One two if I have any way of dealing with this I will And three I'm going to tell other people that you don't pay as well like not to be rude But to be fair. This is how it works. You steal things from a store. You go to jail If you steal things from people for whatever reason we say, that's okay. Please get it to me when you can And that's I don't know that's just my opinion again I know that there's nuance to it but I think people are adults and I think sometimes it's easy for us to feel younger or something or inadequate and Not really put ourselves forward and just ask for what we were already owed and what was agreed to you to begin with Basically get feisty. I think is what? I'll add to the feisty. Okay, just just keep in mind It's and this is especially pertinent with wordpress or any kind of web work You hold the keys to your clients website. So if they're really that Terrible and if they're rude to you and they won't pay you, you know, it gets sticky if you don't have a contract So you gotta make sure you have the contract up front But if you have the doc the necessary documentation, you know, you don't have to sue them But you can totally turn off their website. There's nothing stopping you from doing that You never want it to get to that point and you can't really do that with other, you know items I guess, you know, you could tell them to stop the presses at the printer But with the website, you know, you're you hold the keys to that most of the time I Would just add you might consider not launching a website before you've gotten paid Well, yeah, and then I've had situations where the payment We're right in the middle of the project and the payment that was supposed to be there is not coming in and not coming I'm actively working on this and You know if it's a weekly that's okay It's two weeks later when it starts getting into like a month and a month and a half and I'm still actively doing work That's when it gets to be a problem This happened recently where I had to just have a real honest phone call with the client because they were having money issues They're not bad people But they weren't letting me know what was going on I was just still and we were still working as if nothing was wrong Even though that past dude deadline just kept it and they can I know they were getting notices because I use quickbooks And it sends late invoices like after on the week after, you know, a certain time So I finally just was like you can you can tell me what's going on And I had a really good relationship with this client by the way, too It's a different situation But they were finally just he was honest and was like we have cash flow issues right now And this is what's going on and then we worked out a situation a pain Oh, we broke that payment up into smaller payments and it was but it's different every time You got to be really honest with your client and really open, but also you're valuing yourself So you don't want to discredit yourself I mean your money is the exchange for the service that you're doing it just happens to be and you don't by them not paying you They're not valuing your service So you do have to be you don't have to be like aggressive about it, but just be very real It's a service that you're providing these people and it's very valuable to them Especially like especially if it's a sales kind of thing that could be losing You know hundreds of thousands of dollars, you know because it's not getting done But anyway any other questions related to client type stuff. Yeah Yeah, the question is do you have any preliminary pricing up front for your clients? That they see before you're putting together a proposal or anything like that Depending on the nature of the job and you know, they're usually pretty similar except in rare cases It's probably something you've done similar before It's I think it's fair to give them a wide range up front and you're very that's a great point you make You know if there's no point in putting in two days of work to get that proposal out If there's no way they're gonna meet at least the minimum price Typically at our agency we'll get a request for proposal an RFP and They'll usually say in their budget what their budget is and then we kind of decide from there if it's worth us You know responding to Because yeah, I actually just the same thing has been a whole day making this response to proposal look as pretty as I could and You know It was a little bit over budget, but it was just kind of a risk We were willing to take knowing kind of what they what their budget was up front Yeah The the first thing I ask of people before I go into any of that stuff is what's your budget and More importantly, even then what's your budget is like what's your expected time frame? That disqualifies way more people from me than than budget people who don't understand that this is going to anything is going to take more than a few weeks or Understand that if you unless you go with an agency, which this is one of the advantages But if you if you work with a freelancer or a small firm and you expect to be able to get your project started like immediately You're you're missing a lot of context and it's gonna take a lot of conversation to bring you into an understanding of what it means to engage someone like that So anyway time frame and budget and things like that and then there are Most people who don't want to talk budget don't trust you Because they believe that you're gonna take whatever number they say and then make that your your price So you have to learn to be honest and communicate with people about that But there are there are some people who say my budget doesn't matter I want to know how much it would cost to do something At which point like I I'll throw out two or three just ballparks like a general website with this many pages with You know no special features and I give an example of something, you know and just You know $10,000 or something like that and just kind of throw it out to get a reaction Generally that's helped me in the past and kind of eliminates people who don't have a good understanding of that We turned it into a design business panel real quick and but I want to go down into some actual Some actual design topics now self-steered away. Sorry if anybody had any other questions, but all these guys are gonna be around I'm sure you can ask them plenty of questions Afterwards and at the wedge if they're at the after party afterwards, too But I'd like to talk about a big part about design is communication communicating with your audience and you're defining Objectives and message and content all this stuff really early on in the game and then communicate You know you're trying to effectively get a point across Get more sales get you know Communicate a message whatever they're doing What does that look like for you when you're defining things like audience and the message and the you know The objective of the project and this is kind of starting broad and we'll focus in but yeah I mean just what does that look like for you guys because I know everything's really different in all of your working situations? okay, I Think for me That this is why I just really love that initial conversation with a client because when you have that initial Conversation and you see that spark in their eye about why they're really proud about what they do and what they like are connected to They're like why it's their baby That's like where I just have this moment where I'm like I can see that and how do I talk about that to the world like Who's the audience is very key you have to figure that out But if I can find that little thing that resonates with me and how do I translate that to a broader audience? I think that's like really what we do is designers because we're we're like crafting that experience that moment when you open the page One thing that works, but kind of puts you at risk for having a client realize they don't actually need to do the project at all is so in Less like website design and more just like broader Product focus UX which is more of what I do on a full-time basis So there's a principle called the five whys and it's basically you're you're just an annoying broken record asking people Why until you get to the actual answer so most people's you know? We need to redesign a website Their first answer to why do you need to redesign a website is utter crap. It doesn't matter It's not true. They haven't even had to think about it a lot of times that you know the prompt thing is more I had a budget and I hate our website fine But like do you have an actual goal because I think it's important for I'm not saying don't take work if people don't have a goal That's fine They want to pay you and you want to do something fun and make it beautiful man go for it And that's that's lovely But it's good to know that they don't actually have a goal that's tied to it And if they do have one that hasn't really been unearthed if they really do expect it to generate more Leads sales emails whatever the thing is you're gonna want to find that out early on Because that's the thing they immediately depart from when you start talking about the nature of the design And it's your job to bring people back to that focus because if they have a goal and they're expecting you to deliver on something really particular You're the one who has to keep up with that goal moving forward. They'll forget come back to it later And then blame you for it not working I'm going with your initial meeting I I really like to kind of dissect their whole company and learn as much about it as I can and Oftentimes I find the client is stomped on some of the questions. I ask them like what What are some word like one word that would describe your company like just you know basic things like that? What are some colors? Why do you like these colors and go from there and just take notes on and I'm usually in a team with another Like one or two creative directors Another art director and we just sit with the client and have a conversation and after the client leaves We all kind of talk about everything that we talked about and and brainstorm as a team What would get that? What would be a simple message to get across to? their clients or their customers And usually usually the company wants to throw everything on a brochure everything on the website all their information But it's kind of us we have to like coach them teach them how to simplify it because that's how you get messages across So it's usually kind of our workflow Kind of want to elaborate a little bit on what Cliff said a second ago about kind of help Understanding their goals and where they're coming from and that's that with a lot of smaller businesses or even mid-sized businesses Sometimes they have a passion for something, but they can't quite focus it into whatever into a specific goal So sometimes as a Designer step outside of your comfort zone and help them define that You're you're surprisingly well qualified for it because you're a creative problem solver You might not know their industry front and back and you don't have to you're supposed to listen to them and learn from them But at the end of the day don't don't shy away from Sort of you know getting a little more philosophical with the business side of whatever they're doing Because you know you just want to play with fonts and colors because Taking it to the next step is what will really add meaning to what you're doing for them and Really add value to what you're doing in the long term Anybody have any questions kind of related to this Lydia? So the question was What do you do when you are having trouble connecting with the client or the client's target audience because it's so far outside of your perspective I guess We've done focus groups before we did a Wine bottle label for the bill more and the target audience is called the hunt and the target audience was Manly men that were making over a hundred thousand a year and clearly none of us could relate to that so So we actually like seek out people in the community that met these standards and we put a tape recorder down and we Showed designs and we just got real feedback from the direct Audience and that was really cool to be a part of because I'm definitely not a man Recently I'm in a project where I'm redesigning a pharmacy logo And they're hoping to go national and I just have always shied away from pharmacies in general So it was really hard to then identify with a 60 plus audience and so going through the design I was very aware of what appealed to me into younger Populations, but found that through survey monkey and testing you could actually send out good questions to find out what they're actually Looking for in a pharmacy and and really helped me understand what kind of design really resonates and and what kind of points that we want to communicate I did use survey Guess it really just comes back to understanding their brand and like you mentioned, you know the people who are who they're serving You know you can you can sort of Sometimes it comes down to a frustrating decision maker Whoever it is you're presenting this to in which case, you know, we don't like to copy each other But it's not wrong to make a mood board per se and share it with them and say do you like the kind of overall Feel of this work like is this the kind of direction you like? You know in a perfect world they allow you a little more flexibility to find that yourself but sometimes you have to just kind of check your Idealism at the door and just say I got it. I just got to please the client and you'd be surprised sometimes how you'll come up with something that you might not love but a lot of people like and Oftentimes that's how you really can diversify a personal portfolio beyond, you know, what you might call your style into a more kind of holistic Almost agency kind of look Yeah, she was asking as a copywriter And talking to designers, what are you looking for in the copy world from the copy? And that's really great. I'm glad you brought that up because I was gonna talk about the subject of Designing around content versus going the other direction And what that looks like there's a lot of things that could be talked about that like how do you get good content? Where does it come from? What does it look like? How do you know what it looks like? If they want to answer your question directly, you know, relating to copies Well, Laurel and I gave a talk about this yesterday About how important we feel it is to design around content and not the other way around Content writing writing in general is a form of communication It's it's not obviously not so visual although type is kind of the Crossroads between content writing and visual communication So there's a little overlap there, but at the end of the day, you know As our business grows and we might look to bring on another designer, perhaps I would never hire a designer that couldn't write a complete sentence and That comes from understanding Content understanding, I guess the emotional value of content because that's how you really make the connection with whoever's looking at whatever it is you designed and I guess just the kind of I kind of lost my train of thought anyway content is extremely important and please write lots of content for websites and We'll do our best to try to convince our clients to hire you because we I like working with pre-written content It's a lot less frustrating You don't have to say gee how much space do I need to leave for this and you know You want to be a little flexible But at the end of the day, you know, you got to know if this book is if this site's gonna be like a full book or just a couple sentences so I agree I like having the content first and being able to read through that and and kind of Think in my mind what visually represents that the best so that people will want to read it I work closely with our creative director who is a really amazing writer and we kind of Meet we meet a lot and we'll a lot like for advertisements for instance There'll be a big image headline copy. We work really close together And if I I think the image to the imagery isn't working as well I go back to him and I ask like You know if it's if we were to use this image should we adjust the copy and we just kind of piggyback like that He always teases me calls me a copy killer because I Sometimes I'm like oh it looks so much better. There's like just less type He's he just shakes his head and calls me a copy killer But it's good to have a close relationship with the writer because I am not a writer and I don't pretend to be so I Like having that just like, you know constant communication. I love working with copywriters I think that can elevate a project just like professional photography and If for some reason I were to be given a word document written by the client or or by a copywriter My favorite thing to do is kind of pull out those main messages Just like you were talking about in goals for the website and then kind of build a visual hierarchy around it And and for me, that's like pulling out, you know, would this look better in a statistic Is this a really service-based industry? How do we highlight the services with interactive elements or complementing photos and I think just pulling that kind of visual? This word doc and just starting the wireframe process from that and getting a flow for where eyes need to go first What's at the top of the the page and just waiting things? Helps me understand the content a lot better. I'm just visual and then communicating that for the client I think they they get excited because they see their goals coming out in a whole different way Yeah, I think copywriting is severely underestimated in How it actually makes a design work So studies have shown that people will disqualify I'll explain this but like they disqualify a website based on design And they qualify a website based on content So what that basically means so this came from a big study where people were actually finding out information That would help them improve or save their own lives so they were looking at medical information that would help them and They would judge the value of the content before they read any content based on less than a second of Seeing the design, okay, but then after that the design mattered way less And what mattered way more was the value of the actual content that was written the ability to give information Quickly the ability to guide them forward and for them to understand and like similar to that We spend a lot of time designing calls to action and ways to put people into a funnel when studies show that what actually Causes people to convert is that the call to action has been after the proper amount of information and the design itself is Nearly irrelevant and in all the research and we spend so much time thinking about it and trying to figure that part out And so I would I would say if if you're designing and building something for someone Who is similar to you in terms of kind of age culture or something like that And you've got a decent writer or you're a decent writer You can probably get away with what you're doing because you kind of understand what the people need to read But you mentioned a pharmacy like you need you need to do at least two things if you don't hire a copywriter Who's good at this one you need to have an editor So you at least need to send your stuff to someone who's looking at it Who's not you and who is making sure that this stuff makes sense and isn't too verbose and all of this And the other part is you need to put it in front of people who would actually be reading that and ask them if it Makes sense to them like we just I hate the term millennial I wish that there was another word that we could use to describe whatever age group there is that exists like that but Millennials Think and write totally differently than people just 10 and 20 years older than them And they think and write totally differently than people 10 years younger than them And but yet I think we get in this situation and a lot of times we feel like design will compensate for Average copy and it and it won't the opposite is true You can actually put great copy into a iffy design and it will actually work think of Craigslist Think of the drudge report Think of like a ton of other websites where people will continue to go to it just because it loads quickly and I can read information fast If not, I'm steering it one more direction while we have a few minutes. It's gone really fast So there's there's not much time left But I did want to talk about one thing that especially since we're at word camp which word camp is So much about the community surrounding wordpress and that's one of the things that brings people in and keeps them locked in Regardless of what they do because everybody here has so many different talents. They do different things That's evidence of all the people that are here this weekend. So I want to talk about Connecting with your community and that can be either local, you know with meetup groups and your local Just people that you interact with they can also be virtually Online groups, you know if you're on dribble or just you know, whatever you happen to do if you're really active on Twitter how important is that and And and you know, what are some things that you've seen, you know, if you've if you've dived into it and I mean I could name I Would not be here where I am without the community that has fostered me to this point And I think it might be the same for you guys. So I just like to hear it's less a question Just more of a discussion about you know, what what do you think about that? This is fairly interesting to me. So the UX community in general is insane in the sense that it it's not it almost doesn't exist because the the UX portion of design is so new and Doesn't actually mean anything. It's a bunch of people that range in skill set Dramatically and do dramatically different things from scientific research all the way through to just actually just being a graphic designer And so it's been a catch-all phrase And so it's it's actually really difficult, especially in that little sect to have a sense of community And know when you're talking to someone else who does something that might even have the same title as you They may do completely different things have a different skill set have a different outlook, etc But the best thing I found and I've never been able to find anything like the WordPress community in anywhere inside the design community But the best thing that that I've done with with like a group of other people that I work with is We felt like there wasn't any community around UX locally. So we started a meet-up And we did ours a little bit differently So instead of having yet another Thursday night meet-up where everyone comes and gets drunk Which is supposed to foster community for whatever reason, but it's actually just drunk people at a bar Instead like we started a meet-up that happens in the morning when people are not drunk yet and hopefully and But it's But it's been it's been really helpful in that sense because you can get to know people when they're kind of in their work brain It's during the week like we're thinking about things. We're presenting to each other. We're having conversation and networking And I hate that word too, but like all of it all of it has worked better And so at least in that case like actually just saying I feel like there wasn't enough community So I'm gonna try to make some so that we can find what's already there Has worked really well and since we've been able to do that Really kind of discovered other people that are kind of just hiding They don't know about the community, but a lot of times like portions of the community need They need like leaders you don't actually have to have like ahead of the community You just need to have someone who's saying why don't we just get together at a certain time at a certain place and see who Shows up and then community actually develops and I think a lot of that has occurred in word press Whether we realize it or not there are people whose names that we know who work at the word press project who like You know sanctioned things and events and different things like that And even though you can now be a part of the community and never really know who those people are they still Initiated word camps they initiated you know meetups and other things like that and then they just continue to empower people to create their own mini communities Well Zina and I have been going to Design salon of the few other people here in Asheville if you're interested I think you can Facebook Asheville Design Salon and We're we're still trying to figure out what that really means but in the meantime we've been having picnics and pack square and meeting at craft peak and pretty much just doing what you said just drinking together and having fun but Having well, yeah But yeah, I think I think just it's fun being able to a lot of these Groups keep intermixing between word camp and design salon and you start to just form Relationships with these people because you see them so often and and with that come work opportunities Lydia has been working with us at market connections And it's a it's a good way to network for work and for friends and it's just There's stuff out there. You just have to you have to look for it. Otherwise you'll be hiding like you said I'm really guilty about not getting out as much as I should and Oftentimes it's easy to get bogged down. You know when you got a lot going on I guess it's important though to still make that time And you know, hopefully you can make the time fun like you guys are talking about so it doesn't feel like a chore To go out at evil networking I would I'll step into a totally different realm very quickly though and just say When you're working on any kind of design project never under estimate the power of the naivety of People who have no idea what's going on go talk to people who work in different fields That have nothing to do with design or the web Show them your work get their feedback try to gauge their emotional connection to whatever it is you're creating Because at the end of the day, I think there are a lot of designers who design for designers And that's very satisfying to look at in your portfolio website But if you're the number one viewer of your portfolio website, that's not really conducive to a profitable career, so Definitely, you know Talk with people from different age groups to you know, I hate the word millennial just as much as cliff down here You know, but like I have the benefit of working with Laurel and Jim and we're pretty multi-generational We're all about 20 years apart in age, so gauge the reactions of people who are way different than you and Try to leverage that with whatever Research you've done on whatever project it is you're doing That's a great point and I think For a lot of connections you one sector I think that we could all just really help and even team up on is just the nonprofit sector because there's so much Need and you know joining a board or doing something like that is just some way to like interact with a lot of people that aren't Like you and there's so much need out there, and I think you could just find that having that kind of giving freedom There's just so much respect for your work and and it's just fun and you feel it And I feel like that work just feels good and everyone I Do just being involved in your community allows you to touch so many different avenues and things and you're and that's most likely Something you're passionate about which then translates to so many other kind of connections in your life That's really all that we're kind of at the end here And does anybody have any just other open-ended questions? I'll just kind of open it up to anything you want to ask these guys and probably take what maybe one more question if anybody has one Nobody's gonna have one If not, I'm just gonna say thanks for coming to word camp and you guys are completely awesome and You know come back next year and come to the wedge tonight and hang out afterwards. Oh, yeah And if you if you participated in the contest at all So if you dropped your business card in the happiness bar drop-in contest Or you've been taking pictures and posting them to Twitter or Instagram with the hashtags Meet down in the all users room here in just a couple minutes and we got a couple more prizes to give away other than that Thank you guys and take these guys