Bridging The Gap

This weekend I finally got the chance to fly to Temecula, California and meet/hang out with Aaron Irizarry and Garth Humbert. While out there I was able to attend the 2nd ever Collekt meetup and finally meet, in person, a few others I have been connecting with lately on tinychat. Getting to meet everyone in person really solidified my reasoning for starting Chat Creative. The desire these other creatives had to interact with one another was amazing, so much to the extent that our friend Nicho drove two hours to be there.

On top of all the great connections I made, I was able to find time to relax with Garth and his family. We took a trip down to Coronado Island by San Diego on Saturday afternoon. Getting to smell the ocean air and feel the cool breeze as we walked the beach was a real mind-clearer. To top it off, after the beach we went and visited Temecula Wine Country for a little wine tasting and dinner. Here are a few photos I took while down there. You can see more over on my flickr page.

Thanks again to everyone that came out to the Collekt meetup. I am so pumped for what the future holds for Chat Creative, and all the connections we are making right now. This is just the beginning of a new generation of designers working with/for each other, not against.

community

I know I've always valued the importance of community but today really hit home.

Saturdays are usually a difficult day for me, one because I have nothing to do and two because I can think of a million things to do. (Note: When you own a home your "to-do" list never seems to end.) So I usually try to take it easy and have no plans made. That way I'm not committed to anyone or anything, making it easier to enjoy my weekend and be spontaneous.

However, within the past few months I've started to take a more active role in becoming involved in the design community in the greater Dallas area. I started with the Refresh Dallas monthly meetings, which are a great way to learn about new and interesting technologies. And just today I attended my first WordPress meetup group. I was nervous thinking about who I would meet and what kind of people actually attend these things. Not to mention that it started to feel like more of a burden the more I debated going. My thought pattern went something like this:

• Will there be anyone I can relate too?
• Am I going to show up and everyone just ignores me?
• Did I put on too much cologne?
• Am I overdressed?
• Thanks TomTom for directions, now where is the damn deli?

My nerves were put to rest the moment I walked in the door of the restaurant, P.D. Johnson's, as I was waved over to the table and began to make my introductions. The next two hours were spent chatting about WordPress (obviously), twitter, dogs, Plurk, servers, Ping.fm, our failing economy, the new homeless, as well as enjoying what everyone else was talking about. The range of experience from everyone brought about a nice balance to the conversations. There are those who run multiple sites on multiple servers to those who are just learning about websites. It was great to see how everyone was treated with the same respect and no one was left out.

Now I just have to be patient for WordCamp Dallas 2009.