Design*Sponge » Blog Archive » biz ladies: summer 2008!

this year i traveled across the country to hold design*sponge’s first series of nation-wide biz ladies meetups. it was such an incredible experience and was easily my favorite part of running the site this year. i was such an honor to meet talented designers in philadelphia, chicago, san francisco, seattle, portland and los angeles. and this summer i’m adding a few more cities to the roster now that i have help from our wonderful interns to get things organized. so, this summer i’ll be catching a train to both baltimore and boston to set up biz ladies meetups (dates to come soon)!

later this year i’ll be making some really exciting changes to the biz ladies series but i wanted to travel to a few more cities to continue with the current format of speakers. for baltimore and boston i’m already set with local shop owners and artists to speak but i do need some advice with finding locations in both cities to host the event and local small business advisors to speak.

for each location: we need a space that can comfortably house anywhere from 50-150 people (we’re set for baltimore, thanks!)
for small biz speakers: we’d love to work with someone who is familiar with small biz concerns like taxes, loans, contracts, etc.

if you know a place or person that might work for either space, i’d be so appreciative for any tips. you can shoot me an email with them right here. thanks!

also, there WILL be a brooklyn meetup this summer, but because we’ve done the current format twice already we’re working on taking the meetup to the next level and try out a new format. details and dates will be ready in 2-3 weeks.

hi guys

i’m working on a solution to the problem of not being able to travel to every city i’d like to- hopefully when i get it up and on the site it will be helpful! i pay for the travel and hotel aspect of the series by myself so sadly i can’t afford to go internationally (or to more cities in the states) without sponsorship, which i’m not comfortable with at the moment.

grace :)

Canada is pretty close- and Vancouver’s an hour drive from the US border (and close to Seattle).

It would be wonderful if you could come to Vancouver and I could think of people to speak &/or facilitate speakers.

If it’s not possible now the future would still be quite great!

colleen

a trip to canada for me still involves a plane ticket to seattle or a long drive from nyc. i’ll do my best to travel to as many places as possible this year but this year’s trips were a big blow to my budget so i’ll have to be more careful this year :)

grace

you should try vessel on kingston street in boston. they also have a shop in the south end but it’s smaller. the kingston street store would hold enough people. it’s run by two really nice men. here’s a link to their website: http://www.vesselinc.com/retailers.html

Honestly Grace, the first thing I thought was… “Come to Toronto!”
lol… =D (Everyone wants you to be everywhere!)

However, to all of us design addicts, I am learning that just because something isn’t happening in our city doesn’t mean it can’t! If you really want to see a Biz Ladies meeting in your city… Why not set up your own version of it!?!

Surely it would take a bit of work, but I can imagine that if contacted many artists would love to show up for a day of networking, workshops, chats and to view each other’s craft. (And possibly even contribute to the cost of renting space to meet.) Hmmm…. this has me thinking! =D

Grace – I’d love to see you come to Toronto. But go where you need to and where you can! =D Maybe it will be a good excuse for me to take a vacation!

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