Happy Birthday CV Web Posse
The CV Web Posse is a group that I started just over a year ago with the desire to connect with others in the local tech community. I knew that I wasn’t the only person doing web design here in the Comox Valley and thought it would be fun to meet with other people in the industry and see what would come of it. Before I started freelancing fulltime I worked in Victoria with Number 41 Media. I was an eager designer and front-end developer with a good team spirit and the desire to learn from the others. I loved hanging out with the all team around the office, the programmers, the project managers and especially the other designers. Both Rich Farr and Mark Delamere were instrumental in helping to shape my career as a web designer, coder and person. We would talk about everything from work to music and movies to ideas and theory.
After moving away from Victoria in 2007 and working under Architexture in my home based office for a year I started to get pretty lonely and antsy working in rural Royston so I decided it was time to find some officespace. I wanted to get out of the house and start better connecting with my clients and other people in the industry. After making a few local connections I thought it would be fun to put together a “group” and make it somewhat official by giving it a “name”. I decided on the CV Web Posse because it was fun and I didn’t want it to come across as too serious or formal, just a group of like minded folks who happen to make cool things on the internet.
The CV Web Posse was influenced by a now defunct Victoria web group called the Better Web Posse whose meetings were often frequented by the likes of Gels Saby, Andrew Wilkinson and Andy Peatling . When I was visiting Victoria I attended a couple of their meetings and really enjoyed the vibe and atmosphere. It reminded me of what I missed from working in an office environment with all the tech talk and internet chit chat. I value group discussion for its ability to create evolving dialog on a given subject. You can always learn something new in a group discussion or at least you can walk away knowing at little bit more about what you were already good at by being able explaining it to others.
Being able to communicate is key in business but its also super important in social and group situations. I still sorta struggle standing in front of the room trying to explain a problem or solution, but the more I do it the more I enjoy it and getting the know the familiar faces help too. I have so many good ideas for the Web Posse and I aim to dedicate more time to its sustainability and its growth over the next year.
August 5th was the 1 year anniversary for the CV Web Posse’s first meeting. The meeting was at the Kingfisher and was attended by 5 people (Leif, Jo, Trevor, Merrick and Me) who are now my friends, associates and long standing Web Posse members. These days we get an average of 15+ people to the monthly presentation nights which is pretty good considering the size of the city. We have been fortunate to have had some cool companies come to Courtenay to discuss their products including Smallbox to talk about their custom content management system (CMS) and Oprius to show us their customer relationship management software (CRM).
We will continue to bring in companies and speakers for our presentation nights but its really awesome to have our members present on topics of their choice. We have so many talented people in the group ranging from designers, programmers, business owners, content writers, SEO and social media specialists and there is always something new to learn.
The Web Posse has been fortunate become a liaison for the North Island College Interactive Media program and starting July 2009 the CV Web Posse will be having our monthly presentation nights at the College. We’ve coordinated this effort with the faculty and staff of NIC to offer the CV Web Posse as an information resource to students and in return we have a permanent monthly meeting space for our meetings. Having a secured location allows me to focus on other areas of growth for the CV Web Posse.
Bi-Weekly Socials…
Sticking with our desire for good times off the computer we’ll be having bi-weekly social nights. These nights are a good opportunity to network, meet new people and enjoy a cold bevy. We hope to see you out!
I value every connection that I have made through the Web Posse because it has created an outlet for social or technical discussion that I hope fills the void for every member in the local tech community.
Thanks to all the members of the CV Web Posse for being so awesome and thanks to Campaign Monitor for the newsletter sponsorship. Also thanks to the core group of members who have been apart of the Web Posse since the beginning.
Happy Birthday CV Web Posse!
CV Web Posse Stats
69 people are subscribed to the newsletter, 64 are part of the Google Group, 25 followers on Twitter and ONLY 2 people visited the site using Internet Explorer 6.
For the past 6 months we have been proudly sponsored by Campaign Monitor for sending newsletters. In that time we managed to use up over 10,000 credits and send 17 newsletters.
Here are some other neat little bits of info for the Web Posse.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Ok, who visited the site with IE6? I think they should be banned from the Posse! Ha, j/k of course
Awesome to see the success of the group over time and what it has become today. Kudos to our fearless leader Jamie for taking the initiative to start the group and putting his blood and sweat into it to keep it going. Jamie’s drinks should be on the members tab tonight!