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Interview: Chicago Interactive Design and Development with Judi Wunderlich
Judi Wunderlich is the VP or Recruiting and Marketing at Wunderland, a staffing agency for creative professionals. She also is the organizer behind the popular Meetup group, Chicago Interactive Design & Development, a group that meets every month to discuss and learn more about topics related to the creative industry. We invited her to share more about the group.
Tell us more about your Meetup group, Chicago Interactive Design & Development. Why did you decide to start it? How is it different from other Meetup groups around your area?
I wish I could say I created the group for altruistic reasons, but I didn't. I launched this group in July of 2007, for two (selfish I admit) reasons: (1) So I could listen to subject matter experts and learn from them; and (2) because I was a recruiter in a staffing firm and wanted potential candidates to join the group and come to our events so I could meet them. In 2009, I and 2 partners founded the WunderLand Group (recruiting firm), and of course I continued the group, and it has gotten better and bigger! It helps, of course, that I have a conference center in my office building to host the events.
What are the backgrounds of your members? What are they looking to get out of the group?
My group, which has 2,100 members, is made up of Chicago-area people who work in a digital field - web developers, mobile app developers, digital designers, user experience designers, online marketers, SEO and PPC experts and other related job types. We also have a good-sized contingent of students who will be pursuing a job in one of these fields. They are all looking for one main thing - learning! Networking is in second place to that. That's why we don't hold bar meetups and why we always have a subject-matter-expert speaker.
We noticed on the group's page you specifically say that only people residing in Chicago area will be admitted to the group, why did you choose to do that?
I chose to only let Chicago-area members join because this is a "meet" up; that is, to meet others face to face who share the same interests as you. Originally I did not restrict anyone from joining, and that resulted in people from all over the world joining, who had no intention of attending our events, and they began sending spammy sales emails to group members. That caused me to lose members, so I changed the group so that I now approve, or disapprove, everyone who wants to join.
What have been some of your most popular events? Why do you think they were popular?
I can't really say which was the most popular event, but I can tell you that in the last few years we always 'sell-out' (we don't actually charge anything) and have a waiting list to attend our events. For instance, the most recent event was last Wednesday. The topic was Wireframing the Right Way. We had the maximum yes RSVPs, plus a waiting list of 113 people! The room was filled mostly with people employed as information architects and user experience designers - or students who want to get into that field. It I had to say what tends to be the most popular, I'd say that speakers who talk about front end web and mobile development, and user experience design speakers seem to get the biggest turn-out.
Your group is focused around interactive design and development. How do you determine what topics to cover and how do you get speakers?
I keep abreast of trends in the digital world (i.e., I live online!) by reading everything I can find about topics related to digital technology so I can time my events to cover topical issues. For instance my next event is about starting/building a company apprenticeship program, so America can 'home-grow' our own tech talent, which there is an extreme shortage of today. I know there's a shortage of tech talent because my recruiting firm sees that every day. I sought the speaker, who has written a book about apprenticeships, because he's well-known in the Chicago tech community, and because I personally believe that apprenticeships (where someone learns on-the-job and gets paid a living wage for a year) are the way to go to get more skilled workers. I am vehemently against outsourcing American jobs, or increasing our visa allotments to bring foreign workers here, by the way.
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