The Meetup Scene

Over the past few years the number of meetups for the creative and programming fields have really taken off. I find myself at one nearly once a week. Here are a few that stand out to me.

Refresh Charleston

Refresh Charleston is a movement to help inspire the Lowcountry’s creative community by promoting better design, cutting edge technology, increased usability, and better standards. Ever so often, we come together to share what we know and meet others who share similar interests.

Refresh happens once a quarter and brings in the top creative talent from around the area. The venue changes but it is often hosted at Blue Ion.
refreshcharleston.com

WordPress Meetup

WordPress Charleston is a local user group that meets on the second Tuesday of each month to talk about WordPress, best practices for design, and effectively running an online presence. The group is a resource for both beginners, designers and gurus, allowing all to get together to learn and bounce ideas off each other.

It is good to learn about the new developments as well as hear from beginners on what the pain points are. The meetup is hosted at Flagship.
wpchs.org

Charleston Über Users Group (CHUUG)

This group allows its attendees to pitch technical topics they will either speak on, or want to hear about. While it is limited to tech, there is nothing within that field that is off-limits.

This is where I go to see what the really really smart programmers are up to. This one will blow your mind. It happens on the 4th Thursday of each month at the offices of Jack Russell Software.
nerdy Google+ link

Charleston UX

Charleston UX is a group of like-minded User Experience professionals that love what we do. Join us once a month as we get together to discuss user experience design, information architecture, copywriting, analytics, usability studies, sketching and wireframing, and much more. We keep the format pretty casual, and we encourage you to bring a friend.

Typically this is in the form of a Skype conference hosted at Benefitfocus. By bringing in speakers virtually they can pull in some big names without the expense. The last speaker was Ethan Marcotte, the guy who coined the term Responsive Design. The next event will be an in-person event featuring Daniel Burka and will be hosted here at Blue Ion. There are a few tickets left.
meetup.com/Charleston-User-Experience/

AIGA

Our goal is to stimulate, enhance and develop the graphic design profession and to embrace the other art fields. AIGA SC will serve as the heart for all areas of creativity.

This one certainly has more of a design slant. We’ve been lucky enough to host these events with some of the big names in the design world like Aaron Draplin, James White and Dan Cassaro. There is no set schedule to the events but that happen approximately quarterly.
southcarolina.aiga.org

Are there any events that I’m missing?