Over the last year Kaitlin Villanova and I have worked hard to grow and extend the Digital DUMBO brand to match the exponential size of the monthly networking event. As you may have noticed, last week we officially rolled out the new brand identity for Digital DUMBO across our web presence and collateral.  Surprisingly, this is actually the third iteration of our logo. It seems as if our logo evolves in tandem with the evolution of the Digital DUMBO community.

Over the past year this evolution has taken place in many different forms. We’ve had the opportunity to showcase some amazingly innovative and creative companies at our monthly events in interesting ways such as arm wrestling, sumo wresting, ugly holiday sweaters, and bingo. We hosted a career fair. We participated in and helped plan programming for the DUMBO Arts Festival. All of these accomplishments were made possible because of ideas brought to the table by members of our community.

These accomplishments have led to growth in the size of our community and in new partnerships. This growth has pushed forward our logo as well. The new logo designed by Carrot Creative’s talented team was created to be more dynamic and more iconic than our previous brand, without completely abandoning the color palette and aesthetics of our original identity. The love mark depicts our two D’s, but also creates a face, humanizing our brand and serving as a representation of the community that Digital DUMBO is built upon. We also made a point to allow for a logo that could be utilized by other cities as we continue to explore ways to grow beyond New York, using the format and philosophies of our event to help grow stronger digital communities elsewhere.

The past few months have served as excellent building blocks for the future. We realize that there are many things that we can do better in order to be a better matchmaker for the community. Two areas that we are focusing on in the near term is the creation of the Digital DUMBO Workshop Series and in improving DigitalDUMBO.com. We hope that the Workshop Series will provide high value educational programming to our community in a more focused setting. For our website, we’re exploring ways in which we can create a more vibrant community online to complement our offline community.

We hope that our new logo marks a turning point not only in the design of our brand, but in our efforts to be even better at building a strong digital community that fosters economic activity for all.

We hope to see you at the next event!

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Photo by Michael Sheedy

Last week I had the (over)enthusiastic pleasure to attend FITC’s 2011 Toronto event, which I won a ticket to from the awesome people over at ActiveDen / ActiveTuts / Envato – thanks again! FITC has been community of creativity and inspiration for just about ten years, something I’ve always wanted to attend since I first heard about it but haven’t had the chance til now. The speakers are as diverse as the topics, and my only regret was that I didn’t clone myself so I could attend every presentation.

If you’ve never been to FITC you’re missing out. It’s definitely not a typical ‘conference’ that you’d expect your job would send you to. Throughout the event this year (themed as a retro movie theater), there was free popcorn, cotton candy, coffee, tea, swag, and a healthy selection of brews at the open bar. You’ll meet strategists, headhunters, developers, designers, creatives, and everyone between. Experience is not a limiter either; among the crowd are famous seasoned designers and young students, the only requirement to attend is passion. It was awesome to see some RIT representation: students, graduates, and one of my professors from my alumni were attending. I also met @ekculbertson, a talented RIT student we’re bringing on for a summer internship! The exhibitions had a lot of cool stuff and interesting people – I think the crowd favorite was a large display table where you draw your own character on a card and battle it against other people’s creations!

Adobe had a major presence at the event, not only with their numerous speakers but with their contributions to the environment, discussions, and content. Their people were lots of fun and clearly loved their jobs. Their CS5.5 release was pretty cool as well, and they handed out free trials of it to anyone that brought their laptop. The new subscription model is also a smart move, and looks like it could help smaller companies and freelancers a lot – cheap per-month solutions if you don’t want to shell out for a copy of the master suite. Project Edge was really intriguing as well, and their prototype demonstrations shows a lot of ingenuity – also a lot of features that I hope they plan to implement in to a future version of Flash. I will definitely be keeping up with their other lab projects.

It was great seeing our neighbor Jamie Kosoy of Big Spaceship give The Most Awesomest Talk Ever. He captured the culture and pure awesomeness that agencies in Dumbo represent. We love bringing our silly ideas to life and encourage each other to explore and create. If you haven’t seen The Most Awesomest Thing Ever definitely give it a go!

Some memorable speakers that I took to heart were Mikko Haapoja, Mike Chambers, Doug Winnie, Bradley Munkowitz, Seb Lee-Delisle, Ryan Stewart, Kyle Cooper, and Matt Rix. I think Rix’s presentation was especially interesting, he talked about how he created Trainyard in his free time, marketed it on his own, and shared some of his process work and how he tackled certain challenges. He gave me the inspiration to not let my prototypes get lost on the back burners.

Carrot recognizes the importance of events like these and was happy to send me – and I was happy to attend! I’m sorry if we didn’t get a chance to talk, hopefully next time I’ll be able to stay for the job-a-thon! You can always apply to Carrot at http://carrotcreative.com/careers/ – we’re actively searching for those exceptional people that are passionate about what they do. Thanks to everyone I met, I had a blast!

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But this time was different. It was my first Digital DUMBO as a full-time New Yorker, and more importantly, my first Digital DUMBO as a Carrot.

Maybe it’s just me, but it’s different when “Carrot Creative” is written on your name tag. (Nope. Nobody asked me to write my company on there. I was just bragging.) People were more interested, I was more lively, and conversations lasted longer. The party—and life in general—is just better as part of the Carrot Crew.

That’s not to say that we’re the only ones that have fun. Last night was one of the biggest and most fun Digital DUMBO events ever. Hundreds showed up in their Christmas worst: we’re talking light-up sweaters, pompoms galore, a sea of wool trees, and even one bicep-bearing sleeveless knit top (worn by our very own Creative Director, of course). This, naturally, was all captured for maximum embarrassment thanks to the best party photo booth I’ve ever seen, complete with instant prints of every photo and a row of shiny iPads outfitted with a custom photo-sharing app.

Sponsor AOL rocked the house as Digital DUMBO wrapped up an amazing year. Social Media Director Matt Knell led a Yankee Swap among ten lucky attendees, giving out everything from iPads to FlipCams to AOL-branded mints. Senior Marketing Manager Frederick Van Johnson flew in from Silicon Valley to demo Project Phoenix, reminding us that AOL pioneered email… and that they’re going to do it all over again. Oh, and they’re sending advance invites to everyone who attended. See? Great things happen to those who attend DD.

And though prizes and demos are always great, the beverages flow freely, and the music is awesome, Digital DUMBO is my favorite event because the co-organizer sits behinds me and is reading this of the people that attend. Kyle Studstill best summed it up when we met last night: “I come here because this is where the thinkers, the doers, the creatives come to play.”

I can’t take any credit for that (that all goes to Kaitlin Villanova and Andrew Zarick), but it’s true. And I’ve never been prouder to be a part of it.

For more where this came from, check out AOL’s gallery from the photo booth.

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Photo Credit: Kelly Samardak, Just an Online Minute

Last night was the 4th Digital DUMBO Drinks hosted by our good friends at HUGE. An extremely successful and SOLD OUT event at the DUMBO Arts Center, we’re already excited for the next one. The lofty space hosted over 150 of the DUMBO digital elite gathering around the keg filled with the finest beer around-Brooklyn “We Go Hard” Lager  or filling up a glass with the delicious punch. Kegs and punch? Now THAT is how you throw a party.

After some mingling and networking,  HUGE Partner, Creative Director David Skokna addressed the crowd with “Blood, Sweat and Fear: Doing Business in DUMBO” presentation.  Main themes from his speech:

• DUMBO is awesome.
• If you don’t like what you’re doing at your job, quit.
• If you do like what you’re doing, figure out what that is and hold on to it.
• There is a guy that sunbathes in a Speedo out in DUMBO when it gets warm out. Lucky us.

The speech went well with the nature of Digital DUMBO and it’s growing spirit. Only 4 months in, we’ve had an overwhelming response of interest for the event, companies eager to present and show off their talented work and a community willing to participate and learn about what their neighbors are up to. It’s really exciting.

Keep an eye out for the invite to the May edition if you  haven’t been to a Digital DUMBO yet. It’s sure to blow you away.There’s a Twitter account to follow too.

Check out a great recap of the event on MediaPost’s Just An Online Minute, photos from Nick McGlynn’s Random Night Out and an official post from the sponsors themselves, HUGE.

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We are always looking to meet with people interested in what we do and talk about the changing world of social media, what they’re seeing and just have a kick ass conversation.

So, what’s easier than telling you all where WE are going to be! See the run down below and hope to see you all soon!

Digital DUMBO Drinks #3:

An event co-hosted by Carrot Creative, Digital DUMBO brings together the digital community under the bridge for drinks and socializing at ReBar. Tonight’s event includes a live demo of drop.io with some interactive components to participate. Start time is 6:30pm and be sure to RSVP here: http://digitaldumbodrinks.eventbrite.com/

Social Media 4 Social Change:

Gathering social media professionals, technologists, friends and family and otherwise talented people, Social Media for Social Change was born of the idea that the social media community, these “agents of change” can get together for one night, to support one cause: City Harvest.  The event is next Friday, April 3rd at 7pm.  RSVP here: http://sm4scnyc.eventbrite.com/

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If anyone else is going to be at the workshop, please let me know so we can meet up!

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This article is copyright © 2012 

This article is copyright © 2012 

In case you could not attend the party this year, do not fret as we are already in the planning process for next year’s extravaganza. We can not wait to see what next year brings about. Here is a brief recap of what the Carrot Birthday Bash offered its well-wishers this year:

And lots more memorable occurrences that can only be realized through sharing in the festivities. Join us next year!

This article is copyright © 2012 

This article is copyright © 2012