In 2013, I returned to Vancouver after nearly two years working as a freelance commercial photographer in Asia. The time away left me feeling disconnected from the local creative community.
So I started searching.
I quickly discovered that Vancouver has events that act as hubs for creatives in the advertising and marketing industry. Here’s my short list.
Events for Vancouver Creatives
1. Regular lecture series’
Pros: Inspiring and well organized
Cons: Format makes it difficult to build strong connections
2. Regular opportunities to connect with people
Pros: Fantastic for meeting people
Cons: Difficult to make time for during work hours.
3. Other
- Vancouver Design Week
- ProductYVR
- Interesting Vancouver
- Association, society and award events (GDC, NABS, etc)
Pros: Exciting when they happen
Cons: Only occur occasionally
When asked, I’d happily recommend the events on this list to anyone.
At the same time, I realized that our city’s commercial creatives lacked an on-going event that takes place outside of work hours. We were missing a casual forum for enthusiastic professionals to conveniently connect, share inspiration and spark new collaborations.
How Creative Pulse Began
I met Natasha D’Souza at ProductYVR a month after returning to Vancouver. As an ad-gal (at DDB) she recognized firsthand that Vancouver’s commercial creatives were starving for a community.
So we decided to host a simple industry social for Vancouver’s advertising and marketing creatives.
The response was overwhelmingly positive.
Creative Pulse was born: a non-profit, volunteer organization that produces monthly events for creatives.
623 Reasons To Keep Going
12 months later, our volunteer team has grown and so has our reach. Attendees include creatives from agencies of all sizes (Cossette, Invoke, 123w, Rethink, etc) and many amazing freelancers.
Our reports tell me that we’ve had 623 event registrants in our first year. 623 exciting reasons to keep going!
While our team experiments with event concepts, every Creative Pulse event gives attendees opportunities to:
- Make real connections with like-minded creatives,
- Share and discover new inspiration,
- Find future collaborators
What’s Next?
We plan to keep serving our community by partnering with our city’s best creative leaders and resources.
No event organization can exist without weaknesses—we certainly have ours. That’s why we work with, learn from and promote other community-minded event organization in our industry. Together we hope to give creatives a complete spectrum of options.
We’re going to try new things and break rules. We’ll make mistakes—and hope you’ll forgive us when we do.
If all this resonates with you, let me know by signing up for our mailing list (below). I’ll invite you to be my guest at the next Creative Pulse.
I think you’ll like it.
As a marketing consultant and coach for client-based business owners, Ami specializes in helping experts attract ideal clients — predictably.
Formerly a freelance photographer, Ami has photographed celebrities like Jay-Z, Coldplay, and Olympic athletes.
He’s the proud co-founder of Creative Pulse and has led its volunteer team since 2014.
Thank you to all of the volunteers at Creative Pulse: Chris Vincent, Char Garay, Saeed Hamid, Chris Young. You guys rock!
Thanks also to all of the sponsors, speakers and supporters:
Work at Play,
123w,
Elevator,
VDW,
Skyrocket,
Behance,
Granville Island Brewing,
and especially Mike and the crew at Textbook.