Breakfast Venue
The Bauer Bakery
DesignChats Breakfast events are hosted at the Bauer Bakery & Kitchen.
Kitchener is a community of tech, startups, and entrepreneurship. It's the home of Blackberry, who arguably invented the smartphone - and they still maintain offices here in town. Though Blackberry's time in the spotlight has faded, there are hundreds of brilliant minds here in Kitchener building the future. With Communitech alone playing host to over 180 tenant companies and the surrounding area hosting companies such as Google, OpenText, Shopify, Sqaure, D2L, Blackberry, Thalmic, Clearpath and more - there is no lack of technical talent. With the University of Waterloo - the leading engineering & mathematics school in Canada in Kitchener's backyard, there is a continuous feed of talent serving these companies. Only an hour away from downtown Toronto Kitchener makes for a nice size tech community. What it lacked a few years ago was a strong design community to walk hand in hand with the strong engineering talent. Today there are options available for designers looking to connect with their surrounding community. DesignChats and UXWaterloo both host monthly meetups, and companies like Shopify & Signal UX holding meetups and workshops throughout the year. DesignChats is dedicated to continue building this community - our online slack community connects over 200 people, providing a support network for solo designers and small design teams who don't have the support of a larger team. In 2018 we'll start rolling out workshops in the community to educate aspiring designers on the tools they can use to get ahead. We're looking forward to the future of the design community here in Kitchener-Waterloo, and we hope you'll join us.
Special thanks to the community.
Thank you for opening your doors to host our events.
BrewChats Venue
Abe Erb - The Tannery
BrewChats are typically hosted at the Abe Erb Tannery location - a great spot for drinks.
Co-Host
Shopify
Shopify has been a generous co-host on many occasions - hosting our holiday mixer in 2016.
Co-Host
SignalUX
Dayton and his team are excellent teachers and have co-hosted with us many times. Your go to for Design Sprints.
Disruptors Premiere Location
Apollo Cinema
In 2016 we hosted the InVision Design Disruptors premiere at Apollo - its a great place to watch a movie in KW.
