Webmardi - a decade later
Did you know that Webmardi turns 10 this year?
During this time, it’s been the platform for 82 Web events in Switzerland.
2019 brings a wind of change — the most significant during all these years. Want to know why? Dive into the story!
Ten years ago, 2009 was quite a year. From the Kanye West VMA outburst becoming a meme, the Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration and Roger Federer winning a men’s record fifteenth Grand Slam singles title at Wimbledon, the World was busy.
During the same year, the Web industry also realised incredible milestones. Microsoft released the first version of Bing search engine, Twitter raised $98 million, the World went App mad after Apple’s App Store launch and World of Warcraft hit 11.5 million subscribers.
In a year where the Web was taking off, Pierre Spring created the Webmardi. The first event held in March 2009 by Joël Bez giving an introduction to HTML5 was an avant-garde and successful talk.
Five years later and as the 3rd of 2 organisers, Geoffroy took the lead. In three years, working mostly alone, he organised 40 Webmardi events: 48% of the historical total.
Webmardi wants to become the reference monthly meeting-point about the Web in western Switzerland.
In mid-2018, Kevin — then organiser of PHPMeetup & Frontend Meetup — reached out to Geoffroy. Together we decided to merge our Meetups and combine our strength to propose an enhanced experience for our members. Webmardi wants to become the reference monthly meeting-point about the Web in western Switzerland.
We started by creating the Webmardi’s association. We elaborated a strategy and looked for sponsors.
Once the association had been created, we started working on our dream project to achieve those goals:
- Offer people the possibility to meet their local Web community ;
- Organise events close to our members by moving across cities in western Switzerland ;
- Allow people to attend — for free — any event ;
- Propose a Live Stream of our events on YouTube ;
- Record high-quality video of our events ;
- Challenge our community through funny End-Talk-Quizzes and offer gifts to winners ;
- Give everyone the possibility to share about something during the event with an open mic. session
Along with those changes, we felt the need to refresh the branding to mark the occasion.
Pierre Georges immediately understood our goals and in a few weeks proposed a new typography, logos, covers and social assets.
We contacted Pierre Georges and gave him carte blanche to rethink our visual communication. He immediately understood our goals and in a few weeks proposed a new typography, logos, covers and social assets. We’re grateful for his wonderful work.
Our plan doesn’t stop here (…) maybe one day going beyond organising events.
The Webmardi is now an independent association that organises free monthly events about the Web for amateurs and professionals in western Switzerland.
Our plan for Wembardi doesn’t stop here, we already have plenty new ideas for 2019 and maybe — one day — going beyond organising events.
We’re looking forward to see you during our meetups!
Thanks to our wonderful sponsors Liip & Antistatique that help us to make this adventure possible.
Kevin Wenger & Geoffroy Perriard
Webmardi Organisers
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