(This was sent as an email to all members of the MKDF who are on the mailing list)
Hello everyone,
I’m going to try and keep this brief as possible, as I know that long-winded documents are not what you need when we have so many things clammering for our attention, so here goes:
As most of you may have noticed already, the wind has well and truly dropped from the sails with regards the MKDF. An example would be the last meeting when there were three of us and the planning committee for our first project numbered the same (myself included). I understand that everyone is busy and please don’t think for a second that this is a ‘blaming game’ exercise. But the truth is that there seems little point in carrying on with the forum as it stands. This is not the end of the MKDF however. Not yet at least.
Instead I have decided to finish with the physical meetings until such time that there is enough interest to justify the effort needed to organise and run these things. I think that the best platform to do this on would be Facebook, with LinkedIn as a feed, as the infrastructure is looked after and is therefore less likely to collapse. To be blunt I think Facebook has an appalling UX, but I am aware that at present, it is the biggest and most adopted social platform. To avoid getting a nasty taste in my mouth however, I will be using Chime.In to feed all of the other social media sites as I think that it has real potential and allows for more interesting links to be fed through it (head over there and see for yourselves).
I will keep the mkdesignforum.org.uk URL but will cease to maintain the site as it is. Instead the site will become a pointer (when and if needed) for any things that we may be involved in in the future. I am sorry to every member that has spent time putting there details up on the site but it really isn’t touched by anyone so it seems redundant to keep bashing heads against that particular wall. I will keep the database that sits behind the site so, if it ever regains its original vitality, we can bring it back to life.
The @mkdesignforun Twitter feed will also remain and will continue to be auto updated by other platforms linked into it.
I’ll leave the MailChimp (email) account open but won’t send any mail unless it seems important to the group. (One less thing to read!)
Obviously I will remain active trying to keep this thing going. We are now members of the MK Arts & Heritage Alliance and still have links with the Design Council and their Design Alliance, and it seems a shame to just let that all go. Hopefully at some point in the future we can get a few more people to help organise and run this thing and turn it into the forum we all originally hoped it could be. But, again to be blunt, that is down to the members to make happen.
Thank you to everyone who has supported the MKDF up to now, your help has always been invaluable and I really do appreciate it.
A special thanks goes out to Peter at the Open University and Simon at the MK Gallery for their support as well as Peter Spence of the South Coast Design Forum (it wouldn’t be the same if I didn’t mention him).
See you soon, I hope,
James