The night starts off with some casual intros and chats over drinks and tasty food in a place we haven’t tried yet (and a lot of it!). After dish after dish came out, our bellies were very happy and ready for hearty conversations.

If you haven’t heard about Discussion Dinners before, I can, with plenty of bias, say that it’s a really rad event. It’s a night capped to ten people discussing hot topics over a nice meal together. Each one has had a different mix of people each time and it’s the variety and diversity that we see in everyone’s backgrounds that’s the absolute coolest; designers, developers, strategists, marketers, students and managers - all are welcome!

It’s a little different to the typical meetup where there could be 50-60 people mingling and we wanted to create something that would interest those who prefer a more intimate setting. The literal table limit makes it a small event and encourages participation in interesting, high quality conversations.

We do this with the help of some custom-made topic cards affectionately known as the MEOW cards (meet everyone over wine/whiskey/water cards), designed by yours truly, just for a bit of fun.

The format.

We take turns flipping over the MEOW cards and discuss our perspectives on each, until everyone’s had a turn at doing so.

There’s no time limit to discussions about topics - we keep that organic so everyone can have a chance to contribute.

We listen and learn from each other in a safe, supportive and respectful environment.

The topics.

Here are some of the spicy topics we had fun chatting about:

  • Hamburger menus
  • Open plan offices
  • What to learn next
  • Remote teams
  • Weirdest client or manager request
  • When I grow up… (career advancement options?)
  • Salaries in Perth

Phew! Would you like that served mild, medium or hot?

Don’t miss the next event!

To grab a spot at a future DD in Perth, make sure you subscribe to our newsletter (form below) or join the Facebook group to be the first to hear when we’ve added the event on meetup.com. Make sure you get in quick though; the last event filled within 48 hours!

If you are keen to host your own DD, get in touch with us and we’d be more than happy to send you the cards for your own printing and a list of topics from the library we’ve been creating so far (wherever you are, all good!), and yes, it’s on it’s way to be an open source project. Get in touch to get involved!

Until next time!

Love, Patima & the team at Localhost.

Photos: Brett Jones