I love working remotely. I already loved it before Covid. But during the pandemic, it became even more clear to me that I want to stay fully remote even if many companies call their employees back to the office. I wanted to keep my life balance, have the freedom to organize my working day independently, and work from anywhere.
From my «office view» at my home base, I can see the Swiss mountains changing their colors during seasons. But often my office view changes. I use the freedom of new work to travel through Europe with a van and work from every place I like and the data connection will allow.
Often people ask me how I stay connected with people and if I feel lonely while working remotely. That’s easy to answer 👉 I do networking, as everybody does. There are different opportunities to connect with new people or stay in touch with friends when you’re remote or even for some time a digital nomad.
Let’s have a look at my net-working:
Conferences
At conferences, you can expand your network rapidly. But finding myself at big events with hundreds of people standing around me, I usually do not feel very comfortable. Digital networking made this much easier for me.
Being remote is no reason for me not to attend conferences. It even gives me more freedom to visit conferences around the world (depending on my motivation to wake up very early or stay awake at night 😉).
Many online conferences have meeting areas where you can jump in and talk to other people you’ve never seen before. One of my favorite SaaS solutions for such an experience was a networking area provided by Wonder.
I do not attend conferences very often, but one of the next I will visit is the «UX360 RESEARCH SUMMIT» in February 2022. I am curious and want to learn more about UX research best practices. What’s your favorite topic for a conference? Get in touch with me on social media and let me know! 😃
🎟 Online Events
It does not have to be a conference each week to get in touch with other people. There are tons of virtual events for UX designers that you can visit each week. Just search on sites like Meetup or Eventbrite to find something that interests you. Give it a try!
🙋♀️ Communities
Communities are a great place for networking. I am sure, there are many communities out there, global, national, or local ones. Just give it a search on Google.
⚡️ Memorisely
The best UX community I ever found was the Memorisely Family. In the open Slack of Memorisely you’ll find thousands of designers from all around the world and the community is astonishingly helpful. Zander Whitehurst and the whole Memorisely team created a culture that is very open and there are always activities to meet new designers on regular events or virtual-coffee-pairings.
It’s a very active community and during a few weeks, I made friends, got feedback on my designs, and a lot of help when it came to job interviews. If you’re searching for a community that supports you in all things design-related and beyond, then go and become a member of the Mem Fam – it’s free!
🆓 Volunteering
A few weeks ago I found out about UX rescue, so I am very new to this community. I just signed up for the Slack space and am listening to the conversations.
The purpose behind UX rescue is to volunteer for NGOs that need design help for their projects. While you as a designer get interesting real-world projects for your portfolio you even do something good for other people or our planet. I see this as a great initiative and will keep an eye on UX rescue in the future, hoping for some interesting projects to come up. 🙂
Insights
Networking as a remote working designer is not difficult. Give it some time to find the right mixture of work, meetups, conferences, and personal interactions for yourself and you’ll make new connections with ease – from and to people in any country around the world.
Do you have more tipps how to network as a remote designer? I am really curious about your experiences and would be happy if you would get in touch with me on LinkedIn or Instagram!