Hello SEGD, 

Welcome to 2018!

I hope everyone had an awesome holiday break and that you are all as excited as I am to start the year off strong! I feel extremely honored to be following in the footsteps of John Lutz who, through his inspirational leadership helped the SEGD Board and staff grow our global community to a record-breaking 2,139 members with an emphasis on student membership.

It’s hard to ignore the infectious energy that is spreading throughout our community. The attendance at our events continues to increase as we elevate their educational value through the quality of the speakers and presentations. We are constantly seeing new members joining us with a more diverse design background, and the truth is: We are experiencing organic growth driven by the enthusiasm and input of all our members.

For those of you who don’t know me, I am the CEO & Founder of OpenEye Global,a digital experience design agency. One of the goals during my term as SEGD President is to encourage designers to adapt to the emerging digital disciplines of design. The SEGD community is constantly challenging the boundaries of design to create new exciting experiences in the physical environment and therefore we should not limit our knowledge or exposure to other disciplines. My experience in bridging the gap between digital and physical design will hopefully serve as a solid foundation to help continue expanding our offerings and membership.

I am excited to step into the role of President and look forward to rolling up my sleeves to further the vision and initiatives that were established by our past presidents.

2018 promises to be another exceptional year for SEGD and I’m humbled to be part of this journey with the many talented individuals and groups that make up our exceptional community.

We have many things to look forward to this year and we have only just begun:

• The annual Branded Environments event at The Digital Signage Expo in Las Vegas on March 27th  (Last year was standing room only as the event grew by over 50 percent.)
• The annual conference in Minneapolis, June 7–9 (Don’t miss my first President's Reception, it's guaranteed to be fun!)
• Xlab, which broke past attendance records, will once again be a “must-attend” event in November
• The enhanced SEGD.org now features the SEGD Toolbox
• A redesign of the SEGD Annual by Graham Hanson Design will further increase the prestige of the awards print annual

 

As we move into 2018, we are excited to welcome some new (familiar) faces to our Board of Directors. It is my pleasure to announce the addition of Lucy Holmes of Holmes Wood, now a part of the Benoy group and Hannah Anderson of Kolar Design. I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to Gary Stemler of Archetype, Jill Ayers from Airspace and Cynthia Hall of fd2s, who are stepping off the board but certainly not away from the community. (And how could they anyway? No one would let them.)

I have started my presidency at a time in SEGD’s history when it is continuously setting new records, expanding its community in a more inclusive way and developing content to appeal across a wide cross-section of the design community. I feel confident we can take the SEGD community to new heights with an incredibly strong and supportive team behind me, which includes the Board of Directors, the talented SEGD Staff and my executive team consisting of Anna Sharp of TwoTwelve serving as Vice President, Julie Vogel from Kate Keating Associates serving as Treasurer and John Lutz of Selbert Perkins Design, our Past President.

I look forward to building new relationships, strengthening existing ones and most importantly—sharing laughs and celebrating all the successes of our community with you.

Here’s to an exciting 2018!

Bryan Meszaros

SEGD President
CEO & Founder, OpenEye Global