Welcome to 2009! What better place to start than a recap of last Thursday’s GDC BC AGM & Social?

With a tagline of “vote, learn, eat, drink and mingle!”, it wasn’t too surprising that nearly 200 people attended the AGM. To be fair, the order of events was something more like eat, drink, mingle, drink, eat, drink, vote, learn about where Michael Strassburger (of Modern Dog fame) finds inspiration, eat, drink, mingle…well, you get the idea.

The AGM was Mark Busse’s last official meeting as GDC/BC president. He’s made an enormous impact on the chapter in his two years as president, and we’ll be a little bit sad to see him go. You can read his goodbye message here. I say only a little bit sad because he’ll be hanging around as past president, and also because we welcome the lovely Marga Lopez as our new president. I’m sure that some professional associations have a torch, or sword, or something regal to pass between presidents. Here at GDC/BC, we’re more pragmatic about it: we pass the association’s gold card.

GDC/BC 2008 AGM Mark Busse passes the gold card to Marga Lopez (Photo credit: Juan Madrigal)

We also said thank you and goodbye to some GDC/BC volunteers, and a great big welcome (back!) to others. A significant part of the old executive is hanging on for another term. Some will grow into new positions, and some will build on and improve their work from last term. We also have some new blood (um, hi!) who will inject some new ideas and energy into an already rock-solid core team.

2009/2010 GDC/BC Executive
Marga Lopez – President
Mark Busse – Past President, Design Week Chair
Carolina Becerra – VP, Events Chair
Michael Cober – VP, Membership Chair
Corrie Heringa – VP, Education Chair
Juan Madrigal – VP, Communications Chair
Andy Maier – VP, Sponsorship Chair
Jon Whipple – VP, Ethics Chair
Darren Carcary – Public Relations Chair
Amanda Fetterly – Sustainability Chair 
Shanti Hadioetomo – Associations Liaison Chair
Nikole Japuncic – Student Representative
Pauline Lai – Administration Chair
Alex Leynes – Volunteer Chair
Steve Mynett – National Representative
Jason Murphy – A/V Content Chair 
Ashlea Spitz – Web Communications Chair
Heather Tryon – Corporate Secretary 
Patricia Xu – Treasurer
Eagranie Yuh – Copy Writing Chair

GDC/BC 2008 AGM The 2009/2010 executive team: we aim to please. (Photo credit: Juan Madrigal)

Onto the main show: Michael Strassburger of Modern Dog talked about his work and what inspires him. Part presentation, part comedy show, and part music video, he touched on a number of projects. Some particularly memorable moments include his discussion of BlueQ products (five words: naked men with oven mitts), some pearls of wisdom from Engrish.com, and a poster for Adobe that featured a seemingly innocuous giant kitten on a pink background. Afterwards, Michael bribed the audience with BlueQ products in exchange for questions. In all honesty, he probably could have offered Q-tips and there still would have been questions.

GDC/BC 2008 AGM Michael Strassburger of Modern Dog (Photo credit: Juan Madrigal)

The evening capped off with more eating, drinking and mingling, plus the smooth sounds of the Jesse Cahill Quartet. Our booking for the Stanley Park Pavilion ended at 11:30pm, but when I left at 11:00pm, there were still lots of excited people drinking and mingling. What a way to kick off the new year.

Many thanks to Michael Strassburger for his great talk, to Carolina Becerra for organizing the event, and to Juan Madrigal and Phil Chin for photographing the evening for us. For more of Juan’s photos, check out the GDC/BC Flickr stream

Posted on January 28th, 2009 by Eagranie Yuh