Featured: Meet @philgonzalez
With over 300 cities preparing for the Worldwide InstaMeet on 11 March, this week we’re featuring an Instagram user who has helped other users plan meetups all around the world and shares Instagram tips on his fan blog, instagramers.com. Meet Philippe Gonzalez!
Name: Philippe Gonzalez, @philgonzalez
Bio: Founder of the @Igers network, a community of city-based Instagram groups
Website: instagramers.com
Location: Spain
In December 2010, through a friend, Philippe Gonzalez discovered Instagram. On a lazy Sunday morning, he read about users wondering how to hit the Popular page and thought he could help with his knowledge on social networks. So he started a blog, Instagramers.com, that offers Instagram tutorials, news and interviews. Soon, people started to ask him for help launching local groups and organizing InstaMeets. “It was a crazy idea,” Philippe says. “We launched a few local groups, and one year later, we are 270 groups based in all different locations around the world, mostly focused on organizing local activities for fans of Instagram.”
I remember our two first InstaMeets in Spain. It was in February last year and IGers were very eager to get to know each other. Most of us who attended were working in marketing and social media so we found two great bars in both cities who offered to host the event, providing us with free drinks and food. We organized a contest with a hashtag where people could win dinner for two and some stickers. We did not expect over 120 people to show up (both in Barcelona and Madrid), and we had to find bigger spaces for our next events! With this experience, I wrote a post to help people interested in organzing InstaMeets.
After the first meetups in Spain, we gained more experience and organized bigger InstaMeets, such as photowalks and exhibitions. In October 2011, 120 people attended Milan’s first InstaMeet during fashion week, and our groups started to let their creativity flow, organizing innovative InstaMeets around the world, from Portland to Brazil to Brunei, and many more cities:
- IGers from London visited Italian IGers in an Instameet European Exchange we set up with an airplane company.
- IgersLondon recently organized a Tubewalk in the London Tube.
- IgersEastBay Photowalk in San Francisco.
Over the last few months, I’ve dedicated most of my free time to meeting people from our community all around the world. I went to five different towns and InstaMeets in Spain. Then I went to London for an Instameet in September; Milano for the first Italian InstaMeet in October; and recently I went to meet people in Brazil. I met @annaleticohen and @Paulakossatz from @IgersRio. It’s great to meet all these people dedicating their time to other Igers and organizing events. They recently had an Instameet called #Instachopp (Instabeers) in Rio and an #Instababydoll for Carnival in Brasilia (@igersBSB). Instagram fans in Brazil are so active that we recently appeared in Veja, one of the most important magazines in the country.
Most of our groups are organizing local InstaMeets for the Worldwide InstaMeet on March 11!
Photos by philgonzalez, igers, soundclamp & igerslondon.