Meetup.com is an extremely powerful resource for people in all industries looking to collaborate on a wide variety of topics in a relaxed meeting setting (the groups often get together monthly or bi-weekly).

Skybox Creative recently attended a Meetup for Refresh SD, a group that includes web developers, internet marketers, techies, etc.. The topic: discussing client management and client requests – yes, a complicated matter. This topic often comes up in the web design and branding industry, because it is important to clearly define project scope and rounds of changes before starting a project that has been estimated out.

A few good tips and resources:

• Give clients a questionnaire prior to starting a project (Skybox uses a Branding Analysis Questionnaire, which discusses demographics, target market, competition, look & feel – and more!)

• Project Management tools can be key to balancing work flow – Action Method is a good one, VUE is a good way to describe logic or the development of a back end system

• OfficeTime is a great tool for tracking hours

• Clearly define client deliverables (copy, photos, feedback)