You may have noticed as we’ve entered Fall Q3 of 2014 that it’s a busy time of year for the IIDA Oregon Chapter! Between 2nd Thursday Membership Happy Hours, Forums, Advocacy updates, Fall Student Kickoffs, an NCIDQ mock practicum, and our upcoming Design Excellence Awards, there is no shortage of incredible events and happenings to communicate to you!

Reflecting on our IIDA Oregon Chapter Vision statement, our Communications team has been hard at work this year to refresh resources for our members, as well as creating and strengthening relationships with the Pacific NW media and Oregon community at large. Our goal is to leverage these various tools of communication to continue to provide value to our members and educate our community of the value of professional interior design.

We could not have done it without you: our members, sponsors and supporters! The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. Since implementing social media promotion (in addition to our weekly eblast), attendance at IIDA Oregon chapter events has on average doubled, and even broken records from previous years! So, we thank you for liking, sharing, commenting, tweeting and re-tweeting our pages and content. You are making a difference and are creating a groundswell for the education of Oregon about the value of professional Interior Design (and according to our Instagram feed, you are looking fabulous and having fun while doing so)!

We hope you have been enjoying our refreshed website (huge thank you to Claire Smith!), which includes the first-ever IIDA Oregon Chapter blog! Our new social media streams are being expertly managed by Kiley LaRue, and have afforded us better connection with our IIDA Oregon Chapter student members! Thanks to Kim Gonzales, we hope you will look forward to IIDA Oregon Chapter being featured in a variety of upcoming local and industry publications, such as GRAY Magazine, the DJC Oregon and Portland Monthly Magazine. Claire, Kiley and Kim have all shared a more detailed description of what they’ve been up to in their own words below.

Claire Smith, Associate IIDA – Chair Website: I have had the opportunity to work with our talented website developer, Colin McStravick, to bring the IIDA Oregon Chapter website up to speed with 2014 technology. We all live hectic lives, so we have developed a new homepage that can be your one-stop resource for all IIDA related news and information. The entire website has been optimized for mobile devices, so you can easily visit the site on the go from your phone or tablet. Never miss another IIDA Oregon event with the help of our homepage calendar, which has all of the dates for this year’s events and important deadlines highlighted in yellow. You can also get a glimpse of what is coming up on the rotating homepage banner, via our Twitter feed and Facebook page, and by subscribing to our weekly E-blasts. More to come soon! Look forward to the ability to vote for your favorite IIDA Oregon Design Excellence Awards submission this coming October. We will also be integrating new benefits for 2015 Annual sponsors with special member and sponsor spotlights on our blog, homepage and social media.

Kiley LaRue, Associate IIDA - Chair Social Media: Keeping up with today’s trends, IIDA Oregon Chapter has a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn. As Chair of Social Media, it is my job to reach out to as many members and future members through these outlets. By announcing new events, and live posting photos from these events, we can keep our members and outside connections up to date on all of our fabulous chapter activities! This year, it is my goal to build our social network by increasing the amount of people we reach with every post. We have already made strides by creating a Student Member Facebook Page and are in the process of implementing a hashtag (#) campaign into our upcoming events!  With our new and improved website, you can conveniently see the latest social media postings on the homepage. You can help grow our social media network by “Liking” or “Following” our pages listed at the top right of this page, and using our hashtag #iidaor to identify IIDA Oregon Chapter related posts!

Kim Gonzales, IIDA – Chair PR: The focus for my position as the IIDA Oregon Chapter PR Chair is to connect and develop media relationships within our industry as well as local, relevant design and business publications.  Our chapter already hosts great student & professional events, participates in community out-reach and supports advocacy for the design profession; now it’s our team’s job to share who we are and what we do with our industry and community.  The team’s long term goal is to educate Oregonians on the definition and value of professional interior design and “why design matters”.  This year, IIDA Oregon has formed a Media Partnership with GRAY Magazine for the 2014 Design Excellence Awards, which will include an editor from GRAY magazine as the moderator for the awards.

We look forward to sharing upcoming events and news. Here’s to a year of great communication!

E L S A

Our Team:

ELSA LONG, ASSOCIATE IIDA – VP Communications
CLAIRE SMITH, ASSOCIATE IIDA - Chair Website
KILEY LARUE, ASSOCIATE IIDA – Chair Social Media 
KIM GONZALES, IIDA - Chair PR