EkaBlog - Site Blog for Ekaweeka the Small Business Community

Coming soon to Ekaweeka - we're building the most active browsing filters and favorites. Active filters will watch who is making items, who is chatting, who started a group or listed an event etc. etc. etc. I guess it's going to use an algorithm (are we really that smart?!? LOL) which essentially means some things count as more active then others, so you know you can't send your buddy 20 messages to become the most active user of the day or something.

Once it's in you'll see the filter in the users browsing section and as we can a similar filter will be available for items and photos too.

"THAT'S GREAT BUT WHAT ABOUT THE GROUP FORUMS?!?!?!" no worries that's also in the making, takes time you know... go read a magazine or something we'll be done with it shortly.

The profile editor is wayyyy cool. But it's not getting a lot of traction, this isn't totally unusual, in the past other cool ideas didn't gel like the pages system which still exists but doesn't get the use we anticipated for the most part. The fact that the AJAX profile editor isn't getting a ton of use doesn't mean it sucks, it just means we haven't shown it in the right light. The following story from a recent WIRED Magazine article gives a good example of how users/readers need the right road signs to see the purpose of a tool:

In "Breaking The News" an article in Wired Magazine documents the new order in media publishing and one paper's attempt to work with the new times. Essentially the news publications are turning to user generated content in order to keep their subscriber-ship up. Within the article Linda Parker a journalist for the The Cincinnati Enquirer noted that (the Enquirer) had created a method for readers to submit their own opinions and stories, at first when they had opened up the submission area no one was replying, they started with a button that read: "Be a Citizen Journalist" but no one replied, then they changed the button to "Neighbor to Neighbor" still no response, finally they changed the button to "Get Published" and now they receive several dozen submission a day.

So folks this is a suggestion box for the day, the profile editor isn't going to much use, "Profile Editor" isn't a very sexy title, I'll admit it. What else can we call it - "The Sexy Profile Tool", "The Action Attraction Thinga-Ma-Bob"? We don't know so tell us!!!!

Hi all,
Please take a moment of your time by TOMORROW, to help maintain photographer's shooting rights in NYC. See below for petition information.
Thanks, El

In case you haven't already heard the news, we - photographers, filmakers, local residents, and tourists - are on the verge of facing serious restrictions by New York City Mayor's Office. The City of New York plans to enact legislation THIS FRIDAY that will require a group of two or more people who want to use a moving or still camera in a public location for more than half an hour (including setup and breakdown time) to get a permit and proof of a one million dollar liability insurance policy. There would also be a requirement for groups of five or more who use a tripod for more than ten minutes to provide the same. This legislation is a significant threat to the livelihoods of many, many artists (myself included) and a violation of our Constitutional First Amendment right to photograph in public places.
PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION by Thursday night to prevent this disaster from happening: www.pictureny.org/petition
Every signature counts and is greatly appreciated. You don't have to be a New York resident to sign it. Please pass this on. To learn more about the planned law, click to here.
Thank you so much for signing and helping to keep New York the great city that it was, is, and I hope will always be.

We just rolled out three new things:
1. For ye group leaders - now you can go into the add members page and select any or all of your friends to send an invite to the group.

2. For ye geographical browsers, it's got a couple bugs (we're working on it) but you can now browse users and items by country, state, or city... so you can drill down to folks nearby or in a specific locale far far away. One really neat thing about this is it gives you an idea how far the Ekaweeka crowd reaches we're world wide baby!

3. Another on for ye group leaders, you can now use any of the methods in our edit styles page on the edit group styles page. Ow ow!

We finally have an event. It starts at 9pm this Saturday August 4th at Seven Hollywood (7929 Santa Monica Blvd, West Hollywood). There will be an open champagne bar from 9-10:30pm, an installation will be present by BOXeight artist Samantha Magowen, and POSSO THE PHOTO will present Photobooth. This is the first of many Saturday's at Seven Hollywood and a door opener for Ekaweeka as we finally (better late then never) get these shindigs rolling.

More details

WOOO HOOO!

When was the last time you checked your daily routine and on going business strategy for the 80/20 principle? Chances are you need to review. From time to time we all loose sight of productivity and suffer from busyness.

The Pareto Principle as defined on Wikipedia - (also known as the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, 80% of the effects comes from 20% of the causes. Business management thinker Joseph M. Juran suggested the principle and named it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who observed that 80% of income in Italy went to 20% of the population. It is a common rule of thumb in business; e.g., "80% of your sales comes from 20% of your clients."

Quick right now, take a step away from your email, turn off your phone - kill all external distractions and look over your situation. What is bringing in 80% of your sales? What is taking up 80% of your time? Chances are they aren't the same thing. As the 80-20 rule goes, your profits are primarily coming from a small array of your goods/services. I used to do a lot of pet sitting with my dog walking company, but sure enough pet sitting made of 20% of DWNYC's income while pet sitting the dogs took up 80% (more like 95%) of my time.

Once you have isolated the activities, sales calls, errands whatever it is you waste most of your time on, and once you have identified what you get most of your sales through, commit to throwing out the former. You don't need it. Chances are in the first week of having that spare time you will find a way to increase sales in the 20% that makes up most of your income.
Go for what do you have to lose? thats right - stress and worry.

In my conversations about ekaweeka with fellow creatives, entrepreneurs, and artists, I frequently find myself comparing it to a virtual artist’s collective or an online art fair. In creating an online space for artists to showcase their wares and interact with other artists for advice and inspiration, I find this to be the simplest way to describe it. On the flip side, I also try to visit as many physical collectives and fairs as possible, both to meet new artists who might be interested in the site, as well as to get ideas about what could make ekaweeka a better resource for all involved.

On my recent trip to California, I was able to go check out the Los Altos Arts and Wine Festival on July 14. There were many talented vendors at the show (not to mention tons of wine, which never hurts), but three artists in particular really stood out for me. They stood out for various reasons, but primarily I was drawn to their booths because their art represented styles that I don’t see much at art fairs. These three unique styles were the kind that I can see fostering new ideas and creativity in other individuals, the same kind of vision that I have for eka users.

The first booth that caught my eye was the textual collage work of Richard Curtner. Curtner uses small cutouts of words, phrases, and passages that create images when looked at as a whole. The themes and overall images are quite striking, and because of the amount of detail, I found myself looking at his pieces far longer than I usually look at other work. With the amount of text that goes into each piece, I could easily imagine being able to come back to a collage time and time again and always have new thoughts from it. Much of Curtner’s work is viewable on his website, so do have a look around.

Another booth that drew me in for a closer look was the batik work of Amos Amit. Amit does not have a website, but you can email him any questions about his work here . Amit is an Israeli born artist who currently resides in Los Angeles. Batik is a beautiful and involved art form using fabric, wax, and dye to create gorgeous, intricate prints. I have seen batik around (most often on cards I received at my Bar Mitzvah, lol), but Amit seems to take the form to a different level, moving beyond the traditional batik themes to make beautiful, modern pieces in a range of formats and sizes.

Finally, one artist at the event was so different from what these fairs usually showcase, I had to make mention. Nelson De La Nuez creates pop culture art and what he describes as humor art prints. Both styles are witty, colorful, searing, and infinitely fun to look at. Moreover, these are the kinds of pieces that, if hanging in your home, would incite tons of conversation. And if art, in part, isn’t to get people thinking and talking about it, how successful could it really be? My favorite piece from the Los Altos show is titled “Holy Dominatrix, Batman!” (see inset) and depicts little old Robin getting the full bondage treatment as Batman helplessly looks on. Not sure about the crime-fighting duo, but the ladies sure seem to be enjoying themselves! De La Nuez showcases his work on two websites (see links above) and has a pretty busy upcoming festival schedule. Do yourself a favor and check his work out one way or another.

Many of the businesses on Ekaweeka probably don't consider themselves a business, they're developing graphic designs, creating art, shooting photos, or putting together a clothing line etc. etc.

Whether doing it full time or just in their spare time there is usually a goal for getting to a certain point. Thinking like a business will help you get there. One thing some don't consider as they start to make progress is what will happen when their business grows. For most businesses at some point along the way the flow of communication, requests, reorders, new projects and whatnot start to come in. Eventually many businesses hit a point where they're managing their business more then they are actually performing whatever task their business is created around.

In the start up world the ease with which a business can grow is referred to as "scalability". When I was running my dog walking company, I started to hit a ceiling as the company grew. I had 5 dog walkers and a part time assistant all to manage the 50+ clients we served in Manhattan. Many customers were easy, some called 2-3 times a day with the most outrageous complaints/requests/unnecessary issues that they wished to discuss (I hadn't taken the bizarre variety of people that own dogs into account when I started DWNYC). That combined with keeping the dog walkers happy was a huge load. The company wasn't extremely scalable. Not with the team I had put together.

My problem was, I was the central hub, I was terrified of letting go of the reins for fear that no one else could make the right decisions. What I should have done was to create a system and a margin of allowable independence for each dog walker, my assistant, and my clients. If I had given each entity the ability to make a choice about what to do in various situations so long as the consequence didn't cost more then $20 to the company, I would have had a much more interdependent and low maintenance operation. Instead I was the bottleneck, nothing happened without getting an OK from the leader. This was what ultimately did me in, the company still exists but I chose to step down as I wasn't able to handle the load as it was. Thank god for Leya!

So without getting too deep with this thought, my suggestion to all is to look at what you're doing, think about what you want to be doing - and imagine (or take note of) what is going to be the biggest time waster in the mix (for those already up and running full steam - what is wasting the most time)? It could be an unruly client/customer, it could be a supplier who doesn't keep their word with delivery times. Maybe your assistant is being extremely demanding in which case they are not the best fit as there are loads of people who need the job that would take it seriously and be grateful to you for providing them with work.

Find the point of most resistance, create a system that will give each part more slack, see if it saves you time and trouble, if it does, give it even more slack. Resistance is your enemy.

JASON PETERS, paileontology, will be on view at ROBERT BERMAN GALLERY during August, 2007.

A Reception for the Artist will be held on Saturday, 11 August, 2007, from 7-9.
Brooklyn-based artist, Jason Peters, makes his west coast debut this August, 2007, with a large-scale installation at ROBERT BERMAN GALLERY. Peters will transform his host gallery into a world of infinite darkness, inhabited by a megalithic, luminous form. Using simple industrial materials and light, the artist effaces the traditional white gallery space, and erects rhythmic structures that echo our visual notions about deep space, molecular science,planetariums, dark rides, and hallucinatory rabbit-holes. With his singular, signature style, Jason Peters conjures space in the tradition of artists such as Richard Serra, and Gordon Matta-Clark, using urban objects and surfaces to alter our perception of an artwork’s authorship, sociological place and purpose. With grace and stunning ingenuity, he follows in the legacy of those like Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and others who introduced and championed the use of objects trouvées in their three-dimensional works.

A graduate of the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland (1999), Peters is the recipient of two highly sought-after residencies, including one from the renowned Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA, 2006, as well as an upcoming residency at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, Nebraska, Fall 2007. His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions since the late 1990’s and was the subject of two large-scale installations: The Space in-between, Brooklyn, New York. 2005, and Continually Becoming, in Sante Fe, New Mexico, 2004. This is Peters’ first solo show in California.

German by birth, Jason now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

*A second, unique installation by the artist will be
exhibited in the East Gallery. Supporting artworks by
animation maverick, Tawd b. Dorenfeld, and topologist,
Robert Louve will also be on view.

For more images and updates go to
www.zutiste.typepad.com

The Robert Merman Gallery is located at:
At Bergamot Station Arts Center
2525 michigan avenue, Suite C2/D5
Santa Monica, California 90404
http://www.robertbermangallery.com

Crafta Nosta - the STL (St. Loui) Craft Mafia Summer Trunk Show on August 18th from 7 pm to 1 am.
Located at (and happily hosted by): CooperElla, 2743 Sutton, Maplewood, MO 63145
http://craftanostra.com/

Vendors Attending (whom appear to be the main members of STL Craft Media):
Ahimsa Creations, Beqi Clothing, Cate Anevski, Cranky Bowler, Cranky Yellow, HouseShoe Mamas, Libra Gear, Lucky Bees, Punkin Pie, Senora Muertos, Squareville, STL-Style, and Superchick

STL Craft Mafia was started by a group of craft business owners in Austin, TX. They networked and shared resources amongst themselves and in doing so helped their own ventures grow and spread craft goodness thoughtout the Autsin area. Other cities soon wished to join and have been popping up over the country ever since. They work locally to promote the indie craft scene and grow their businesses. They are located in St. Louis , MO. They sell items on Cafe Press. You can join them is you're interested, they periodically vote as a group on new members.
They'll be at CooperElla in Maplewood representing their entire
family - it'll be an evening event with tons of hip crafts, music
& art. Come by and have some drinks, listen to music,
and shop till you drop! Get your craft fix!

Ok not everyone, but if you're a small business and you work alone or only have one partner and no one else around you helping out - there's good news. When an entrepreneur decides to take a dive off the deep end and start their own operation, the path most end up taking is that of working as much as possible to save on the cost of doing business. "Why have someone else do it when I can do it for free?". Am I right? Yeah I've been saying that for the last 8 years.

But what happens? You stop innovating, you stop creating, you stop improving upon what you have. Or you only innovate, you only account, or you only focus on that one thing. Meanwhile the world spins around faster and faster as the other objectives in the basket stay at the wayside collecting dust. This happens sooooo much. Why do you think franchise businesses have a 90% success rate and yet small businesses only have 50%? Small Businesses don't organize, they don't make a system to operate in accordance with. Whether you are a blogger, a craft maker, a photographer, or even a painter - you won't become unburied until you convert you business into a system.

Start by dividing each of your tasks into a job description. When the list is complete you should have the outline of all the roles necessary to run your business at it's current size and at it's maximum size possible. This is your system. As your business grows so will the workload for each job description. Now - instead getting overwhelmed in any one area of the system find someone else who can do it better then you. Whether it is your best friend, a stranger you found on Craigslist, or a Virtual Assistant in Bangalore - there are people who can do what you are spending too much time on for much less then it is costing you.

As you role out each task, keep the flow, keep the system in a balance. The goal of your new system is that it should be documented and operable by anyone with the instructions in their hands. Imagine you decided to travel the world for 6 months, you have 3 weeks to get ready and you're business is not going to stop while you're away. The only way this is possible is if each task you perform is documented and can be put into action by a group of people who will be accountable for every step along the way. This is possible, even for small business owners such as those on Ekaweeka. You can get someone to ship out your art as it sells, you can set up an automatic deposit and payment system with your bank, and you can get someone to follow up on the shipments and deal with any problems that come up. It isn't a dream, just a different way of running the show.

I've been a fan of gaudy, clunky costume jewelry for as long as I can remember – I think it had something to do with my mother's penchant for the same thing when I was growing up. Some people might think that “gaudy” or “clunky” have negative connotations, but I think they're some of the best adjectives when describing unique, over sized pieces.

Which is why I was drawn to Laura Iverson's creations. The pendant she featured on her site initially drew me in – the treble clef made of copper and mounted on the necklace caught my eye. Then I started clicking around and looking at some of the other styles, and found I really liked them too!

She's a self-proclaimed hippie, and when I asked her about her designs she said most of them were in the chunky, hippie style – and that nature is one of her biggest inspirations.

Laura is a full-time artist, selling her creations through her company, Zen Breeze Art – a name she says is derived from her Zen series of paintings. Plus, she says the idea of Zen has a lot of nature analogies, and enabled her to incorporate “something natural, such as a breeze.”

Laura describes her method for making art as this, “I am a polymer clay jewelry designer, which means I start off with hunks of raw clay, create and design, and cure it - bake it in a special oven.” She says she's been making varying types of art since she was a kid, and got more heavily into jewelry making when she did a “peace swap.” Laura explains that a number of different people got together and created peace-related items. That's when she says she decided to make pendants, and how she developed the peace sign pieces she sells.

She sells her creations primarily online, through her website, zenbreeze.com, through right here on ekaweeka (http://www.ekaweeka.com/zenbreeze), Etsy, and on eBay. If you're in the Northern California area, you can stop by and see her necklaces on consignment at Sacred Paths.

Every day on the world wide web, hundreds to thousands of new blogs are created. More and more of these blogs are connected to small business websites. In fact, you're reading one such scenario right now. Some of these blogs offer tips and research relative to the kind of business they are attached to. For example, a blog attached to the website of a pet food store might feature articles on pet care, pet shows, and training tips. Other small businesses use their blogs for feedback and customer comments. The efficacy of these blogs is still being sorted out, but they are certainly gaining in popularity as a business tool. Today's Wall Street Journal's Journal Report on small businesses even contains an article on the subject. The newspaper's website requires a subscription to read it online, so I am not including the link here, but if you have access, I suggest checking it out. Or, just go down to your local news stand and pick up a copy as I do....there's nothing like drinking your morning cup of joe with the ink-stained fingers of traditional news media! So, it's clear that these small business linked blogs are picking up steam, but are they working? Is blogging the answer to small business web success? It may be too early to really tell, but I'm willing to make the prediction that yes, blogging absolutely does.

The most obvious way a blog can help your website is by increasing traffic. Blogs that are kept current show up higher in search results for your site. Further, people looking for general-interest information are more likely to stumble across your site via your blog if you are covering the kind of information they are looking for. This also helps to bring people to your site that have genuine interest in what you are selling already. To go back to my earlier example, if someone is reading a blog about pet-care, they probably have a pet, and they probably need supplies. Your pet store's website is now directly reaching people that have a greater probability of becoming actual customers. To put this into real-world perspective, Ekaweeka receives nearly double the amount of hits to our blog than we do for our site. On top of that, the majority of visitors to the blog then head over to the main site to check it out.

Another way a blog could help your business is one that doesn't seem to be brought up by other people discussing this, but that I think is the essential reason why you should consider blogging for your business. That is, a blog can be a hugely successful tool in branding your business. Brand identity is paramount to setting apart your business from competitors. This is particularly true for small businesses creating their own products, but also applies to small business that are selling other people's goods. The short explanation is that people are more likely to buy your products if you convey an identity that is attractive to them or that that can identify with. A blog is a natural way to do this as it is a forum set aside from selling things that allows you the opportunity to show who you are, as a person, or as a company in general. For a good example of what I am talking about, look at Unis ,a high end clothing line based in New York City. Unis' website featured their lines, but also links you to their blog, which simply features pictures of their customer base over the course of the summer. This provides customer's with insight to what the brand is about as well as perhaps promoting a "cool" image to potential customers that may be located outside of NYC, but want to emulate that image.

Sounds great right? Well it is. But there are a few things to keep in mind before launching into a blog for your small business. The main thing to realize is that a blog is time consuming. You need to be prepared for the extra effort necessary to add this element to your online marketing. As I mentioned earlier, a successful blog is one that is consistently updated. Not only will this keep your search engine visibility up, but it will also keep readers coming back with a greater frequency. Fresh content equals more repeat readers. Another thing to keep in mind is that results in the sense of increased sales are hard to measure and will probably take a while before it is really evident. The blog is a long term tool to increase your brand recognition and presence, not an overnight way to drum up profit.

That said, it is still my belief that a blog for your small business website is a worthwhile marketing tool. Ekaweeka makes it easy to embed a blog in your Eka page, and the Eka users that currently utilize this feature have enjoyed a boost on their Eka page's web presence. So give it a try. A few extra hours a week can keep your blog fresh and relevant, a price well worth the extra traffic you'll receive.

Over the weekend we used some spare time to add some well overdue pieces of the ongoing puzzle that makes up how you manage and customize your profile. Adding a banner to sit at the top of the profile pages has been a dream for many days now, and though relatively simple to put in, it took the right day and the right mood to do it right.
We did it good, go into your account and click on "customize your profile", this was the edit styles page but we've added so much stuff, re-arranged it all and gave you a preview window to see what you're doing to your profile as you do it.

With the banner function you can upload an image ideally that of a rectangle that is no more then 800 pixels wide (but we'll shrink it for yah don't worry about that). The banner then just like that is already there hosting your page giving everyone who stops by a look at your beautiful branding!

In addition we put in a background color/image choosing option, it works the same as the header colors do, just choose which color/image you like or upload your own, then save and boom you're done.

It's a far cry from perfection but man it just got a little hotter up here don't you think?

I was recently in Tokyo visiting my parents who are living there for the time being, and I just had to write about an art experience we don't get much of (or at least I don't!) in the States: Japanese calligraphy as fine art, and story telling.

My mom's Kanji tutor has an exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art, and when we went to go see it, we had the opportunity to have the artist (her teacher) escort us around to his work and explain them to us. As my mom will tell you (and did tell me on many occasions!) perfecting Kanji characters is nothing short of painstakingly difficult. Each tiny stroke is no accident, each character must be finished with the perfect flare, curl, or movement.

I'll admit that as I walked around the exhibit, a lot of the artwork (many of them long scrolls with HUNDREDS of tiny characters) started to look the same. Which is why it was so wonderful to have her teacher there to help us go beyond the aesthetic appreciation to understanding the story.

The above picture (as I understand it) is a somewhat artistic representation of a few of the Kanji characters and the stories behind them. At the right, the character – or drawing – is of the evil Emperor. Next to that and more towards the middle are two of the other rulers, riding in a chariot to try and overthrow the evil Emperor. The large portrayal in the middle is of another ruler who's supposed to be fishing inside the walls of the evil Emperor's kingdom. He's hoping to “catch” the evil ruler. The black spot to the left of that – with people drawn inside it = represent the people who have died at the hands of the Emperor.

At the far right is a mountain, with a hawk flying above. The rest of the description of that particular section is a little fuzzy to me! Suffice it to say these are the stories the characters of the Japanese language are based on – beautiful, interesting, yet SO complicated!

Part of me wishes English had the history and artistic expression that is found in the characters of Japanese writing. But part of me is glad I didn't have to learn the upwards of 2000 representations necessary to read Japanese!