Dan's Biztalk posts

What did you think of the Biznik holiday guide format?

All the Biznik members in the state of Washington received this newsletter in their email inbox on Sunday: http://biznik.com/special/index.html

I received a lot of positive responses to the new format, so I'm going to start doing this weekly. It's a ton more work to do, though, so I'll need your help. So, Seattle members, send me interesting stuff - if your work is in an art show, tell me, if you know about another member who's doing something cool, tell me. And if it fits, I'll weave it into a weekly "what's up Seattle" newsletter that reads like the holiday guide.

PS this is also a great reason to start and participate in conversations on BizTalk - I'll echo the best BizTalk posts into the weekly newsletter, which is currently going to over 1,000 viewers.

Best online payment provider?

As a web developer I've hooked up to several different payment gateways - PayPal, Authorize.net, and Verisign Payflow Pro. I know there are about a million different options, and I'm curious to know from those of you who've used some of them what your experiences have been, and which you'd recommend. What's the best online payment processor for a small independent business?

Anyone know a good Filemaker developer?

I have a client who needs someone to come in and teach them how to generated complex reports in Filemaker. I designed and built a database for them, but I suck at reports, so I want to find someone I can refer that to. Anyone know anybody? This person would need to be locally based here in Seattle.

The heavy lifting is underway for Biznik 2.0

We had a fantastic first meeting of the team that will be developing Biznik 2.0 last week (see photos from our back-yard session), and I'd like to share some of our process with you and what we're working on. First of all, though, let me introduce the team members:

Nadja Haldimann - our favorite Swiss designer in the whole world, Nadja designed the Biznik logo and year ago and is an active member of the Biznik advisory board. Her design experience includes 6 years at Microsoft, where among her many achievements she designed Office 2003. She is currently a partner in the design firm Veraguth-Haldimann.

John Adair - John is one of those rare and priceless people to have on any web development effort - a programmer who understands design intuitively and thinks about presentation (and the "why" of an application) almost as much as he does about how he lays down code. He is joining us as lead developer.

Lara Feltin - Co-founder of Biznik, Lara handles the business side of things and keeps us organized on on task. She'll be project managing and making sure we do what we say we will.

Dan McComb (me) - Co-founder of Biznik, I developed the current Biznik website, and will be working closely with John Adair to develop Biznik 2.0.

Our goal with this from-the-ground-up rewrite of the website is to make Biznik as relevant to indie business people in Toronto as it is currently to those of us in Seattle. We want to make Biznik a business networking platform that our members will rave about - no matter where they are.

On the technical side of things, the code John Adair will be laying down for us on this project will be developed in Ruby on Rails. Rails is a framework that will allow us to develop very quickly and take advantage of the latest trends in technology. What that ultimately means is that Biznik 2.0 will feel more like a piece of software than a website. It's going to be a beautiful blend of form and function, one that we can modify quickly and easily in response to our evolving vision and user feedback.

At our first day-long meeting last Thursday, Nadja walked us through the creation of user profiles. We ended up creating six distinct users, each with different needs, expectations and tasks to perform. We'll be developing Biznik 2.0 from the perspective of each of those users.

Of course, one of the things most on our mind is what YOU want. We've received a ton of fantastic feedback from this forum recently, and we'd like you to keep it coming. If you've got a request or idea you'd like to see included in Biznik 2.0, please share it with us by posting a reply here, or by emailing it to me privately.

Finally, we're aiming to launch this completely new version of the site in February. Between now and then, we'll continue to release minor improvements to the current site.

Biz Talk now featuring author photos

One of the things that came up yesterday in our day-long Biznik 2.0 brainstorming session was that the main Biz Talk page, which shows a list of all current topics, looks pretty lifeless without photos. That turns out to be something I can fix quickly, so I added photos there this morning.

The other member requests - sorting into different categories, and a way to indicate which topics have new comments - will likely have to way until the next release.

Don't forget, though, that if you want to follow the latest comments you can subscribe to them using RSS and a news reader, which delivers them to you with no fuss, most recent comment at the top. Here's the link:

http://biznik.com/feedbiztalkcomments.html

Eastside Biznik events - time to make it happen

We now have 38 members in Bellevue, 21 members in Kirkland, and 16 members in Redmond. That's way more than enough for us to start having very successful events there.

I'm looking for an Eastside Biznik member to work with me to kick things off by hosting an Eastside happy hour.

Everything in moderation...

...including, as Winston Churchill said, moderation.

This morning we did something which we really don't like doing - we nixed a discussion thread that had turned nasty between two members in BizTalk. They were trashing each other in a public in a way that made both of them look bad, and we can't see any value in letting that continue in this forum.

In removing the thread, we asked ourselves these questions:

1. Is the discussion of value to either of the members involved?
2. Is the discussion bringing value to the Biznik community?

Stifling conversations isn't a role we relish. But we do want to let everyone know that we won't tolerate lengthy exchanges here that turn nasty. It really hasn't been an issue, in large part we believe because Biznik has such a strong face-to-face community: you're less likely to trash someone when you might actually have to meet that person.

So, let's keep it civilized going forward, shall we? And on that note, we'll leave you with some great conflict resolution suggestions posted by John Hays.

Biznik 2.0 call for ideas

We're gearing up to do a major redesign of Biznik - we're calling it Biznik 2.0 - and I'd like find out what you think's missing from the current site. What could be improved? If the next website could do anything, what would that be?

The Rise of the Creative Class

Wow, I'm reading Richard Florida's book, The Rise of the Creative Class, and it's a fantastic description of about 90 percent of the people in this group - people who "could never be forced to work, yet they were never truly not at work." Creativity is at the core of what a lot of us do for a living, and many of us "work at home and seemingly play at work." In my case I do both from home. I stopped renting an office space a couple of years ago. In fact, I'm typing this on my laptop while I'm sitting on the edge of my bed in a sarong. Of course, the big thing you give up when you work from home is immediate day-to-day contact with other creative people. Hence, Biznik!

There's so much to discuss about this book that I'm going to make it Biznik Book Club event. I highly recommend it for anyone who does creative work for a living.

spam issue fix

We got spammed overnight by some guy who joined from India. He managed to send almost 200 cut-and-paste messages to other members before we shut him down. One person has already cancelled his membership because of this, so needless to say, it's a top priority for me to prevent this from happening again.

Here's what I'm doing today: I'm deploying a script that severely limits the amount of email that new members can send in a 24-hour period. Supporting members can still send unlimited messages.

Internet webcam question

I'm working on a project where I need to purchase an internet webcam that can serve high-quality, hi-resolution images with real (not interpolated) zoom up to 3x or 4x. I don't know anything about internet webcams...is there someone in Biznik who does and can recommend some hardware to me?

It's now easy to charge for your Biznik event

I just finished up writing the code that allows members who are hosting events to charge for their event, and already we've got three members offering fee-based events. This is a pretty slick way to host an event and make a little income from it, too.

To learn more about hosting events, check out the event guidelines. And thank you to all our great Biznik hosts - we've currently got eight upcoming events thanks to you guys, the most ever. You rock.

How is Biznik working for you?

Joe Shirley blogged recently about how Biznik is working for him in pretty amazing ways.

How is Biznik working for you?

We want to spread the word about how our members are using Biznik to generate business, find collaboration partners, and more. Tell us your Biznik story, and we'll quote you in the Biznik blog and possibly invite you to become a contributor to the blog.

Website hiccups fixed

I did some fairly major behind-the-scenes work on Biznik early this morning (pointed it at it's own IP address so that it doesn't have to share one with a bunch of other domains), just after 12am, thinking "no one will be awake to notice this if anything goes wrong." Well, something did go wrong, and Robin Park noticed, and thank you Robin for sending me the email about it, because I had my head down working and might not have noticed it. I just wanted to let anyone else who may have been poking around the site in the middle of the night that everything's working normally again now.

Thanks for your patience. /dan

Event topic suggestions

Chris Haddad and I are getting together to brainstorm some events that will be held over the next couple of months, and in preparation for that I'd like to hear from you about what you'd like to see in the way of educational events. What topics interest you? How-to classes such as "How to run an effective email newsletter?" My feeling is we need more classes with a specific business focus like this. What sort of event titles would you like to see?

Great event venue: Good Shepherd Center in Wallingford

I have a client in the Good Shepherd Center, a huge old historic building in Seattle's Wallingford neighborhood, that I meet with regularly, and each time I walk in and out of that incredible place, I think, wow, wouldn't it be cool if we could rent space here for a Biznik event. Well, it turns out you can! Not only that, but it's about as cheap as any space I've seen - a room that holds 20-25, with big huge windows and a table with blackboards on the walls goes for $10-$15 hr, depending on when you rent it. There's also a larger room available, which holds 50-60, for $20-$25 hr.

You can call (206) 547-8127 for recorded information and application forms - I have the forms too, if you want them, I can fax 'em to you - just drop me an email to dan [at] biznik.com.

Learn how to create a small business web presence tonight

Particularly if you're artist, or someone with a portfolio of pictures you'd like to put online that you can update easily, check out my class tonight at the Apple Store in U Village. I'll be focusing on how to use iWeb, which is a nifty little tool that allows you to build incredibly beautiful websites, incredibly fast. I'm going to build an artist portfolio site for Morgan Hammer in under an hour, and I'll also answer any questions you may have on the subject of building a small business web presence. RSVP here. Hope to see you tonight!

/dan

Great turnout at Mona's last night

Thanks to everone who showed up at Mona's in Greenlake last night, we had a fabulous happy hour at a beautiful place. In particular I'd like to say thanks to co-owner Quinn, who gave us happy hour prices all night.

I recorded 31 names, and I'm pretty sure there were a few that I didn't catch, so if you attended but didn't sign in, please drop me an email so I can credit you with attending.

Last night reminded me how glad I am that we've got this way of finding each other. Biznik really is starting to work the way we imagined. Thanks for being part of it.

/dan

San Francisco happy hour on April 27th

Biznik member David Amann will be hosting the first Biznik event outside of Seattle on April 27th - a happy hour in San Francisco.

If you know someone who would be a great Biznik member in the Bay Area, please let them know about this event.

/dan

Happy Hour at Mona's is Tuesday night

Hey there Seattle Bizniks, don't forget that tomorrow night is Biznik happy hour at Mona's, which is in Greenlake. This will likely be our largest event ever, and Mona's is making us feel welcome by offering Biznik members happy hour prices all evening.

I'm looking forward to meeting some new members, and I hope you can make it.

/dan