Here's a question for the group: if we start shooting digital video of selected Biznik workshops, would you watch it? We're going to experiment with several upcoming events. Video will be posted shortly after the event, on the event page. The video will be available for supporting members only, as an additional added value to paying members. Thoughts?
Thanks to some great feedback from Karrie Kohlhaas, I've added to the Biznik home page the pictures of 21 Biznik members who will be speaking at BizJam on June 9th. Anyone you know there?
And I'd like to add that time is running out if you'd like to promote your business at BizJam - here are three things you can you do to get your business noticed at BizJam: sponsor the event (3 levels available), advertise in the program, reserve a trade table, or give a 5-minute talk about your business.
Hey everyone, you may have noticed that a bunch of BizTalk posts and comments are suddenly missing from here. We had a hard drive fail late this afternoon, and the most recent backup we were able to restore from was made about 48 hours ago, which means 48 hours of data is unrecoverable. I'll be implementing a much more aggressive backup strategy tomorrow, in which we maintain hourly backups to prevent this situation from happening again. Meanwhile, I'm really sorry for the inconvenience.
Guess what? We've been working for a long time on a rockin' event that we just publicly announced earlier today. It's called BizJam: a business-building marathon of ideas, inspiration and innovation. It's an all-day, and all-evening event, on June 9th, here in Seattle at two locations. We put a lot of thought into creating this as a radically different kind of business conference, a hybrid between an unconference like Seattle Mind Camp, and a traditional conference. About half the the speakers will be invited, and about half will be - you guessed it - you! Sounds pretty Biznik, hey? Here's the official announcement:
Are you ready for a business conference that speaks the language of innovation? One that invites you to create the learning experience you want, yet provides a structure that ensures you'll get your money's worth? One that's serious about business, yet seriously fun? Biznik is thrilled to present BizJam: a business-building marathon of ideas, inspiration and innovation.
Website: http://www.seattlebizjam.com When: June 9, 2007 Where: Seattle, Washington (two locations)
BizJam is designed to help bootstrapping entrepreneurs develop the skills and make the connections they need to succeed. Scott Berkun, author of forthcoming O'Reilly book "The Myths of Innovation," will deliver the conference keynote talk on the topic of innovation. More than 20 "JamSessions" and panel discussions will follow throughout the day. Confirmed speakers include DL Byron, Shelly Farnham, Ron Sukenick, Madeline Bailey and Internet broadcasting pioneer Scott Bourne.
And that's just the beginning. The evening portion of the event will kick off at 7pm with a fast-paced Ask Later slide jam organized by Brady Forrest, co-founder of Ignite Seattle. Next up: an awards presention spotlighting the most innovative Seattle indie business people, followed by a fashion show presenting the work of Seattle indie fashion designers. The climax of the evening will be a party featuring the talents of Seattle indie DJs. It's going to rock.
But what's really cool about BizJam? You. About half the JamSessions and panel discussions - and all of the evening presentations - will be created by you, the conference attendees. Here⊃s three ways to get involved:
To learn more and get started, visit http://www.seattlebizjam.com/you/
Secure online registration begins today at http://www.seattlebizjam.com/registration/ Register before March 31 and save up to $50.
BizJam needs volunteers to make this a smooth-running event. Send an email to volunteers@seattlebizjam.com to learn more.
I'm thinking about hosting a Business Book Club event on "A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future" by Daniel Pink. I read the book recently and it's a fantastic read for anyone involved with an indie business. Anybody interested in that?
OK, we’ve had some nibbles on sponsorship of the Seattle Indie Biz Buzz, but no takers so far. So I figured, maybe that’s because members are afraid to ask how much it costs. I mean, we don’t really know what sponsorship is worth to you, so we really don’t know what to ask. So I’ve hit on a solution: I’ve created an online auction that will allow YOU to set the price. That’s right, you can now place a bid to sponsor next Sunday’s edition of the Seattle Indie Biz Buzz, which is emailed to more than a thousand independent business owners in the Seattle area. It’s a great way to get your message out there, and bidding starts at just $25.
Check it out at http://biznik.com/buzz/bid
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.
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?
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.
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.
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:
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.
...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:
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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