18 Non-Toy Gifts for Children Friday, Jan 23 2015

July 16, 2014 by Rachel

http://nourishingminimalism.com/2014/07/18-non-toy-gifts-for-children.html

All of us that have children, have too many toys. No matter how diligent we are at keeping them at bay, it seems to be a constant fight. It’s especially hard when special days come and we want to give gifts to our children, or grandparents want to give gifts.

Gifts are good things!

But, too much of anything isn’t good.

A great way to combat too many toys, is to shift all the gifts to non-toy items.

18 Non-Toy Gifts for Children

1. Classes. Music, dance, riding, drawing, classes are a great way to encourage children in their interests and let them know that you pay attention to them and what they enjoy.
2. Memberships. Zoo, science museum, children’s museum, YMCA membership, etc. These are particularly great for family gifts! Many young families want to enjoy day outings, but affording them can be a challenge, so give them the gift of a yearly membership.
3. Subscriptions. Kids enjoy getting things int he mail. Why not encourage their reading by getting them a magazine subscription for something they are interested in!
4. Events. Movie tickets, tickets to a play, concert or sports event are really exciting! Having an event to look forward to makes the rest of life more enjoyable.
5. Activities. Mini golf, bowling, skating rink. These are so much fun! And a big part of the fun is going together. Children love spending time with the adults in their lives, they want to see you enjoying your time as well as enjoying them.
6. Recipe and Ingredients. Kids love cooking with their parents. Baking something special or cooking dinner is an ideal time to spend together and learn life skills. Print out a recipe, purchase all the ingredients and set a date for cooking together.
7. Crafting Date. Our daughter loves making crafts. I do to, I really do enjoy the creative aspect. But I rarely take time out to do it with her. These crafting dates mean the world to our creative little girl. Keep a basket of craft supplies and get out a book for inspiration. We like this book.
8. Arts and Craft supplies. If your craft box is running low, stock up a little on things you need. Add in something fun the kids haven’t used before. A gift of art and craft supplies often brings on the imagination and kids can’t wait to get to work!
9. Coupons. An envelope of coupons that they can “spend” at any time: I’ll do one chore- no questions asked, movie and popcorn night, you pick the movie!, 1:1 game of cards or basketball (whatever the child’s interest is in), sit and read a book with me, Stay up 1/2 hour past bedtime
10. Restaurant Gift Card. Dinner, ice cream, coffee, cupcake- whatever suits their fancy! Give them the freedom of inviting whoever they wish: it may be mom or dad, it may be a grandparent, aunt or even teacher that they would like to spend more time with.
11. Dress Up Clothes. These do need to be limited, but  2 dresses and couple play silks can get hours and hours of play!
12. Books. We get a lot of books from the library, but there are some that I just can’t find there, or it takes us longer to read through. We have read through the entire Little House series, Narnia and are working our way through Shel Silverstein’s books. Be sure to pass the books on when you are done, so they don’t clutter up your home.
13. Clothes. When kids only have a certain amount of clothes, they often enjoy getting clothes. Make it a point to get something that fits their style. That may mean western clothes, super-hero, fancy dresses, etc.

Want more? Check out:

• 18 Non-Toy Gifts for Toddlers
• 18 Non-Toy, Non-Clutter Gifts for Baby Showers
• 11 Ways to Get Friends and Family on Board with the Limited Gifts Idea
• 15 Clutter Free Gift Ideas

1. Snacks. If your child is a foodie, they will love this! Some homemade granola or cookies made just for them, is a special treat!
2. Outdoor Supplies. If you are an outdoorsy family, giving kids their own fishing tackle or gardening equipment can be a big deal. It’s also something that gets left on the shelf in the garage, so you always know right where to find it.
3. Telling Time. The average child these days doesn’t know how to read analog, or finds it takes too long to think about it, so they search for a digital watch. Getting them a cool watch makes them want to be able to tell time on it. Boys, girls, and even teenagers can be excited about this.
4. Games and Puzzles. Games and puzzles are great activities for when kids have to be indoors. It’s a good practice to have individual quiet times during the day, and having a puzzle to sit and work on by themselves helps brain development and problem solving skills. Games teach a lot too! My kids talk about how they passed geography, just because we played Risk when they were little. Monopoly and PayDay have been popular and help cement math skills. Memory games are great for younger children.
5. Calendar. Many children like to know what is going on, what day it is, how many days until ____. These kids are the ones that want to know what the plan is for the day, in what order things will happen, what time friends are expected over, etc. They struggle with spur-of-the-moment and can be frustrating if you are a spontaneous parent. But celebrate it! These children have many strengths and make our world run smoother. Embrace their inner schedule and get them their own calendar. They can write down their own classes, appointments, play dates, etc. And if they ask you, send them to their calendar so they can get used to being in control of their own schedule. You can even schedule “spontaneous days”, so they know that something different will happen that day. Trust me, it will help them enjoy the spontaneous outings!

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Focusing on What’s Important Thursday, Jan 22 2015

By Quin McDonald

Focusing on What’s Important

Posted on January 21, 2015

If you own your business or are starting up a business, you need a plan. Not a formal business plan (unless you are planning on forming a partnership or need to borrow money from a bank). But you do need a plan. A plan that uses your skills and what is important to you. Normally, I call what is important to you, “values,” and what I mean by that is heart. Your power to run or improve a business depends on your strength of heart.

Heart is talent. It’s what you believe in. It’s what you are good at and don’t mind putting in long hours to improve.

The biggest mistake you can make is get distracted. Decide that someone else is stronger, better, or smarter than you and follow them. Hope their light shines on you. Ask them to include you in their plan. Think they will mentor you.

Successful people have plans. They keep their eyes on working on their plan, making choices that benefit their plan. That is what you should be doing, too.

The American businessman Jim Rohn said it wonderfully: “If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.”

Of course you can ask for help, advice, or suggestions. But tend your own plan. Know what it is. Watch your business decisions to keep them filled with your heart. That’s where your power is. That’s where your strength is. That is how you will build a business that is all yours and clear to you.

–-Quinn McDonald owns her own business and helps others work on their plans.

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Meditation Is Even More Powerful Than We Originally Thought Friday, Dec 12 2014

The Huffington Post  | By Alena Hall

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/11/meditation-reduces-stress-harvard-study_n_6109404.html?&ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000067

With our stress levels creeping higher than ever before, we could all stand to reap the benefits of this mindful practice.

A recent study from Harvard University and the University of Sienna found that the powers of meditation move beyond the cultivation of self-awareness, improvement of concentration and protection of the heart and immune system — it can actually alter the physiology of the human brain. Consistent practice can help alleviate symptoms of anxiety and depression in people who often need it most.

In the study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, the scientists selected 24 subjects who had never meditated before and guided them through an 8-week meditation course. Each participant completed a two-and-a-half hour session each week, where they learned about various components and styles of a meditation practice. Outside of the weekly session, they each meditated for 45 minutes daily.

Data gathered from the MRIs conducted before and after the meditation program, along with psychological evaluations, revealed that the subjects experienced a thickening in the part of the brain responsible for emotions and perception. Such changes strengthen the body’s physiological resilience against worry, anxiety and depression.

For the increasing number of us struggling with the overwhelming demands of our lives, reserving a little time each day to tune into ourselves might not be such a bad idea. It takes a little prioritizing in an already-busy schedule, but the proven benefits can be well worth the effort.

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The 5-Second Secret to Less Awkward Online Meetings Tuesday, Nov 18 2014

A re-post from:

BY JESSICA STILLMAN@ENTRYLEVELREBEL

Overcoming one of the biggest issues plaguing virtual get togethers is as simple as counting to five, according to one expert.

 In theory online meetings are great. They save on expensive and time-consuming travel and hold out the tantalizing promise of location independence. The only problem? In practice they can be excruciatingly awkward.

Talking to you computer screen offers none of the helpful feedback of looking out on an audience for speakers and none of the visual stimulation of watching someone up on stage for listeners. And the experience is almost worse if you try to make things interactive as a lack of visual cues means people either talk over each other or hold back out of uncertainty, leaving gaping chasms of silence.

So is the only solution getting in a car or on a plane? Sometimes. But according to online meetings expert Wayne Turmel there’s at least one simple trick that can radically improve your online meetings with essentially no effort.

One Mississippi….

On Management Issues recently Turmel, who has written books on better web meetings and coaches teams on how to improve theirs, asserts that he constantly runs into the same issue when troubleshooting for clients. “They often bemoan thelack of engagement and responsiveness from meeting or class participants,” he reports. Fixing this issue, according to Turmel is as simple as counting to five.

Leaders of online meetings often fear silent lulls excessively, according to Turmel. The inherent awkwardness of not being face to face makes normal pauses where others are absorbing information and formulating their thoughts feel like an age. Plus, potential question askers, for instance, may be simply waiting to see if someone else chimes in first. The result is speakers who barely pause and inadvertently squelch opportunities for interactive exchange.

Luckily, the solution is dead simple. Just “ask for questions or comments and wait five full seconds. It’s longer than you think, and your instinct will be to move things along. Don’t submit to the panic,” instructs Turmel. “Ask, ‘What questions do you have?’ and then silently count ‘one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi, five Mississippi’… Only then will you have given people a real chance to process the information, form a response, and step up to speak.”

“I have seen this simple technique radically change the dynamic in meetings,” he concludes.

Could it have similarly great effects for your online interactions? Give it a test and tell us how it goes.

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The Real Reason No One Wants To Link To You Thursday, Nov 13 2014

Wondering why no one is linking to you? Julie Joyce gives you the lowdown on why your site isn’t as linkworthy as it could be.

Julie Joyce on November 11, 2014 at 9:02 am

Over the years, one of the least fun parts of my job has been nicely explaining to clients why no one is going to link to them.

Many of them think that because they offer something awesome, people will naturally know that, seek them out, and generously link to them. Few of them like it when I point out all the problems with that mindset.

I wouldn’t want to link to a poor quality site myself. In fact, just this morning as I was writing something, I needed to link to a source — and immediately rejected one because it had a broken image, a video that did not play, and a code error that appeared on the page. It ranked very well, but that initial impression wasn’t something I wanted to be associated with.

So, how come no one is linking?

1. Website Bloat

Perhaps your site is so bloated, it’s impossible to pin down which page to link to.

You might have poorly chosen link targets because you want certain pages to rank well, but there’s not much to gain by trying to rank 10 pages that say the same thing with slight variations.

Yes, we did that a decade ago and it worked well then — but today, you’re just taunting the Panda.

2. Load Time

It could be that your site takes way too long to load — and by way too long, I mean more than 3 seconds.

If you’re a huge retailer like Amazon, people will wait it out, of course. Otherwise, long load times risk losing everyone’s attention.

3. Broken Media

Maybe you have broken images, or videos that can’t be played in your posts.

To be clear, I’m not talking about one broken image/video on some random page deep within your site. I’m talking about your main home page image, or a video in a post that basically says, “Hey, here’s a video of how to do this!”

4. No Sharing Capabilities

Are you missing social sharing buttons on your posts?

If I’m linking to something, then I want it to show signs of life. Why would I want to promote a post that the author doesn’t even feel like promoting?

Obviously, this applies only to certain types of content, as most people aren’t going to be tweeting your About Us page. However, if it’s a blog post, take the two minutes to install a WordPress social buttons plugin.

5. No Fresh Content

Perhaps your blog hasn’t been updated in over a year. If you can’t update it, why do you have it? We shut down our company blog almost a year ago because we could not properly maintain it.

6. Atrocious Writing

I’m not referring to minor grammatical issues, like an inability to distinguish when to use “effect” vs. “affect.” I mean maybe you really can’t write and probably shouldn’t be writing, because you have no clue how to structure sentences, state your positions, or move the reader in any way. You may have a great checklist for something, but that’s not enough to make me link.

7. Untended Comments Section

Do you let spam comments fill up your site? Do you fail to respond to legitimate comments? Do you get any comments at all?

If you can’t take the time to moderate your comments, you’re sending a message that you don’t truly care what your site looks like. If someone asks a question and you can’t be bothered to answer… again, that’s a sign that you don’t really care. If no one is commenting, well why aren’t they? Maybe your content isn’t interesting enough?

 

8. Too Many Ads

It’s awesome that you are making money, of course, but it’s distracting for people who actually want information. If I’m linking to information, it’s going to be something no one has to get a seizure viewing.

9. Unoriginal Content

Ask yourself honestly: “Do I have anything unique to offer?”

If all you do is rehash other people’s content, scrape their sites, publish roundups, and basically repeat everything that you can already find elsewhere… well, you may rank highly (because sadly that is the way things work at times), but you aren’t going to get great links.

We’re going to find the real source that has unique info. Have you ever looked at the number of sites that have posts on how to make salsa? I have (because I am addicted to salsa), and it’s currently 76,400 results if you search for it in quotes in Google.

How can you possibly decide which one to link to? You may check 10 of them out before you make salsa, but if you had to link to one recipe? Something would have to jump out at you.

10. There’s Better Content Elsewhere

Have you ever seen a food blog with no photos? I know I’m harping on food here, but the cookbooks that I love the most have photos in them. Food is very visual to me, and I’ve definitely tried recipes simply because the photos of the finished product looked amazing.

Let’s say you need to repair your washer and dryer, and you’re not mechanically inclined. Wouldn’t you be more likely to look at a site that had a video of someone doing it, with step-by-step instructions for you?

If I were looking to see the latest news on how Google may never update Toolbar Page Rank again, I’d rather find an article with some quotes to back this up — along with some predictions for what it could mean for some of us.

In my planning for a trip to Prague, I found tons of sites listing great restaurants to try — but only a few listed vegetarian restaurants, and I’m a vegetarian. Out of those vegetarian listings? There was one site that listed typical vegetarian dishes that you could eat in non-veg restaurants. If I was linking to something, it would be that one, no question.

11. 2001 Called And They Want Their Site Back

I’ll admit it: I was once someone who didn’t take the time to have a professionally designed site.

After making that investment and immediately seeing the benefits of it, however, I have much less patience with sites that look like antiques.

Attention spans seem to get shorter and shorter, and I’ll freely admit that I’d much rather read a blog post that has great, high-quality images, highlighted information, and formatting that lets me skim but still encourages me to read every word.

Check out Copyblogger.com to see what I mean. I read all of their posts because, well, they’re just so darned good-looking to ignore! They look fresh and modern, aren’t too long but aren’t too short either, and are very cleanly laid out and organized. They’re like a nicely organized workspace…you just want to dive right in.

Who’s To Blame?

So, before you blame your link builder, or start screaming about Google wrecking your link campaign, take a step back and look at your site.

Look at what you’re doing in comparison with what others are doing. Just as in my last post onlearning from lost link opportunities, maybe the problem is actually you.

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2 New Tricks for Hiring Tech Talent Thursday, Nov 13 2014

There’s a war for tech talent. Here’s how you can get creative about finding and training coding ninjas.

BY JESSICA STILLMAN  @ENTRYLEVELREBEL

Talk to any entrepreneur looking to hire technical talent and they’ll tell you its insanely tough out there, with companies facing a dire shortage of trained engineering and design talent.

Sure, you could always steal the competition’s talent, or look abroad for salvation. But both approaches have obvious costs. So as we’ve reported here before some businesses are trying a third way: growing their own tech talent through apprentice style programs.

Video gaming-focused media company IGN, for instance, is augmenting its traditional recruiting for the second year in a row with a “no resumes allowed” alternative. Their Code-Foo program selects participants by setting hopefuls up with online coding challenges and asking for a statement of passion about the company. Those that succeed aren’t asked to produce diplomas and sit for endless interviews. Instead, IGN brings them to a six-week training boot camp. If an individual impresses, he or she gets a job—without ever having to say a word about their work history or educational background.

So how did that work out last year? “We ended up with 30 people,” Roy Bahat, the president of IGN, told Inc.com. “Our guys thought we were going to hire one or two—a third of them didn’t even go to college, a third had non-technical degrees. These were not the people you would have even interviewed on the basis of their resumes. And then lo and behold, a third of them were meeting our bar and the best of them were running laps around much more ‘qualified’ candidates. We were thrilled.” Ten were hired and Bahat says, “on average they’ve worked out better than hires from a traditional hiring process. The best few are among our highest potential talent.”

Code-Foo and other training schemes outside of the academy aren’t just a good bet for smaller companies looking to recruit, but also something Bahat sees as having larger social benefits. “One of my personal passions is teaching young people coding skills because I think that it is the fastest path towards not just economically rewarding work but creatively rewarding work. It’s not as hard as people make it out to be—it’s like being an auto mechanic of the 21st century,” he said. IGN is accepting applications for Code Foo until April 30.

Meanwhile, online marketplace Etsy isn’t just trying to nurture tech talent in general, but female tech talent in particular. The Los Angeles Times reports that the Marc Hedlund, Etsy’s vice president of engineering, noticed that in his career he’s hired men by the hundreds but only a handful of women. To even out the gender balance, the company is hosting the summer 2012 session of Hacker School at its New York City headquarters and offering women who want to participate $5,000 grants to help them support themselves while they learn to be code ninjas.

“Our goal is to bring 20 women to New York to participate, and we hope this will be the first of many steps to encourage more women into engineering at Etsy and across the industry,” Hedlund commented. Which is a good thing, as so far only one woman has participated in Hacker School since its founding last year.

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7 Reasons to Start Something Really Audacious Today Wednesday, Nov 12 2014

Today is a great day to begin working on something that will make a difference. Here are just the reasons you’ve been looking for.

BY KEVIN DAUM  @KEVINJDAUM

http://www.inc.com/kevin-daum/7-reasons-to-start-something-really-audacious-today.html

This quote often attributed to Goethe (a statue of him is pictured above) has always been a key inspiration: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”

I know you are already busy. And the idea of starting a big new project when you are near capacity seems foolish, especially with the holidays just around the corner. But sometimes the opportunity comes and you have to capitalize now–for tomorrow may not be an option.

I made just such a commitment today with this column. Instead of writing three times a week, I have committed to at least a column per day for the next year. I intend to create better, more interesting content–yes, I know you will be the judge–and lots more of it. I understand that writing roughly 20,000 words per month may not be audacious to some, but to achieve it without sacrificing my current responsibilities or lifestyle, I must change the way I do everything in my life.

If you have been thinking of an accomplishment or challenge that you know is important, today is as good a day as any to start. Here are the seven reasons that inspired me to do it. Maybe they will inspire you as well.

1. It will advance your preferred future.

The future will happen either with your input or without. Of course you can’t control what will happen, but you can have some influence. More writing is the path that will increase my engagement with the business community and ultimately result in a better lifestyle and impact.

Start a project today that gets you closer to your life goals.

2. It will help you prioritize.

There are many things you and I both do every day that are simply not important. I am not suggesting you eliminate necessary relaxing time or entertainment. Instead, the need to do something important will allow you to edit out only those activities that do not serve you best during the day.

Start a project today that gets you motivated to reduce meaningless activity.

3. It will refine your productivity.

I am as good as anybody at procrastination or constant distraction. This big writing commitment forces me to build better work habits so I can maximize my time and not be distracted. I now have to schedule everything and make choices, which shows me I had more time than I originally believed.

Start a project today that inspires you to organize and manage time better.

4. It will improve your efficiency.

There are many things I do during the day that take longer than they should. I now analyze every process to see how I can do it better and faster. It used to take me hours to write a meaningful column. With some advance planning and better work habits, I can now create something meaningful in much less time.

Start a project today that inspires you to examine how you can give yourself more time with greater output.

5. It will give you something new to talk about.

At nearly 50, even I get tired of telling the same stories, let alone hearing them. A big project like this helps you learn new ideas and share them with your friends. This decision has started a flurry of new conversation in my circle.

Start a project today that instigates new learning and conversation among your peers.

6. It will open new and exciting doors.

I am grateful for all of you, my loyal subscribers and readers. Producing more columns motivated me to engage more with my social media and followers. Already the conversations are yielding new and interesting discussions and opportunities.

Start a project today that creates new possibilities where few existed before.

7. It will inspire others.

Since I committed to this new objective, several people have told me they have also decided to do something bold and audacious. I am of course not responsible for their achievements, but I take great satisfaction in being the seed of thought that they will take forward. Who knows how they might actually better the world!

Start a project today that inspires others to follow their dreams and take action today.

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From Garbage To Gourmet: Fixing SEO Content Strategies Friday, Nov 7 2014

Ian Lurie on April 28, 2011 at 12:19 pm

Ian Lurie is Chief Marketing Curmudgeon and President at Portent, Inc, a firm he started in 1995. Portent is a full-service internet marketing company whose services include SEO, SEM and strategic consulting

From Garbage To Gourmet: Fixing SEO Content Strategies

Tell me if you’ve heard this one before:

Site Owner: I want to rank higher in the search engines!

SEO: OK, you’ll need to fix a few things…
produces a list

SEO: And you’ll need to start a content strategy. That means 10-20 pages of new content per month, minimum, plus work to promote it.

Site Owner: OKAY! I’m on it.
Site owner goes away.

…

Two months later:

Site Owner: SEO, you totally ripped me off. I haven’t seen any improvement in my rankings.

SEO: Did you make all the changes?

Site Owner: Yes.

SEO: Did you start work on the content?

Site Owner: Yes.

SEO: Can I see?

Site Owner shows SEO their site. It has 70 pages of new articles.

SEO: Wow, that’s great… Wait a minute. This article is only 150 words. And the author used the wrong ‘your’ five times. And this article is almost identical to these other five…

Site Owner: So?

SEO: Well, this isn’t exactly great content.

Site Owner: Hey, you told me to get new content. You didn’t say anything about great content!

Search Engines Aren’t Garbage Disposals

I suspect that most people see search engines as a sort of content garbage disposals. You feed them a random assortment of leftovers, hard-to-identify and vaguely smelly things, and the occasional rotten egg in one end, there are some grinding and crunching sounds, and you’re all set.

Well, they’re not garbage disposals.

Half of SEO is a long list of things you must do to make yourself visible, help search engines classify your content, etc..

But, in the pre- and now more importantly, post- Panda world, the other half of SEO is all about differentiating yourself from competitors with great, unique information.

You know… Marketing.

No More Garbage

You have to stop serving garbage to your visitors, and to search engines. Here’s a couple ideas to get you started:

1. Write stuff that hasn’t been written before. There are already 999,999 articles about SEO and title tags. Try something else, or a new spin on your topic.
2. Be interesting. Put some thought into how the article is put together. Use visuals where it helps. Use humor, even.
3. Hire quality writers to write quality stuff.
4. Ask your visitors and customers what they’d like to read. Then write it.
5. Follow production best practices. Use good line spacing and typography. Place subheads to organize your story and make it easier to scan. A 500-word article vomited onto the page with zero formatting makes it look like you don’t care. If you don’t care, you don’t deserve to rank.
6. Brainstorm and maintain a list of headlines you can assign to writers.
7. Assign target topics and phrases to specific pages on your site. Think through how you’ll interlink new content with those pages to build authority.
8. Integrate content into your site. You probably won’t make much progress if you hang a bunch of lousy articles off your site like some kind of growth. Content has to be in the flow of a normal visitor’s movement through the site.

In short: think about it. Make content strategy part of your overall Internet marketing strategy and invest in it. You can’t outsource your writing to eLance for $5 per article and expect progress. Nor can you somehow automate or fake your way into the rankings. Yes, there are always the lucky few who manage it. But it’s not the norm.

But It’s Hard/Expensive/Time-Consuming!

I know, huh? If you want to gain a top ranking, you have to work for it, and invest, and really dedicate yourself to it.

But have some perspective: 20 years ago, the minimum required to reach a national audience was $250,000, a fantastic sales letter and a lot of luck. Now, you can reach a national audience with a well-coded website, one decent writer and a good idea. That’s nothing short of miraculous.

So switch your content strategy from garbage to gourmet. It’s worth the effort.

---

Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

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Molly Crabapple’s 14 rules for creative success in the Internet age Wednesday, Nov 5 2014

To celebrate the release of my new book, Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age, I’ve invited some of my favorite creators and thinkers to write about their philosophy on the arts and the Internet. Today, Molly Crabapple presents her 14 iron laws of creativity. -Cory Doctorow

Why do creative people seem so cynical when they follow standard business practices that every successful business person must follow?  Martin

I’m a visual artist and writer. What this means is that I have done most things one can do that involve making pictures (as to making words, I’m far newer). I’ve ` dicks for Playgirl. I’ve painted a six foot tall replica of my own face and carefully calligraphed things people have said to me on the Internet, then displayed it in a Tribeca gallery, as a sort of totem. I’ve live-sketched snipers in Tripoli. I’ve illustrated self-published kids books for ten dollars a page. I’ve balanced on jury-rigged scaffolding on a freezing British dawn, painting pigs on the walls of one of the world’s poshest nightclubs.

I’ve made my living as an artist for eight years, almost entirely without galleries, and until relatively recently without agents. It was a death-slog that threw me into periodic breakdowns . I’m pretty successful now. I make a good living, even in New York, have a full time assistant who gets a middle-class salary, and have a book coming out with a major publisher. I feel so lucky, and so grateful, for every bit of this.

My success would not have been possible without the internet. I’ve used every platform, from Craigslist and Suicide Girls to Livejournal, Myspace, Kickstarter, Tumblr and Twitter. I’m both sick of social media and addicted to it. What nourishes you destroys you, and all that. The internet is getting increasingly corporate and centralized, and I don’t know that the future isn’t just going back to big money platforms. I hope its not.

Here’s what I’ve learned.

1. The number one thing that would let more independent artists exists in America is a universal basic income. The number one thing that has a possibility of happening is single payer healthcare. This is because artists are humans who need to eat and live and get medical care, and our country punishes anyone who wants to go freelance and pursue their dream by telling them they might get cancer while uninsured, and then not be able to afford to treat it.

2. Companies are not loyal to you. Please never believe a company has your back. They are amoral by design and will discard you at a moment’s notice. Negotiate aggressively, ask other freelancers what they’re getting paid, and don’t buy into the financial negging of some suit.

3. I’ve cobbled together many different streams of income, so that if the bottom falls out of one industry, I’m not ruined. My mom worked in packaging design. When computers fundamentally changed the field, she lost all her work. I learned from this.

4. Very often people who blow up and become famous fast already have some other sort of income, either parental money, spousal money, money saved from another job, or corporate backing behind the scenes. Other times they’ve actually been working for 10 years and no one noticed until suddenly they passed some threshold. Either way, its good to take a hard look- you’ll learn from studying both types of people, and it will keep you from delusional myth-making.

5. I’ve never had a big break. I’ve just had tiny cracks in this wall of indifference until finally the wall wasn’t there any more

6. Don’t be a dick. Be nice to everyone who is also not a dick, help people who don’t have the advantages you do, and never succumb to crabs in the barrel infighting.

7. Remember that most people who try to be artists are kind of lazy. Just by busting your ass, you’re probably good enough to put yourself forward, so why not try?

8. Rejection is inevitable. Let it hit you hard for a moment, feel the hurt, and then move on.

9. Never trust some Silicon Valley douchebag who’s flush with investors’ money, but telling creators to post on their platform for free or for potential crumbs of cash. They’re just using you to build their own thing, and they’ll discard you when they sell the company a few years later.

10. Be a mercenary towards people with money. Be generous and giving to good people without it.

11. Working for free is only worth it if its with fellow artists or grassroots organizations you believe in, and only if they treat your respectfully and you get creative control.

12. Don’t ever submit to contests where you have to do new work. They’ll just waste your time, and again, only build the profile of the judges and the sponsoring company. Do not believe their lies about “exposure”. There is so much content online that just having your work posted in some massive image gallery is not exposure at all.

13. Don’t work for free for rich people. Seriously. Don’t don’t don’t. Even if you can afford to, you’re fucking over the labor market for other creators. Haggling hard for money is actually a beneficial act for other freelancers, because it is a fight against the race to the bottom that’s happening online.

14. If people love your work, treat them nice as long as they’re nice to you.

15. Be massively idealistic about your art, dream big, open your heart and let the blood pour forth. Be utterly cynical about the business around your art.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer living in New York. She has written for the NY Times, Vanity Fair, and VICE, and has work in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art.

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5 things I learned from one of Portland’s most bustling startups Monday, Nov 3 2014

Re-post from Malia SpencerStaff Reporter-Portland Business JournalEmail  |  Twitter

http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/blog/2014/10/5-things-i-learned-from-one-of-portlands-most.html?ana=twt&page=all

Treehouse learning mission control, providing you with an overview of your current progress and total points earned at Treehouse.       https://teamtreehouse.com

Treehouse co-founder and CEO Ryan Carson spoke at the PDXedtech meetupTuesday night, and while we are pretty familiar with what the company is doing — particularly with its efforts with Code Oregon— there were still interesting takeaways.

The company is up to 75 employees, 20 of them are in its headquarters in northeast Portland, and it’s serving 91,000 students. Also, the company is profitable.

Treehouse sees itself as an online trade school. That means the company’s mission is to get students jobs.

Students are typically between 20 and 40 years old. Many are underemployed and view the Treehouse training as steps to a better job.

Carson highlighted a recent student who went from working retail in Portland to landing a job at the startup OpenSesame.

Here’s are some more pieces of knowledge that Carson dropped:

1. Treehouse launched a beta program that aims to guarantee job placement for students who are deemed by the company to be job ready. Treehouse Careers has an online application where the company gets to know more a student and what kind of job they want. The student is then served with a dashboard with a to-do to put them on track for the job they want. Part of this process includes some written components, so Treehouse recruiting staff can determine a student’s communication abilities. There is also a project component to gauge how well a student works on a team. If everything is met and the student is deemed job ready, the company will work to place them in a job
2. The company made headlines last year when it announced that it was removing managers from its organizational structure. There are the top level executives and then everyone else, Carson said. The move came when the company employed 50 people (it now employs 75), and it required a new way to communicate. “It was total chaos,” Carson said of the time immediately following the move. The current communications tools, mainly email didn’t work. So the company built an internal tool called Canopy, which operates like a public Gmail account that everyone can see and contribute. That way information isn’t siloed into any one person’s inbox. For its more private conversations, the team uses the messaging tool HipChat.
3. Treehouse is closed on Fridays. The team works four, eight-hour days and all the work is able to get done. Carson said this can happen because the company has a culture of non-interruption. Conversations happen on HipChat and people can stay focused on what they do. He noted this tends to mean they have a pretty quiet office.
4. For now the four-day work week and the no-manager policy works for the company, but Carson acknowledged that it might be that way forever.
5. Luck has played a role in Treehouse’s development so far. Carson noted that he unknowingly built really strong network and became the center of a community of technologists with an earlier company. That company did code training workshops around the country and it was early on in the Web 2.0 movement, he noted at that point you could actually email Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and he would email back. Based on this community he was a part of, when it came time for Treehouse to raise money, he had the right contacts.

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