måndag, oktober 29, 2007

Conversation Agent

Conversation Agent: "Making Social Media Work for You – Be Crafty Jim_long This is a story of how Jim Long is reinventing his career with the help of social media. He inspired today’s post at The Blog Herald on what you can do to become famous.

Helge: We've been in touch with Crafty Nation. It's nice to know what Jim Long has been doing.

Making Social Media Work for You – Be Crafty

Jim_long This is a story of how Jim Long is reinventing his career with the help of social media. He inspired today’s post at The Blog Herald on what you can do to become famous. During the presentation at DMAW a couple of weeks ago, Jim talked about one of his recent entrepreneurial projects, Crafty Nation.

We watched the video where his partner, Toni Lyn, visited a hand glass worker in her home, which doubles as her laboratory. Seeing the skill and craft made me want to go back to making earrings -- I sold many as a teenager.

Crafts are a booming business in the US. Take a peek at the appropriate isle at Target and you'll know what I mean. Rows of interesting materials ready for unleashing your creativity.

I asked Jim to join us here and tell his story of how this venture came about.


Jim: Crafty Nation started as another video podcast project titled “The Crafty Hag” which I was developing with a friend. We called her “Martha Stewart’s evil subversive twin.” That project failed as she and I differed on the business model.

Crafty Nation rose from those ashes as a collaboration between Toni Lyn (@craftynation on Twitter) and myself. I put an ad in Craigslist looking for someone who was passionate about craft and had business savvy and entrepreneurial drive.

Toni and I originally developed the idea of episodic video combined with video. As we worked toward this the emergence of niche market social networks as tools of engagement seemed the next logical progression.

Craftynation_2 We launched in beta in July of this year coinciding with our attendance at the Craft Hobby Association show in Chicago.

We covered the show and have created one episode and are currently in post-production on the second highlighting the best of the CHA.

The CHA show (held twice a year) is where store buyers and manufacturers of craft products meet and make deals.

Craft is a 30 billion dollar industry and millions of Americans identify themselves as “crafty”. We’re building Crafty Nation (currently rebuilding with more sophisticated and robust social networking platform), combining social networking, episodic, editorially driven video, and blogging, all designed to celebrate and give voice to the rich tapestry of craft.

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