#2

[HannahP]

My lovely and talented partner had an idea for a new forum on Friday night. She emailed a few dozen people who would be the target audience for the thing, and most of them responded quickly and were supportive of her proposed scheme (her concept filled a niche where no forum existed, so I wasn't surprised).

Saturday morning around 10 a.m. she decided on a domain name. By 11 a.m. (really), the domain was registered, her new XF forum was purchased, uploaded, set up and running, using a style she downloaded here. She spent some of the rest of the day tweaking the installation and poking around, and on Sunday morning she opened it up for business.

She has never administered a forum before. I should probably mention that.

This is just for anyone wondering if XF is difficult to use. I would say, no. No it's not.

 

[GofD]

Awesome! Care to share the URL?

 

[Blandt]

#2 means a totally different thing in my neck of the woods

Good to hear

 

[Peggy]

Well congrats to her and good luck with her new venture.
I wanna see! URL please.

#2 means a totally different thing in my neck of the woods

You would have to mention that...

 

[Tigratrus]

Grats!

 

[HannahP]

Awesome! Care to share the URL?

I wanna see! URL please.

Nothing to see there, I'm afraid, it's a private forum. That's what made it an appealing idea to the initial group of users. The fact that they could speak openly about things they don't usually talk about online for fear that the wrong person would see it, and what they said could potentially come back to harm them.

Being a successful contemporary artist sometimes seems to be as much about public relations as it is about the work. So if you are unhappy with something your gallery is doing, or you want to talk about a certain collector in a less than flattering way, you have to keep that kind of thing quiet. Or at least out of public view. It wouldn't be such a good thing if your gallery Googled themselves (or you) and read that you were complaining about them.

They are also showing work in progress and talking business and giving advice (not just complaining), and it's been difficult to do that in the large existing artist's forums without getting a lot of erroneous input from people who are not quite at their career level. It sounds exclusionary and a little pretentious, but I can see the value of it. This is their business, and they want to get feedback from their peers. Someone who has never sold a painting wouldn't really understand why someone might be complaining about selling a work for "only" $15,000 because it should have been priced higher. You can't really have that discussion on a huge art forum like Wet Canvas. It would go off the rails in about 30 seconds.

So yeah, it's like that.

 

[GofD]

They are also showing work in progress and talking business and giving advice (not just complaining), and it's been difficult to do that in the large existing artist's forums without getting a lot of erroneous input from people who are not quite at their career level. It sounds exclusionary and a little pretentious, but I can see the value of it. This is their business, and they want to get feedback from their peers. Someone who has never sold a painting wouldn't really understand why someone might be complaining about selling a work for "only" $15,000 because it should have been priced higher. You can't really have that discussion on a huge art forum like Wet Canvas. It would go off the rails in about 30 seconds.

So yeah, it's like that.

Ah, I see. Good niche, and good thought process. It's a bit like an admin forum we take part in that's private - what's posted there stays there, and you don't have to weed through 1000 new posts a day from someone saying, "I want to start forum. What should it be about?" only it would be "I want to paint painting. What should it be of?" lol

Thanks for the response, and good luck to your partner!

 

[HannahP]

It's a bit like an admin forum we take part in that's private - what's posted there stays there, and you don't have to weed through 1000 new posts a day...

Yeah, exactly.

 

[GofD]

I assume it would be by invitation only. Curated membership, as it were?

 

[HannahP]

Yes. It's member recommendation or someone can apply by submitting some work images and a CV.

 

[Peggy]

Very good. Much luck to her!