Earlier quoted context omitted.
So doubling or tripling everyone's salaries, making workweeks 4 days of 6 hours each, and firing all business and management majors and replacing them with engineers is not the path to a successful company?
it worked for Google....
So You Want to Open a Small Press Bookstore/Artist-Run Space? A Cautionary Tale
111–120 of 251 posts
Re: So You Want to Open a Small Press Bookstore/Artist-Run Space? A Cautionary Tale
#112A recent experience from a hackerspace showed me how incredibly thankless people can be. After working really insanely hard to build an inclusive space with loads of features, every little hobby revolutionary in the community just shits all over the work and proclaims the people actually getting stuff done should just stop and leave it to them. Even if I had the time, money and expertise I would never do something li…
Thank you for sharing your experience. I've been chewing on an idea. Please bear with me. A friend's MBA thesis (WIP) is on the business model of evangelical churches. How the players build their flock, manage the brand, shape the culture, revenue, run their meetings, etc. Kinda eye opening. I'm even going to church again, a new one every few weeks. To gleen the strategies and techniques that have been hiding in plai…
Your friend's thesis sounds very interesting. Does your friend run any sort of blog or post publicly? I'd be interested in seeing their work.
Re: So You Want to Open a Small Press Bookstore/Artist-Run Space? A Cautionary Tale
#113> Then, a few months later, you wake up to the headline that 36 people died at Ghost Ship, an artist collective in Oakland, CA. When it’s all said and done, it won’t be the landlord, but the leaseholders, Derick Almena and Max Harris, who’ll be charged with manslaughter and face up to 39 years in prison. That's a big problem right there (all the bureaucracy that has creeped up for having a space or shop etc, a lot of…
That is exactly how it works now. You don't get convicted of manslaughter because someone died in your shop, you get convicted because you were grossly negligent in preventing someone dying in your shop. If the place was inspected regularly, and was as it should be (fire extinguishers etc), then they won't be convicted. And typically, prosecutors won't charge them unless they are confident of a conviction.
Re: So You Want to Open a Small Press Bookstore/Artist-Run Space? A Cautionary Tale
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Even if I had the time, money and expertise I would never do something like that. Invite only spaces. New members have mentors who are responsible for them. Anyone can be expelled for any reason at any time. It's amazing how much the tone changes when someone is on the line for breaking a 10k machine and having to pay for everyone else using an equivalent machine commercially while they get it fixed.
> New members have mentors who are responsible for them. Does that imply that if you vouch for a new member that you are also expelled if they are or share the cost of their fuckups?
lobste.rs does something similar:
Invite only. But any member can hand out invites.
If there's a trend however that you invite the wrong persons I think you can get banned or punished somehow yourself. Edit, exact rules: """There's no limit on how many invitations a user can send (though that might be prompted by scaling problems in the future). When accounts are banned for spam, sockpuppeting, or other abuse, moderators will look up the invitation tree to consider disabling their inviter's ability to send invitations or, rarely, also banning. """
Also there is a public list tree on the site of who invited who: https://lobste.rs/u
Re: So You Want to Open a Small Press Bookstore/Artist-Run Space? A Cautionary Tale
#115A recent experience from a hackerspace showed me how incredibly thankless people can be. After working really insanely hard to build an inclusive space with loads of features, every little hobby revolutionary in the community just shits all over the work and proclaims the people actually getting stuff done should just stop and leave it to them. Even if I had the time, money and expertise I would never do something li…
Thank you for sharing your experience. I've been chewing on an idea. Please bear with me. A friend's MBA thesis (WIP) is on the business model of evangelical churches. How the players build their flock, manage the brand, shape the culture, revenue, run their meetings, etc. Kinda eye opening. I'm even going to church again, a new one every few weeks. To gleen the strategies and techniques that have been hiding in plai…
I’d also be interested in your friend’s work.
Re: So You Want to Open a Small Press Bookstore/Artist-Run Space? A Cautionary Tale
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
So how do coffee shops like Starbucks mange to support 20 working part time plus a corporate headquarters and make a profit, from the same small store you would operate as a hobby?
While I can't speak to Starbucks, a similar coffee chain in Australia is actually a property play. They don't just own their cafe, but also several of the adjacent stores as well, which they lease out to other retailers. Much of the value in the business actually comes from appreciation in property values.
I heard Starbucks is closing down in New Zealand due to lack of profit. But we have ridiculously good independent coffee shops, often run as "labours of love" or wishful thinking as per the article.
Re: So You Want to Open a Small Press Bookstore/Artist-Run Space? A Cautionary Tale
#117A recent experience from a hackerspace showed me how incredibly thankless people can be. After working really insanely hard to build an inclusive space with loads of features, every little hobby revolutionary in the community just shits all over the work and proclaims the people actually getting stuff done should just stop and leave it to them. Even if I had the time, money and expertise I would never do something li…
> A recent experience from a hackerspace showed me how incredibly thankless people can be. After working really insanely hard to build an inclusive space with loads of features, every little hobby revolutionary in the community just shits all over the work and proclaims the people actually getting stuff done should just stop and leave it to them. They are clueless. It's like when developers on HN share all their idea…
I'd be more interested on the "why being a manager". Considering how shitty the atmosphere seems, I wonder why people want to be managers at all...
Re: So You Want to Open a Small Press Bookstore/Artist-Run Space? A Cautionary Tale
#118A recent experience from a hackerspace showed me how incredibly thankless people can be. After working really insanely hard to build an inclusive space with loads of features, every little hobby revolutionary in the community just shits all over the work and proclaims the people actually getting stuff done should just stop and leave it to them. Even if I had the time, money and expertise I would never do something li…
Thank you for sharing your experience. I've been chewing on an idea. Please bear with me. A friend's MBA thesis (WIP) is on the business model of evangelical churches. How the players build their flock, manage the brand, shape the culture, revenue, run their meetings, etc. Kinda eye opening. I'm even going to church again, a new one every few weeks. To gleen the strategies and techniques that have been hiding in plai…
>>> The Field of Dreams "Buit it and they will come" strategy doesn't work.
could you elaborate on "why" ?
Re: So You Want to Open a Small Press Bookstore/Artist-Run Space? A Cautionary Tale
#119Interesting writeup, but the Ghost Ship is an extreme example of what goes wrong - you couldn't make a place more of a fire hazard if you tried.
Actually I think the interior looked really awesome. Nonetheless some more thinking should have been put to a scenario in case a fire starts. But still I think the problem is that modern media coverage causes every hazard to be a reason to implement even more rules and regulations for how a building or room has to be designed to be fit for a public event. That's another reason why those non- or semi-professional happ…
The Ghost Ship didn't have smoke detectors, a fire alarm, or emergency lighting. It did have blocked staircases and cluttered pathways, and the available staircase was fairly flammable. It had people warning about some of these problems; they were ignored.
It looks cool/arty, and OK to wander through in an afternoon, but it also looks like the last place I'd expect to find a party.
The closest place I can think of for a similar labyrinth of clutter is Camden Stables Market in London [0][1]. But it's a daytime clothing, art and antiques market, not an event space. You can see the green emergency exit signs in some of the photos; doors have notices things like "This door to be open during trading hours".
For your tradeoff, how low do you propose we go?
[0] Camden Town has several markets. If you've been, this is the one you're least likely to have visited, and it's furthest from the station.
[1] https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/camden-lock-stables-market...
Re: So You Want to Open a Small Press Bookstore/Artist-Run Space? A Cautionary Tale
#120I was the owner of a retail store from '90 to '00. The ecomm version overlapped from '97 to 2007. Given that experience, I read this thinking: This person(s) was massively underprepared, as well as underfunded. They also seemed to believe that all their options (in growing the biz) were too difficult. Marketing was rarely mentioned. I don't want to be negative but there are two life rules (not just biz) that apply he…
I'd say their only problem was : underfunded. All others problems becomes much more easy when you're funded (they say it in the article I think).
(and that's why, imho, if you have nobody to give (yep, "give") you the amount of money you need, you'll never ever make it; that's a very unequal world...)