DIY Business Association

Meet some of the panelists who will inspire with killer advice and expertise for creative small businesses and freelancers

By Amy Schroeder

The first Brooklyn DIY Business Association Conference is an incubator for the DIYT (do-it-yourself-together) crowd.

The one-day event is a talent show for productivity, a swap meet for arty types, a crucial meeting of the minds, a think tank for the Creative New Economy. Scheduled for Saturday, June 25, Sunday, June 26, the conference will take place at DUMBO Loft and Etsy Labs.

Rumored to be one of the least boring conferences of the summer, you can score updates and registration details here on diyba.org and Twitter at @diybusiness.

ABOUT THE FIRST BROOKLYN CONFERENCE

When attendees apply for the DIYBA Conference, they will answer questions that illustrate their skill sets, goals, and what they need help with. Conference administrators will carefully curate attendees’ experiences, teaming them up with fellow attendees and professional consultants who will provide connections, networking opportunities, and feedback. The application process is not meant to be exclusive—instead, it’s intended to ensure attendees obtain valuable resources and walk away with next steps to grow their businesses and freelance careers. Some may even start thriving businesses together!

The Brooklyn Conference will connect these communities:

• Visual Artisans: The Etsy community, crafters, painters, etc.

• The Music Industry: Musicians, producers, publicists, record-label owners, music publishers, recording engineers, booking agents, managers

• Communicators: Freelance writers and journalists, editors, graphic designers, videographers, filmmakers, content producers and strategists, social-networking gurus

• Internet Gurus: Web designers, web developers, e-book and e-newsletter developers

• Support Professionals: Lawyers, business consultants, accountants, bookkeepers

• Individuals and companies seeking mad talent from all of these communities.

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ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

The Art and Craft of Commerce

• Susan Gregg Koger is the Chief Creative Officer and Co-Founder of ModCloth (http://www.modcloth.com), the online retailer selling independent designer fashion and decor with a highly engaged following of millions of female shoppers. Gregg Koger started ModCloth when she was just 17, taking her love of thrifting to start an online business. ModCloth was operated out of dorm rooms and basements for four years, and after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University in 2006, Gregg Koger and husband/co-founder Eric Koger decided to expand by selling vintage-inspired clothing from talented indie designers around the world. Today ModCloth has grown into a thriving business of more than 230 employees, and the company has since gained attention for its dedication to customer engagement on the site, as well as for being a vanguard in the social-media sphere. Their goal is to democratize fashion and build a social-shopping community that empowers both indie designers and customers. Koger was recognized by Inc. magazine as the “#2 Top Entrepreneur under 30” and named to BusinessWeek’s 2010 list of the “Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs.” Koger is living her dream, and now she has made it her mission to build a community that allows her customers to do the same.

• Kimm Alfonso, Events Coordinator, Etsy.com

• Danielle Maveal, Etsy’s Education Coordinator, works to help artists, crafters, and makers earn a creative living selling their work. She shares tips on Etsy’s blog, in Etsy Success (a biweekly newsletter), and hosts live workshops through Etsy’s online classrooms. Maveal started making and selling her etched jewelry on Etsy in 2007 and has sold more than 1,000 unique pieces. Since then she’s been featured in magazines and shopping blogs, and her work has been carried by more than 50 galleries and boutiques worldwide. Her focus is to encourage, motivate, and educate crafters running their own small, independent businesses.

• Lauryn Ballesteros is a partnership and special-sales ninja and works as the head of sales for Seth Godin’s The Domino Project, working with cutting-edge companies to help them use books as an effective marketing tool. You can find more of Ballesteros here and here. She started her first company almost two years ago in real estate where she had the chance to work with gurus Paul Esajian and Than Merrill from Flip This House in San Diego.

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The New Music Industry

• Molly Neuman began her career in music as a founding member of feminist punk band Bratmobile and continued on into nearly every job imaginable from there—from label owner, to artist manager to label relations executive for a digital retailer. In short, she’s nearly done it all in the music industry. Now she’s added natural-foods chef and nutritional consultant to her résumé and hopes to connect all these dots into a scalable health and wellness program for young women and artists. She’s the owner of Simple Social Kitchen and Simple Social Graces Discos and is Senior Director of Label and Artist Relations at eMusic.com. Follow Neuman on Twitter @simplesocial.

• Chris Kaskie, President of Pitchfork, Pitchfork TV, and Altered Zones.

• Gregory Jackson rocked many concert halls as touring bassist for Burning Spear a.k.a. Winston Rodney, in addition to performance and writing credits with the Brit, Mercury, and Amy Winehouse. He has a Source Magazine award nomination for best remix, through his work with Dead Prez featuring Jay-Z. Originally from Yorktown Heights, New York, he was classically trained on the bass violin by Dr. Arthur Davis. Jackson toured and recorded with the Westchester, New York State, and Toronto Youth Symphonies. He earned his BA and MPA degrees from Lafayette College and Rutgers University. Jackson’s experiences include extensive world tours, major festivals, and broadcast appearances across cities in North and South America, Africa, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Jackson’s performance, recording and writing credits include Erykah Badu, Amy Winehouse, Simply Red, Leela James, Joss Stone, Wild Cookie, Jeru, Midnite, David Banner, Dead Prez, and Snoop Dogg.

• Todd P.

Moderator: Evie Nagy has been at Billboard since 2006, where she was first an intern and then associate editor for the print magazine before becoming the editor of Billboard Pro. With an interest in the developing sector of the music business, she started a series of artist-focused How To’s for the magazine, which offered advice from industry leaders and innovative DIY musicians. A former university administrator and speechwriter, she has a master’s degree from NYU’s Cultural Reporting and Criticism program, and was secretly once in a girl group. She has written about music, comic books and culture for a variety of publications, and her writing was published in Best Music Writing 2010. She also co-wrote the afterword for a new anthology of rock writing by the late Ellen Willis, the first pop music critic for the New Yorker.

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DIY Content Strategy

• Mary S. Butler is a Senior Content Strategist for Razorfish, one of the world’s largest interactive agencies. She is the content-strategy lead for consumer automotive site-content requirements and oversees a team of content strategists and content-strategy deliverables across project lifecycles. Butler collaborates with other discipline leads on social-media content strategy, consumer lifecycle strategy, user experience, and user research to create engaging consumer-focused experiences that surpass user expectations and align with business objectives. “While it is relatively easy to create a Twitter profile and a Facebook page, creating content that will engage your audience and achieve your business objectives is more difficult,” Butler says, discussing her thoughts about planning the panel. “Without the money to hire a content strategist, copy writer, and social media specialist, what should DIYers do?” In short, Butler will provide examples of ways that creative small businesses and freelancers can maximize their budgets with engaging content.

• Ryan J. Davis writes and video-blogs about politics and entertainment for The Huffington Post, and is a political pundit on The Hill. By day, he works as the Social Media Director for Blue State Digital, a full-service digital agency that develops engagement campaigns for advocacy campaigns; clients include American Red Cross, HBO, NAACP, National Geographic, and Vogue.

• Scott Lindenbaum is the Co-Publisher and Editor of Electric Literature, a quarterly anthology of top-notch short stories, delivered in every viable medium. Electric Literature uses new media and innovative distribution to return the short story to a place of prominence in popular culture. Lindenbaum’s roots are unconventional in the field of publishing; for almost 10 years, he was a half-pipe snowboard competitor who rode for Burton. It was only after a near-fatal collision with a birch tree in 2001 that reading, writing, and editing became central in his life. In 2010, Lindenbaum was included in L Magazine’s “Young New Yorkers Who Are Better Than You.”

Moderator: Dixie Laite, the Senior Editorial Director for MTV Networks’ TeenNick, has been working in (and watching way too much) television for over 20 years. Laite has put the “broad” in broadcasting for a host of TV and Web brands, including PBS, Oxygen, Oprah, AMC, WE, the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, and Nickelodeon’s digital channels for teens and preschoolers. She works with producers, marketers, and writers on branding, scripts, promo copy, and the occasional song. (Laite created, and wrote most of the songs for, popular animated hosts Moose A. Moose and Zee.) Laite also works as an editorial and social media marketing consultant.

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Gurus of Communication and Content

• Grace Bonney founded Design*Sponge, the daily blog dedicated to design, in 2004. In 2007, Bonney founded the Design*Sponge Scholarship and the Biz Ladies series to support design students and women running their own design-based businesses. In fall 2011, Bonney will publish her first book, Design*Sponge at Home (Artisan Books), a 400-page guide to homes, do-it-yourself projects, furniture makeovers, and floral design. Follow Grace Bonney on Twitter: @designsponge

• Jessica Delfino is a controversial singer, songwriter, and comedian. She has been featured in many publications, including the New York Times, Time Out New York, The New York Daily News, New York Magazine, JANE Magazine, and The Guardian. She has won numerous awards, including beating out Flight of the Conchords to win a Best Musical Comedy Act ECNY award, and a Village Voice “Best of” Award, in which the Village Voice declared her to be “fall-off-your-chair hilarious,” as well as the Arlene’s Grocery “Gong Show,” which later became The Gong Show with Dave Attell on Comedy Central. She has appeared on Good Morning America as a finalist in a national comedy competition, on The Russell Brand Radio Show, Red Eye With Greg Gutfeld, and more. Coincidentally, she’s been publicly denounced by the U.S. Catholic League for some of her viral videos, alongside other performers, such as Bill Maher, Marilyn Manson, and Sarah Silverman. You can find Delfino playing the guitar, the ukulele, and sometimes, the rape whistle, regularly around New York. On July 8, she will perform in the Funny Girls on Film Festival in SoHo. For more info, visit JessicaDelfino.com. Follow Delfino on Twitter.

• Caroline Suh is a New York–based documentary director-producer. Her first independent feature film, Frontrunners, was released theatrically in 2008 by Oscilloscope Productions (with a premiere at the New Yorker Festival and Film Forum), aired on the Sundance Channel in fall 2010, and was featured in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, and Newsweek. She also has produced numerous films and television documentaries for the History Channel (10 Days That Changed America: Antietam), Trio (Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven’s Gate), A&E, and PBS. Most recently, she was the series producer for Sundance Channel’s Iconoclasts, for which she has produced six episodes, overseeing the fifth anniversary season.

• Justin Bilicki is the 2000 winner of the prestigious Locher Award, and his cartoons have appeared on the cover of Congressional Quarterly and inside The Los Angeles Times, amNewYork, Metro, New York Press, San Francisco Examiner, Cincinnati Enquirer, New York Press, and hundreds of other publications you’ve never heard of. In addition to editorial, he has illustrated advertisements for Citibank, Absolut Vodka, Snapple, DSW, TBS, and Toyota. He also teaches summer journalism workshop on editorial cartooning at Michigan State University.

• Jenn Pelly, the conference’s youngest panelist, is a New York-based writer, blogger, and DJ. A student at NYU, she hosts the “New Afternoon Show” on WNYU 89.1 FM, contributes to the Pitchfork site Altered Zones, and books DIY shows in Brooklyn and beyond. Her writing has been published online by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, SPIN, and the Village Voice, and in print by Nylon, the Long Island Press, and more. Jenn and her twin sister, Liz, blog about music and DIY culture at Pellytwins.blogspot.com. Her most played track on iTunes is “One More Hour” by Sleater-Kinney.

• Photographer Seth Kushner has been freelancing since graduating from School of Visual Arts, and his work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Time, Newsweek, Businessweek, L’Uomo Vogue, the New Yorker, and others. Kushner was chosen by Photo District News magazine as one of its “30 under 30” and is twice-winner of their Photo Annual Competition. Kushner’s first book, The Brooklynites, published by powerHouse Books in 2007, was considered a “terrific coffee-table book” by the New York Times. Kushner is working on his Web series CulturePOP Photocomix, mixing his photography with a comic book-type format on ACT-I-VATE.com, and on his next book, Leaping Tall Buildings: The History of American Comic Books.

Moderator: Shaina Feinberg is a jill-of-all-trades. She works as a contributor to This American Life, collaborator with comedian Dave Hill, freelance editor for the New York Observer, a writing and life coach, and inventor of hyper-crafting.

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Creating a New Way of Work: How to Embrace, Empower, and Maximize Your Creativity

• In typical Millennial fashion, Marcos Salazar is a renaissance worker who wears many hats. By day, Salazar is a leadership researcher and technology integrator for Girl Scouts of the USA. By night he is the co-founder of www.BeSocialChange.com, curator of BeSocialChange Digest NYC, owner of the New York City clothing business www.BoroThreads.com, author of two books, a speaker on the psychology of life after college, Gen Y, and Millennial topics, and an elected official in the state of New York. Salazar is working on a new book about the psychology of social entrepreneurship and Millennials.

• Jessica H. Lawrence is a columnist, blogger, nonprofit leader, Seth Godin MBA recipient, Regret Me Not Creator, ROWE warrior, event curator. She is an expert on co-working spaces and the future of the self-employed economy.

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Increase Your Income: How to get paid what you’re worth, how to tap into funds that you don’t even know exist, and practical ways to earn extra income

• Emmy award-winning artist Dean Haspiel is a native New Yorker who created the Eisner Award nominated Billy Dogma, the semi-autobiographical Street Code, and helped pioneer personal webcomics with the invention of ACT-I-VATE. Haspiel has drawn many great superhero and semi-autobiographical comic books published by Marvel, DC/Vertigo, Dark Horse, Image, Scholastic, Toon Books, Top Shelf, and the New York Times, including collaborations with Harvey Pekar, Jonathan Ames, and Inverna Lockpez, and illustrates for HBO’s Bored To Death.

• Amber Rae is a starter of meaningful things who lives for inspiring people to chase what makes them feel alive. She accidentally started a ‘Passion Experiment’ business in April 2011 when she decided to turn her love for challenging people to get outside their comfort zone into a four-week program. When she’s not helping people get unstuck, Rae is the chief evangelist of Seth Godin’s Domino Project, a new publishing venture powered by Amazon. She also created revolution.is, a site that curates weekly stories of change-makers and culture-shapers who take initiative and trust their gut to create revolutions in their work. Last year, Amber turned insomnia into a social movement when she co-founded late-night coworking group NY Nightowls, which is active in 14 countries and 30 cities. Rae has appeared in the New York Times, ABC World News, Forbes, on the BBC, and at TEDxCMU, where she spoke about the art of being unreasonable and how to astray from traditional cultural expectations.

• As the Editorial Director for Yoxi (pronounced “yo-see”), Joshua Fischer specializes in storytelling, content strategy, and idea and concept development. Yoxi is a creative competition to discover big ideas and bright stars to solve social problems; the winning team scores start-up funds, mentorship, and connections to put their idea to action. Fischer first got a taste for social innovation at the global digital agency Razorfish where he helped create two pro-bono projects for TED, the “nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading.” His work for the rebrand of the Razorfish company site was featured on the cover of Communication Arts magazine and received a 2009 HOW Interactive Design Award. Having served as a Senior Writer for a variety of leading creative agencies, Fischer has crafted digital experiences and ideas for Microsoft, Hulu, and Universal Music, among many others. He has also acted as a Senior Writing consultant at 19 Entertainment, the company known for creating American Idol. Fischer has a master’s in journalism from NYU’s Cultural Reporting and Criticism program, and his music and cultural writing has appeared in publications such as Salon, Nylon, and Zink.

Moderator: Mauricio Garcia is the Fellowship Program Manager at The Financial Clinic, an organization focused on building the financial security of working poor families and individuals. A native Detroiter and corporate convert, he has been involved in the New York nonprofit community for more than five years, providing program development, grants administration, and financial-management services for the likes of Business Outreach Center Network, LISC, and The Financial Clinic.