ABOUT THE DIY BUSINESS ASSOCIATION The DIY Business Association empowers, educates, and connects creative small businesses and self-employed/freelancers to help them grow their businesses—because it takes a community to do it yourself. Hatched in late 2010, the DIY Business Association is growing exactly as it should—DIY-style. The options are endless for the future of the DIYT (do-it-yourself-together) community. The Brooklyn DIYBA Conference is the kickoff event. In addition to follow-up events for the rest of 2011 in New York, in 2012, the DIYBA plans to organize a tour of events in Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, Austin, and Boston. After that, who knows: A video or radio series? A TV show? A book series? Why not? Thank you for attending the very first DIY Business Association Conference. We look forward to hearing your feedback and suggestions. We couldn’t do this without you. With respect, Amy Schroeder [email protected] DIYBA.ORG 1 CREDITS DIY BUSINESS ASSOCIATION FOUNDER AND CEO AMY SCHROEDER founded Venus Zine and venuszine.com in her Michigan State University dorm room at age 19. After about a decade of growing the publication from a cut-and-paste fanzine into an internationally circulated magazine with a starting budget of zero, she sold the company to an independent Chicago publisher and moved to New York. For her first year and a half in New York, she worked for inkpop.com and Girl Scouts of the USA. She now works full time for the DIY Business Association, organizing conferences and consulting with creatives to grow their businesses. Schroeder writes a column about entrepreneurship for Splashlife.com and is working on a book about creative entrepreneurs’ success stories. O B F Christen Carter, Founder, Busy Beaver Buttons O A A R Sue Daly, Co-Founder, Renegade Craft Fair D D V Mauricio Garcia, Fellowship Program Manager, the Financial Clinic I SERS Jenny Hart, Founder, Sublime Stitching Samara Kaufman, Business Process Improvement Manager, Girl Scouts of the USA Dixie Laite, Senior Editorial Director, TeenNick Maile Ohye, Google Search Engineer Julie Showers, Independent Web designer Laura Strom, Freelance designer for Travel + Leisure Andrew Wagner, Editor-in-Chief, ReadyMade N Katie Frichtel + Troy Farmer, Program Designers (Raven + Crow Studio, ravenandcrowstudio.com) Y REW Martin Cuevas, Associate Coordinator C Stefanie Nieves, Associate Coordinator (The Petite Soiree Events, thepetitesoiree.com) ROOKL Lesley Ware, Blogger (thecreativecookie.net) B Niema Jordan, Blogger (niemajordan.com) ERENCE F Stephanie Tardy Duimstra, Sponsorship Sales (yourphantomlimb.com/) ON Audrey Seilheimer, Sponsorship Sales (audreyeditor.wordpress.com) C C Sarah Barrett, elemental-interiors.com ON Amber Drea, Writer, newyorkdrinkie.com F ERENCE Jeb Gleason-Allured Anjali Goyal, Graduate student Frieda Klotz, Journalist, friedaklotz.com V OLUNTEERS Laura Leebove, Production Editor, eMusic B Jen Ng, Jill-of-all-trades ROOKL Kirstyn Soles, Content manager, alloymarketing.com Marti Trgovich, Copy editor, Health.com Y Original DIYBA logo design by Mat Daly Erin Wengrovius, Graphic designer/art director, BUST N Cover photo and conference logo design, Raven + Crow Studio 1 SPONSORS W I TH ROASTING COMPANY TH A NKS 2 3 ABOUT THE PANELISTS 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 BeSocialChange.com, curator of BeSocialChange Digest NYC, owner of the New York City clothing business 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, Managing Director at New York Tech Meetup, is a columnist, blogger, nonprofit leader, Seth Godin MBA recipient, Regret Me Not Creator, ROWE warrior, and event curator. She is an expert on co-working spaces and the future of the self-employed economy. BEST THING I’VE DONE FOR MY CAREER SO Far: Decision #1: I decided to start living in the “now” instead of the “when.” I used to put off doing things I was truly passionate about or learning something that satisfied my curiosity because I always had some excuse that I was too busy with work. I would say, “I’ll start taking ballet again when this project gets done,” or “I’ll read that book when work gets less crazy.” Well, guess what? Things never got less busy. One project was just replaced by another one, and I never did the things I said were important to me. When I started replacing “when” with “now,” life started to get even better. Decision #2: I decided that my brain is precious real estate. Eighty perfect of my brain used to be taken up thinking about crap on a daily basis that I wasn’t actually that passionate about. What a waste. I decided to start filling my life and mind with things that actually mattered to me. Decision #3: I decided to write down my own fears. We often walk around with these nebulous fears in our heads that make us feel like doing something (like quitting our jobs to start our own company) is going to have disastrous consequences. When you write it down, the fear that has been masquerading as a lion usually turns into a kitten. 2 3 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. BEST THING I’VE DONE FOR MY CAREER SO Far: If waking up every day to the struggles of anxiety and insecurity is what keeps me innovative and productive, then rejection was the best thing that happened to me early on in my graphic-novel career. See, I had pipe dreams of becoming a penciler for The Fantastic Four, and I wanted to be the next Jack Kirby. Alas, I wasn’t good enough and, despite my unyielding commitment to create stories, failure forced me to think different, strive harder, and, ultimately, manifest a unique sensibility to brand and barter with. After he proved himself on Daredevil, it was Frank Miller’s vision that sold Batman and that profound success gave him latitude to create the hard-boiled Sin City series, the histrionic 300, and more. Miller’s bold tactics influenced me to take risks and collaborate on semi-autobiographical fare with Harvey Pekar, Jonathan Ames, and Inverna Lockpez, while writing my own semi-auto-bio Street Code, and psychotronic Billy Dogma, sans apology and permission. These days, I get hired by franchise publishers to create mythology for their heroes while drawing for high-profile television shows and develop original content for other print and digital media. I’ve finally come to a crossroad where people are getting unexpurgated Dean Haspiel. 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. In 2010, Amber turned insomnia into a social movement when she co-founded late-night co-working 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. 4 5 As the Editorial Director for Yoxi (pronounced “yo-see”), JOSHUA FISCHER specializes in storytelling, content strategy, 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.