#weirdcanada

Wyrd Chill V1

Last Friday, we were joined by Marie LeBlanc Flanagan, Executive Director of WeirdCanada.com and Wyrd Arts Initiatives, which is a non-profit dedicated to encouraging, documenting, and connecting creative expression across Canada. She generously shared with us how she helped to revolutionized the arts and music website.

When Marie landed at Weird Canada, it was a tiny music blog with a few writers, a few posts a week, and a vision to celebrate underrepresented Canadian music. It was one blog in the sea of a million blogs.

But like so many bright ideas before, one year into its birth, Weird Canada hit a wall: energy turned into excuses, missed deadlines, and faltering morale. They weren't dying from lack of need. In fact, the DIY and emerging music community in Canada was thriving. MySpace had launched millions of tiny bedroom and garage bands out into the world, but no one was really listening.

And so there it was: a tiny blog made up of music nerds, struggling to find the energy and time at the end of a long day to write a blog post. Musicians loved it but it seemed like no one else cared. Then something funny happened.

Someone nominated Weird Canada as CBC R3’s “best music website in Canada.” They were on the end of a very long list, and stood virtually no chance against the other blogs also on the list, which included Exclaim, Joel Plaskett's blog, Matthew Goode's blog, Disorder magazine, and other Goliaths. It was a seemingly impossible challenge. So they decided to give it their all.

They reached out to every friend Weird Canada had. They said: “We want to win this thing. We don't have a chance. Will you help us?” And though all these DIY artists and communities were tiny, when banding together they turned into an unstoppable army. All these tiny communities heard the calling and they shouted back: YES.

And then something amazing happened: They won.

In that moment they realized they were at a pivotal moment: Step-up and make something happen, or step back and let the communities fracture and fragment back into geographical division.

So they started listening. They opened their doors and asked people what they wanted and what they needed, and drew an enormous map of everything that their community wanted them to be. This Marie turned into a mandate, a dream, and a list of 35 objectives.

Immediately after finalizing the objectives they got started realizing them. Marie incorporated Weird Canada as a national not-for-profit in the Fall, and have (with the support of a volunteer army) been steadily working on achieving their list of dreams.

Through their mandate, they’ve accomplished many of their goals, and below is a list of five key learnings that Marie offered on how to make your community more accessible:

Define your community and communicate your intent to be accessible Not everyone belongs in every space. This isn’t a conversation about how everyone should be everywhere all the time. What is needed is an ongoing and thoughtful conversation about inclusivity, and an awareness of community boundaries and barriers.

Identify Barriers Develop a barrier-based mentality, where you identify barriers and treat them with respect, no matter how small they look. List some things that might prevent people from getting into spaces. And if you are having a hard time with brainstorming, just look around to see who is missing.

Look for Gaps  Who is in your space? Who is not? Make a list, and then systematically go through it.  You can be certain that if there are certain demographics missing from your community, it is because there are barriers in place. You need to go to the missing people, don’t wait for them to come to you. Don’t be weird about it, just ask what they think about your space. Note: It can feel a bit scary to ask our communities the important question: “who is missing, here?” People will get defensive and angry, no matter how you ask them. The anger is a good thing. It means you are poking in the right direction.

Communicate your intent to be accessible Tell people what you are doing. This will open you up to all kinds of criticism. Other people will notice your mistakes. This is a good thing.

I was thinking about MySpace yesterday and what I would do if I was given the opportunity to rejuvenate it (as a thought experiment). It's easy to point out the failings in an idea, but nontrivial to actually fix one. So, here is my idea:

Buy Bandcamp. Don't replace it. Continue running it as it is. Now, for every Bandcamp user, MySpace exists as a social layer (with music powered by Bandcamp). You register for Bandcamp, upload your songs, and the Bandcamp experience remains the same. However, you now also have a MySpace page, where you can get in touch with other artists, network, book shows, discover, etc. In the past, this was the only useful part of MySpace from an artist perspective.

Next, harmonize data between MySpace and Bandcamp and build a very powerful recommendation and discovery engine using Bandcamp's transactional data and MySpace's artist-artist graph. This recommendation engine can be used to power discovery on Bandcamp and MySpace, making the non-artist user experience great on both sites.

This marriage would infuse MySpace with artists while giving Bandcamp artists the feature artists most desperately need: social connectivity.

Bandcamp is a really great service. We don't need or want to replace it. They've got a clean and minimal interface, support payments, and do well for artists and users. However, they don't have a social component and, as of the last time I checked, do not plan on it. For those that remember what being in an indie band (or fan of indie music) was like when MySpace was around, it was very amazing. Sure, the UI sucked, but the amount of tours and connections made through that platform was marvellous. Powered by the simple Friends, Favourites, and Wall comments, MySpace was a simple-to-use discovery paradise. And now that social cohesion is gone.

Through Weird Canada, which existed during and after MySpace's domination, I experienced the shift in social cohesion first-hand. I've seen the decline in shows and networking as bands have greater difficulty discovering bands in other cities. We desperately need a social network geared towards artists and sometimes I wonder if the time when MySpace did just that is gone. But then again, Bandcamp adoption is quite high, so perhaps there's a hope!

PS - you may ask: why not SoundCloud? I love SoundCloud (both as a user and as an engineer). However, it's a large product with a (unique) social layer that misses some of the key needs of traditional "bands." It could work, though, but Bandcamp's simplicity and focus on the traditional artist->album->track model makes it an easier platform to integrate with (IMO).

Photo by Preacher Katie

Cityscape :: Victoria 

The backbeat of dark cobblestoned alleyways, the rugged shorelines of the mystic Pacific, the raindrops of 1862’s history, and the musical heterogeneity in the city’s nooks and crannies are a few of the reasons why Victoria is a poetic city. In an afternoon you can wander the dramatic and spacious streets, venture in and out of art galleries, thrift and record stores, cafes and venues, all while eating a fresh, caught-that-day fish taco. Youthful spirits and old souls of all sorts paint the rhythmic mountainous spaces. With the same entertainment of a metropolis, this little harbour city is accessible on foot or bike. You cannot resist Victoria’s small town community vibe, and will bump into someone you know, whether you want to or not! Listen to Darth Vader play violin, watch a man draw 18th century murals with sidewalk chalk, spark up a conversation with a stranger, try on costumes, or just simply throw bread at the seagulls; anything goes in Victoria. It’s a city that doesn't discriminate, and there is something for everyone.