14 posts tagged “work”

Abbey: Mom, I want to paint in the kitchen.

Me: Not right now, honey. Mumma just cleaned up the kitchen and I want it to stay nice at least a little while.

Abbey: But you can clean it again after I'm done painting, ok?

::headdesk::

In other news, I haven't been blogging (or even tweeting) much lately because the kids and I have all been varying degrees of sick over the past week, with Abbey having gotten it the worst. We ended up having to miss my nephew's first birthday party last weekend (and it sounds like they're all sick over there as well). I spent the rest of the week coordinating our joint-exhibit promotion with Imagekind, rolling out the new member list for EBSQ Juried Artists, and then the weekend doing a manual database audit. Fun fun fun!  So right now, I just want to revel in my fabulously clean (and paint-free) kitchen table, read my feeds, and drink a cup of cocoa. At least for a little while before I succumb to Abbey's superior powers of persuation.

Just wanted to show off the interview I did with Anne Zelenka (disclosure: she's on EBSQ's advisory board) for Web Work Daily:

http://webworkerdaily.com/2007/10/25/from-the-field-amie-gillingham/

Thanks, Anne!

Quality Control and Shipping
Originally uploaded by spreadshirt_usa

I was lucky to get a second tour of the new Spreadshirt production facility here in Greensburg, this time for the offical "Grand Opening." It was neat to be included in the list of invitees which included a very giddy Congressman Tim Murphy who confided that he used to play in a rock band that was a little folksy, a little bluegrassy, and definitely influenced by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young when asked if he was "a t-shirt guy." My first visit was, I believe, literally the first week they had moved to this location, so things were a little threadbare (no pun intended!) so it was great seeing the place alive today and full of fantastic tshirts. I hadn't really thought about it in this way before, but it was brought up that the internet has actually revolutionized manufacturing, and innovative companies like Spreadshirt are bringing jobs back to traditional manufacturing areas like Pittsburgh. Considering Pittsburgh is also a great mecca for tech and art, this is such a match made in heaven. Given the kind of operation Spreadshirt is, they could have literally been located anywhere globally (and I do believe they also have production facilities in both Germany & Poland) so we are definitely lucky to have them here.

(Can you find me in this picture? I'm standing between Spreadshirt Global CEO Janna Eggers and US Congressman Tim Murphy with the blue cardigan hoodie and the disproportionally large bag that I will never admit is actually a diaper bag. Nope.)

In case there's any doubt about who is king of search, I was just reviewing our site analytics for July

Google / organic: 62, 059

Yahoo / organic: 7,266

OY! What a difference! I can understand 2x or 3x as much traffic, but 9x?? Wow.

this has been a long hellish trip to sfo and back. we're tired, and a stupid snow storm in chicago has set us back by hours. we were supposed to be back in pgh by 8:35 eastern time and it's nearly that local time. we probably won't be home until 1am. carly is miserable. liam is touch and go at this point, and my fibromyalgia is going nuts from the lack of sleep over the past 5 days. 

So, the decision has been made to change EBSQ's legal structure from LLC to c-corp.

I'm of two minds over this. I know without a doubt it's the best thing for the growth of the company. We NEED to bring in more people since this three ring circus can't handle the workload, let alone do everything we need to do to scale and bring in new technologies. We haven't done a code overhaul since 2004, making us antiquated in tech years. The servers act like they're crawling through mud some days when we're dealing with heavy image uploads. Our site has grown so organically and with so much squeaky-wheel grease that the internal/external architecture looks and acts like a cheap addition to an old house done by shoddy contractors who double billed you. And even if we wouldn't have had the catastrophic dev server loss in 05 right before a full-site re-code relaunch, we'd still be at a point where we'd need to bring in more people. It's hard to get anything new done when I'm still bogged down doing customer service, tech support, maintenace tasks, corporate blogging, and admin stuff pretty much entirely on my own, and my two co-workers are just as bogged down doing their things. Our customers deserve so much more than we're able to give them. And if we don't want to be left behind, we simply have to evolve.

At the same time, it's terrifying. EBSQ is my baby, and I am not a trusting mama. I am someone who has been let down so many times in my life that my unofficial mantra has become, "If you want it done, you have to do it yourself, because no one else is going to do it for you." I think this mindset is both a blessing and a curse. I am very focused and passionate about what I do. But I am also overwhelmed by how much I have to do on a daily basis and none of it seems to be getting done very well. Bring full-time care of a toddler and an infant into the mix, and my days are nuts. Bill says I am a control freak. While I think that may be true on some levels, I think the root of the problem is that I have trust issues and a fear of delegation. For so long, it's been my company, my vision. What is going to happen when we bring  more people into the mix? How am I going to be able to allow them their say? How am I going to just be able to give up control? Am I ready to take that leap of faith and trust? It's going to be an interesting transition, that's for sure!

What's the first image that comes up when you Google your name?

Carlywbrahamsukiyoe_275_275

Since I'm an artist, I did a google images search to see which one of my paintings came up first. This one is a portrait I did of my sister back in 2002.

I just did a phone interview with the Irish Times for an upcoming article on art and the internet. How bloody cool is that?

I have always been a book fiend. Always. All of my birthday money, all of my allowance, was invariably spent on books. Prior to my current position with EBSQ, working at Waldenbooks back in the 90's was my dream job. Dangerous to the pocketbook, to be sure, but an awesome opportunity. In the pre-Amazon days, I could special order anything my heart desired. (yup, I told you it was dangerous!)

After I moved back to Pittsburgh from my brief stint in WA State, a shiny new Barnes & Noble opened up in Squirrel Hill, making it just walking distance from my apartment. And again, all the spare cash went to books. I consumed poetry books and literature like they were going out of style.  Even after I caught the Amazon bug, I still bought most of my books in actual bookstores, simply out of love for being in that space, feeling the energy hum of all of those books simply waiting to be picked up and consumed.

Then, my daughter was born. The books changed to tomes about parenting, breastfeeding, and the like. My book purchases were few and far between, because who the heck has the leisure to read with a newborn? Books are clunky when managing a nursling. I did still manage to read a novel or two in the tub, though. And it was around this time I also discovered a world of new, and often serial fiction, posted in people's blogs. I could read again to my heart's content since it's so much easier to NAK (nurse at the keyboard). Three years later, and I still do the bulk of my fiction reading online. But non-fiction? Oh, that's another story.

I look at the books I've bought in the past year and a half. So radically different than what I bought a decade ago! Never in a million years did I think I'd ever pick up, let alone enjoy a book like, "The Art of Project Management" by Scott Berkun, or anxiously await the arrival of the newly published, "Citizen Marketers" by Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell. My shelf is filled with books on marketing, programming, blogging, social community building while my rather expansive collection of novels, poems, art history, film studies, French grammar, playbooks,and classics grow dusty.

When the heck did I become an adult?