Roadmap 

8 creative works found

• RedBubble Post Card - The roadmap
  by RedBubble

  Hello all, Thought you might be interested in a sneak preview of what’s in the RedBubble road map for the next two to eight weeks. An…

  Hello all, Thought you might be interested in a sneak preview of what’s in the RedBubble road map for the next two to eight weeks. And a caveat to start with – things change – so please don’t take this as a rock solid guarantee. Groups First up we’re looking to introduce an early version of ‘groups’ this Thursday. The group functionality will evolve a lot over the next six months – so what you’ll see on Thursday is just the first step. Our thinking on groups is that they will allow people to immerse themselves more fully in their areas of interest. For example, we could have a landscape photography group or a street photography group. At the moment RedBubble has 15,000 members – and it can be hard to engage with a collection of 15,000 people. Groups will allow us all to engage with smaller collections of people – with a shared interest. T-shirts On 4 October we’ll switch all our t-shirt manufacturing the US (using a technology that can print white inks). We’ll also be adding a new style and new colour. Again this isn’t the final destination for t-shirts … just another small step. Tools for buyers Over the next month or two we’ll update the site to make it easier for buyers to find what they are looking for. This has yet to be finalized but could include such things as a buyer path through the site and improved search functionality. Tools for artists Over the next month or two we’ll also look to provide artists with more tools to promote their work – widgets and fingers crossed a ‘private’ version of RedBubble: e.g. peter.redbubble.com which could serve as a ‘shop front’ for any traffic I’d like to direct to RedBubble (i.e. it wouldn’t include comments, it would only include my images and wouldn’t link to the rest of RedBubble). Other new products and features Gift certificates, an updated canvas product, larger wall art products, integrating payment into the website, and a few features to encourage people to use RedBubble for their best work (e.g. an updated upload process and the studio idea that we’ve previously written about here). Competitions A competition for writers and visual artists – our writers haven’t been feeling as much love over the last little while and we want to start addressing this. And there’s probably a whole bunch of stuff I’ve forgotten about (and there’s a few things that we’re working on that are not quite ready to go in the road map) but this should give you a sense of what’s in the pipe works for the next couple of months. - Peter

• The Roadmap: Spanish Painters, German Pop Music & Iced Tea
  by RedBubble

  Every 5-ish weeks we take a bit of time out to regroup, argue talk about what we think we need to do next, what’s broken, what we dream…

  Every 5-ish weeks we take a bit of time out to regroup, argue talk about what we think we need to do next, what’s broken, what we dream of doing eventually, crazy marketing ideas, even crazier tech ideas, problems, solutions, etc. The nerds (myself included) also get a chance to tinker around with new code, do little experiments and fix things we haven’t had time for in the regular mad rush to get stuff done. At the end of this 5th week we tend to have a massive pile of things we’d love to do and a sense of which of those are most important. Pete usually thinks there’s not enough there, and the dev team usually curls up in the fetal position terrified about how much work there is. “What does this have to do with Spanish painters, german pop music or iced tea?” you ask? Each one of these 5-week cycles is named after a particular artist or creative type we like (or at least one we think is amusing), starting with “A” for Archibald and working our way through the alphabet. We recently wrapped up the Goya and Hasselhoff cycles, and we’ve just started work on Ice T. You can blame Hasselhoff on me (the pictures of the Hoff around the office were punishment enough) and Ice T on Xavier. Anyway, we recently had one of these 5th weeks to figure out what we were trying achieve with Ice T, and we think it’s either (a) a really good idea, or (b) a really crazy idea to let you all know what’s on the roadmap and what’s really important to us for the immediate future. Of course, this is not a promise that we’ll get it all done, and it certainly doesn’t mean that we’re ignoring the other million things on the list. Have patience! Without any further ramblings, in no particular order, here’s what’s up with Ice T: some more love for Groups some buyer-oriented pages and paths through the site for shoppers a whole lotta love for our fulfillment houses so that they can process, make and ship your orders faster a whole lotta love for our back-end accounting system bigger/better canvas prints posters (these look beautiful!) postcards supersized products (yup, we want big to be bigger!) measurements in both metric and imperial gift vouchers gift wrapping wishlists more currencies something other than paypal for payments a two-minute tour for new visitors some tools to help artists promote themselves elsewhere on the web tools for us admins and moderators edit/delete tools for comments planning out some super secret stuff for the “J” release a whole lot of little/boring/techy things you don’t need to hear about This list will definitely change, twist and morph, but hopefully it’s still useful for you guys to see what’s coming up, and to know we’re listening. What should we name the “J” release? We’ve had plenty of painters, musicians and questionable actors, so perhaps it’s time for a writer, or a photographer, or a sculptor, or…? — Justin

• BubbleWRAP Monday - More about Painters, Music & Tea
  by community

  Check out the latest issue of BubbleWRAP as written by YOU, to get to know your fellow Bubblers…

  Check out the latest issue of BubbleWRAP as written by YOU, to get to know your fellow Bubblers Toxteth O’Grady, Stacy Lee, Helen Sewell, Melody & Sometimes; find out what’s next on the agenda; read Pilgrim’s conceptions on the Evolution of Art; embark upon a journey with Danny in his Kathleen Interview; share some emotions with Damian in Family Bonds (Flash Fiction); find out what fuels the Scots in Ode to Porra by photogenique; or read about a Bubbler’s upcoming serial novel in Kathleen’s Wolf Hollow Interview with Kate Smith. And Don’t Forget / We want YOU – the RedBubble Community – to drive the inspiration and creative content of BubbleWRAP. We want you to share with us everything that excites your inner child or anything that inspires your creative pursuits. They can be in any form that you find them, be it images or designs, stories or interviews, poetry or tshirts, quotes or collaborations – the list is endless. We want BubbleWRAP to become a showcase of your brilliance. Send any entries (such as image and tee reviews, member interviews or inspiring stories) to: / tom@redbubble.com

• The year ahead ...
  by RedBubble

  We spent most of January catching our breath and thinking about the year ahead. We’re not entirely done with out thinking – because the …

  We spent most of January catching our breath and thinking about the year ahead. We’re not entirely done with out thinking – because the devil’s always in the details. But there are a few outcomes I’d like to share. We think we need to communicate ‘more betterer’. We’re often so busy ‘doing’ that we forget to tell you what’s going on and why we’re doing particular things. So we’ll try to be better and more regular communicators. The way we view RedBubble is that we’re in a partnership with the artists on the site. This influences every element of our thinking. And the partnership works like this – we take care of the boring back of house work to free people up to concentrate on their art / writing – and marketing themselves. We solve hard boring problems that individually are very difficult to solve (e.g. manufacturing and shipping goods around the world). But we can’t do everything. We’re a team of 16 – and we’re flat out. Over the next eighteen months we want to grow this to a team of 30 – but even then we won’t be able to do all the things we want. We want to involve you in RedBubble. For example, we’d love to be more involved in selling your work – but the reality is that out of the 16 people in the company now only one has a sales focused role. So we need your help to sell your work. And I think you’ll be far better sales people than we could ever be – but what we can do is to provide the tools / advice to make the selling process easier. This is one of the things we’ll be working on this year. Better tools and advice. Better products. Sales features. I am completely inspired by wikipedia. I’m inspired by the fact that it’s trusting and it works. And this is what I want RedBubble to be – a trusting site. Over the course of the year we want to hand over control of the site to the members of the site. Just like wikipeadia. So if you’re keen to get involved there’ll be lots of opportunities! And this trust needs to extend very deeply – this year we’re going to be very open with our thinking and internal numbers. Our view is that open communication is essential to a healthy partnership. For example, for those of you who wonder about the financial side of things – the current profit margin on the RB base price is 10%. Over the course of this year we’ll be looking to improve our logistics to increase this to 23%. With this money we need to pay all our expenses – staff salary, equipment et cetera. Here’s a quick snapshot of the RB team and our jobs (to give you a sense of what we’re all doing day-to-day) : Xavier – Website builder / Justin – Website builder and thinker / Hop – Answers e-mails and chases up orders / Bridget – Does the books / Ben – Website builder / Tom – Looks after logistics / Ed – Looks after t-shirts / Dave Cheney – Keeps the computers running / Fran – Looks after writing / John – Website builder / Jo – People stuff on the site / Dave Librach – Groups and other people related stuff on the site / Martin – Thinker / Peter – Bus driver and everything else / Grant – Website builder and seller of stuff / Paul – Makes things look beautiful Thoughts, comments, feedback all welcome. Most importantly, are we heading on the right track? Peter

• The road map for the next few months
  by RedBubble

  So, we said January is thinking month, yet here we are mid-Februa…

  So, we said January is thinking month, yet here we are mid-February and we’re still thinking quite a lot! It’s been incredibly valuable to us to take a step back, look at what we’re really trying to achieve here, and how we make all the pieces fit. The first thing I guess you need to know about RedBubble is that we have no shortage of ideas, and no shortage of suggestions from the community. It’s actually quite rare that we hear of a bad idea — most ideas are great, or as Xavier would say, winners. So when we’re faced with hundreds or thousands of great ideas, the challenge is deciding what’s going to solve the biggest problems for the most people, and making sure we stay true to The Big Plan. A huge part of The Big Plan is the buying and selling. Artists are happy when they sell their work, buyers are happy when they find something they want to buy. With this is in mind, we’re going going to be spending a lot of our time over the next few months looking at our products, as well as how they’re bought and how they’re sold. What does that mean? Hopefully that means… Revised wall art products We don’t think we’ve got the wall art stuff right yet, and this is going to change. Pete’s already previewed our plans for framed wall art with interchangeable matted prints, but this is just the tip of the iceberg — we have some top secret stuff wall art products we really hope we can get ready. Wall art needs to be big and we still haven’t been able to find a way to economically ship big wall art around the globe, so this is high on our list (still). Post cards Our greeting cards still need some attention, but we’re also really keen to do post cards and some other printed promotional stuff that helps the artist sell their work and promote themselves. Photo books Calendars were a roaring success (and they weren’t even publicly available for sale), so we’re pretty keen to get a photo book product out there for everyone to buy. More T-shirt options We’re keen to have more colors and styles available to the buyers, as well as more options for the artist (like front and back printing, shifting the print area around on the tee, etc). Better selling tools As Pete recently discussed in the year ahead, we feel we’re in a partnership with the artists, and we need their help to promote their work and sell it. So we want to give you tools to do that. Business cards and post cards will help, but so will some technical stuff like allowing you to have a more product-oriented profile page and some more widgets to embed in other websites. Personally, I’d really like to help other artists sell their stuff by promoting it, so that’s something we’re going to explore as well. Better buying tools Not everyone is a buyer, but for those who come to RedBubble (or to your profile) with cash in their hand looking to buy something, we want to make it really easy. Mooks and publications In addition to In The Moment (on sale in a few days) and our current competition Gaia, Fran is working hard to introduce more periodical publications in the form of Mooks (not a magazine, not quite a book, get it?) to get more of your fantastic writing and art published. Disclaimers and footnotes This is the big stuff that we really think will make a difference to RedBubble over the next few months, but it’s not a definitive list at all. There’s no guarantee we can get all of this done of course, and there’s obviously other things that we’ll need to take care of along the way, but everyone needs a plan and something to focus on. Hopefully you’re as excited about this stuff as we are! — Peter & Justin

• Roadmap To Loserville
  by Arletta

  There’s lines on your face, cracking at the dawn’s early light / No laugh wrinkles, just dusty gouged out trails of badness / Marking time …

  Just wrote this, because I accidentally typed in the name for the title of a painting into the name for the title of a written work, and then I had to write something to go with it. Inspiration? Lots of drunken, stupid people and their children.

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  Roadmap for Peace
  by nofrillsart

  I was initially going to use a roadmap from a part of Israel…but then I figured it would better to use Texas! Just not sure why? hmm…hehe Road map for peace The “road map” for peace is a plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict proposed by a “quartet” of international entities: the United States, the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations. The principles of the plan were first outlined by U.S. President George W. Bush in a speech on June 24, 2002, in which he called for an independent Palestinian state living side by side with Israel in peace: “The Roadmap represents a starting point toward achieving the vision of two states, a secure State of Israel and a viable, peaceful, democratic Palestine. It is the framework for progress towards lasting peace and security in the Middle East…” Definition from Wikipedia I never was any good at folding maps back up… / Now there is only 999 more cranes to make…till world peace!

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  Roadmap
  by Trish Woodford

  Abstract closeup shot of a leaf, all the connecting lines remind me of a roadmap. Taken in my backyard. / Camera – Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ30