Power Couples

I’m always excited when I hear that artists I admire are collaborating on a new project. Collaboration — in art or other ventures — lends you a perspective you can’t have on your own, and because of that it can produce some exceptionally cool results.

But just because a collaboration can produce wonderful things, it doesn’t mean the road to creation is smooth and pothole free. While I can’t help with the creative dips and bumps, I can tell you how to avoid some common collaboration conflicts and deal with the ones you can’t avoid.

Your Opinions, Please!

If you live or work in Portland, I would very much appreciate three minutes of your time.

I’m planning some business skills and negotiation classes for artists and freelancers this summer. And I want to make sure I’m creating classes that people want and will enjoy.

So I’ve created a small survey. It’s five whole questions long. Answering it doesn’t obligate you to anything and it’s totally anonymous.

The information I gather will help me plan what to teach, when to hold the classes and how to price tuition. You know, the important stuff. So if you have three minutes to spare, I would very much appreciate your help.

You can find the survey here.

In exchange for your help, I offer you this gif of Captain Picard dancing:

Thank you.

Featured image by albertogp123 via Flickr.com.

Unforeseen Events

You can plan a negotiation to the T, being careful to consider your interests and options, investing time to understand the other party and their needs, even making sure you have a few back up plans ready to go should things not work out.

You can do all of these things, and more, only to have the entire negotiation go cattywampus because of a last minute phone call or a decision by the client to “explore a different direction.”

How to Not Die From Exposure

Hopefully, by now you know that working for “exposure” is fool’s work. People die from exposure! You should only work for free if it involves your mother or a debt that is the result of a life saving organ donation (see Jessica Hische’s awesome flow chart for specifics).

But just because you know you shouldn’t work for free doesn’t mean that people will stop asking you to work for free. When you respond to these inevitable offers of blood, sweat and tears in exchange for exposure you have two basic choices:

–> Say “No” and walk away pissed that people don’t appreciate how valuable your services are; or

–> Say “No” and have it lead to paying work and that person never asking you to work for free again.

I figure you know how to do the first; this post will teach you how to do the second.

It’s Complicated

There’s been a lot of talk recently about how freelancing and independent art “should” work. From discussions about intellectual property rights, to ethical business practices, to dealing with clients who don’t pay their bills, it seems that everyone has an opinion on how it “should” be and there’s not a lot of agreement on how to get there.

These conversations are important because they have the potential to really change how freelance business works.