TEST Meetup Summary

Last Saturday the team held a discussion meetup and we chatted about lot's of different things... here's a little summary of those chats.

The number one topic on the agenda was our Spring Show. June 1st was decided as the date (all depending on securing a location) We threw around ideas for location with the Brickworks being the most popular choice. We'd love to get the beautiful space for a number or reasons. More space, more vendors and the inclusion of our Vintage members and more space per booth. We are also looking to get the shoppers more involved, with vendor workshops during the show. Either vendors selling, or members just looking to teach a workshop during the show. We did also discuss the idea of a pop up, either in the East End (Danforth) or along Dundas West, both having the space and eager landlords. Perhaps we'll save the pop up for the Holiday show!

Emma has been researching some funding for the team, city arts grants, etsy fellowships etc, so we can make our shows even more fantastic, and secure even more workshops. We're reviewing the applications, if you have any suggestions let us know!

Kevin is doing some updates to the app to make it even more awesome! We'll let you know when that's all ready to roll out.

We chatted quite a bit about workshops, we want to do MORE, we love the idea of our members sharing their talents. If you're interested in leading a workshop let us know, we have the next 3 lined up (Bookbinding with Sprouts Press in March, Candice of candiware - polymer clay mini food this summer and Nicole of spontaneousreality - Eco-dying in the fall) If you know of a venue that would house our workshops, let us know as well. We're always looking for great spots to meetup.

Candace (Candiware) offered to do up a photoshop tutorial for the blog, tips and tricks for your product shots. Stay tuned for that one later this spring. We're continuing to improve the blog, including adding a contact page, so you'll know who to contact for what! Got suggestions.... let us know.

Our next team event will be the bookbinding workshop with Carolyn. We'll let you know the details as soon as we have them all! Hope to see you there ;}

Toronto Etsy Street Team meet-up

The last TEST meet-up of 2012 that took place on October 19 had a great turnout and was terrific in terms of information-sharing  and engaged discussion.

More frequent meet-ups in 2013:

There will be more opportunities to meet face-to-face next year, as the meet-ups are set to happen monthly, with a rotating schedule of weekday/weekend and day/evening meeting times around the third week of each month. Hopefully, this will give all our team members the chance to attend a few meet-ups that fit their schedule best! 

The suggestion to alternate discussion, social, and workshop meetings, as well as holding a Spring and a Winter TEST craft shows was also enthusiastically greeted. Keep your eyes open for announcements of meeting dates and topics starting in January 2013.

Some of the workshop ideas which we discussed are:

photography (Nada is working on a photography workshop for Etsy Canada)
SEO (search engine optimization and how to get noticed on-line)
Getting noticed in Etsy Browse
Tips for participating in craft/art/vintage shows
Accounting/small business information
Work/life balance
Carolyn of SproutsPressDesigns volunteered to run a bookbiding workshop!

Have more suggestions? Let us know below!

Team tag:

The official tag of the TEST team is "Toronto team". Adding this tag to your Etsy listings helps us promote each other by making it easier to find team members' products and shops for treasuries, referrals, etc. 

An additional advantage of using the "Toronto team" tag is that people searching for "Toronto" as a keyword will also find your listings, as individual words within tags are searchable on Etsy.

Mobile payment solutions:

There was a lot of information sharing around seller experiences with mobile payment solutions, such as Square, Kudos, Payd, and others. A blog post detailing all of these is coming soon!  For now, you can refer to the TEST team forum on Etsy, as there are at least two discussion threads with recommendations on this topic.

Team showcase widget:

Kevin of BetaRays has created a great tool to help us showcase the team's products in one place. It is a widget you can add to your website or blog that loads a random selection of products from the TEST members' shops.  You can see it in action below, as well as on this blog's new TEST Team Showcase! page.

The random selection of products is a fun way to browse team member's shops, put together treasuries, and stumble upon surprising new creations by TEST sellers. To quote Michelle from Thunderpeep: "It's like a loot bag!".

You can get the code needed to add the TEST Team Showcase to your own blog on Kevin's site here: http://kmbray.com/etsy-team-showcase/ 

TESTy Showcase



Other topics
We also discussed funding opportunities for committee-based arts organizations, like the TEST Handmade segment of our team. We would love to hear any ideas about increasing participation amongst our almost 500 member strong team. Last, but not least, we highlighted the opportunities for members to volunteer for the team. Would you also like to be a team Leader? Blog or tweet for the team? Post to our Facebook pages? Participate on the team's pinterest? Help organize shows or events? Let us know!

By Natalie from fragmentalist with additional information from Ele from minouette

Etsy meet-up

Nada the Canadian Etsy admin hosted her first official Etsy meet-up at Oz Studios, at Ossington and Dundas, last Friday night. The evening included a panel of speakers: Arounna from bookhouathome, Sarah from thehouseofhemp and T.E.S.T.'s own Alison of gracedesign with Q&A, food and drink, DJs and photographers in the crowd. It was great to see a large turn out from TEST and meet many other lovely local sellers. It was a fun night and we're looking forward to more Official Etsy events in Toronto in the future.

If you were just introduced to TEST at the event, welcome to our blog! You can find us in the forums and we'll try to process applications as soon as we can.

Look for more on this event on the Etsy blog soon, including some familiar TESTy faces!