Expressive Connections

Top 10 :: December 10, 2006

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

At Expressive Connections, we want to make sure our members are recognized for their talents – that’s why we’ll be showcasing their best works right here. Each week or so, we’ll choose our favorite submissions and let you know why we think they deserve the spotlight. (P.S. There aren’t 10 winners right now because we didn’t want to pick ourselves for everything.)

The First Written Work
This is another work chosen because it is an example of what one of your submissions might look like. This work also introduces you to Textile, a markup language we like to use around here to style our textual submissions.
More Than I Bargained For
I chose this one because it made me realize that we may need a new category of works specifically for songwriters and lyrics. Thanks for the inspiration, AJ!
Top 10 Winner
Yep, it’s another fake one. What can I say, I guess none of us are really writers.
Coming Soon to Expressive Connections
This winner discusses the features coming soon to our site! What do you think?
Sign Up!
Just a little something about the perks of joining – clearly Top 10 worthy.
The Birds

Here’s a winner from me, not because I like myself so much – but because it’ll give you a good idea of how the Top 10 works.
Cameron

Typically, all images would be intertwined with textual winners, however do to some server difficulties they now have to sit here at the end of the list.

I chose this work by AJ because, well he had said it was his favorite and I could see why. Well done, man.

Well, there it is – our first, semi-official Top 10 Post. Hope this gave you a better idea of what we have to offer here at Expressive Connections. Check back soon!

Featured Member :: January 07, 2007

Sun, 07 Jan 2007 23:48:50 -0600

One of the perks of becoming a member of Expressive Connections is that it gives you a chance to get your work out there for the world to see. What better way to become noticed then to become a featured member on our Home Page! What does it take to be selected as the featured member? Well, technically nothing on your part besides creating an account and posting some of your work. Every so often, the Expressive Connections team will confer and decide on a new featured member that gets showcased on our Home Page.

AJ Gorczyca

Name: AJ Gorczyca
Location: Chicago, IL
Description/Objective: I am a graduate from Michigan State University (in Computer Science) and co-designer of this site. Even though I have always loved and enjoyed art and poetry as a hobby, I have never had a chance to display my work for anyone other than close friends and family. This is my chance to put some of my work out there for others to see and hopefully you enjoy it! Besides drawing, I also love to write poetry and songs. Music is my passion, I have been playing guitar for over eight years and I recently started to pick up drums. Now that I have an acoustic guitar, I am also trying to work on a voice so I can sing the songs that I write. I hope to eventually have more than just lyrics...but I haven't seemed to be able to get the music to go well with my words. You can check out my writings to see some of the song lyrics I am currently working on.

What type of criteria are we looking for when choosing a featured member? Well, to be completely honest, that will vary depending on the situation. Maybe we see someone who has a lot of unique artwork that we feel is deserving of some recognition. Or possibly, there was a recent member who this site helped aim in the right direction and might now have a received a job offer or awarded recognition elsewhere. Maybe it is as simple as our recognition of your creativity and talent and we want others to be able to appreciate as well. We’re not expert artists or writers, but we know good when we see it. Maybe it will be you up here next time!

Co-creator Andrew Gorczyca is our first choice for Featured Member at Expressive Connections. He learned of his ability to draw in a high school art class. Ever since, he has been drawing as a hobby whenever the chance is present, but if you ask him, this is not nearly often enough. His favorite medium to use is pencil, either black & white or colored, and he prefers drawing people, especially portraits. It was his idea to create a site where the casual or professional artist/writer would be able to post their work and have peers and others enjoy what they have created. This vision is the reason that Andrew is the current featured member of Expressive Connections!

The EC Blog :: The Launch

Mon, 11 Dec 2006 10:08:17 -0600

The Launch

It’s finally here! Launch time…the moment of truth. Can a small group of three college students pull off a web site built in only one semester that will be used by a world-wide network of artists and writers? Well, we’ll let you answer that question.

Expressive Connections was an idea that came out of a Telecommunications class assignment at Michigan State University. Our final class project basically boiled down to the phrase “build me a web site”. Although this doesn’t get in the way of creativity, anyone knows that given no guidelines to follow, coming up with a suitable solution is not always the easiest thing in the world – but hey, it’s more fun that way. Being the ambitious youngsters that we are, we wanted to create something that would be used beyond the scope of the class and for more than just a grade – something that people could actually use and enjoy.

This was a lofty goal indeed, however it didn’t get us any closer to an actual solution for the project. As young adults, we’re always being told to dream big – so that’s what we did. Since I have always been sort of a lazy artist (only working on my projects when I have the free time, which isn’t that often) I have always wanted to be able to show more people what I have done. I guess you could say that this is where the idea for Expressive Connections began. So, my selfish goal to show the world my own artwork may, in fact, now turn out to work in the favor of many other closet-artists and writers just like myself.

I would like to conclude by saying that we believe this class project was indeed a huge success and that hopefully many of you can be benefited by what we’re offering as well. All I can vouch for is that we, as a group, extremely enjoyed working together and constructing this site. We hope that you will find it useful and enjoyable. If you have any problems, concerns, ideas, or compliments – please don’t hesitate to contact us with your comment. Thanks for stopping by and please come again soon.

The EC Blog :: Alpha Launch - Welcome, Friends!

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 13:33:31 -0600

Alpha Launch - Welcome, Friends!

Well it’s official, Expressive Connections is now open to the public. The site is in a sort of alpha-mode right now. We think it’s got a pretty solid start – which is why we’re inviting you to take a look around, create an account and let us know what you think – if you’d use it, or what features you’d like to see added, etc. It’s still got some kinks and we’re working things out here and there. But we’ve got big plans.

Expressive Connections started out as a group project for class. Well once again, AJ and I have found ourselves in the same course (this time entailing Ruby on Rails, MySQL, Apache, and other things of the “Web 2.0” nature) Just like the last course we took together, this one has a group project – that is to develop a web site utilizing the ideas and languages learned in class. Since Expressive Connections already fits into these project requirements, we decided to ask the professor, Kurt Demaagd, if we could continue building onto the project rather than start again from scratch. He agreed and so you can expect to see a lot of new features and changes. Here’s what we’re aiming for:

On-site private messaging
Member endorsements and letters of recommendation
Ability to watch favorite users, see who other users are watching, and see who is watching you
User-submitted audio and video content for portfolios!

Right now, we’re aiming our services at artists and writers. But we’re a network for creative professionals, right? Well, what kind of network for creative professionals would we be if we left out musicians, producers, actors, directors, and everyone in between. So, we’re not going to leave you out.

This is where we stand and these are our plans for the next semester. I think you’ll see some exciting changes along the way. And, hopefully you’ll help us, too – by checking it out, creating a profile, or spreading the word around to others who may be interested.

It’s a work in progress and we want you all to help us in building the most exciting site we can, so any feedback you give would be greatly appreciated.

The EC Blog :: New Feature Specs

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 16:25:09 -0500

New Feature Specs

AJ and I just met for lunch to talk about some of the details of our upcoming features.

Here’s the summary:

1. On-site Messaging

Basic 1-to-1 messaging system
Read, Send, Delete
Inbox & Sentbox
Read, unread, and replied statuses

2. Networks (Yay!)

3 Things:

People I know.
People I’m watching.
People watching me.

3. Groups

User-constructed and controlled
Open or Private

4. OpenID

That’s all for now, check back soon!

Featured Member :: May 01, 2007

Tue, 01 May 2007 10:38:14 -0500

Our newest Featured Member is Jake from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Jake’s been a member for less than a week, but already, he’s been our biggest contributer.

Jake

Name: Jake
Location: Eau Claire, WI
Description/Objective: I am a Philosophy student at UW-Eau Claire but in my free time I like to enjoy Web 2.0 applications and creating a web identity for myself. I use Netvibes, Thinkfree, Google Web Photos, Wesabe, and a bunch of social networking sites. I find this all really fun and exciting. Along with that, I adore music--listening and playing. I also like to read about anarchism, continental philosophy, and FLOSS/Tech.

Jake has already uploaded several beautiful photographs, as well as a few philosophical poems (of which, the Nietzchian one is my favorite!), and has also posted some very good ideas for the site on the blog and in our new Suggestions Forum.

For his immediate and substantial participation, we’re naming him our latest Featured Member. :)