KmikeyM

Stock: Dinner = Art + Money
July 26th, Sunday 6-9 pm
Gallery Homeland (2505 SE 11th Ave)

Stock is a monthly public dinner event and presentation series which funds small to medium-sized artist projects. Hosted at Gallery Homeland, diners pay a modest $10 for a meal of homemade soup and other local delicacies and the chance to take part in deciding which artist proposal will receive the evening's proceeds. In other words, the dinner's profits immediately become an artists grant, which is awarded according to the choice of the diners. Winning artists will present their completed work at the following Stock dinner.

Stock is inspired by InCubate's Sunday Soup granting program in Chicago and its offshoots in Brooklyn, Grand Rapids, Mexico City, Newcastle, and Houston. Organizers Katy Asher, Ariana Jacob and Amber Bell are interested in the participatory and democratic aspects of the Sunday Soup model and its potential to encourage support for artist projects in Portland.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS:

Submit proposal before July 20th to be considered for the first granting session. Each month the first 15 completed proposals will vie for Stock's dinner grant. One proposal per artist per month please.

To learn more or submit a proposal email visit http://portlandstock.blogspot.com/

The problem of incredibly valuable things is that you never to get to see them. Even when they are on display, like the Mona Lisa, the demand is so high that you can't end up actually getting a good luck at it. The problem is either things are too popular or too rare. AsI look at the trading activity of KmikeyM.com, I suspect there is a liquidity problem. With only about 1500 stocks on the KmikeyM.com market, the problem is scarcity, and that leads to bad things.

From The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson:

When Charlemagne was crowned Imperator Augustus in 800, there was a chronic shortage of silver in Western Europe. Demand for money was greater in the much more developed commercial centres of the Islamic Empire that dominated the southern Mediterranean and the Near East, so that precious metal tended to drain away from backward Europe. So rare was the denarius in Charlemagne's time that twenty-four of them sufficed to buy a Carolingian cow. In some parts of Europe, peppers and squirrel skins served as substitutes for currency; in others pecunia came to mean land rather than money. This was a problem that Europeans sought to overcome in one of two ways. They could export labour and goods, exchanging slaves and timber for silver in Baghdad or for African gold in Cordoba and Cairo. Or they could plunder precious metal by making war on the Muslim world. The Crusades, like the conquests that followed, were as much about overcoming Europe's monetary shortage as about converting heathens to Christianity.

With about 1500 shares on the market today, we're seeing an average of one share traded every two days. While I'm sure it won't exactly double the rate, I do believe that doubling the number of shares would vastly increase the volume of trading. In order to double the number of shares KmikeyM.com would need to auction off another 1500 or so shares.

The first auction was done in December of 2008 and was a test of the auction system with just 300 shares put up. The next auction was expected to happen near the time of Annual Shareholder Weekend (May 17th, 2009), but was postponed as management wanted to present a better financial picture to the shareholders. As we begin to see the close of the second quarter of 2009 it seems that the time is right for a new auction, and we'll soon be proposing a auction of nearly 1500 shares.

I'm writing about this now in order to address any concerns shareholders might have and to begin the planning of the next auction. Certainly releasing 1500 shares into the market will likely lower the current price of shares, but this is an expected result that will happen every time we issue new shares into the hands of the shareholders.

The other concern is that 1500 new shares on the market will dramatically shift the power centers of KmikeyM.com. The leaderboard shows the top five shareholders currently control 815 shares. With this auction we are likely to see the leaderboard shift. And of course, this auction would put more money into the KmikeyM.com projects.

When shareholders buy shares of KmikeyM.com, they are buying those shares from other shareholders. I only put shares out on the market at specified times.

With the deposits of shareholder funds, I am essentially running a bank (in addition to a public company and a market). Two shareholders could agree to exchange money completely within this system. For example, someone might buy a CD from States Rights Records, and just transfer the money from their account to his account.

The system does not currently support automated transfers from one account to another, but I could facilitate an exchange like this.

By holding funds, and being able to credit from one account and debit to another, I am only missing the ability make loans in order to truly become a bank (The ELP allows me to loan money to myself under certain conditions). It's my impression that the shareholders don't want me loaning money as a general policy.

However, I believe that loans within the context of the system might be a resolution that could be passed. That is, loaning shareholders in good standing the funds to buy more shares. With PayPal fees taking $0.59 out of a $10.00 deposit (2.9% + $0.30), a loan from the bank would be a cheaper way to quickly gain access to funds to secure a trade and could still return an investment to KmikeyM.com. By only loaning to shareholders in good standing, there is likely the collateral of their shares should they default on a loan.

During the auction there is a sort of de-facto loan program in place as KmikeyM.com works to collect the money and distribute shares to the highest bidders. A formal loan program would allow that system to benefit the majority of shareholders if a person was late in making their payment, while still honoring the agreement of their bid.

I'd be interested in any feedback people have about this idea.

I'll be in San Franciso next week for WWDC. If anyone would like to meet up for coffee or lunch let me know.

My guest post for WalletPop.com is up. It's titled The Human I.P.O.: How to be rich, How To Be Rich, and it ties into the Money Blog project.

(it also got mentioned on Huff Post!)

The Month of May, 2009

I kept various stats for the month of May in order to try to establish some metrics for success.

Stock Price

Clearly stock price is my primary measure of success. I took the last trade of the day as the final price, so this graph avoids some of the wild jumps of the graph on KmikeyM.com.

The all time average of the stock price is $2.46. For May 2009 it was $2.41. There was only one shareholder vote in May (on the 1st), which was approved. There are a few ways to interpret the results. While overall the average for the month was below the overall average, the price is currently higher than the average. Additionally, the month ended with a stock price higher than when the month started.

Performance of Stock Price Metric: ***/of 5

Flickr Views

Part of being successful with KmikeyM is marketing. By using the alias KmikeyM in many places, people get to know me and the KmikeyM project. Many of the social network sites track stats, allowing another measurement of influence.

There are natural dips on weekends, but with an average of 327 views a day, most of my days are not successful. The peaks were caused by other people mentioning the photo on Twitter and are somewhat outside of my control. I tend to post in bursts, and I wonder if a more measured upload pace would smooth out the graph. I love that I'm averaging 327 a day, but I am not satisfied that most days fall below that.

Performance of Flickr Metric: **/of 5

Vimeo Views

Vimeo also gives you stats, and my stats for Vimeo are low, but I have not uploaded much there either. And the new project, Money Blog, is being posed on YouTube as it is a commercial enterprise.

While my daily views has been low, the average of 17 gives me a reasonable goal.

Performance of Vimeo Metric: */of 5

Twitter

As the Hot New Thing, twitter stats are pretty interesting. I currently have multiple twitter accounts, making collecting the data a little more difficult. What I've chosen to focus on is number of new followers as well as tweets via my KmikeyM user account.

With so many accounts, the primary account tends to not get a lot of attention. And I found that when I had my twitter tied to my FaceBook account I didn't want to update it as much. By divorcing those into separate things, I hope to up my amount of Twittering.

Performance of Twitter Metric: **/of 5

New Followers is interesting because it represents potential new shareholders. However, the data is somewhat misleading as there is a steady stream of low-quality accounts.

Performance of New Followers Metric: ***/of 5

Tumblr

Tumblr does a pretty good job of tracking your effectiveness in using the site, which they equate to your "Tumblarity". I am at 15 (my group tumblr, 2020, has a 23). Rather than reproduce their stats, I chose to just look at my output for May.

It's pretty easy to see where the weekends are. Looking at this it seems like four a day is probably the right level. I use Tumblr has a mini-library for interesting things that I want to share (as opposed to delicious.com, which isn't used for sharing). I would hope that followers of my Tumblr would potentially convert to shareholders, but my expectation is that is would be less so than Flickr or Vimeo. Looking back over my tumblr, I'm pretty happy with it.

Performance of Vimeo Metric: ***/of 5

KmikeyM Blog

An area that seems to get almost neglected is this very blog. I only made five posts in the last month (though I do think they are high quality), or 0.16 posts per month.

While I am posting content all over the internet, this blog is likely the primary method of creating new shareholders, and it's important to not neglect this space. At the same time, long posts like this are not as easily read as a Twitter post, a Tumblr entry, or a Flickr update.

Performance of Vimeo Metric: **/of 5

Overall I'm displeased with my performance as measured by these metrics. May was a very productive month for me, and I'm working on a new Productivity Journal that I think will give a better measure of my progress.

I'd love to know what anyone else thinks about my performance or other metrics I should consider.

Katy Asher gave a talk on her MFA thesis exhibition. The exhibition is titled, BOX SET: THE M.O.S.T. REMASTERED, and is a presentation of the history of the four person arts collective, the M.O.S.T. She has been researching the ways in which creative groups work. Not the work they create, but the way they work internally.

She showed some of the things she had discovered, like Mark Elliott's Stigmergic Collaboration (PDF), where he breaks down a Generalized Framework for Collective Activity:

Katy explained that in Coordination you are leading a group to achieve a pre-established goal. In Cooperation you are working with a group to achieve an agreed upon goal. And in Collaboration you are a member of a group working to create a goal. (I am paraphrasing and likely ruining her more elegant concept here, I only noted the above image in my notes.)

There was a quote, I think attributed to HAHA, that said

Collaboration dislocates work from a focus on the artists identity as the basis for its interpretation, and becomes a means of research, a way to see, interpret, and affect the world.

And then my favorite slide was the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Modes chart:

The design of the chart implies that the best resolution is Compromising, but Katy preferred Collaborating, and it would seem to be the "best" of the chart in that it is the farthest from the bottom. It also got me thinking about UHAC, which exists to promote Competing.

Looking back, I believe I generally default to Coordination rather than Cooperation or Collaboration. But the times I've collaborated have perhaps created better outcomes.

Everyone should go see the exhibit:

Autzen Gallery
724 SW Harrison Street
Neuberger Hall, 2nd Floor, rm 205
Katy Asher - Box Set: The M.O.S.T. Remastered
Exhibition Dates: May 18 - 29, 2009
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 29, 2009 | 6-9 pm

Please join Urban Honking and the shareholders of KmikeyM.com for the first UHAC Softball event of 2009!

This Sunday, May 17th at Peninsula Park (700 N Rosa Parks Way).

Details are here.

This is from last year:

Portland Sportsman is a new voice of independent sporting culture in the urban crown jewel of Cascadia. KmikeyM.com owns a 50% stake in Portland Sportsman along with co-founder Zach Dundas.

The initial cost for Portland Sportsman was $60.00 USD for the Proximity theme plus hosting. The installation of the site and design was done by Curt Merrill on spec. The site started on March 19th with an epic Timbers post by Zach Dundas, The Town Team: The Timbers, Portland, The Future.

Stats
Posts: 47
Comments: 68
Contributors: 7

Currently the costs of Portland Sportsman are the initial set up costs ($60) and the monthly hosting ($10). The single revenue source we have at this time is AdSense, which has brought in $3.34.

The success criteria of Portland Sportsman is to create a self-sustaining site. This includes not only covering the hosting fees but also offering compensation for the contributors as well as future technical support and design work. The estimate is that monthly revenue should be $125/month.

This is not likely to happen based only on AdSense, and Portland Sportsman will likely have to find additional revenue opportunities, possibly local sponsors.

What is the current value of Portland Sportsman?

That is difficult to determine. Various sites attempt to value sites based on PageRank, inbound links, and other metrics valued by SEO experts. In these cases the value ranges between $9 and $602 (young sites don't tend to score well). It looks like dnscoop.com is a somewhat reliable site and it suggests $309.

Been thinking about chess.

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 d5 3. exd5 Qxd5 4. Nc3 Qc5 5. Bb5+ Bd7 6. d4 exd4 7. Nxd4 Bxb5 8. Ndxb5 a6 9. Nd4 Nf6 10. O-O Be7 11. Nb3 Qf5 12. Re1 Nc6 13. Nd4 Nxd4 14. Qxd4 Kf8 15. Bf4 Rd8 16. Qc4 c5 17. Qe2 Re8 18. Be5 Rd8 19. Bg3 Re8 20. Rad1 Kg8 21. Qxe7 h6 22. Qxb7 Rxe1+ 23. Rxe1 Qxc2 24. Be5 Ne8 25. Nd5 Qa4 26. Bc3 c4 27. Qe7 Nd6 28. Nf6+ gxf6 29. Qxf6 Rh7 30. Qd8+ Qe8 31. Rxe8+ Nxe8 32. Qxe8# 1-0

KmikeyM.com is an organization that completes projects. The parameters of each project vary which makes it difficult to pin down what exactly KmikeyM.com does. This is only a problem when it comes to communicating to people, and attempting to recruit new shareholders. It does not affect the progress of projects, and therefore KmikeyM.com management has decided that this is a "Secondary Issue" and the solution is more work and higher profile projects.

While I generally agree with management, I find it the difficulty of explaining KmikeyM.com frustrating. I was looking at the simple website of Christopher Griffin and I was jealous at his ability to summarize his work with the title, Interface Designer.

Within the upper levels of management there is a conflict between those that feel KmikeyM.com should embrace the title of Artist and those that feel that the Artist label weakens the impact of the work we do. Management is happy to do work that is artistic and to display work in an art setting, but some feel art can be seen as "fake" and easily dismissed, especially within the murkiness of "social practice". For example, if the market is positioned as art, then it ceases to become a real commercial enterprise, and exists only as some expression of imagination, no more consequential than the Linden currency of Second Life. (Additionally there is the classificatory dispute about what is and what is not art, a subject I enjoy discussing, but management finds excruciatingly dull.)

Some solutions that I see include defining the KmikeyM.com project primarily as the market, or limiting the projects that KmikeyM.com works on in order to better define the work we do, or fully embracing the Artist label. As KmikeyM.com approaches the 2nd Annual Shareholders Meeting, these are some of the issues we're hoping that management will agree deserve to be raised to Primary Issues.