I just have to make a short and giddy post. First off: We have some incredible people making Enfuse grow across the board. In a post that now seems a lifetime ago, I had mentioned that we'd had some difficulty keeping the Culture section vibrant - and in that post I discussed some reasons why I thought that was. We made some changes to the organization of the section and the proof is in the pudding. The Culture section is now so vibrant that I just had to modify the home page and the Culture index to give readers better access to new stuff.

Articles were getting posted so fast that they were displacing one another from view and getting buried before they got due traction. So, take a quick look and if you like what you see, thank the editors:

We've had trouble over the years with the Culture section. It was a section that burned editors up. Somebody would step in and crank out a ton of work, but there was just too much to stay on top of. We have always known that the content model for the culture section was challenging in comparison to Features - because features are a vehicle of promotion for the artist while reviews, columns, etc... are more of a writing exercise. So, good content is difficult to get for free. Thus, we're still looking at payment models for our culture content contributors including gift certificates from retailers (in exchange for advertising) and payment for syndication to branded sites...

But, there has been a larger issue that we just hadn't identified. Culture is a broad subject. An editor might have a strong sense of the music scene, or literature, or film... but trying to stay on top of all those areas of interest, that's just not realistic.

So, a couple months ago... as a result of a comment made by an outgoing editor - we decided to rework it. We broke the section up into "Topics" managed by (you guessed it) "Topic Managers" who focused on specific areas. We threw away the concept of an overarching culture editor all together, and instead focused on building strong topics and integrating the topics with their corresponding feature sections. So - Music Reviews worked closely with Music Features, Books with Literature. The result has been incredibly positive. We've gone from struggling to get a single new review per month to publishing 3 - 5 reviews per topic per month. We've even added topics that we didn't have before - such as Restaurant Reviews, Fashion and Design and have true "Columns".

Who do we have to thank for this:

• Laura Olson - Books
• Nathan Olson - Music
• Shawn Stufflebeam - Columns
• Mark Flanagan - Design
• Jessica Cox - Fashion

Why? The reason, I think, can be attributed to a few things.

1. People get overwhelmed when there's too much choice and too much to do.
2. Focusing on what you care about is fulfilling, everything else is work.
3. Poorly defined expectations and open-ended forums don't offer direction. Clear definitions help people focus.

All that said, we are now considering bringing on a new editor to bring the topic managers together. Hopefully, the role of Culture Editor will seem more manageable under the new model. Stay tuned for details on who our new Culture Editor will be...

Met with Ray Sumner, Program Director at Westwood College regarding a Fashion internship. We had a great discussion outside the scope of internships as well.

We spoke about the future of Enfuse as a onestop shop for art related business networking and information. He truly seemed sincere when he expressed his interest in our model. As with others, he was quick to ask where our money was coming from, but he also believed there was a future in both cobranding and in network targeted reference ads. We even discussed the idea of bringing academic and industry leaders onto a board of directors to ensure that we continue to understand the industry we serve... that it doesn't just become a technical exercies in feature buildout.

We also discussed publishing faculty as a mutually beneficial content / portfolio building collaboration. I'd really like to follow-up on that. They have many design, fashion and gaming faculty that could probably submit some very good articles on theory if not business.

Finally, regarding internships, it does seem that this is a great networking opportunity for students. Much better than working as a cashier for a boutique... it gives them a real opportunity to get inside the business, talk to owners of boutiques, designers, etc... in a capacity they would not have access to through other channels.

It looks like we should definately explore gaming too, perhaps even technology infrastructure as a way to fine tune FFMPEG.