Scaling the Deviants

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We find that its hard for the community here at deviantART to really grasp the idea that we're a technology company. It just doesn't seem like it does it? Deviants everywhere emerce themselves in this super creative and interactive environment filled with other creative and interesting people. Millions of people, connected by art.

Technology company? What's a technology company?

Well, it means that we spend considerable time in window-less gray rooms filled with no art, looking at blinking lights. Biometric hand scanners, metal servers, microchips & RAM. Slackware & Linux distributions coupled with mysql hacks and we find ourselves in the best of spirits when we figure out how to cache something in a more efficient manner.

There are many artists on staff; especially in volunteer positions like most of Artist Relations & Community Development. But the majority of day in and day out employees of deviantART are primarily engineers/programmers/CSS type people.

I'd have to say that the most fascinating aspects of deviantART for me sit right between the creative community and the hardcore tech. Crafting technology that impacts the social aspects of the community. It's a social science if you will, and the focus is on creating environments here at deviantART that are not only fun for you to use but also valuable to you as an artist.

Another way to look at it; there are millions of artists here, there are thousands of interest to you, there are hundreds who can impact your art career, there are a few that could change your life. And if we don't do this job right, you'll be lucky to find even one of them.

During the deviantART v4 launch we introduced Chat & the Gallery pages/navigation, and we relaunched the message center. These changes were a step in the right direction, but only represent approximately a third of the elements needed to truly scale this online society.

The most important elements remain. Another third is a system entirely unique to deviantART and is currently being tested with the name "GROUPS" - the final name is not GROUPS. So many other sites out there talk about groups, tribes, clubs, cliques, you name it just about every synonym to "GROUPS" in the thesaurus has been used in a super lame attempt to bring people together in an online setting.

The only one that scales well on a social level is Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and projects that embrace its basic concepts.

After intense study, even an initial failed attempt at design implementation, I'm happy to announce that we have in fact figured out just how to do this right for deviantART. The project enters the Creative implementation stages within the coming weeks. Technical implementation to follow, and launch would be in the near future.

Do you like journal entries like these? I'll talk about the other third of the social scaling solution in my next journal if you comment on this one.


Blings

• NINJAM is released under the GNU General Public License,  because "things this cool need to be free."
  
  
  • The official tribute page for Erika is now up and running.  (Aka strivingtoexist ) Please read my journal about Erika and leave a comment on her official page. Her story is not one we should forget as a community.
    
    
    • I beat SuperC on the original 8-Bit Nintendo for fun about an hour ago, took about 15 minutes. I do that once in a while just to remember the "good ol' days." I can beat the original Zelda in about 2 hours from scratch so I do that once every couple of years too. Just to keep my skills sharp.
      
      
      • Head over to Diary of a Broken Jaw and check out the hell Derek (apartialfragment) went through with his surgery. Derek eats babies.