"Do you want to collab?"

 

When I was younger and posting my art online on platforms such as DeviantArt, the way that people would ask to collaborate with you was by asking "collab?".  Collab is obviously short for "collaboration" and it's probably the most important thing you'll do within your journey as a connected professional building your connected learning community.

Maintain Your Relationships

Relationships matter, no matter what career field you're in, but it's especially true as a freelancer. Your relationships with not only clients, but your fellow artists and your following is your career's life force. Does that mean you have to be friends? Absolutely not. It'd be absurd to ask someone working an office job to befriend every single colleague and coworker. Everywhere you'll find people you like and that like you, or people you don't like and don't like you-- that's human interactions. The key point is to be professional to everyone.

Collab?

If you were posting your art online as a teenager,
do you remember these prompts?

As mentioned in my anecdote at the top, collaboration is the most important action you can take. Humans were built to collaborate. As an artist, I have to collaborate with a lot of other people-- whether that be asking my friends for feedback on a piece, working with an online mutual on an art piece, or working as a professional in a team environment. 

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

In a lot of working environments, you need to be open to other people's needs and a lot of advice will tell you that that needs to be the case all the time. Personally, I think that's not entirely constructive. Sometimes you have to have boundaries and protect yourself. The reason I think this is because in my experience as an freelance artist, you deal with a lot of people and knowing where to say "No" is just as important as being collaborative.

As I say in all my posts, how you build your communities is what works best for you and what gives you the best milage. The above is just my experience. Happy community building!

Thank you for reading,

Shaun DiGiovanni

For more context, please read my previous blog posts about this topic:

The Connected Professional • Building a Connected Learning Community 

The Tools of a (Connected) Professional