You may have noticed our sites were down for around 30 minutes from 6:15 to 6:45PM EST time. There was a slight misconfiguration while we changed settings to make our sites more stable and secure. So ironically, the changes to make the sites stay up, made the sites go down. We have taken the necessary steps to ensure this does not happen again. We can also assure you that nothing was lost and that the sites are now, in fact, more stable and secure than ever before.

We wanted to provide an updated list of the select retail stores that Behance has partnered with across the US.  These retails partners are the first to carry the Action Method product line.

Austin, TX: Spartan

Berkeley, CA: Twig & Fig
Boston, MA: Institute of Contemporary Art

Boulder, CO: two hands paperie

Brooklyn, NY: Exit 9

Chicago, IL: Museum of Contemporary Art

Lakewood, CO: Composition

Lakewood, CO: Red Rocks CC Bookstore

Los Angeles, CA: Pulp/Illiterature

Minneapolis, MN: Walker Art Center Shop

New York, NY: A.I. Friedman

New York, NY:  Environment 337

New York, NY: MXYPLYZYK

New York, NY: New York Central Art Supply

New York, NY: Paper Presentation Center

New York, NY: Reed Space

New York, NY: Therapie
Philadelphia, PA: WEJETSET

Philadelphia, PA: AIA Bookstore & Design Center

Pittsburgh, PA: MoreThanWords

Portland, OR: Writer's Bloc

San Francisco, CA: Museum of Modern Art

Sante Fe, NM: Design Warehouse

Seattle, WA: Peter Miller Architecture & Design Books

Westport, CT: Presentation

Chichester, UK: Strawberry & Cream

Melbourne, Australia:  The Source

Montreal, Canada: Papeterie Nota Bene

South Korea: HiPag International

Taipei, Taiwan: W Design Store

Toronto, Canada: Laywine's Pens & Organizers

We also have an online retail collaboration with YouWorkForThem and Organize.com.

We're thrilled to be one of the sponsors of the PSFK Conference in San Francisco.  After a morning of trends & inspiration and an afternoon of creative ideas, come join us at Otis Bar on July 17th from 7 - 10 PM.  We'll have DJ Spinnerty playing the latest tracks and Gawker will be picking up the bar tab.  So come join us for a night of creativity and revelry!  RSVP here.

Behance was pleased to throw a party for New York's Internet Week - gathering leaders in the creativity community together for a good cause. Attendees were encouraged to bring their idealism, and leave behind Action Steps with resources, connections, and next steps to help three non-profits make their ideas happen. The featured non-profits at the event were City Year, StartingBloc, and Sustainable South Bronx. Check out the photos by Behance Network member Rachel Feierman.

The event was co-sponsored with our friends at AllDayBuffet.

Whether you're a designer, economist, brand strategist, copywriter or ball juggler; we're always on the lookout for talent.  Behance is a start-up and we believe we're in the first inning with many more exciting things to come in the future.  We're currently hiring freelance writers, online ad sales associate, junior web developer, and interns.  If you have a strong passion for creativity, productivity, and making ideas happen, please visit www.behance.com/Talent to apply!

Behance founder Scott Belsky presented "Tips for Making Ideas Happen" at this year's HOW Design Conference in Boston, MA. Over 4000 people attended the conference this year. The session included a selection of tips from Behance's 200+ interviews of creative teams (many of which are profiled on BehanceMag.com) as well as the methodologies developed by the Behance team. We have come across an early blog review of the session as well as a few blogger recaps here and here.

Behance's research on how the most productive creative teams operate is the featured cover story in the June 2008 issue of HOW Design Magazine, one of the biggest design industry magazines in the US.

The story covers a list of the "obstacles" observed by the Behance Team as well as eight tips that all creative teams should consider adopting...

One of the Behance Network's most important features is each person's "inner circle." Your inner circle is a collection of your colleagues and people you know and/or respect.

Every time you publish a new project or join a new group, your inner circle is notified. This becomes a powerful way to get feedback and disseminate your latest work.

BUT, WE CAN RUN INTO A FEW PROBLEMS WITH INNER CIRCLES:

(1) If you join the inner circle for people you don't know, then you will get lots of notifications that you don't care about. Messages from your inner circle will start to look like "spam" unless you curate your inner circle CAREFULLY. Inner circles were designed to be small and important...

(2) If you like someone's work, just ADD THEM TO YOUR WATCHLIST (in "Tools" within each project). At Behance, we refuse over 90% of inner circle invitations. But we have huge watchlists of members we love to watch...

(3) If you send too many messages to your inner circle, they may leave you! We encourage you to use your inner circle wisely (just like you would use your close network of peers in the real world).

INNER CIRCLE MAINTENANCE

Want to better manage your inner circle? Maybe you should CLEAN IT UP! Here is how you review, remove people, and edit your inner circle:

(1) Go to "Circles" and select "My Circles." Then select the Top Circle in "My Circles" - your Inner Circle.

(2) Select "Edit Circle"

(3) Select "Participants."  Click "remove" next to anyone that you wish to remove from your inner circle (don't worry, they won't get a message). You can also use this space to add any members that you know well or truly respect.

We came across a little story in Behance Network member Adriana de Barros' visual journal today. She explains that she has been meeting many new artists in the network and received an invite from painter Simon M. Smith for input on a special project: 

"This is something I’ve never done before: seek ideas, input, intervention in one of my paintings. If anyone out there is interested in taking my existing image and interfering with it in some way, and then conveying the results back to me, I’d be very pleased to hear from them. (…) I’m particularly interested in what those of you working outside the realm of painting might make of it."

What follows is Adriana's fascinating journey to interpret his work through an entirely different artistic medium and vision. We encourage you to check out her story at "Interpreting the Abstract."

Also, the original painting work, as well as Adriana's interpretation, is posted in Simon's portfolio as a project title "Collaborative Invitation."

(co) Simon M. Smith