My friend Dale and I started a skateboarding media project a few years ago called “the Small Arts.” The idea was to explore, feature, and enjoy what I have now come to call “skateboarding at the human scale.”

Bank skating, ditches, curbs, and flat. Occasionally a skatepark. But for the most part it is the little things in skateboarding we enjoy, and we think that’s what most skaters themselves enjoy.

The project started as a Wix site, but we are not happy with that. It has been a few years and I’ve kept the Wix site alive, but we are very inclined to move to micro.blog. Frankly, a Wordpress blog would be better for our purposes than Wix. We chose Wix mostly because we thought it might work well with some eCommerce that never happenend. It also offers some interesting page layout capabilities that Dale likes, as he is really good with that stuff.

But ulitimately I think simplicity is key with actually getting things done, especially with team projects. The Small Arts is kind of an umbrella term for any skate-related media we create, be it writing, video, audio, images, or zines. I’m very impressed by the simplicity of micro.blog. The iPhone app works great. The connectivity with the Wavelength app is great of podcasting on the go. Even this web interface is nice and easy to use. I’m very experienced with Wordpress, but in this project I’m not looking for a million options or to build a web portal. I want a team blog, from which we can post stuff or point to other resources.

The biggest challenge for me is more a philosophical one. I would like to bypass the various big social media silos with regard to promoting the project, but I don’t think that’s really possible. Right now we really need Facebook, at least, to bring people in. The idea or posting here and syndicating elsewhere sounds great, but honestly I want people to just come here. I suppose that is not going to happen.

So I’m going to work on an actual plan and process of promoting the Small Arts, once I create it here, that will get the job done without making me feel like I’ve sold my soul (again) to the big social media companies. Frankly, I like the idea of this being an entirely phone/mobile based project. I think that would be a fun challenge.