Last August, we posted a blog showing our user map which highlights where our site visitors are coming from. As was the case then, we’re currently seeing visitors from all over the world, with the majority of them coming from the USA, Russia, England, Spain and Japan. Check out the map and Top 15 list below.

Currently on the light side is Australia, New Zealand, Africa and South America. Where you at Southern Hemisphere?

We’ve now migrated to BuddyPress allowing our users to do more, and it seems to be working really well. We’ve had a ton of signups since the migration and our users seem to be online and engaged. Yes, there’s still a lot more to do, but we promise, we’ll get there as soon as we can.

Here’s a list of some new features that users can currently engage with. If you aren’t already using these, check them out.

• Create groups and add forum topics from within that group. Try creating a group in your own city or town. Maybe you can swap with someone in your current city for a change of scenery and check out another firm. This can also be a great way to meet more people where you live and share the joys and pains of your profession.
• Check out the latest activity for the entire community, your friends activity or your groups activities. This is a great way to stay informed as to what’s going on. And be sure to update your own activity every now and then by going to your activity tab under your account.
• A better organized search results interface with convenient “Add Friend” buttons for easy engagement with potential swappers. Start becoming friends with other swappers. This isn’t Facebook and you don’t need to actually know someone, but if they seem interesting enough to follow, are in one of your current groups or might be a potential swapper, befriend them. Don’t be bashful. Think of all the friends you can make from all over the world.
• Notifications to keep you updated with your activity. This feature has really helped users know what’s been going on while they’re not there. Just pay attention to your notifications.

We have lots of ideas in the works for making the site better including a gallery for uploading photos of your work space, home space and city or town. Keep an eye out for more features as we roll them out.

What else would the swap community like to see? What will bring you back to the site regularly? If you have any ideas or comments about how the site currently works, or doesn’t work, please let us know. We want to make the swap community a place for creative professionals to engage with one another with the hopes of one day fostering a swap.

As always, happy travels!

Last month the SwapYourShop community really came to life. Unexpectedly, we gained the attention and interest of a few writers and thanks to their work we witnessed a significant spike in growth. We’re totally thrilled to see that our community is now comprised of nearly 500 members from all over the world. It’s awesome to see SwapYourShop a-buzz with destination desires and shop talk.

While the publicity was of course a great catalyst, myself and the rest of the team were taken aback by the way in which some writers framed the SwapYourShop concept, specifically Urban Daddy’s article. Give it a quick scan for yourself. After reading the article I had a bit of an epiphany – there must be hordes of men in the world aspiring to be the 21st century Don Draper.

Our reaction to the article was a bit of shock followed by an acknowledgement that publicity is publicity. However, I do want to clarify (and had the article had a comments section, I’d be writing this there) that the intention of the SwapYourShop community is to support creative professionals by helping them immerse in new cultures and creative environments all the while keeping their jobs. It’s an opportunity to escape the day to day routine, gain new experiences and come home more inspired and refreshed. If that involves sleeping with the receptionist, so be it, but that’s not really our message.

And by the way, the article failed to clarify that SwapYourShop is intended for creative professionals only at this time. My apologies to all of the international diplomats out there who wanted to participate, but the Peggy Olsons of the creative industry have wised up in the last half century anyway.

Over the past several weeks we’ve been collecting all kinds of great input from the community on what features the site needs. We brought some of these ideas to life last night by wrapping up our website migration process to a new platform. This is a significant change and we apologize for any frustration it may cause anyone. This was a one-time effort and hopefully the benefits of the new features outweigh any inconveniences you experience.

If anyone is having trouble accessing their account, you may need to reset your password, which can be done here.

Over the next several weeks we will be deploying several minor site updates, tweaks and fun features, so keep an eye out for them. We still continue to encourage input from everyone to help make the site and the community increasingly better.

First off, we want to say thank you to all of you that have signed up for updates from SwapYourShop as well as followed us on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

If we’ve been silent for a while its because we’re working away on building the full site, which will allow you to connect with creatives around the world and get to swapping. Building SwapYourShop has been an incredibly fun project for us and seeing it come to life is thrilling.

Now we need your help. Please take one minute to answer just a few questions and email us your answers:

1) What concerns would you have when swapping with another creative (ex. safety, quality of housing, unfamiliar with location, job security, etc)?

2) Are there ways you’d like to use SwapYourShop that you haven’t heard mentioned yet (ex. swap your full team, intern swaps, freelance swaps, etc)?

3) What features do you think will be important at site launch? What will you want to know about the person/place you are swapping with?

Again, just send us an email with answers and any additonal concerns, thoughts or suggestions and you’ll be helping us move further faster, which means you can swap sooner.

And now I’ll end this post as I started it with a big “thank you”.

I was working on some swapyourshop buttons the other day for an AIGA Small Talks presentation and I wanted to share how refreshing it was to sit for an hour and create something with my hands. Yes, making one button at a time over and over got old fast but what it did do was well worth the effort.

1) It got me off the computer. Yes you can create without a computer.

2) The repetition put my body in a machine-like state cranking out buttons while my mind opened up to new and creative ideas. What a great exercise for the brain and it made my work day easier since I came prepared with concepts.

3) Believe it or not, a task like this one can be a great stress reliever. Less stress is good.

4) I made some pretty cool buttons.

The number of visits to our site has jumped greatly in the last month thanks to features on Creative Review and Quipsologies. One of the more exciting things about the visits (besides confirmation that we’re not alone in our desires to work abroad while keeping our jobs) is where the visits are coming from. They’re all over the map! Check it out:

Who wouldn’t want to swap with someone in Rio de Jenerio, Amsterdam, Auckland, Moscow or New York City?

Some of the feedback we’re getting says you want us to hurry and get the site up so you can connect with each other and start swapping. Well, we’re working on it. Josh has figured out our backend setup and we’re working through the features we’ll have at launch.

Got some ideas around that? We’d love to hear them.