Story Of QuiltingHub

Story Of QuiltingHub

Who am I and why did I create QuiltingHub?

My name is Paul Johnson. I discovered quilting in late 2009 and was amazed that you could spend your entire life learning to quilt and never learn it all. Being a problem solver, I began asking quilters, shop owners, teachers, service providers and guild members what thought what was wrong with the industry to see if there was anything I could fix. I discovered two unanimous needs and another need two years later.

1. Quilters felt that guilt shop and guild lists were very inaccurate. Even the best lists, books and websites were not good.
2. They wanted a central place to find all quilting events on a calendar that would only show events near them.
3. Later, a guild speaker told me there was a huge need for a searchable list of guild speakers with their speaking schedules listed so guild program managers could find them and see who is speaking nearby.

 

QuiltingHub has expanded into much more.

Expensive work was put into processes to keep the information accurate. The community maintains the data entered. Anyone can verify or report errors to the listing organizations and anyone in the organization can edit their listing. It took over three years and 175,000 lines of computer code to complete this project. If hired out, the estimated cost of development would be between $250,000 and $750,000 USD. This brings quilting into the information age and many of these features have never been seen before:

1. Extensive quilting Terminology with cross reference of similar terms.
2. The future accurate shops list -- eliminating all other lists and maps.
3. The future accurate events list -- eliminating all other lists and calendars.
4. The future source for Guild Program Managers to easily find guild speakers worldwide and cut speakers cost.
5. Shop pages include their events, product/service categories and brands they sell, which has never been seen before.
6. The future source for all quilting brand pages. Very useful for shops that can not make it to Quilt Market!
7. Listings support likes, followers and ratings.
8. Guild pages and their events are free. It can eliminate the need for their own websites.
9. Brands can begin to eliminate their retail shop lists and can point to QuiltingHub instead. This savings is more than their listing fee!

 

Future plans for the site include:

1. Multi-language content.
2. Invest in advertising, so are member pages spend less with us, yet get more in return than any other source.
3. Article system with a terms cross reference (in progress).
4. Be the central source of all quilting events.  (We are already #1).
5. All industry professionals, brands, shops, guilds etc have pages with us.
6. Forums and private forums may be added. (Done)
7. Followers of pages get event updates to stay informed.

 

Concluding thoughts and a request for the community.

I have invested a huge amount of my time, money and effort to make a lasting positive impact on quilting and quilters. I believe bringing this technology to quilters will allow them to spend less time looking for information. Having a central place (or hub) of all this quilting information will allow the quilting community to more easily share resources (shops, services, etc) with each other and eliminate the costly redundancy and inaccuracy inherent to the information. I believe in a short time, quilters will see how valuable this is and contribute their knowledge by listing their local resources and sharing the site with others.

Join me in sharing this with others and helping to add missing resources and events.
Read about about sharing QuiltingHub with others.