With AI’s ability to automatically produce content and process complicated datasets with high accuracy, museums worldwide are exploring ways in which this innovative technology can help them better achieve their missions and advance accessibility efforts. Through case studies, learn about three applications of this technology: content digitalization, language accessibility, and visual description.
October was filled with new debates on AI policies, a halt to one of the most significant AI safety bills in the United States, and a host of new AI developments in video, music, and even podcasts.
Arts and cultural nonprofits often operate in multiple markets for earned and contributed revenue. With increasing attention on data-driven decision making, effective market orientation often depends on effective data use. This fundamental collection, transmission, use, and interpretation of data within an organization collectively contributes to what can be considered an organization’s data culture.
Museums have increasingly begun to volunteer their spaces as polling places, acting as a democratic vehicle for their communities and adding to the greater fabric of America’s election infrastructure. In doing so, they can support local democratic processes and prove to their communities that they are not unbreachable temples for the elite, but open platforms for the people.
As exemplified by the Hollywood strikes of 2023, we find ourselves in a new era of Artificial Intelligence in film and television. While studios are looking to cut costs, performers seek job security, and consumers seek quality content. Through research conducted in collaboration with facial motion capture technology provider Faceware Technologies Inc., Master of Entertainment Industry Management students at Carnegie Mellon sought to gain insight on how AI-generated content will transform existing industries, including how this technology could affect employment in the entertainment industry, content development, budgets, contracts, legislation, and privacy rights.
In 2019 the Arts Management and Technology Lab researched a wide breadth of content, from product reviews of image editing software to industry analysis of music streaming. As the year draws to a close, looking back through Google analytics offers a perspective on what the arts management field was particularly keen to learn over the year. Read on to see if the top topics align with any of your particular interests or passions.
Artificial Intelligence is opening up a new world of possibilities for arts organizations in terms of programmatic offerings, guest services, and management. A recent convening of the American Alliance of Museums, hosted by the Perez Art Museum Miami, and sponsored by The Knight Foundation and Alley Interactive, brought together museum professionals, technologists, and futurists to discuss how AI is, and can be used in museums.
Guest Correspondent Randolph Jones of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival attended Capacity Interactive's 2015 Digital Marketing and left elated and hopeful. The conference focused on the intersection of technology, marketing, and the arts and featured presenters from across the sector. To learn more about what these presenters had to say, and to see what insight Jones draws himself, read the full article here.
Over the past couple of years or so there has been a steady rise in the phenomena of competitive voting contests for not for profit organizations to receive grants for projects or operations. These contests are run by large corporations as well as not for profit groups. Examples of corporate contests take different shapes such as Pepsi's with the Pepsi Refresh Project which gives grants ranging from $5k to $50k based on competitive community voting toChase Community Giving which touts donations over $600 million dollars through Facebook contests. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has similarly put contests into place by granting to various historic restoration projects based on the number of votes they receive online.
Whether these contests sit well with critic's ethical concerns or not, the volume of web traffic generated for the recipients, the donor organizations, and the organizations who compete but do not win is remarkable. According to Pepsi, the most recent contest in the fall of 2011 garnered more than half a million distinct registrations with over 3.5 million votes counted on the Pepsi site alone. If you aggregate this number with all of the site visits, social network hits, and emails then you have a truly noteworthy phenomena.
Why are people so invigorated by these contests? There are less time intensive ways to earn money in aggregate. One can point to the idea that the contest is a game and the competition itself is what people are engaging in more than the philanthropic cause. It could also be argued that the community effort of building a team to go online and vote for the cause for multiple days has an intrinsic value as well and that by the simple act of building this team you are building and drawing constituents deeper into the arts community.
As these online contest continue even more organizations are starting to do them. The Humane Society recently used a online photo contest to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars, the Case Foundation has been running a voter based contest for years, and American Express has also run contests in the past.
The following are some tips that have been gleaned from articles and criticism of various contests mentioned previously:
1) Make sure that the contest aligns with your mission. By diverting resources for a potential pie in the sky pot of money you can detract from your organization's true work.
2) Ask what your organization can gain from competing for these pots of money? Set forward goals of community building and identify volunteers to assist with these aims.
3) If you are going to market this to your patrons identify your budget for staff time and delegate a reasonably proportional amount of money to pursue getting the word out.
4) Don't start mid-steam. Almost all winners of these contests have strong starts and once you are behind in the voting it is hard to keep up. If you see a contest in progress that you would have liked to take part in simply put it on your calendar for an effort next year as your opportunity may all ready have passed.
