The Dynamic Box Office

Airlines have been doing it for years. Ticketmaster (in its latest incarnation) recently jumped on the bandwagon.

Dynamic or variable ticket pricing is the strategy of altering ticket prices based on different variables.  (As noted in the comments below, "Variable pricing is setting BASE prices according to differences in performances' time of day, day of week, etc as in paragraph 2 (a midweek evening may be less expensive than a Sunday matinee, for instance). Dynamic pricing, on the other hand, changes prices after the initial on-sale in response to changes in demand over the sales cycle."  I use the term "dynamic pricing" in this article to discuss changes made to prices once the tickets have already gone on sale, altering FROM the base price.  Thank you for pointing this out, Kara!) These can include everything from the number of seats already sold at the time of purchase, the proximity of the show date, alternative entertainment options on the show date, anticipated weather, and any number of factors that the host deems as having an impact on ticket prices. It is perhaps a more realistic and “fair” way to price tickets, allowing the cost of tickets to reflect the actual supply and demand of the market. This should result in minimized dead-weight loss, which benefits but the consumer and the supplier. For performing arts organizations, grappling with decreasing advance-ticket sales and discounting options that gouge profit margins, dynamic pricing might be “just the ticket.”

Unlike regular discounting or promotional pricing, the dynamic ticket model would enable organizations to price each production—and even each performance--strategically and, perhaps, more realistically. Instead of offering incentive discounts, both the organization and the audience would be able to gauge expectations for a show based on the ticket prices. Declining ticket sales and decreased subscription renewals lead marketers to worry and wonder about the most effective way to promote ticket sales. A common “solution” is discounting, which leads to a host of other problems. Ron wrote this piece for Group of Minds outlining what the major drawbacks to discounting. Rather than reiterate what he has already presented so well, I will simply say that I agree with his concerns about this eagerness to discount in order to get butts in seats.  Considering these issues may make dynamic pricing a more attractive option for some.

A great example of the potential for dynamic ticketing is its recent use outside of the airline industry-- the newest Ticketmaster/LiveNation partnership is exploring the efficacy of dynamic pricing for sporting events. Last year, an article in Sports Business Journal did a great job outlining the way that dynamic pricing works at the San Francisco Giants’ AT&T Park.

There are a couple of key sentences in this article that I wish to address as they pertain to the performing arts industry:

• “Advanced software analyzes market conditions and determines a pricing recommendation that team executives can either accept, deny outright or tweak.” That’s the kicker: advanced software. I know that the biggest question is always: how can my organization do this? Non-profit performing arts organizations already face challenges being short on staff; the responsibility and complication of daily ticket price changes could be a full-time job in and of itself.

Analyzing the results of the 2011 Ticketing Software Satisfaction Survey, most respondents indicate that box office systems are either custom-built, cobbled together, or some of the solid, inexpensive options available to organizations. I went through and sent inquiries to the organizations listed in Amelia’s overview of the ticketing software survey results, as well as some others that respondents are using.

Unfortunately, at this time, nobody seems to have an easy-to-use “dynamic!” function in their software that makes it easy for an organization to alter prices without sending an actual staff member in to change them by hand each day. But the conversation is building in volume, and a few companies expressed that they can either design such a component for their clients, are looking into offering dynamic pricing in the future, or would like to know more about the demand for this function before they pursue including it in their products. (Just before posting this, I received the following from ProVenue: “We have no dynamic pricing customers in the UK as yet, however we do in the US. Please click on (this link) for details. We are looking to release in the UK sometime in the new year.” (I learned that ProVenue is part of the company that provides this model to the Giants. How accessible this component is for budgets that may be more modest than those of the Giants, however, is a question that I have yet to get a response to.)

• “(S)hould a game get rained out, standard refund and exchange policies would apply. But if a fan pays a premium price to see a particular player, such as a starting pitcher, and that player doesn’t play, there is no refund.” This quotation makes me smile, because in the performing arts, understudies are just part of the game. It does beg the question, however: what if someone paid a price bump because of a certain headliner, and that artist’s understudy performs that night? Does the ticketholder get a refund of the difference? We are all familiar with understudies and what that can mean.

• Perhaps the most universally applicable part of this article is the section “What’s the payoff?” As it outlines, “Dynamic pricing structures can provide significant cost savings for fans over original list prices for lower-demand games, and for teams, provide another means to help fill seats, generate additional concession revenue and potentially upsell that fan into a larger, future purchase. And for higher-demand games, dynamic pricing provides teams a revenue maximization tool to capitalize better on that heightened fan interest.” So actually, dynamic pricing could give us in the performing arts a real understanding of how our work is valued. We make a lot of guesses, some educated, some not, to try and figure out what the “best” price is for the work that we produce. Could dynamic pricing remove some of the mystery, and help us maximize both the number of tickets sold and the revenue generated?

Some may balk at the idea, as Diane Ragsdale does in this article on dynamic pricing in the non-profit sector. She quips, “Let’s call a spade a spade. Dynamic pricing is a method for maximizing profits….Suddenly increasing ticket prices in response to high demand, and selling ‘premium’ seats priced as high as people are willing to pay, strike me as questionable practices in a nonprofit organization.” What will it take for people to stop associating “non-profit” with “NO profit”? She likens dynamic pricing in the non-profit performing arts sector to soup kitchens charging for certain perks. What an unfortunate and offensive comparison. Non-profit arts organizations are businesses, regardless of their tax status or their primary sources of funding, and selling tickets is a fundamental component of what they do. Certainly, there are organizations whose missions might preclude them from dynamically pricing their tickets (e.g. “free art for all”), but there are others for which dynamic pricing could help generate more revenue (not a bad thing) and bring in more audience. As Lori Kleinerman of the Goodman Theatre remarks in her compelling talk on the Goodman’s use of variable and dynamic pricing, “We are aware of our civic responsibilities as a not-for-profit institution, so it’s important that we are accessible while still optimizing our income.”

There are many ways to apply dynamic pricing within the performing arts sector, and with more use some things may become evident.  It is possible that it is a practice best suited for venues that do not scale their houses, or best applied to the “nose-bleed” sections, or only effective for the blockbuster shows. Of course, the key word there is “possible.” As we lament the decline of ticket sales, the loss of revenue when we discount with programs like Groupon and LivingSocial, and the oh-so-onerous epidemic of last-minute-ticket-buyers, why not consider dynamic pricing as an alternative model for revenue generation?  After all, we may be “non-profits,” but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t subject to the supply and demand curves that drive for-profit business economics.

Is this thing on?? Important news for performance spaces that use wireless microphones

The FCC officially decided in January to clear the "white space" that exists at the 700 MHZ frequency for particularly designated usage. While the FCC fielded arguments from big cellular and broadcasters in determining white space authorization, "unauthorized users" of microphones operating on a 700 MHZ frequency were depicted as "squatters" and intruders, since many have, technically operated in this space illegally for years. Unfortunately, this may have a serious impact on venues that use wireless microphones. Theaters, concert halls, stadiums, and others, will no longer be able to use technology that uses the 700 MHZ frequency. The FCC is giving organizations that use mics on the 700 MHZ frequency until June 12 to transition to another frequency.

This means that you need to know if this is something you need to know. This could be hugely expensive to organizations that have equipment that operates at this frequency. If nobody in your organization knows this, or knows where the equipment manuals are, you can check the FCC's website.

If you find that your equipment will have to be replaced, try contacting the manufacturer and/or the retailer where it was purchased. Some companies are being very good about offering discounts on new equipment or switching out the old free of charge, according to sources at a conversation at Arts Advocacy Day.

For a complete story and many additional, helpful links, see The Future of Music Coalition's blog.

A Little Friday Tech-Art

PIXELS by PATRICK JEAN. - une vidéo Art et Création @ Yahoo! Video

Happy Friday!

And see below: Arts Advocacy Day is just a few days away...Tweet it up!

Does technology appeal to some sixth sense?

The iPad (insert hackneyed joke about the name here) may be the most powerful indicator of the new direction of our experience of museums and reception of art.  Interestingly, the iPad coincides with the release of Nina Simon's book, The Participatory Museum.  Worth a read, her book refines (and, in a sense, re-imagines) the institution of the museum, casting it as a changeable form that can relate and react to the visitors' experience. This got me thinking. As children we learned about our world through our senses, and an important sense was our sense of touch.  Our understanding of our environment was shaped by the information that our tactile experiences relayed, and the power we did or did not have to change the physicality of our surroundings.  Space was something that we inhabited, and in so doing, we left some sort of a tangible mark on the world.

Certainly it may be argued that our travels in cyberspace leave trails as well.  But are our senses diluted when filtered through technology--and, as consequence, are we reinventing the role of art in our lives?  As more and more people receive art from their computers, cell phones, digital devices, is some part of the artistic experience lost?

Certainly, there are many purists who will (and have) vehemently replied, "YES!"  Have you ever heard the phrase "the smell of the greasepaint, the roar of the crowd"?  Art, whether experiencing or producing art, is a multi-sensory experience.  Although digitization of art enhances collaboration and enables the appreciation of a piece by a broader audience, does technology actual remove part of the essence of what it is to both create and receive the artistic experience?  Or is the unique way in which the audience interacts with digitized art the new sixth sense?

As a student, I have become acutely aware of the manner in which I interact with my computer-based work compared to that which I can hold in my hand and mark up with pen or highlighter.  I find that I am more present, and more focused, when it is not just me and my glowing computer screen.  I don't care to read a book electronically, and though I have tried repeatedly to listen to audiobooks (so that I can, surprise!, mult-task), the book-experience is much less fulfilling when it does not involve a tangible, dog-earable, paper-and-ink product that I can hold in my hand.

Producers of today's art  can, potentially, consider myriad factors involving reproduction, dissemination, and audience that change as rapidly as technology.  The longevity of an artistic reproduction depends on the longevity of the media used to reproduce it.  Watching the Met perform in high definition might, in some ways, be better than getting a nosebleed seat at the real thing--but is it as emotionally powerful as seeing the show live?  How about appreciating the "Mona Lisa" daily as your desktop image, only to be startled by the appearance of the actual painting, which, in real life, may have hues you'd never seen?  Even music pumped through headphones as you run on the treadmill or ride the subway--your other four senses (and likely your brain) are occupied by the business of existence: you are not a captive audience.

Is a diluted experience in order to reach more people a fair exchange?  Are we willing to compromise (or perhaps I should say "accept a differently-imagined") artistic experience for the knowledge and understanding that the pixels reach further than the atoms of oil paint: if there are twice as many eyes or ears or minds receiving the art, does it matter that the collective attention of this audience may be only half as riveted as it would be experiencing the art live and in person?

What do you think?

SEOoooo....what? Improving your organization's search engine optimization.

As promised too-long ago, here is a quick-and-dirty guide to improving your website's search engine optimization.

I certainly couldn't have made sense of this all on my own; I had the great fortune to be able to pick the brain of David Hejduk of River City Studios. He is the man behind the website-optimization curtain for many companies and organizations.

While the various search engines in creation all claim slightly different methods of operating, according to Hejduk there are some hard-and-fast rules that you can follow to make your site as discoverable as possible.

Make it easy

The 'bots that crawl the web, searching for the words that somebody wants to find, are very smart for non-sentient beings. But as people, according to Hejduk, they are like second graders. They can do a surprising amount on their own, but the easier that you make it for them, the better the results that they will return on your behalf.

As with any marketing plan, SEO requires that you think like your audience (or the audience you hope to attract). What would people type (and usually this is a couple-word phrase, as opposed to one single word) if they were looking for your organization? What would people type if they were looking for something that your organization provides?  These are the phrases and words that  should continuously appear from page to page, in title tags, headers, copy, internal and external linking.

From the literal top down, your page should make it easy to figure out what you are about. Your address should include words that are pertinent to your organization--like its name, for example. Your banner should highlight words that are relevant and interesting--the more cryptic your titles (do you call the link where you can buy tickets "buy tickets" or "box office," or do you use a clever and obtuse moniker?) the more difficult it will be to directly access the information that a person seeks when they Google you.

So take a look at your homepage. How clean is it? Where is information placed? The more important stuff should be on the top, should be in bold, should be headings. Do you have captions for your visual and audio content, are you social media sites up to date (and linked from your homepage), and do you link to news articles that are relevant? And what are the keywords that appear throughout your site, indicating to the 'bots and your potential audience what you are about?

Don't assume

Don't assume that you know what your site's keywords actually are:  check here to see what the 'bots consider your site's keywords. Does that list best describe your purpose and mission? Will they attract the audience you WANT to visit your site?

Image originally found here.

If not, it is time to take a moment (or multiple long moments) to work out how you want your organization to be identified online. If the words you think are most relevant are highly competitive (i.e. other websites that naturally generate more traffic use the same keywords), your site still may wind up buried deep in the results pages of a search.  So think about word combinations that may be less popular but more representative of your organization, and which may bring visitors and audience that will be most interested in what you offer.  A more comprehensive keyword  instructional can be found here or here. When you are ready to start placing keywords strategically, check out this reference.

Get analytical

Before you tackle your very own homepage, there are a number of tangential tools that are free and require only that you insert a little code onto your pages. The first is Google Analytics. We've said it before and I am here to say it again: USE THIS TOOL. It is free. It is incredibly useful. Register your website with Google Analytics and copy the code into your page (Analytics gives you a really basic how-to when you sign up).

Analytics tracks how people find you. Do they click on a direct link that they found on someone else's page (did you even know that someone else has linked to you?) or did they find you from a google search or did they track you down from your Facebook page? If your response is, "How could I possibly know where they came from?" my answer to you is "Google Analytics!"

I don't work for Google, Google doesn't give me any kind of incentive for talking about their products (I'm so over Google Chrome, by the way), and yes, they are approaching world wide web domination, BUT...they make great free tools. And you should learn how to take advantage of what they offer.

Over the summer I gave a shout-out to the Google Business Center, and I'm here to do a follow-up cheer. Like Google Analytics, the Local Business Center is free, and provides insight into how people are finding your organization. It can give you diagnoses and provide feedback on your website's traffic.  It also places your organization's physical location on a map that makes your location in real-space clearly apparent for someone who is searching. This means that somebody searching in Boston for information on the Artspace Gallery will be much less likely to get top results of Artspace Gallery on South Ridgefield Rd. in Edison, NV and Artspace Gallery and Coffeeshop in Madison, California, than your Artspace Gallery right there in Beantown.

Keep your site current

A search engine, when it crawls the web, isn't really looking at what is out there RIGHT NOW. It's actually searching the input phrase against pages that were cached in the past--sometimes a month or so ago or longer. (You can find out the last time the 'bot stopped by your site: in the list of search results there is a hyperlink below your site that says "cached" and will tell you when the page was indexed last.)  This means that you want to keep a consistent presence--and it also means that you cannot guarantee that your calendar will be indexed in time for your events, so be sure there are other places that information appears that may register more readily.

Keeping your site current is important, because when you update, the bot notices the next time its crawling out there, looking for sites that are active. You don't want somebody to search for your company and have the top five results be reviews from a play you produced in 2007. You want them to find YOU.  The challenge is that when your local paper is receiving a lot of traffic on a daily basis, even its archived pages are getting more action than your website. So does Facebook, incidentally.

(You say, "If Facebook receives a lot of traffic and therefore scores more highly in the bot's mind, does this mean that I should have a page on Facebook for my organization that also includes information and links to my homepage?"  I say, "YES! (Caveat: don't just use Facebook to say you use Facebook, have a social media plan.)  So, have some pages that have fresh, regularly updated content (this may be a blog, or perhaps a newsletter that you publish on your page once a month).

NOTE: This does not mean your entire site should get a face lift every month. There should be stable pages, with easily identifiable URLS (like www.yourgallery.com/directions  and www.yourgallery.com/home and www.yourgallery.com/artists) that stay consistent.  You may have links from those pages to other pages that do change frequently (your artist page may be about artists that have shown in the past, but have a link to "current show" that takes the visitor to a new page, www.yourgallery.com/lcorwinchristie), but you should have a core of reliable, recognizable pages that your visitors and Google recognize as solid.

Get listed

Alright, good work. The next thing I want you to do is sit down and think about the other search tools that people use that are NOT search engines. I'm talking about sites like Citysearch,Yelp, Yellowpages, ask.com, epinion. You may not be using them to find out something fun to do on a Saturday night, but I have news for you: a LOT of other people are. These are free directories that list businesses and allow users to write reviews and comments about experiences.

The great thing about this resource is that, because these web directories get so much traffic all the time, search engines check them. If your organization is listed with full contact information (THIS INCLUDES YOUR URL--I could rant for hours about how obnoxious it is to find a listing for someone ONLINE without a way to ACCESS THEIR WEBSITE. But I digress.), this gives a search engine more to go from. "Ohhh," it "thinks" in its little second-grade "brain," "The person searching for XYZ company is in Atlanta, and here is a listing on Yelp.com for an XYZ company that has an address in Atlanta!" Voila! A match made in Georgia!

Get linked

Another tip? Links are huge.  Links to both internal and external content will improve your rating when a search engine is looking for you.  As always, however, do not simply compile a list of links for the sake of having them. A search engine will notice if you have a "links" page that is little more than a list of everyone you have met and their blogs (recent or outdated).

It's much wiser, and more interesting, to integrate links into your web design. This can be in blog posts, or side bars on specific pages, definitely in artists' profiles.  The more you link out to places that are both relevant and potentially interested in what you are producing, the more likely they are to link back to you.  What does this mean?  Well, if Google sees that you have a certain amount of popularity, that is, that there are people who think that you are saying things that are worth sharing, it will consider you more important as it indexes your site.  (Yes, it's true--Google judges you.)

So, to sum it up:

• Your headline, header tag, bold text or text that is a larger font, should be IMPORTANT and RELEVANT (and will thereby improve your searchability).  They should be placed higher on the page and centered whenever possible. There should be a continuity of keywords across your pages.

• You should have a core of a few pages that have consistent content, and from those pages link to others that are updated and altered regularly.  Your homepage can be current without being overloaded with new content on a monthly basis.  Having the pages link to each other ("artists" from "home," "location" from "artists" and "home") is also crucial for giving the search engines a sense of the overall picture of your site and the information therein.

• Plan ahead:  If you have an artist who you will be featuring in a few months, publish a page about that artists in advance.  That way the 'bot can find the information before it is outdated. The 'bots only stop by every month or so (and if you were cached long before that, you have some updating to do!)

• Plug your page in sites where it is kosher to do so: Yelp, Yellowpages, Citysearch, and so forth.  And remember, this also gives people a forum for discussing your work, and this will give you a sense of what the word of mouth is about what your organization is doing.

Anonymous input, please!

We're putting together a webinar on digitizing art, and want to know what YOU want to know.  Please help us make this an experience that benefits you by filling out this 3-question survey. I promise you--it will take less time than it took you to fill out the Census. Even if you are the only person living in your household.

Thanks!

Why Flickr? Using photos to tell your story

"Wire + Minipegs = Polaroid Wall" by FionaMclaren

While discussing various uses of social media by arts organizations, a coworker mused, "But why Flickr?"

"Why Flickr?" indeed.  Or perhaps, more accurately, HOW Flickr?  After prowling around in search of arts organizations that are using Flickr in interesting and relevant ways, it seems pretty clear that the question should be addressed.

Since the internet can transmit exciting, attractive, visual media, rather tell you about what you can do with Flickr, I will let the photos save me a thousand words.

The Mattress Factory's photostream -Inviting front page -Colorful photos with good composition and interesting content -Current (there's this week's snowstorm!) -Clearly organized into sets [e.g. "Behind the Scenes" (something that I strongly believe in--because, as we know, "Everyone wants to feel like an insider."), "Exhibitions" or "Events"] -Flickr page is linked from the social media ("Friendship 2.0") page on the Mattress Factory's website.

Misnomer Dance Theatre's photostream -Inviting front page -Colorful, bright, energetic photos -Clearly labeled sets -Misnomer home page has a Flickr widget at the bottom

Steppenwolf Theatre Company's photostream -Clear differentiation among sets (e.g. rehearsal pics in black and white) -Behind-the-scenes and production shots -Some albums show interaction with audience -Linked from SteppenwolfTheatre.org

The American Conservatory Theater's photostream -Don't all look professionally-shot, but convey a spirit and energy -Show many aspects of the production -Show interaction with patrons -Linked from ACT homepage

The Whitney Museum's photostream -User-generated photos -Linked from "Get Involved" page on Whitney's website -Discussion forum (with some involvement)

I do want to say what I have seen that I haven't found effective. Too often organizations do a couple of things: they have an intern, or a staff member, who manages their photostream (that's their page on Flickr) from a personal profile. That doesn't make me want to engage. Instead, it makes me feel like I'm encroaching on a space to which I am not convinced I'm invited. Organizations that DO use Flickr, and have someone taking photos to PUT on Flickr, should have an organizational profile and should have a Flickr widget or link prominently placed on the homepage. (And, pet peeve, I think the best widget is one that actually SAYS "flickr" and doesn't just have the dot-logo).

Other huge turn-offs? (Apologies for immenent snarkiness.) I don't want to name names here, but organizations that essentially just do a mass-upload from their camera after an event: shudder.  Do your audience a favor and sift through them to find the ones that actually look interesting and lively.  I don't particularly care to see an entire album of a group of students all with their backs to the camera.  Having endless posed pictures of people standing and smiling together like the social pages looks like bragging, and not a lot like fun.  It's fine to include a few, but thirty?

Why you want to know what SEO means.

Last summer I, like much of television-watching America, was bombarded with commercials touting a "decision" engine that promised to cut down on irrelevant and off-the-mark responses to search queries.

According to the ad, I am not, in my overwhelming frustration at irrelevant search results, as unique as I thought. Evidently, many (most?) of us are accustomed to having to type and refine searches until we actually encounter what we sought. If I am to believe the ad, others also find it irritating to scroll through a list of links that are loosely (or perhaps, completely un-) related to the desired result. So it isn't just me who loathes being forced to navigate unrelated blog entries or archived reviews or the site of a similarly-named beer distributor in Wisconsin!

My point is: what do you know about SEO?

SEO stands for "Search Engine Optimization," and it essentially means that if I were to search for your organization you would be one of the top results--ideally THE top result--that appeared on the results page.

Don't know if your website makes the cut?  Check it out.

Seriously.  Right now.  Google, Bing, or Yahoo! your organization name.  (Or try all three!)   Now search for the name of your latest show.  What about your organization and the word "gives" or "donate" or "fundraising"?  What about your organization name and "buy tickets"? What about if you search for the name of an artist currently working with or featured by your organization?  Now try "(your city name) (type of venue, e.g. gallery, theater, dance)."

If your website, and even more specifically, the pages within your site that contain the most relevant information, do not top the list of search results, take note.  SEO is an easily-overlooked element of your organization's presence that should be considered as important as the other steps that you take to stay visible.

What must you do to accomplish this goal?

Next week I'll demystify the process of optimizing your website for the search -engine crawler.  I will delve into the nitty-gritty about SEO and what you must do and be aware of to command some of the search engine spotlight.

Is your organization in the cloud?

"Towering Clouds" by James Jordan

Nine months ago, when I first began interning here at CAMT, I spent a lot of my first couple of weeks filling in gaps in my knowledge, reading other blogs, trolling the web for information, making sure I was up to speed. On these forays I encountered much discussion of mystical-sounding "cloud computing."

Interestingly, for as little as this term tends to be understood, the concept is one that could cut costs and improve efficiency for organizations. Cloud computing, as Wikipedia will tell you, involves storing data offsite--no longer in a server room somewhere in your organization's building or on individual desktops, linked together by an intra-office network, but "out there," essentially in the clouds. If you want to get more in-depth, there are myriad resources online that delve into the subtleties of the definition of cloud computing. One example is that given by Ismael Ghalimi of the SociaMediaToday blog who writes that cloud computing is "predicated upon the sharing of a common infrastructure by multiple groups of users, often referred to as tenants. . . .Cloud Computing creates virtual slices of resources from clusters of servers and storage devices, perfectly sized to fit the specific needs of multiple users."

So...

If your organization stores publicity photos on Flickr so that the press and others can download high-resolution copies without you having to save them on your office computer or network and then send them, your are using cloud computing.

If you store and share documents in Google Docs so that you and others can access and edit them from anywhere, you are cloud computing.

If you upload videos to YouTube so that people can see your art in action, but don't post them on your website so that you don't use up too much bandwith, you're cloud computing.

If your website is hosted off-site, for example, by an organization like CAMT, you are cloud computing.

These are not the only examples of cloud computing, which is a concept that encompasses nearly every form of off-site data storage that you could imagine. Cloud computing may save your organization the (hefty) cost of purchasing its own server (and regular cost of replacing or maintaining that server), or free up space on the server it already uses.  Companies like ADrive.com offer free and fee-based storage plans that enable your organization to upload, access, edit, and share files without having to use its own server or bandwith to do so. DivShare, another online hosting site, makes it possible for you to store your media on their servers but embed it in your webpages.  This is all very cool, and it's easy to get swept up in the clamor for jumping on the cloud computing bandwagon.

With increased popularity of cloud computing, however, come reports of the dark lining to this silvery concept. Security is always of utmost concern when it comes to data--especially sensitive data--and when those files are being hosted off-site, on a server that is hosting hundreds of other users' data as well, there is a risk of security breach.  This may be because the contract that your organization entered into allowed the service provider rights to your information, or it may be because of a malfunction in the server's security. Google experienced this in March of 2009 when a software bug meant that some users were granted access to documents that were never intended to be shared with them--and theirs with others. Or, in the case of last summer's Twitter hack, the company's usage of cloud storage meant that a hacker was able to easily and remotely access a plethora of sensitive documents.

A security breach is not the only risk that comes with cloud computing. As with any server, there is the chance of crashing, which can lead to inconvenience at best and irretrievable data loss at worst. For a recent example, see autumn's Sidekick phone crash, which affected all users of T-Mobile Sidekick phones and completely wiped out any information stored in their phones. The counter to this fear about the cloud is that, no matter where your organization stores its data, the data should always be backed up. This may mean that your organization has two cloud-based copies of all data, one for regular usage and one to back up the first cloud. Or perhaps your organization operates out of a cloud, but has all of that data backed up in the office. Conversely, your organization may have its own server, but use the cloud as a backup in the event of a malfunction.

Cloud computing is a powerful development in the way we can store and share data, and organizations would do well to examine the ways that utilizing the cloud may help cut costs. But this is not an experiment that should be taken lightly. Definitely ensure that your organization fully understands any contracts that are involved and who retains ownership of any data being stored offsite. And, it bears repeating, regardless of where you store it, regularly back up your organization's data.

Know who you are, be who you are, and have fun figuring out what works: NAMP reflection

I apologize for my delay in getting this up. In the spirit of the subject of this post, I'll be honest: I just wasn't satisfied with it. Repeatedly I tried to write about authenticity, and it was schlock. So I give you the intended post (happily abbreviated), plus an offshoot (bonus!) thought.

The final reflection on the NAMP Conference, I would like to call attention to the importance of conducting your organization's online presence with authenticity, and of taking a deep breath and just experimenting to see what works for you.

We can all access information at the touch of a button. Our phones are smarter than we, the internet is pervasive (and invasive?), and finding out the truth is easier than it's ever been. If you are being disingenuous, you can bet that your audience will know.

Web 2.0 means audiences may instantly learn about organization, the people who make it work, and the reasons behind its existence. Audiences are afforded the opportunity to connect with you in new ways that seem to be personal because they defy "conventional" marketing practice. This means that your organization must speak with a unified voice, with clarity of intention, and with honesty. Web 2.0 transcends the boundary of cover-ups and spin doctoring. Be honest, be real, and your audience will appreciate you all the more. Quick and dirty tip from the NAMP session "Command the Cultural Marketplace": Know who you are, BE who you are, and make others know and understand who you are.

Audiences will sense this authenticity, and will appreciate the additional things that you do to make your organization accessible (though, of course, they may not understand how very time-consuming it may be!).

In this vein, the very last NAMP take-away was one that Rich Mintz introduced in his plenary address, and which became a bit of a rallying cry: “Throw spaghetti at the wall and see if it sticks.” Translation? Just try stuff. If it doesn’t work, toss it, but at least give it a shot. You will probably discover things that DO work for your organization, and how exciting is that? I was reminded how important this is when I attended a round-table discussion the other day that was attended by many different individuals from many different types of arts organizations. The purpose of the meeting was, in fact, to reflect on much of what we had learned at NAMP. As we discussed various sessions and reflections, a few of the attendees were visibly alarmed by the daunting prospect of tackling some of the social media and technologies that we were discussing, including developing the sort of e-mail marketing plan that I discussed here, or establishing a YouTube channel or blog. It can be overwhelming, so choose one or two areas you want to work on. E-mail and Facebook, perhaps? But really give it a shot.

As NAMP presenters Chris Elam, Rich Mintz, Jeffrey Inscho, Gene Carr, and Chad Bauman will tell you—not everything works. But don’t let the fear of failure keep you from trying. If you are being authentic your audience will identify with you and appreciate your efforts. Nobody is going to fault you your failures (sometimes those leave as much of an impression as your successes—look at all the conversation that the Seattle Opera's attempt generated).

So take a deep breath. Get your staff together and be sure you're on the same page with your online presence. What could you do more of? What social media tools are your friends, staff, audience using that your organization isn't? How do you want your staff voice to be heard--from individual accounts or one overarching organizational account? Will there be different user names? Are you doing things that are working? Are you doing things that aren't? Can you quantify the success or failure? (If not, get analytic tools NOW--Google Analytics is free.) Are you or is someone on staff particularly interested in trying out a particular tool, like building a Flickr account, and willing to work on that and see how it can benefit your organization? Ask these and more questions, and build a plan. Remember--it doesn't have to be a runaway success from the start. But know what it is you want and try things to get that result.

Now go have some fun.

Fear not what "They" will say: Relinquishing control and opening up the conversation

Misnomer Dance Theater's "Breakfast With You"

Arts organizations, especially in this economy, rely heavily on positive reviews and audience raves to generate ticket sales and interest.  As technology improves, so has the speed and reach of these review: one voice can be heard across an infinite distance, and one individual's bad experience can be heard around the World Wide Web.

Damage control, clean up in the wake of widely-disseminated destructive commentary, is never as good as the kind of real-time management that is possible when an organization is able to react and engage as the conversation is developing.  Even better when the conversation takes place in a forum that is controlled by the organization and populated by unaffiliated supporters who can voice unsolicited positive defense of the organization.

This is one of the most powerful elements of Web 2.0, and one that seems to strike the most fear in the hearts of arts managers. The NAMP Conference was an eye-opener: arts managers are really afraid of relinquishing control over the conversation.  From the keynote to the final session three days later, attendees at every Q&A expressed concern about allowing organization-related conversations to publicly occur with outsiders and audience. (For example, allowing user-generated comments on a blog on the organization’s website, comments on the YouTube channel, Twitter conversations, Facebook dialogue.)  The question asked by managers time and again: "What if 'they' say something negative?"

The reply? “They’re saying it anyway.”  Would you rather they said it behind your back? Imagine that your organization begins to open up the conversation. Great examples of this can be found by looking at the Mattress Factory Museum's Friendship 2.0 page, or Misnomer Dance Theater's blog, which links to a variety of other interactive possibilities (though Misnomer's Chris Elam would like to improve upon this even more, by having an aggregate feed that pulls in the conversations happening in various forums and making them accessible in one place on the site). Perhaps you have a way for visitors to post publicly from the venue, or link to articles that have been written about your organization and allow users to comment. Maybe you have a Flickr page to which your audience can contribute, or a YouTube channel. People start commenting on a piece or an interview, a post or an exhibit.

Let’s look at the positive outcome of enabling and encouraging audience participation online.

It is generally accepted that people are more likely to complain than they are to express happiness about something.  That changes as social media and Web 2.0 enable people to easily share thoughts and feelings, and so they do not have to make the same kind of effort to offer praise.  They can take five minutes (and feel good about) publicly expressing to you how good they feel.

Remember, “everyone wants to be an insider.”  When they can express themselves on your site, or engage in dialogue with your organization and its other supporters, that person feels like they are special.  They are being included and being respected as a participant--which givees them a sense of ownership.  And they will hopefully keep returning to their conversation, see who has responded to their opinions, and continue to engage with your organization and with other supporters.  This builds loyalty, especially when you acknowledge them, and your relationship may lead to this person's friends also getting involved.

But certainly the fear of negative public feedback is not unfounded.  Along comes a disgruntled patron.  This unhappy patron lambasts your organization for the offenses you have, in his estimation, committed (dirty bathrooms? Offensive scene? Maybe they just thought the work was garbage?).  This person comments angrily on your blog, and complains on your Facebook wall.  Your organization can now fully benefit from the power of Web 2.0.

If this person posts to your sites, count yourself lucky (if not, you can keep tabs on what is being said about your organization elsewhere with Google Analytics, and respond on your site, thereby directing the traffic to your organization) .  This negative view now can be addressed directly by you—both publicly and personally—and a conversation can occur.  You can find out the real source of this person’s vexation, and you can demonstrate that your organization is invested in the experience of its audience.

You are also aware of something that has fallen short of an audience member’s expectations.  Sure, maybe that person was just having a bad day, but perhaps there is a greater issue there that you can now work to solve.  If you were not involved, it is possible you never would have known of their dissatisfaction.  You might have missed them renewing their membership, or you might have lost friends of theirs.  But you might never have known why.

New visitors to your sites will see this dialogue and appreciate your honesty. (Who isn't skeptical about something that NEVER receives negative feedback?  It smacks of censorship, and seems disingenuous.)  Your loyal followers may also have gotten involved and expressed positive opinions in your defense. By endorsing both the positive and negative views, by demonstrating your appreciation and value of both sides of a situation, your organization gains credibility for its honesty and forthrightness.

Elam urges organizations not to avoid something out of fear that might prove a most powerful tool.  “If you don’t open the floodgates you have zero comments.  If you do open them and you get 100 comments and three are bad, you are building energy around your work.”  But be aware: “If you have 98 that are bad, that tells you something about your organization.”

Remember, opening the conversation can be incredibly powerful, but you must not just sit back once you have made available the possibility for user-generated content. Your engagement is important to keep the conversations relevant and to connect your organization to the discussions being had.

Content is King (but a compelling subject line is crucial): Effective E-mail Marketing

The Crown of the Moon by gilderic Organizations too often overlook the hidden powers of e-mail marketing, a relatively inexpensive powertool if used correctly.  As Gene Carr of Patron Technologies will tell you, a strong e-mail marketing plan is a critical component of your online presence.  "Why?  Because the average arts consumer doesn’t. . . go to an arts website to browse around to see what’s happening next Tuesday.  [Now,] when they get an e-mail in their inbox, they say 'OH! That’s happening next Tuesday!' and they forward it to their boyfriend and they send it on.  So I say, get your e-mail marketing program great, you’ll solve half your problems."

How do you do this?

I was fortunate to attend a great session at NAMP called "Beyond the Blast: E-Mail Marketing Well-Done" featuring a panel of Playwright Horizons' Bradford Louryk and The Book Report Network's Carol Fitzgerald, and moderated by Carr, who chatted with me for the blog.  Following his "Three B's" I offer you some take-aways.

• BUILD YOUR LIST

You must have a strong list to have an effective e-mail marketing campaign. Building a list can be challenging, and is often seen as secondary to other elements of the e-mail or newsletter (design, content, etc.)--but Carr argues that building the list should take 75% of your time.  To collect e-mail addresses and learn what these individuals want to receive takes time and finesse, and involves regular (about thrice-yearly) follow-up surveys to define their interests and ensure that your messages are hitting their appropriate mark.  If you are sending out one blanket e-mail to everyone on your list, you are blasting, and are likely seeing a low return on such messages.  It also may decrease your revenue: "You won’t advertise a $5 ticket lottery to a full-season subscriber.  You really have to think about who is getting what messages," reminds Louryk.

• BE PROFESSIONAL

Exercise professionalism when managing your e-mail campaigns: "[p]lan a schedule in advance, get (the e-mail) proofread, get great graphics, send it to outside readers (to look it over before you send it to your lists). All the things that professional publishers do," explains Carr.  "It doesn’t mean that your newsletter can’t be in a personal voice;" you should cultivate a specific tone and feel to make your organization accessible and relatable.  Set the sender's name to appear as a person in the organization rather than the company's name.  "But there better not be any typos in there and it better come on Tuesday if you say it’s going to come on Tuesday."

And don't underestimate the power of timing: your communication should be timed to coincide with reviews, published profiles, podcasts, etc.  Driving traffic to other locations where your organization receives publicity demonstrates that you are connected and aware of how your organization is being represented and perceived.

• BE INTERESTING

Once you have determined who your segmented audiences are and established how your campaign will be structured (once monthly newsletters? event-specific?), remember that every recipient will read the subject line of your e-mail. 100% of them.  Their decision to open the e-mail is based on what they get from that subject line.  So be engaging, intriguing, exciting--but exercise caution.  A "tantalizing" subject may get filtered as spam.

Within the message, Louryk stresses the importance of representing your organization's mission, expressing its urgency and importance.  Integrate your logo but vary the colors, designs, header graphics to reflect the particular content of each message.  Remind your audience who you are and why they support you.

Everyone wants to feel like an insider. People want to catch a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the inner workings of an arts organization.  This may take the form of staff blog entries, artist personal stories, backstage video tours, or any number of personal touches that will give your audience a taste of the other side.  Fitzgerald regularly shares personal stories with organizational information, authors of featured books write newsletters, and readers keep reading.  Newsletters are not just about the sale, but about making connections.  The more your audience feels a vested interest in what your organization is doing, the more they are to come around in real life. Give them the opportunity to receive special discounts, participate in lotteries, and get additional details beyond the website--and acknowledge those who open every e-mail with personalized thank-yous.

• FINALLY

Don't despair if  your organization already has established an e-mail marketing program that is less-than-effective, Carr is confident that that is not a death knell if you are prepared to put in a little work, figure out what makes you unique, and what your recipients want to read.

"We have an e-mail newsletter that goes out to seven- or 8000 arts managers every month.  We’ve been doing this for eight years.  And about a year ago we started sending an interview, first it was an interview format, then we switched it to a video format.   And we were spending a lot of time taping the person and then editing it, and the open rates were abysmal.  Terrible, really terrible.  And we were, depressed, we spend all this time, and (each interviewed person) was really excited, and nobody was opening it. So we threw out the interviews, rethought the content, and started writing about things we knew people were interested in: Facebook and Twitter, started putting contests in and quoting from clients and just totally reinvented the content.  And the open rates jumped."  The lesson?  "Basically the reason people are tuning out is because YOU’RE BORING.  The content that you send is what you’re about.  It’s almost like you’re a magazine publisher and you don’t really pay attention to what is in the magazine.  People are not getting your magazine because they like a bound thing showing up in their mailbox.  People are tuning out because you’re not interesting."

Post-NAMP 2009 Reflections

It's Wednesday in Pittsburgh, and the information-laden NAMP Conference is still fresh in my mind. I have been pondering the challenge of separating these closely-connected insights, and will do my best to craft them into individual blog entries. I will start here with a quick overview of NAMP 2009 themes, and then delve into how these pervasive truths can be utilized in your emails, in your social media interactions, on your website, and finally, as we work through broader ways to connect beyond our own organizations' networks.

David Court's keynote emphasized that "Content is King" while the "Friendship 2.0" message "access is more important than content," highlighted the power of an organization's online content when controlled, in part, by its audience. Closely related was the undisputed tenet "Everybody wants to be an insider," Rich Mintz's much-tweeted quotation from Saturday's plenary lunch.

I believe that achieving this goal is one of the great strengths of social media well-used, a stance echoed in many of the sessions I attended. A social media strategy (as we have discussed in this blog and webinars) cannot be overemphasized--by establishing a place to start and a reason for so doing, you open up the possibility of experimentation, measuring success and failure, and cultivating a strong organizational identity and relationship with your "posse" (the term that Jeffrey Inscho of the Mattress Factory uses to designate online followers---without relegating them to being beneath and apart from the organization). The implications of embracing your audience and bringing them into the fold are far-reaching, and should color the consideration given to content, presentation, and accessibility. Is your organization asking for feedback and really listening, or simply proclaiming without engaging? Are you perceived as real and authentic, or dictatorial and closely controlling of the information and conversations being had about you? Are you afraid to hear what is really being said, and if so, are you ignoring critical feedback that could alter and improve programming?

Before my post on email marketing, I want to mention a couple of basic guidelines that came up time and again at the conference and which apply across the board.

• Experimenting and failing (within the strategy your organization has defined) is better than not experimenting and going unnoticed. Increasingly, people's decisions are made in a split second based on what is in front of them, and you want to be a contender for their attention.
• Testing, and taking note of what is and is not working (Haeben Kim of CAMT attended a session on ROI that she may guest-blog about in the future) will improve your organization's social media efficiency.
• Authenticity is crucial--you are selling an experience, not just "art," and remembering who you are and who you serve will help you captivate your audience early and often.
• Including your audience in the discussion is far more effective than talking at them. Yes, this means that you open up the channel for negative feedback as well, but remember: people will say negative things about you anyway, wouldn't you rather it be in a place where you can respond to it and facilitate a dialogue and reaction to it?

I hope that that overview, painted though it is in broad strokes, helps give you a sense of where the conversation will be headed for the next few NAMP-related posts. And if you were in attendance at NAMP, and have additional thoughts, suggestions, questions, or comments, I encourage you to share below!

National Arts Marketing Project - Day One

If you haven't been, check out #nampc09 on Twitter. The day was chock-full, and I am happy to say that I feel I attended some of the best sessions. I had a chance to chat with Gene Carr and Jerry Yoshitomi on-the-record (which I will have up as a forthcoming podcast), as well as Rich Minz (the latter more informally), about many things tech/arts related. I am still processing and digesting, so for the moment I will leave you with some images of my long, but good, day in Providence at the NAMP Conference.

Portion of Pittsburgh contingent represents in front of WaterFire - Haeben (CAMT), Justin (CMU's MAM Program), Corwin (CAMT and MAM), Lauren (Pgh Cultural Trust)

National Arts Marketing Project Conference - Preconference

Providence, RI was brisk and bright this afternoon as I collected my registration materials for the Americans for the Arts NAMP Conference. I did not attend today's Pre-Conference sessions, but did have an opportunity to get involved in one of the Dine Arounds. There were a few topics to choose from, and I signed up to grab dinner and hear Tegy Thomas' perspective on using technology to inspire and involve creative minorities in the work that we as arts organizations are doing.

The nine of us attending this particular dinner quickly discovered that our particular restaurant was not very conducive to an informal talk from a single person--the result being that I don't have anything to share on that particular topic. Among our immediate table-mates, however, we were able to have some pretty thought-provoking and exciting debates and discussions about the usage of technologies in building audiences, interpreting art, experiencing art, driving organizations to new missions, and much more (including Canadian sports and "The Well").

At one point the hypothesis was posed that technology contributes to younger generations' view of the world as comprised of disposable things. The modern world, it seems, lacks a permanence that the world pre-virtual reality once had. Because technology advances so rapidly, what was once new quickly becomes obsolete (I just experienced that this month with a terrifically ill-timed iMac purchase, but that's another story). Thus, the generations of children and young adults who have come to expect the "relevant" to be fleeting and fickle, may find it difficult to relate to the unchanging reliability of a museum's permanent collection.

This is the thought I leave you with this evening: if we push to integrate technology into the museum experience, are we sending the message that art can no longer endure in and of itself, but must be processed with contemporary mediums that can be relied upon to change as technology advances? (Is this just another way of, for example, setting a Shakespeare play in late-twentieth-century California to "highlight the universality of the work" or "make it relevant"?)

Google Chrome Exposure Tarnished by Brand Names

A few months ago I wrote a post lambasting Google for soliciting artist work without financial compensation.  The situation, to recap, was that Google approached well-known illustrators to design nifty new artist skins for the Google Chrome browser.  The catch: Google offered to compensate the artists with only exposure.  In my mind, the offense was as follows:

Google chose artists because they were highly-recognizable and then was unwilling to financially compensate them what Google obviously is aware that they are worth. In so doing, Google sent the message that artists, no matter how successful, are not worth paying.  Thus, the undervaluing of the arts (against which artists constantly struggle) was publicly perpetuated by a wealthy company that could have afforded to pay for artists' work.

A few weeks ago the new Google Chrome skins launched--and the result is underwhelming at best.  Google apparently regards all its "Artists" as brands--and vice-versa--and assembled a page featuring everything from sports cars to architects, from haute couture to hip-hop bands.  The Artist Themes library reads like an advertising pull-out in a magazine: smaller, niche artists vie for attention against the top-billed Porsche, American Apparel,  Mariah Carey, in addition to other such easily-recognized names as Donna Karan, Marc Ecko, Wes Craven, Ocean Pacific and Candies (among others).  Each theme is presented with a button navigating to a one- or two-sentence blurb about the artist/brand/company (including, in many cases, a link to the artist's store where the user can purchase products)  and most of the skins feature a brand logo somewhere in the skin itself.  Artists who are less commercial and have less name-recognition are lost in the shadow of the BIGBRANDNAMES. So what exposure, exactly, is Google offering its skin-designing artists whose names don't ring an immediate bell with the General Public?  I hope that they are receiving more interest from people who might not otherwise have known their art, and ultimately generating more sales and commissioned work.  I hope that they find they are growing their audience and that people unfamiliar with their work before Google Chrome now are interested in what the artist is producing.

In truth, however, I suspect that one of two things is happening:  they are overshadowed by the highly-recognizable brands, or reach an audience that was already aware of their work.  If Google had not piled these artists into a motley assortment of brands, designers, products, and artists, I believe that those artists with more specialized popularity would have received greater exposure, and thereby reached a broader audience of new followers and potential financial supporters for their work.  (Though of course, I may be erroneously assuming that these artists WANT to add new fans to their audience--perhaps they don't.)

Operating under the assumption that each designer wants to increase site traffic and popularity, reaching Chrome users who might have otherwise been unfamiliar with their work, I would recommend that Google redesign the Themes page.  Arranging the contributors in alphabetical order, for a start, would give a sense of order and artist equity.  To take it one step further, I think that calling the page an "Artist Gallery" is a misnomer, and Google would have done better to segment its collection of skins into tabs like "Music," "Fashion," etc, thereby bringing more attention to each skin--and reach people who may be more interested in certain artistic genres.  Additionally, Google could have routed skin downloads through the artists' bio page by default, truly offering the opportunity to generate traffic to the individual (or company) site.

I am interested to know about the arrangement between companies such as Porsche and Google--were there really no financial negotiations?  Did the designer of the skin get paid by Porsche, instead?  I reached out to a couple of the participating artists to learn about their experience working with Google, and whether or not Google ended up financially compensating them after all--but at this time none has responded.  So, Chrome Theme designers, if you read this I'd love to have you weigh in on the matter.

And, as always, I encourage anyone reading to share your thoughts.

Technology as the Art

“Molotov Alva and His Search for the Creator,” by Douglas Gayeton, a film made using machinima. Technology and the Arts...it's what we focus on in this blog, on this website, and in our offices. Dictionary.com defines technology first as "the branch of knowledge that deals with the creation and use of technical means and their interrelation with life, society, and the environment, drawing upon such subjects as industrial arts, engineering, applied science, and pure science."

Today, however, I would like to liberate “technology” from its seemingly ubiquitous linkage with other, more concrete and easily definable terms, and examine technology as art.   Technology is about creation, it is creative in its very definition, though it is too often regarded by artist-types as out of our realm of right-brained comprehension. This may be the reason that we consider art and technology, as if those two elements naturally remain separate.  When the first maths-based technology was utilized to create visual imagery, the products were considered not art because they were so often created by scientists.  (That relationship is explored in this piece by Lewis Dartnell.)  In this day and age, however, it is evident that technology can, in fact, be the medium in which the art is created. It can be the palette, the orchestra, the voice, the film.

It is a difficult distinction to make: at what point do we consider technology as an artistic medium?  Eight-track is a technology.  As is infrared film.   For our purposes I will be considering technology as digital, computerized.   I am interested to hear thoughts, because it can be a very difficult determination to make--at what point does technology actually comprise the art rather than merely facilitate it?  Is this a distinction that needs to be made? Is technology ever truly a medium, and if so, does the technology we discuss here necessarily happen with computers? And if so, does the art need to happen on a coding level to be considered created in the medium of technology? If the art can be created without a computer (for example, audio reel-to-reel), can we classify it as relying on (our definition of) technology?

So, without further ado, a few examples of what I would consider technology as the medium in which the below art is produced. (Additionally, the piece at the top of this post.)

There’s digital rotoscoping, mainstreamed in the 2006 feature film ”A Scanner Darkly," which combines digital filmmaking with a computerized version of traditional rotoscoping.

The Rhizome "Tiny Sketch" competition set a 200-character limit for coding to design tiny sketches. This is not unusual, and there are countless areas where code is used to create visual art. It is more clearly obvious in many cases, but is also easily taken for granted with continued computer usage, as it is code that gives us the graphics that we see as computer users.

Toplap, a musical group that performs live by writing code in real-time to produce music. (Video courtesy of the BBC on YouTube.)

Virtual composer Emily Howell, an independently-creating creation of David Cope's.

Watch Information Hunter Gatherer @ Electric Art in Entertainment Videos |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com “Information Hunter Gatherer” by Stephen Belovarich

Filtering for Information: The Value in Streamlining Online Presence

We talk a lot about online identity and managing the way in which the world receives you. But what about the way that you receive the world? Establishing and fostering connections and relationships necessitates that channels of information and communication be open. Once you open the door a little, however, the information that once trickled through can quickly become a deluge.

The ideal online presence develops awareness and support for your organization.  You can communicate with people near and far, and hope to transfer your online relationships into strong real-world bonds.  You want a blog that incites conversation and commentary, a Twitter or Facebook following that generates real-life audience, and virtual relationships that are mutually beneficial, creatively stimulating, and further your organization's mission. While building a substantive online presence, however, you may accumulate a lot of clutter that impedes your efforts (and not even realize it). I was surprised to find myself in this position. Once invigorated, I was suddenly overwhelmed by my virtual life. Useful information was lost among irrelevant chatter, and I had unconsciously begun tuning out everything. I went from eager and active online to quiet and uninvolved; I unconsciously stopped acknowledging Twitter or RSS notifications on my cell phone, filed away more newsletters than I read, and was a member of myriad services and sites that I had tested out, found unhelpful or redundant, and abandoned--without cancelling membership.

If you find yourself growing sluggish and disenchanted with your organization's social networking and online communication presence, consider some of the elements that I used to structure my interaction overhaul.

Contacts: Whose input do you value? How do you know this person--virtually or personally, in a business context or as a friend? Do you receive regular updates from them, and are these updates useful? Do they receive regular updates from you, and if so, do they engage? It's ok to set some people free, but do use caution so as to avoid offending anyone.

Social Networking Accounts: Do you use only the accounts on which you are registered? Do you have profiles that are inactive that you should delete? Do you have multiple profiles on the same site (e.g. your organization's Twitter and your personal Twitter)? If so, do you make careful distinction between the two in your interactions, and do you separate your contacts accordingly? Do you remain engaged equally on each, or do you swing between letting your organization account fall silent as you become more chatty on your personal account, and vice versa? If you do not have separate profiles and accounts, are you losing important information among your friends' weekend updates and baby pictures?

Email and Reader: How much spam do you receive at the email account you use for your organization? How many "relevant" newsletters, updates, etc. do you receive but never read? Do you have folders for different subjects, contacts, organizations, and so forth? Do you have a "get-to-it-later" folder that you never get to? Does your reader have dozens of feeds in it, of which you actually read only a fraction? Is there a chance that you will miss something important by deleting some of these feeds? Where do you find your most useful information, and what is making that process most difficult?

It was a surprisingly difficult task, and one on which I am still working, but it has made me feel like my online activity is more streamlined and efficient, my attention is more focused, and the information I now receive through these channels is proportionately more relevant and applicable than before. It is worth remembering that your online activities are an extension of your offline activities, and just as valuable to manage and streamline.

A Social Network Apart

Last week Ning announced its new platform for apps. If you are unfamiliar with Ning, it's a service that allows users to create new social networking sites. And, as the white noise generated by the rapidly growing mass of internet users threatens to overpower the individual voice, this may be just the change that an organization needs to break out of the Facebook Group Box. Where is your target audience, and how can your organization stand out when everything that seems most popular is very formulaic? Twitter? Facebook? LinkedIn? Somewhere else? Can you really tell how effective it is, or is your voice getting lost with all the others chattering away on those networks?

As I grow weary of the same-old same-old, I am finding Ning to be very refreshing. It does, however, pose its unique challenges.

The great thing about Ning is that it is customizable, interesting--all the personality of a website with all of the interactivity of a social network! It's like Wordpress, but with members in a community at large. It feels more encouraging, urging members to communicate with one another without as much moderation.

There are downsides, though. A Ning site is one more thing to maintain, and one more place that your audience (fans/followers) has to go. They must be cultivated more actively because the Ning community is not as widespread as that of Facebook. And, if your "people" are hanging out on Twitter or Facebook, do they want to join another community? Will they be less likely to interact because they are already consumed with their activities on the sites that Everyone Else is on?

I am on Ning, and am beginning to delve into the vast array of social networks afforded by my free membership. I find it takes a little more attention and investment than my Facebook time, but I also think that my Ning social networking experience is more varied and engaging. I keep thinking of ways that organizations, artists, could bond together by region on a social network, sharing upcoming events, sharing audiences, and generally cross-pollinating. I'd love to hear about your thoughts and experiences.

Technology in the Museum: Turning Visitors On or Off to Art?

Photo caption on Flickr: "There was a queue waiting to photograph this little Dali painting." Photo by moirabot.

On the Technology in the Arts LinkedIn group a member, referencing this blog post, asked: "Will Tech Engage or Distract a Museum Visit?"

This simple question led me down a rabbit-hole of tangential questions and topics (internal vs. external technology, technology for information vs. dialogue, and so forth) that made it impossible for me to compose a post that contained any rhyme or reason. And so I return to that most basic question here.

Technology: does it engage or distract the visitor? A friend of mine remarked, "I hate cameras for daily documentation. I think cameras detract from the authenticity of an experience, because you filter that experience through a lens." Certainly, I have photographs of experiences that I was a step removed from because I was so concerned with DOCUMENTING events that I didn't participate as fully as I could have. The flip side is that I have proof that indeed, I was there, it was awesome, and now I own it--forever.

This "ownership" issue arises when we debate photography policies in a museum. Often the photographers are people who take pride in having the experience, and want to have something by which to remember, share, and "keep" it. But as my friend said, in many cases they are likely removed from the immediacy of the art by the act of taking photos. Of course, the experience to them could be less about the art than it is about the "been-there-done-that" element of going to the museum, but is it fair to judge that person as being irreverent, or "missing the point?" At least they were there, and cared enough to take a picture, right?

Alternately, there is technology that is provided by some museums for the visitor to utilize. This technology is arguably nothing more than updated versions of the visitor's guidebook, later the VHS playing in the corner of a gallery, showing a documentary (available for purchase in the gift shop!) about an artist, or the walking audio-handsets. In some places a visitor may use his iPhone to scan a barcode and learn more information about a given piece. In others there are iPods set up that visitors can use to view a short movie about a work. And, of course, the curious smartphone user might use his own technology to visit wikipedia while standing in front of a piece. I argue that, in so doing, that visitor distills the experience of art into something that requires explanation, rather than a communication to be received by the viewer without others' interpretation.  Of course, I also argue that that sense of curiosity shows a degree of interest on some level, and should not be condemned.

Technology removes the necessity for personal, visceral interpretation of a piece; as quickly as a viewer can form an impression he can access a wealth of information that competes with (or "legitimizes") his instinctive understanding. While I am a testament to the fact that background information can completely sway the experience of viewing a certain piece, and I have grown to love certain pieces because of what I have later learned about the artist, historical context, and so forth, I don't know that I think the museum experience should necessarily be a lesson ABOUT the art.

Shouldn't the learning be a supplement to the going? I think about the symphony, or ballet, or opera, or theater--the audience may have some information in their program to lend insight into plot, composer, musicians, and so forth, but I would be surprised if I were surrounded by audience members simultaneously listening to a recording that said, "Now, this movement here represents..."

By techologizing the experience of visual art, are we pandering to a society that wants experience for the sake of having done it, wants to know what to think without forming a decision, that needs to have as much information as possible in as little time as possible? Are we leading people to experience art the same way they experience a trip: interpreted by GPS rather than orienting themselves in their world, figuring it out from a map, appreciating the journey?

Or are we addressing the fact that museums are expected by many to be intimidating places, off-putting and cold, sterile and quiet, where disliking something makes the viewer feel as if he just doesn't "get it?" Is technology the antidote, a way to inject the familiarly contemporary into an institution that is perceived as unchanging and never-aging?  Are we introducing a new way to experience art, and it fair to value one experience above another?

Addendum: The Brooklyn Museum's blog post about successful and unsuccessful uses of technology in the museum.