Make your Voice Heard!

Click here to take survey. Photo: Gyorgy Kovacs via Flickr.

The 2011 Ticketing Software Satisfaction Survey is now live! Now in its second year, we designed this short survey to see how satisfied arts and cultural organizations are with the ticketing software products they are currently using. The survey will close on February 18, and results will be sent to survey participants in April 2011.

Many ticketing software vendors have used the results of last year’s survey to find out what is important to arts and culture managers. This survey is your chance to tell them, and the field at large, how satisfied (or not) you are with your current system.

If you are a box office manager or staff member, house manager, business manager, executive director, board member, marketing staff, or anyone else who has contact with a box office software system, then this survey is for you!

Fill out the survey today!

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Changing The Way You See With Augmented Reality

When looking ahead at what will be the most exciting technology for the arts in the coming year, augmented reality is bound to pop up in the conversation. You may be familiar with augmented reality already. The National Football League has taken advantage of this technology for years to project lines of scrimmage and game time information onto the field in real-time during television broadcasts. So what exactly is augmented reality (AR)? According to Wikipedia:

Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input, such as sound or graphics.

AR layers digital elements on top of our view of the everyday world. This overlay can be done in a number of ways: through the use of handheld devices like smartphones, through desktop computers with a webcam, by wearing specialized headsets, or by projecting a digital images/animations onto a real world location.

Since AR has the possibility to create such a unique visual experience, it naturally has attracted adopters from the creative community. Here are just a few cool projects taking advantage of AR:

DIY Day MoMA – Augmented Reality Art Invasion! On October 9^th, 2010, Sander Veenhof and Mark Skwarek decided they would circumvent the traditional art world and host their own exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art using AR. The artists took advantage of the augmented reality viewer app Layar, currently available only on iPhone and Android devices, to create a virtual exhibition of digital works. By downloading the Layar app and loading the “AR Exhibition” layer, anyone with a camera-enabled smartphone or mobile device can view numerous digital artworks throughout MoMA. This includes both 2-D and 3-D images and animations and an additional 7^th floor that only exists in the world of AR. The digital artworks have continued to be on display since DIY Day wrapped up in October.

The Virtual Public Art Project Also utilizing the Layar app, the Virtual Public Art Project (VPAP) takes the idea of AR artworks one step further by placing pieces around the globe. The artworks can be viewed in the round and from multiple perspectives, just as you would be able to with a real piece of public art. Check out some of the current works on display on VPAP’s website . If you’re interested in creating your own piece of AR artwork for the public, VPAP puts out multiple calls for submissions.               

The Macula Project – Mapping 600 years of history The Macula Project is comprised of a group of artists exploring the relationship between image, sound and the viewer. The city of Prague was searching for a way to celebrate the 600^th anniversary of the astrological clock tower situated in the center of the city and turned to the Macula Project for a creative solution. The artists at the Macula Project turned to AR for the project and projected this stunning work that took the audience through the 600-year history of the clock tower.  Macula was able to achieve this by digitally mapping the building beforehand and tailoring their animation so when it ran through a digital projector, the perspective lined up perfectly with the real life clock tower.               

The Getty Museum – Exploring the Augsburg Display Cabinet in 3-D If there is one frustrating roadblock shared across the gamut of art lovers, it’s the frustration over not being able to personally handle and explore a piece of art in a museum. The Getty Museum understood this burning desire and took advantage of AR technology to let their visitors have a more in-depth exploration of one of the pieces from their decorative arts collection. Using an online program launched within a web browser, a computer’s built-in webcam, and a printed out “AR tag”, an art lover can handle a 3-D model of a 17^th century collector’s cabinet. By rotating and tilting the AR tag, the cabinet will spin 360 degrees and various doors can be opened and explored.               

The University of Gronigen – Giving students X-ray vision Part of a permanent exhibit in their Hall of the Bernouilliborg, the University of Gronigen teamed up with Science LinX and Nanopodium to create a unique science experience for their students. The exhibit is comprised of multiple boxes covered with AR tags. By wearing a special set of glasses containing display screens and a camera, the boxes’ walls suddenly disappear for the user. The user can then tilt and turn the now ‘hollow’ box that contains various types of 3-D science-related models, such as a model of a chain of molecules.

The types of projects that are now possible with augmented reality are rapidly growing and the technology is some pretty exciting stuff to play with. But beyond the wow factor that comes with AR, what are some of the ways that arts organizations can use this technology in worthwhile and innovative ways? Can AR extend to projects beyond the visual arts? Are there ways that this technology can be used to engage with large audiences as well as the individual? I don’t think it is too far a stretch of the imagination to envision actors on stage reacting to digital props or musicians playing digitally created instruments. As with any new tech, it will be exciting to see how AR develops and continues to merge our reality with a digital one.

Top Technology Trends: What’s Ahead for Arts Marketers in 2011

This post also appears as a featured article on artsmarketing.org, hosted by Americans for the Arts.

In this tough economy, most of us have encouraged ourselves and others to look ahead to brighter times. But, what exactly lies ahead in the next year for us? How can we make the most of our future?

In 2010, technology influenced our field tremendously. Some predicted trends, like Google Wave and Google Buzz, failed to take off, and many unexpected trends, like group-manipulated pricing and Ask a Curator, flourished. The following are some major trends that have gathered momentum in the past year and/or are poised to take off in 2011:

Group discounts and group-manipulated pricing Group discount sites exploded in popularity in 2010. While many organizations have a group sales manager or special deals for groups, these sites allow people to opt in to a deal that will only go live if enough people opt in, encouraging people to sell to their friends. Groupon now boasts 35 million subscribers and 18 million Groupons sold in North America. However, marketers question their ability to attract repeat visitors. Now that the initial novelty has worn off, hopefully the knowledge we’ve gained will result in smarter offers. I recently heard from a colleague about a ballet company that didn’t cap their Nutcracker offer and lost revenue on their offer.

Since the advent of these group-buying applications, many variants have cropped up. For example, Uniqlo’s Lucky Counter makes clear to the consumer the advantage of group buying, by lowering the price on the offer in real-time as more people sign up. Arts organizations also started implementing dynamic pricing, similar to the way in which airlines price their tickets.

iPhone sunset in the Andes by Gonzalo Baeza Hernández via Flickr.

Go mobile or go home: mobile app development and mobile ticketing In 2010 Wired reported “The Web is Dead”, meaning that the way people use the Internet is moving away from web access on a desktop or laptop computer to mobile applications. Arts organizations have started asking themselves if their website is mobile friendly and, along with companies like InstantEncore and Pop Media, have started to develop apps.

Pop Media has developed Cloudtix, which uses Tessitura to sell tickets in real time through mobile apps and download a scanable ticket to their phone.

Bill Predmore of Pop Media compares the rise of mobile apps this year to website development in 1997.  “Arts orgs started out with a ‘brochure site’ and slowly began to evolve as they realized their capabilities. Things will happen a lot more quickly this time.”

So if the web is dead, which is worth more investment: mobile websites or mobile apps? And if you are going to develop an app, which platform do you develop it for? While Apple’s iOS devices (including iPad, iPhone, and iPod) still outnumber Android devices, Android phones have overtaken iPhones in terms of market share.

Predmore advises companies to begin to look into all three: iOS, Android and mobile websites. “Things are changing rapidly and it’s difficult to know what’s going to be there a year from now. For this reason, many organizations are reluctant to make an investment. But patrons are going to expect you to be there and if you’re not, there’s a problem.”

Changing media consumption At the same time that Internet usage is shifting to mobile devices, the way audiences consume entertainment is changing. The introduction of tablet-style devices like the iPad  and 4G-capable phones running on Android means more people are consuming mobile entertainment, especially video , than ever before. iPad users are also more likely to complete video ads (63%) than desktop video viewers (53%).

In the past several years, performing arts organizations have started taking their performances outside of the theater and concert hall with initiatives like the Met’s Live in HD, San Francisco Opera’s Opera in the Ballpark, and most recently, L.A. Phil Live. In 2010, we saw a shift to more online streaming video. Sites like Tendu TV and classicaltv aggregate video of performances. Streaming on platforms like Livestream has become more commonplace, notably Chris Elam’s efforts with Misnomer Dance Theatre.  Recently YouTube announced that it would offer live streaming to its content partners, several of which are arts organizations.

Are you in the cloud? Photo: James Jordan via Flickr.

The privacy debate Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of how they are being tracked by marketers. At the same time advertisers are under more pressure than ever monetize their online investments as they cut offline budgets. Last year was notable in that two major companies have made privacy faux pas: Facebook over profile information and Google over Buzz. These controversies as well as the rise in location-based apps and ever-nichified Facebook ads have made people more aware of exactly how much information marketers have about them. (If you want to know how much personal information marketers know about you, check out rapleaf.com .

How does this apply to arts orgs? At the same time these privacy concerns have surfaced, arts organizations are being persuaded to move to shared service models, in which databases may be shared by multiple organizations, or have started using other platforms which use cloud computing (where the organization’s data is stored on outside servers). As patrons become more aware of where their information is stored, employees also worry about the security of cloud computing. At the same time, they wonder how secure their database was in the first place. Bottom line: arts organizations should remember that it is crucial to be transparent about their privacy policies to patrons.

Rise of location-based social media No discussion of arts and technology in 2010 would be complete without mentioning location-based platforms like FourSquare, GoWalla, Facebook Places, and Google Latitude. Foursqaure was up 33.2 million users in 2010 from 12.3 million users in 2009.

Arts organizations, most of which position themselves as serving local community, are starting to understand the potential for hyper-local platforms like this. Location-based applications are increasingly attracting young, urban influencers with disposable income—precisely the audience many arts organizations are trying to attract. People connect to geolocation apps primarily to “get informed” and “obtain promotions” rather than “to compete” to become mayor of their favorite locations.

2011 will likely determine which “check-in” application will dominate. As of November 2010 Facebook Places had 7 times more users than FourSquare, but Places users utilize the service less frequently. So, which platform will win out? Independent companies like GoWalla and FourSquare, or platforms emerging from established networks and services like Facebook and Google?

What do you think were the biggest trends in arts marketing in 2010? What do you see ahead for 2011?

10 Arts and Culture Mobile Apps from 2010

Merely half a day away from the end of the year, today is a great day to reflect on all the different happenings in 2010. One of the big things I have been looking back on is the growth of useful mobile apps for arts and culture audiences and managers. Here is a look at ten of these apps from the past year selected by the Technology in the Arts team and you, our lovely readers:

The Florida Grand Opera | FREE

Available for: iPhone, AndroidThe Breakdown: A great app for the Opera lover in us all, the Florida Grand Opera app offers news about the company, events updates, listings of upcoming performances, and streaming audio of the 2010-2011 season. One aspect of the app I really enjoyed was the videos section, containing a multitude of interviews and performances from the FGO. The only real complaint I have about the app is the necessity to sign up for updates from FGO before being allowed access into the app.

Google Goggles | FREE

Available for: iPhone, Android

The Breakdown: Google Goggles is a visual search engine built into a mobile app. It utilizes your smartphone's camera to capture and scan an image, object, or landmark and perform a search online to provide information on it. This is a very fun app to play around with and can be very helpful when trying to identify an artwork without a clear label or an unknown landmark. The app is still in beta though and cannot identify anything that is not already currently online in some form.

The L.A. Phil | FREE

Available for: iPhone, Android, & Blackberry

The Breakdown: The LA Philharmonic app has a lot of same offerings as the Florida Grand Opera app in terms of news, media, and listings of events. What sets this app apart is the interactive Orchestra map, laying out the different groups of muscians in the LA Phil. When a user taps on a section of the orchestra, such as First Violins, they are directed to profiles of each musician with in-depth biographies. This app is packed full of great content and an excellent way to learn more about classical music and the people that perform it.

AMNH Explorer | FREE

Available for: iPhone

The Breakdown: The Explorer app from the American Museum of Natural History is a great guide for navigating a very large museum. The app acts as a personal in-museum GPS, finding your location and providing information on the exhibits within that area. The app can not only find your location, but provide turn-by-turn directions from one exhibit to the next. This may go against some museum purists love of getting lost within a museum, but on a busy day in a museum packed with visitors this app could be an incredible advantage.

Is This Art? | FREE

Available for: iPhone

The Breakdown: A fun app from the folks at Deeplocal and the Mattress Factory, Is This Art? is one way to win those age old arguments about what is and isn’t art. Users snap a picture of the art in question and open it within the app to test its validity in the art world. The explanations the app gives are often hilarious such as, "This makes me feel intellectually inferior, therefore THIS IS ART" and, "This piece is not accompanied by enough obtuse wall text, therefore THIS IS NOT ART". All of the images users put to the test can be uploaded to the project's ongoing blog.

Brooklyn Museum Mobile | FREE Available for: iPhone, Android, & Blackberry

The Breakdown: Another great app for a large museum, Brooklyn Museum Mobile has less of a focus on navigation and more on community and interaction. The app brings in aspects from social media by inviting users to add descriptive tags and/or "like" artworks from the collection. This acts as a recommendation system for other visitors and encourages a more participatory experience. The aspect I like about Brooklyn Museum's offering is that the app runs off of a mobile website, meaning that it is not device exclusive and anyone with a web-enabled device can join in the fun.

The Lighting Handbook | $4.99

Available for: iPhone

The Breakdown: This is a great app for all of you theater techies. The Lighting Handbook is exactly what it sounds like, an in-depth guide to all things lighting, conveniently in your pocket.

Chicago Gangland Tour | $2.99

Available for: iPhone

The Breakdown: Ever wanted to walk in the footsteps of famous gangster Al Capone? That's exactly what the Chicago Gangland Tour app helps you do, integrated with google maps to give users a handheld guide for a historical walkthrough of Chicago's mafia history. This app provides info on all the different sites historical relevance and invites users to add their own comments. My favorite aspect of the app is the drop-down menu where results can be sorted by subjects like murders, shootouts, and gangster hideouts.

At The Booth | $0.99

Available for: iPhone, Android

The Breakdown: At The Booth is a full-service app for attendees of Broadway and Off-Broadway shows in New York City. The main page updates with every launch of the app and includes the latest shows and theater locations. For each show the app provides info on the showtimes, ticket prices, discounts, synopses, links to reviews and videos, and nearby restaurants. Listings will appear with a pink undertone to let users know if there are long lines at the theater. The only real complaint I have about the app is that the listings are only viewable in list form, whereas a map option would really assist in seeing all that is available in the immediate area.

The Sundance Festival 2010 | $4.99

Available for: iPhone

The Breakdown: The Sundance Festival app acts as an online brochure for the annual film festival. In addition to offering videos and reviews on films being shown, the app gives festival attendees real-time updates as to what is happening with the film fest's various events and screenings. The one feature that this app lacks is a way to create custom schedules of screening times and events. This would be invaluable at a festival where multiple things are being offered at once and making the most of the your time requires a lot of planning.

Best of Technology in the Arts 2010 -- David's Favorites

As we move into 2011, it's time to take a look back at my favorite articles and podcast episodes from Technology in the Arts in 2010.

My Top 10 TITA Articles (in chronological order)

1. Building Audience Diversity Through Social Networking - Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 -- Amelia investigates why arts organizations use certain social networking sites but not others (such as ethnically specific sites like Black Planet) and what impact this has on their ability to use social networking as a tool for building diverse audiences. [Okay, okay...I'm counting this three-part series as one really looooonnnggg article.]

2. SEOoooo….what? Improving your organization’s search engine optimization. -- Corwin takes a look at search engine optimization: what it is; why it is important; and what you can do to optimize it for your website. [And it was published on my birthday, which makes it extra special.]

3. Micro-donations: Proving Size Doesn’t Always Matter -- Joe highlights reasons and tips for starting a micro-donation campaign for your organization.

4. Social Media Spotlight: Vancouver Opera -- Amelia kicks off our Social Media Spotlight series by interviewing Ling Chan, Social Media Manager for the Vancouver Opera, about her social media strategy and experiments.

5. Online Group Discounts and the Arts - Tara unearths some of the buzz around the use of online group discount sites like Groupon and Living Social.

6. Is your organization engaging older adults through social media? -- Molly questions our assumptions about social media sites as places to primarily engage younger audiences.

7. Going Mobile - Websites vs Apps -- Reprinted from Americans for the Arts' Arts Marketing Blog Salon, I break down the differences between mobile apps and mobile websites with an eye toward where arts organizations should invest their time and money.

8. The Handheld Guide: Experimenting with Mobile Technology in Museums -- Tom digs deeper into mobile apps by exploring how they are used by and within art museums.

9. Social Media Spotlight: The Guggenheim and YouTube Play -- Thomas interviews Guggenheim Associate Curator Hanne Mugaas about YouTube Play, a biennial celebrating creative talent in the realm of online video.

10. 7 steps to a Successful Facebook Ad Campaign -- Tara discusses the benefits of and best practices for creating Facebook Ads.

My Top 4 Podcast Episodes (in chronological order)

#66 – Google Wave, Google Buzz and the iPad -- A humorous (yet informative) conversation with Brad, Amelia and me wherein I make this ridiculous prediction that the iPad was not going to take off. LOL.

#70 – Discussion of "Theatre & Social Media in 2009″ with Devon Smith -- Pat interviews Yale Repertory Theatre's Devon Smith about her research report “Theatre & Social Media in 2009.”

#71 – Audience 2.0, Smartphone Apps and Tips for Working with Developers -- Brad, Jeff and I get into a rowdy conversation about everything from the NEA's Audience 2.0 report to smartphone apps for the arts.

#78 – Seven Digital Trends and Their Implications for the Creative Sector -- My interview with thought leader and arts consultant Brian Newman about trends in the technology sector and what they (will) mean for the arts industry.

Happy New Year to all of our fans, friends, readers and listeners! We'll see you on the flip side in 2011.

Social Media Spotlight: SF Playhouse Pluggers

Welcome to the fourth installment of the Social Media Spotlight, our monthly feature focusing on arts organizations’ social media strategies.

Earlier this year, the SF Playhouse invited Bay Area Twitter users to apply for the SF Playhouse Pluggers, a group of individuals invited to "plug in and Tweet during the performance in special 'tweet seats' where their thoughts will be instantly be shared with the Bay Area and the world." I recently had an opportunity to talk with Dan Meagher, Director of Marketing for SF Playhouse, about this controversial and highly debated social media program.

What inspired the SF Playhouse to explore a Twitter program?

When I came to the SF Playhouse as Director of Marketing, I wanted to devise a program that would be unique plus tap into social media. Since I had been using Twitter for quite some time and liked the "real-time" aspect of it, I saw the potential for using it in conjunction with a live performance. More importantly, it lets us give folks a voice for their criticism and instant thoughts of our shows. Twitter lives in the moment, just like theatre. We're creating our own critics. There couldn't be a better combination.

How did you arrive at the program name?

The name came about after thinking about what people were doing with this program. They are "plugging" into the show, into social media, and into the SF Playhouse. Plus, it's darn catchy!

How does the program work? How do you find program participants? What are the criteria for participation?

A few weeks before a Plugger event, we start advertising on our Facebook and Twitter pages. The requirements are: - Must be 18 years or older - Must be a Bay Area resident - Must have an active Twitter account - Must have a portable texting device that can last a least 90 minutes.

Participants are selected on a first-applied basis and receive one complimentary ticket to the show, where they sit in the last row. We also extend to them a special ticket offer if they want to bring a friend (who won't be tweeting). We've had Pluggers use everything from cell phones to iPads! We accept 8-101 Pluggers for the event and usually end up with a wait list.

Do they tweet for a single performance or are they invited to come back to tweet throughout the season?

The Pluggers are initially invited for the one performance. Some love it..some find it challenging and not their thing. It's not a program for everyone. We have about a 70% rate of people asking to come back to plug for the next show, but it is important to me to have new people with us each session. We have one guy who has been with us for every Plugger session! It's great to see them arrive and become a group...they get each other's Twitter screen names and even start tweeting to each other during the performance. For that show, they become a community.

Our Pluggers come from all over - different backgrounds, communities, jobs, you name it. We've had them as young as 18 and up to their 60s. Our average age in 30 -40.

What rules (if any) govern the program?

We have a few basic rules: must turn ringers/any sound elements off; all screens must be dimmed; no talking; and no photos or recording devices may be used (we're an Equity theatre). We do let them drink from their seats, which, with a laptop or iPhone, has caused a few spills!

The biggest rule (well, not really a rule) we have is that we will not censor anything our Pluggers have to say. We retweet all of their messages about the show, whether they be good and bad. This has allowed us to gain a trust with our Pluggers and our audience, because they know that they are seeing all of the instant reactions - not just selected ones.

Someone once asked me if this is bad, letting people possibly criticize your production. Actually, I see it as a good thing. Theatre must be able to take the good and the bad. It allows us to see things from another perspective. We've had some Pluggers be very direct about what they didn't like in a show.

Is there a particular hashtag for the Pluggers’ tweets?

#sfplay - We started using this hashtag during our last Pluggers session in the hopes of making the feed more streamlined. Also, in the past, we have crashed our Twitter page because of too many feeds going out at the same time. I have been in touch with the folks at Twitter to ask for their help in maintaining our feed, but they weren't very responsive.

Do you post the hashtag feed on a screen in the lobby for your audience before the show, during intermission, and after the show?

That's a great idea! Unfortunately, we don't have the capability to do that right now. We do mention at the start of the performance to the audience that they should go home and look at our Twitter page and see the live feed.

What are your benchmarks for measuring the success of the program?

I don't use any specific bench marks for the Playhouse Pluggers.  Since it's a very "organic" kind of program, I don't feel the need to throw in tickets codes or other marketing positions.  We know it works because we have people come to the SF Playhouse and mention that they read the Plugger feed from the last show.  We've also received much press coverage.

What feedback has the program received from your on-site audience?

It's funny.  When we first announced this program, we received emails from patrons unhappy with the idea.  Of course, we heard this before we even did a Pluggers night!  However, Executive Director Susi Damilano and Artistic Director Bill English were unwaivering in their support for trying this crazy new idea.  Without their support, this would have never gone forward.

After our first session went off without a hitch, we didn't hear many complaints.  We have had audience members sitting right behind our Pluggers and, at the end of the show, say they didn't even know the Pluggers were there.  The non-Tweeting audience members wouldn't even know it was happening if we didn't tell them.  Now that people see that this isn't disruptive to the show, they seem to have embraced it.

What type of response and interaction have the Pluggers’ received from the Twitter community?

The Twitter community has been very supportive of the idea. I've heard from people all over the US and the world about how much they enjoy following the live feed.

Twitter has also brought us some surprises.  During our last Pluggers session for the new musical Coraline, who should join in the tweeting but the author himself - Neil Gaiman!

Another wonderful thing happened during our Plugger session for Cormac McCarthy's The Sunset Limited.  We were about 40 minutes into the show and suddenly, someone from Twitter-land sent one of our Pluggers a direct message asking them a question about something they just tweeted.  That was a first for us.  We now had Twitter users from other places asking questions of our Pluggers during the show!  It helped me realize the scope this program.  Those interactions took the Playhouse Plugger program to a whole new, unexpected level.

Why do you think there has been so much controversy and debate about the program?

Many theatre people are afraid of the "new."   Technology scares a lot of folks.  We're taught that theatre is a revered place where you come, sit, watch, and applaud.  Interaction is not allowed or encouraged.  So when you create something that breaks down a wall, people are going to jump up and say, "Not in my backyard!"  Here's the bottom line...the Playhouse Pluggers program is not going to end the world or change theatre as we know it.  This program will not cause thousands to run out and start tweeting during Romeo & Juliet.

Theatre is about change...about evolution.  The basic nature of theatre requires us to adapt to the new, or else we would be going to see plays by Euripides on Broadway.  Theatre is a shared experience and this program is just a way to let the theatergoer have voice in the theatre going experience by sharing their thoughts.  That's it..it's a very simple concept.

In an article earlier this year, Theatre Bay Area quoted Artistic Director Bill English as saying of the program, “It’s an experiment. We're trying to check out the balance between social media and theatre.”  Eight months into the experiment, what has SF Playhouse learned?

We have learned that social media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Skype, etc.) has become a major force in everyday life.  It's here to stay.  We've also learned that people love to discuss theatre using these platforms.  It can connect a theatre fan in England with a theater fan in the US instantly.  If anything, social media has opened up lines of instant communication that never existed before and encourage discussion.

I'm happy to share my knowledge about this progam with all!  Feel free to contact me at Dan@SFPlayhouse.org

This has lead to the creation of citizen critics. Everyone today has a voice and the ability to broadcast their thoughts. With the demise of print and media criticism, theatre needs to find and cultivate these new voices that will talk, criticize, and promote.

Planning for Engagement: Tech Strategy & the Visitor Experience

Earlier this week, the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum hosted a talk by Nina K. Simon, author of The Participatory Museum and the Museum 2.0 blog. Simon works with museums throughout the country to develop programs for improving visitor engagement.

Simon brought up some great ideas about the ways in which museums could use programming to increase engagement and create meaningful experiences between visitors.  Might arts organizations be able to apply her ideas about museums when designing their own strategies with technology and social media?

Here are a few of her ideas from the talk and how I think they might be applied:

Museums should be seen as places for everyday use

Simon argued that many museums are seen as tourist destinations that have a long-standing stereotype of being a place to be visited maybe only once a year. This is also true for many other types of arts organizations.  Many of us would like to see that change and for arts organizations to become places that people consider frequenting practically everyday. Social media could be a strong tool for stimulating this impression. Offering frequent, engaging content online and creating a personal connection with our organizations’ constituents can help counter the idea that arts organizations are aloof and impersonal tourist destinations.  Social media offers an opportunity to communicate the frequent, sometimes daily offerings of your organization.

Museums should be trusted hosts for social experiences

Simon spoke last night about the success some museums have had with programs that involve voting, encourage competition, and prioritize face-to-face interaction between visitors.  Arts organizations could apply this idea towards utilizing social event sites like meetup.com, where the end result is a real-life, social interaction. Or this idea could be applied towards using such tools as real time tagging of artworks from any discipline or mobile device voting systems as a way to create conversation and interaction between visitors. The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra went the mobile voting route when they had audience members vote, via text, to choose which encore the symphony performed.

Museums should be places for seeing and exploring as well as sharing and making

Another great way to engage visitors in a meaningful way is to encourage them to share their experiences of the organization with their friends and to create their own content. Social networking sites are centered on this idea of sharing experiences online and many organizations have taken advantage of this by encouraging their visitors to share photos and stories on the organizations’ social networks. The Vancouver Opera has a flickr fashion page that gives visitors who have “dressed to the nines” a place to shine online. The Mattress Factory’s iConfess is a confessional booth for visitors to express their ideas about the museum and publish those ideas directly to YouTube. Photos and personal experiences are definitely visitor-created content, but current technology can push this idea of participation even further. The success the Guggenheim had with YouTube Play, an online exhibition of user-created videos, and online projects like The Johnny Cash Project, where users re-interpret a Johnny Cash video by drawing over each frame, are two great examples.

As technology and social networks continue to expand and grow at a rapid rate, it’s hard to know which to develop programming for. These ideas presented at Ms. Simon’s talk can serve as great starting points to that conversation. As your organization moves forward developing technological programming, some questions should be asked, such as: Is the technology serving the end goal of bringing people to our institution? Is it helping to create a worthwhile experience for visitors, or is it just tech for tech’s sake? How varied of an audience can a particular technology or social network reach? Are there better, low-tech solutions to visitor engagement? New technology and advances in web 2.0 can offer powerful tools that can help expand audiences and increase visitor engagement, but remember to step back and look at which strategy best serves your organization's visitors and creates a meaningful experience.

Learning to Lead (and Follow) from Any Position

This article originally appeared in the Leading Creatively Blog Salon, a week-long exploration of leadership in the creative sector, hosted by the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture.

When I first entered the workforce after graduate school, I believed that leadership originated at the top of the organizational pyramid and flowed downward. My first two jobs reinforced this belief: the senior leadership set the agenda for the organization, provided directives to the staff, and neither solicited nor desired the input of the junior staff. We were solely there to follow…or so I thought.

In retrospect, I see that my professional life has always contained the simultaneous duality of leading and following. When I worked in entry-level positions, I followed my supervisor’s directives for actualizing the executive director’s vision in service of the mission. And I was happy to be doing it. Following the lead of the senior staff allowed me to learn a great deal about management and leadership in the arts. So where did I lead in those early days? In the organization’s blind spots.

Small and mid-sized organizations in the creative sector are often faced with human resource capacity issues. Everyone on staff tends to wear numerous “hats.” Correspondingly, there are always areas within these organizations in need of attention and innovation. Turning these blind spots into areas of opportunity takes three key leadership traits: vision, initiative and persuasiveness.

In my personal experience, the organizations that I worked with had significant blind spots in their technology infrastructures. Once I recognized this, I started envisioning ways in which the incorporation of new and/or different technologies could improve organizational efficiency, audience reach, depth of engagement, etc. Having the vision for change was not enough by itself, I had to take the initiative to approach the senior leadership and persuade them to pursue change via technology adoption.

As I rose through the ranks, those three traits remained pivotal for leadership. Now as an executive director, I have tried to consciously foster a working environment wherein other members of the staff are encouraged to lead. Obviously, this requires me to follow. When I first took on the executive role, I wondered if I would be one of those executives who just could not follow someone else’s lead. I mean, I was hired to lead, right? Wouldn’t choosing to let someone else take the lead in an area be shirking my duties?

Three years into the role, I know that the answer to this is “no.” We must embrace the duality of leading and following throughout our professional lives in order to foster and ensure the continuous development of our organizations and ourselves.

Fill in the ________: A New, Social Entertainment Website

MySpace, the original social networking site, has relaunched and re-branded itself as My_______ ,the world's first “Social entertainment” website.  The purpose of the website has shifted from a social networking site motivated by the slogan “a place for friends” to a site intent on “becoming the leading entertainment destination that is socially powered by the passions of fans and curators.” Essentially, the new My_______ focuses less on people and more on media and digital content sharing. The sleek new site combines the most popular features of Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and Youtube into a single media focused platform. Users can now follow artists and organizations on topic pages, similar to Facebook fan pages, while receiving real time updates on the music, videos and content being heard, viewed, or uploaded by them (very reminiscent of Twitter).

In this way, members will be able to see what music their favorite opera company is listening to as well as what they are posting. Users will be shown the media that their friends are consuming, not just the media that their friends and topics are posting. It opens a new opportunity for media recommendations, community building, viral marketing, and content sharing.

These updates appear on the new homepage now referred to as the dashboard which can be viewed in three modes: list, grid, or full screen.

The list mode looks almost exactly like a Facebook news feed.  The grid view integrates watchable videos, playable songs, pictures, and micro-blogs in a chronological collage of media tiles, and the full screen mode allows users to experience their media updates in an interface similar to iTunes coverflow.

My_______ has combined multiple features from across the web  that have never been offered in tandem before - creating a unique media viewing and sharing experience.  Some of the other new features include: interactive games, karaoke (Opera?), free music playlists creation (competing with Pandora?), and media trending.

The new interface and combination of features could prove very useful to cultural institutions and arts managers if the user base is willing to readopt a floundering platform.

The largest obstacle for the new My______ is the old MySpace.  The relaunch comes after one of the worst years in the company's history.  MySpace lost 50% of its user base between 2009 and 2010, a critical hit for the organization and a terrible loss for its functional use as a communications tool and social network.  The new My________ is much more in line with Internet usage interests and behaviors of Millenials, but it is not yet clear if they will return to the site.

In order to make the transition smoother and help regain customers, My______ has paired with Facebook to create what they are calling a mashup, in which My_______ takes all of a user’s profile information, friends, and likes from Facebook and imports them into a My_______ page; making the process of setting up a new functioning account much quicker and helping users grasp the changes and full functionality of the site much faster.  This partnership bodes well for My_______ and provides a clear focus away from social networking and onto new media and digital content sharing.

For arts organizations and non-profits that are currently tweeting links to content on Twitter, uploading videos to YouTube, and sharing pictures and events on Facebook, the new My_______ offers a single platform that will combine all three. A one-stop shop for all of your social entertainment and digital media needs. The ability for pictures and videos to appear directly in a news feed like Twitter but with a usable interface like Facebook is very desirable and something that I believe has huge potential.  Pairing the interface with the content and media focus allows for a more streamlined experience that is not diluted by the social aspect of Facebook and Twitter.  The New My_______ is definitely trying to steer away from content that does not surround music, media or artists in some way.

The ability to create opera karaoke, post audio excerpts from a concert, or share video from a stage production or event that are instantly previewable and clickable in a media focused feed that is more graphic than Twitter, less convoluted than a YouTube subscription, and easier to deliver than Facebook is very enticing.  If users begin to adopt the new My_______, it seems only natural for organizations to follow. Only time will tell if this snazzy new facelift will take off, but the potential is definitely real.

Exhibiting Online with Open Source Software

Has your organization been giving some thought to creating online components for its upcoming exhibitions? The demand for having exhibition-related content available online is not only increasing, it has grown into an expectation. Web publishing can be a costly process for many arts organizations, especially if a web developer and designer is required for each exhibition.  A more cost-friendly alternative is to consider using open-source, publishing software for creating collections and exhibitions online. Here are two currently available, free downloadable options designed specifically with cultural institutions in mind:

Omeka – Launched this past year, Omeka was designed by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. Omeka features a variety of themes and plugins while offering a management system similar to that of the blogging site Wordpress. Here is a great video tour of the software.

Collective Access – Also utilizing a management system similar to many blogging platforms, Collective Access was developed by software firm Whirl-i-Gig in 2007. Click here to demo the software.

Both sites offer links to exhibition sites built with their software, which are worth checking out to see what’s possible using these open source systems.

So what is open-source software, anyway? A software is considered open source when the firm who created the software makes the source code available to the public and opts out of certain other copyrights that are normally reserved.  This means that any user can alter, customize and develop for that software as they sit fit to meet their project’s needs. An important thing to keep in mind is that in the tradition of open source software, the user must share this new, modified code with the public as well.

Before your organization goes forward with publishing an exhibition or collection online with this kind of software, there are some questions you should consider:

What is the user experience like?

No two web publishing software systems are exactly alike, so make sure to take a detailed tour before committing to one.  A clean and simple user interface will drastically shorten training time for your staff and save a lot of future headaches if you pursue more complex projects. Omeka and Collective Access are both strong examples since each offers a blog-like user-interface specifically designed with cultural institutions in mind.

Omeka offers services that cover a wide range of needs for cultural institutions

An example of how Collective Access allows you to build relationships between items in your online collection.

How much storage will you need?

What kind of content and media will your project involve? What kind of storage and back-up will be needed? Remember that server space is essential, whether it’s your organization’s internal server, a web-hosting service’s server, or buying some space from a server provider online. In addition to their software, Omeka offers a web-hosting service with different plans priced according to number of sites and the amount of storage needed.

How easy is it to customize?

This goes back to the importance of taking a detailed demo of the software. Many of the platforms have multiple themes available to make the task of designing your organization’s site a lot easier. However, you should test the platform to determine how difficult it will be to change those themes and customize them to fit your organization’s unique brand image without requiring the help of a web designer.

What kind of support is there for the software?

When an open source software is downloaded and installed on your server, all of the support and maintenance responsibilities for that software rests with your organization. A server provider will be able to fix bugs and issues specific to your server, but maintaining the software is up to you. Omeka and Collective access offer extensive documentation and guides as well as online forums, but support and troubleshooting are left to you. This is one of the advantages to Omeka’s hosted option; they will provide service support for both server and software issues.

How is the software upgraded?

When the system you use comes out with a new version, who installs the upgrade? How easily can an upgrade in the software be installed and configured? With both Omeka and Collective Access, the users have to manually perform the upgrades, but extensive documentation and guides are provided. This is another benefit of a hosted service option like Omeka.net; they will install and configure software upgrades for you.

So while these open-source, publishing software systems are free, there are some costs to consider.  Be sure to do your research in order to determine if these open source tools will meet your budgetary and technical constraints for experimenting with online collections and exhibitions.