Social Media Spotlight: Telling Your Story With Broadcastr

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

So having some tie to location seemed like a good idea. If you think about the way that media works on the internet and has worked historically, you’ve got three major things: you’ve got content, you’ve got connectivity, and now suddenly you have context.

So content we know, content is the things we make and connectivity is a massive part of our lives now, whether that be through Twitter or Facebook or anything else. But context is brand new, because context not only means what content you’re consuming and how you are consuming it, but where you are when you consume it. Then it seemed to make sense, because good stories are married inherently to place and always have been. Whether you look in religion where you have holy spaces and the idea of a trace that was left behind by someone that was once there or an experience that once happened in a certain location.

It made sense, then, to have stories that were indexed by place and once we had that, we had the foundation for what became Broadcastr. Which is a simple way for anyone to record a story and pin it to a location, so that anyone in the world can hear that story, understand that place, and have a deeper and more meaningful connection with another person.

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So how does Broadcastr tie a story to a location? Do I need to be on a mobile phone in order for my audio to be pinned to that location?

Broadcastr is a way for anyone to tell their story, on any platform, web, android and iPhone, and then index it by location and category. You don’t have to be in a specific location in order to do that. So whether you tell your story into your phone or into your computer’s on-board microphone, you can place that story where it’s referencing in the world.

So for instance, if I told the story about going and getting my MFA in Brooklyn and studying with Michael Cunningham and that’s where I met Andy (Co-Founder of Broadcastr), I can then tell that story on any platform and actually pin it to Flatbush Avenue at Brooklyn College. It doesn’t have to be pinned at that exact moment.

So we teamed up with them in order to take the aural remembrances from cops, fire fighters, and families of victims, first responders and residents of downtown Manhattan. We actually took those testimonies and put them back into the World Trade Center site and we’re doing that of course through Broadcastr. So that on the ten year anniversary of 9/11, when you go to the WTC site downtown, you’re going to be able to actually walk through the memorial and Broadcastr will be an invisible layer that is part of the memorial. You’ll be hearing these voices that connect you to the real experience and the history the way that the people who were there remember it.

What we’re hoping is that it will do a couple of things. One, it’s very powerful, I mean when we test this thing and walk around the site now it’s incredible because instead of looking at a hole in the ground and thinking “ I remember when that happened.” It’s tough to grasp what the tone of the country really was then, but I remember it was a very, very moving moment. Instead, you can be brought right there so that the people who had the most powerful experience that day are going to be talking to you about it.

That does two things: One, it brings that space to life for people. But two, it creates a precedent for how we can start talking about these things in a public social space. Then of course, because Broadcastr is a two-way street, if you hear a story about 9/11 it will prompt you to remember your own story. You can immediately add that to the aural history that is growing in that site. You can just take your phone, click record and record your story right there on the spot. Over time what we are going to be doing is building this collective kind of rememberance at sites.

And we’re doing that all over the world with different organizations. So for instance, at Auschwitz you can do the exact same thing since we are working with the Shoah foundation. So you’ll be able to walk through Orca now, which was a death camp and instead of seeing a field, you’re going to be actually hearing the Holocaust survivors that escaped 60 years before. And that’s going to be a massive, massive change in experience for people that are younger and too young to be connected to events like that. Also for people that are really interested in how events are represented and who gets to tell the story, which I think is a very important change that’s happened with the advent of social media. The story no longer comes from the top down; the story can now come from the bottom up. The telling of this story and the agency to tell can be put back in the hands of the people that have had the experiences.

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In addition to listening to story as a user and contributing to Broadcastr as a storyteller, what are some of the additional ways that people can interact with audio posts?

Yeah, so you don’t have to be a passive listener or a active content creator in order to participate. You can actually be a curator or an aggregator of content. So for instance, let’s say you live in Milwaukee and there are 500 stories say right now in Milwaukee. And you’re like “Ok, these stories are pretty good, but you know what? There are ten of them that to me, really represent Milwaukee perfectly or represent my version of Milwaukee.”

You can take those ten stories, aggregate them into a separate playlist and I can share that playlist. So you can call from the collective, kind of dig in to the collective consciousness and pull out the little bits that you best feel represent some theme or some place. Then you can group those as a playlist and share that version of that place.  So you can imagine people creating definitive versions of different places by going through this aural record that we’re creating in real time.

Screenshot of the Broadcastr map and media player. Image via blog.bryantpark.org

Additionally you can share any item on Facebook and on Twitter and you can share it via e-mail. And you are going to be able in one week to embed it in a separate website, either as an individual item or as a little mini map that would be a subset collection of items. So  imagine, for instance, you’re writing a blog post about foreclosures in New Jersey. You can find five stories about people that have been foreclosed upon and actually embed their real voices into the blog post, just the same way you would embed a video from YouTube.

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When a lot of other social media platforms started to take off, some organizations were hesitant to adopt them out of fear of inappropriate, negative or even copyrighted content being recorded and attached to their organization is a public way. What are some of the ways they would approach a problem like this if they wanted to start using Broadcastr?

There are a number of things: One, just like on Facebook or on Twitter or on YouTube, you control your own username. So no one else is ever going to be able to upload content under your specific username, just like your Twitter feed is your own to curate.

That said, people can be uploading things and be talking about your organization for sure. Something that someone said to me recently in Austin, Texas at South by SouthWest is probably relevant here. When you go to talk to an organization and you ask them if they are on Twitter and they say “No, no, we’re not on Twitter. We’re not sure how to approach that, so we’re not there, we don’t have a presence there. We don’t think we have to be.”

Well, all you have to say to that organization is to go to Twitter right now and search the name of your organization. Because you think you’re not on Twitter, but I promise you, you are in some form. As soon as they’ll put in the name of their organization, what they’ll find is hundreds, if not thousands, of individual pieces of opinion that are part of, right now, a one-sided conversation about their organization. So just because the organization wasn’t there to engage, it doesn’t mean no one is talking about them on these platforms, they absolutely are. To me, it seems that an organization needs to embrace the place where people concerned with their organization are having the conversation and get involved.

That’s kind of the high level answer, the particular answer is that you can flag content on Broadcastr. So if something is actually slanderous, or would be considered something like slander or libel or hate speech or pornography, it’s up to you the community to police your space. So if you think those things don’t accurately represent your neighborhood or your place on the map, then you should flag them. And if they haven’t been rated by anyone and they’re been flagged, they’ll automatically be pulled from the service. So that allows for a level of self-policing.

Now additionally, items can be rated on Broadcastr. So if you’re engaged in the conversation and you’re creating great content and promoting that content, then hopefully other users will feel the same way and will rate your items very well. On Broadcastr you’re always seeing the highest rated items first for any given place. So it’s kind of up to those organizations to get involved and create content that basically best represents them and is the kind of content that their audience wants to engage with. That content will flow to the top, if in fact their assumptions are correct. I think it is important to engage in that way and to be part of the conversation and to respond as opposed to ignoring the crowd and the community and the opinions of the community.

There are other things too, such as if organizations are interested in embedding content in their own website, that’s a way that they can have a custom curated space. They can embed only a selection of content that they feel best represents them and that is a way to use Broadcastr to create a multimedia community-driven experience on another website that is more curated and in a way more restricted.

It’s tough to answer that question, because I was at an Ivy league school recently and their social media guy said that the school would not let them make a official Facebook page for this institution. He said the irony of that is that there are twenty unofficial Facebook pages for that school. All of those Facebook pages are putting out fallacious information about the school. So just because there is no official page and because there is 750 million users on Facebook, there is more ways for those 750 users to get that information within the Facebook community. So there is something a little bit backwards about the thinking there.

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On a more positive note, what are some of your favorite stories that have already been uploaded?

There is a bunch of great stuff. One of my favorite projects that we’ve been involved with is the Neo Futurists, which are a theatre performance troupe that originated in Chicago and now have a New York chapter. They have a show called Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind and the show is 30 plays that get performed in 60 minutes. Every week they re-write a good portion of the show, so its been changing for however many the past few years that they have been doing it, but it always keeps the same format.

Image via waterdogmusic.com

They came to us early and said “We would love to do 30 plays in 30 blocks.” And Broadcastr, because it’s short form – a three minute maximum for most stories – is the perfect way for them to take their theater performance and use the world as their stage, as the saying goes. So if you go to second avenue in Manhattan, you can walk from Houston Street to 29^th Street and experience 30 location specific, audio, interactive, pieces of content. Some of them are directing you to do things, some of them are little songs, some of them are plays with multiple voices, some of them reference the location very directly, some more overtly. But it’s a curated experience that happens out in the world. So that’s been very exciting to work with them.

Broadcastr is a fantastic way to make literal this idea that you hear all the time, especially when talking with mission and message driven organizations, of giving the community a voice. People talk about that abstractly a lot, like “How do we give the community a voice?” or “What is the voice of the community?”

In this instance, as long as the members of that community can get to a computer or to a phone, and that computer might be at the public library, it doesn’t have to be a computer at home. But as long as they can get access, they can actually put their voice back into their community, in a very literal way. I think that’s very powerful because in a sense, by publishing your opinion and your memories and your reflections to Broadcastr, you publishing those things for the whole world to be able to hear. You’re representing not just your social circle, as you do when you talk on Facebook, but you’re actually representing a physical place.

I think that if Broadcastr succeeds, what it’s going to do is it’s going to show a person that in this age of social media and mobile computing, place is just as important as people.

Mobile Audience Participation with Jonah Bokaer and the Ferst Center

Audience interaction has become a pretty major trend this year and arts organizations around the country are experimenting with different ways to engage their audiences. But how does one go about making their experience a participatory one? Artist Jonah Bokaer and the Ferst Center for the Arts at Georgia Tech decided to approach the issue using mobile technology. Jonah Bokaer is an award-winning choreographer and media artist participating in the Ferst Center's first ever year-long dance residency program, ARTech. Jonah worked closely with students from the Georgia Tech Music Technology Program to develop MassMobile, a smartphone app that acts as an interactive platform for audience members to participate by affecting the stage in different ways. On April 2nd, MassMobile will premier with Jonah's new work FILTER at the Ferst Center.

I had to opportunity to speak with Jonah as well as Stephen Garrett, one of the graduate students on the MassMobile development team, and dancer Adam Weinert, who can be seen in the sneak peek video at the end of this post.

Where did the idea to include the audience in the performance, through a mobile app, come from?

Jonah - Well, in 2004 I made a work called RSVP, which planted 12 cellular devices in the audience. We used those devices and their ringtones to create the music for the piece. And that was engineered from offstage by the composer. But, when doing some initial research down here and planning this production called FILTER, I wanted to put forward the idea or the proposal that there could be interaction or intervention even, with the show.  And maybe Stephen can take it from here, but we spoke with Jason Freeman and the Ferst Center and this relationship started.

Stephen – Yeah, and I think Jason’s idea, who is my advising professor on my master’s project, was to create a system that allowed for a rapid deployment of audience interaction devices through peoples’ mobile phones. So the idea came from Jason through some previous mobile development work and with several other projects, to create an iPhone and android application that will allow any type of input that the phones will allow. Whether that be an accelerometer, motion data, text messaging, touch data, drawing…anything that the phone will accept, to try and incorporate that into the performances in some way.

What are some of the direct ways that the audience is affecting the performance through MassMobile? Does it affect the lighting or are there sound elements that change?

Jonah - Well, one thing I just want to clarify is that this production will premier in it’s full form here in Atlanta on April 2nd. So we’ve had a six or seven day production period in Avignon France and we premiered the choreography, but MassMobile and these technological components have not yet been unveiled and actually this week we are holding a workshop with invited public to interact with it further.

So in terms of how the audience affects the performance? We’ve identified four ways for potential interaction. In particular I wrote in one section of the performance which is very much open-ended and is a 9 minute section which can basically be reconfigured a bit.  Specifically the lighting is influenced. We worked closely with Aaron Copp, who is my lighting designer, to integrate that into the performance.

Stephen – And certainly MassMobile itself, the way that the app can interact with a piece, is not set in stone. It’s a creative conversation that is always happening. But specifically for this piece, for one of the sections that involves interaction during the pre-show, the audience is quite literally plugged into the lighting board through their app.

The actual technical details of the connection is that the mobile app is connected through a client server relationship to one of our servers here at Georgia Tech. Then there is a laptop that sits in the lighting booth that constantly pulls for information. Based on what items people have selected in the app, the laptop is connected directly to the lighting board and will instantly turn lights on and off. You can change color palettes and things like that pretty much instantly.

Did you build MassMobile specifically for this performance or is this a platform that could be used for other performances/performers?

Jonah – I would almost say that it is still in progress. But, you know, Aaron Copp and I have known each other since 1999 and have been building work together for a long time and often in our creative discussions we would say, “Is there some way to interface or interact?” As opposed to working with just video or with sound, lighting is so integral to these performances that MassMobile seems like a natural fit. I think that for light and choreography I am working in very particular ways. For larger applications of MassMobile I know there are many options.

Stephen – So MassMobile itself is the platform and the app, and is still in pretty active development. Working with Jonah and his FILTER has been a great way to beta-test the app and see it grow to more of its current capacity. My professor Jason Freeman already had the plan to use the application in a live music notation work with saxophone where the audience could directly affect the notes that the performer is seeing onscreen. So there are other uses for MassMobile in the arts imaginable.

Could you speak to the importance, for you, of having participation from the audience?

Jonah – Well, I should say that my degree is not in choreography, it is in media and visual arts. For my thesis I focused on the myth of interactivity and focused on a lot of mid to late video work in the 1980’s and 1990’s. My sense was that there is a certain parallel between what we could call this myth with interactivity with video, but also with performance.  Just because it’s time based, it’s not necessarily interactive. This is one area of focus of mine in terms of creating performances.

I guess the impulse to say that an audience could interact, is still pretty much in progress. So far, at least in this stage in the piece, we’ve only had pre-show interaction. It’s kind of an open question.

I think some major conventions of theater are called into question, for example having the phones on during the show, the light of a cellular device on in the theatre. Some artists would consider this distracting, but in this case we are actually inviting it.  There are certainly questions of attention and attention span. We’re sort of walking into this project and saying that it is assumed that this will be unusually structured.

So why create such an unconventional performance? Well really, the participation is a part of why we wanted to open this out. Because instead of really disrupting or undermining a performance, we wanted people to be able to engage and help the author.

Stephen – The way we’ve enabled that interaction is a very direct and literal effect the audience can have with the lighting of different parts of the stage. [The pre-show] is an opportunity for people to come in and the curtain is open and they can see the initial set and it gives them a chance to explore. Our hope is that creates a deeper and more meaningful bong throughout the rest of the performance. That [the audience] has really explored the set and can experience it on a different level.

In addition to the interaction between the viewer and the stage, do you think that this program will cause the audience to interact with each other?

Jonah – The way that we piloted MassMobile was to have six mobile devices distributed internally to members of the creative team, producers and close colleagues over the course of a few days. I did note, on a couple of occasions, the social interactions that would occur person to person. Maybe Stephen would like to address any interactivity within the platform itself.

Stephen – We did see people that were using the app that were sitting next to each other sort of communicating in person and coordinating their efforts, but at this moment that’s not something we’re doing. [Interactivity within the platform] is something we are looking at in the future of MassMobile. More specifically looking at how do we enable or make sure that people have their own voice in their interactions with the performance.

From a performer’s perspective, what is it like working with something like MassMobile?

Adam – From a performer’s perspective, I think what excites me most about this kind of initiative is that as a performer we’re always looking for new ways to engage the audience and make each articulation of the performance event unique and special and fresh. I think that MassMobile can be a unique way to do that.

The other thing I really appreciate is how we’re using this mobile technology and multimedia to make more personal the performance. Which I think is rare and hard to accomplish.

If you live in the Atlanta area I highly recommend heading over to the Ferst Center for the premiere of FILTER on April 2nd. You can find more information about performance times and tickets at the Ferst Center's main website here. Until then, he is a sneak peak of dancer Adam Weinert and MassMobile.

MassMobile App Sneak Peak from Ferst Center on Vimeo.

Twitter by Example: Our Favorite Tweeps

Why are some Twitter users so effective at getting your attention while others fall flat?  What can you do to make your tweets stand out in a crowded feed?  By taking the time to reflect on some of the engagement techniques you see cropping up amongst your fellow Tweeps, you can invent your own ways to harness the power of Twitter for your organization. The Technology in the Arts team thought it might be fun to highlight a handful of our favorite Twitter users from the arts sector.   Check out these Twitter streams to see illustrations of successful, interesting, and unique ways to use the platform ...

My favorites:

@SFMOMA I love the tone of San Francisco MOMA’s tweets – they do a great job of blending humor with behind-the-scenes photos, museum happenings, and random things like wacky art historical facts.  They actively participate in dialogue with not only other orgs but also their Twitter audience - and sometimes they even project their audience’s Tweets on their museum walls…now that’s some serious tweet integration.

@TheSoapFactory With a staff of only five people, this Minneapolis nonprofit gallery proves that small organizations can make a big impact via Twitter.  Their tweets are conversational, friendly and often funny – and they actively tweet their support & enthusiasm for local arts happenings and the artists they work with.  @TheSoapFactory loves shout outs, and always takes the time to publicly say “thank you” to volunteers and interns in their tweets.  Their warmth and graciousness on Twitter creates a personal connection with their audience – which goes a long way in the tweetosphere, despite their relatively small size.

@yokoono With nearly 1.9 million followers, Yoko’s got a worldwide Twitter audience, and she keeps them engaged in a variety of innovative ways that other artists and arts organizations can learn from.  Each week, she posts a series of responses to questions that are tweeted to her – showing that she really cares about engaging in dialogue with her fans.  Her own tweets are powerful in their simplicity and she’s always got a positive message to share.  She encourages followers to participate by creating their own positive messages, too: the Imagine Peace Tower, an art installation located in Iceland, lights up a few weeks each year with tweeted "wishes" related to peace and love.  So far, over 1.3 million wishes have been sent via @IPTower, and it's happening now through March 26.

Amelia's favorite:

@SUEtheTrex at Chicago's Field Museum.  "Hi. I'm Sue, I'm a Leo, I like meat, Chicago, the movie Jurassic Park, and what else? Oh yeah, I'm the world's greatest apex predator." This tagline says it all about Sue the T-Rex--she's sassy, hilarious, and about 2 million years old. That doesn't stop her from having conversations with present-day life forms, tweeting about current events--everything from Thanksgiving to Women's History Month--and educating about the T-Rex. A great example of employees personalizing an institution.

David's favorites:

@artfulmanager Andrew Taylor, author of the Artful Manager blog and Director of University of Wisconsin’s MBA in Arts Administration, always provides great resources for arts managers.  His retweets tend to pull from sources that I may not be following – which opens me up to new content that I might not otherwise stumble upon.

@travisbedard Travis Bedard, Artistic Director of Austin’s Cambiare Productions theatre company, provides a great combination of humor and informative posts from the theatre community.

@Brandinyourhand International arts consultant Roger Tomlinson always offers thoughtful information and insights from across the Pond.

@JamesUrbaniak New York stage, screen and voice actor James Urbaniak is a subversive pleasure.  Witty, sarcastic and irreverent – a wonderful 140-characters-or-less chucklefest.

Tom's favorites:

@MuseumNext is one of my favorite sources for finding out not just what is going on with museums now, but in the future as well. Through their blog, publications and their conference, MuseumNext highlights the ways museums are using technology to become more participatory and engaging for audiences. Plus, these are the folks that brought us the wildly popular twitter campaigns Ask a Curator, Follow a Museum and most recently Picture a Museum Day.

@MuseumNerd Oh, the Museum Nerd. That Brooklyn-based lover of all things art. Museum Nerd is an anonymous persona who tweets about his/her experiences as they weave through different exhibits. Besides the color commentary, Museum Nerd is great at engaging both visitors and museums on Twitter while exploring exhibits and other art world happenings.

@NancyProctor The Head of Mobile Strategy and Initiatives for the Smithsonian Institution, I feel like Nancy Proctor is the Queen of museum mobile tech on Twitter. I check her feed for the latest developments in museum mobile tech, thoughts on best practices and to find who is experimenting and how. You can usually find her dropping some mobile tech knowledge with the hashtags #mtogo and #simobile.

Tara's favorite:

@atane Atane O. is one of my favorite music and audiophile nerds to follow on Twitter. He's currently a blogger for the Elements of Jazz blog, and always has cool pictures, videos and music clips to share via his Twitter stream. He also has an amazing vinyl collection (and great turntables!).

Now, it's your turn: who do YOU love on Twitter, and why?

Ticket Buying Comes to Facebook

Concert promoters, venue managers and artists are still reeling from the historic LiveNation-Ticketmaster merger. Many feared that the merger would result in a ticketing monopoly that would force venues to raise ticket prices and only use the Live Nation-Ticketmaster service if they wanted to book a Live Nation artist. Almost a year later, a recent Chicago Tribune article indicated that ticket prices have not yet skyrocketed and independent promoters are still thriving. While there is still a fear that the worst may be yet to come, the merger hasn’t deterred venues from pursuing other options when it comes to choosing a ticketing platform.

One of the more innovative platforms is Arizona-based company,  TicketForce, which describes itself as a ticketing solution for venues  and promoters of all sizes. The company designs fully customizable  ticketing applications that allow venues and promoters to effectively  build their own brands. They recently launched a Facebook app that will  allow clients to sell tickets directly from a Fan Page. This application  allows clients to add a ‘Buy Tickets’ tab on their Facebook Fan Pages  so that fans won’t have to leave Facebook.

The app has several benefits:

• Once the purchase is completed, a custom notification is posted to your customers’ Facebook Wall or Twitter feed that tells all of their friends about their ticket purchase with an image and link to buy tickets, too.

• Buyers are able to search for events in a specific area, choose seats, and securely purchase tickets without ever leaving Facebook.

• All active events are pulled automatically from your Ticketing Home and sales are fully integrated into your existing web sales.

• Customers are prompted to share their purchase with their Facebook friends as well as on their Twitter stream

As the company illustrates:  With 500 million Facebook users, more  than 600 tweets every second, and  665,000 blogs posted every day – social media is  your most powerful sales  tool. TicketForce's latest innovation is capitalizing on social media sales opportunities and making it easier for small and mid-sized venues to find viable Live-Nation/Ticketmaster alternatives.

Upcoming Webinar - Engaging Audiences Through the Mobile Web

Mobilizing the Arts - Engaging Audiences Through the Mobile WebThursday, March 31, 2011 2:00pm - 3:30pm Eastern Register today for $25 Presenter: David Dombrosky

With the rapid adoption of web-enabled cell phones, smartphones and tablet computers, how are arts organizations adapting to the rise of the mobile Internet? What options are available to arts professionals who want to engage their audiences through mobile devices? What are the cost implications for these new technologies?

In this 90-minute webinar, we will:

• Examine the need for engaging with arts audiences through mobile devices
• Explore options for connecting with audiences via the mobile web
• Discuss what factors may lead you to choose one mobile option over another
• Take a look at the various ways in which arts organizations are using these tools to connect with their audiences

David Dombrosky is the Executive Director of the Center for Arts Management and Technology (CAMT), an applied research center at Carnegie Mellon University investigating ways in which arts organizations can use online technology to more effectively meet their goals. He frequently presents technology and social media workshops and webinars for arts managers – recently for The Association of American Cultures, Performing Arts Exchange, Chorus America, Opera America, College Art Association, and Grantmakers in the Arts.

Behind the Scenes: The Virtual Orchestra Project

Emmy-nominated, Canadian composer Glen Rhodes hopes to "bring the world together through music" with his groundbreaking Virtual Orchestra Project. Though you may be familiar with similar projects, like the Youtube Orchestra, Glen's Virtual Orchestra is one of the most unique and exciting examples of arts and technology collaborations to date. I recently had the opportunity to interview Glen about the virtual orchestra, and today we will get an exclusive sneak peek behind the scenes of the process.

How exactly does this work?

The Virtual Orchestra begins with musicians across the world.  Musicians play their individual parts of the same piece, follow the same conductor on-screen, record their part, and then submit the finished part.  Then, it's up to me to piece together the audio and visual elements.

The recording takes place in the personal home studio or office of each musician. Orchestra members do not play live with any other instrumentalists. The music for their instruments is available on a main "app" for download as a PDF file. After printing the score, the musician watches a conductor on screen while listening to a computer-generated rendition of the entire piece through headphones (in order to prevent the music from feeding back into the microphone). Once the video is complete, information is entered (in order for musicians to be properly credited), and URL to the YouTube upload is sent to me. That's right - all videos are going to be submitted to YouTube to make intelligent use of their conversion abilities, and bandwidth.

What got you interested in starting this project?

I started this project for three reasons.  One, I genuinely wanted to hear one of my works performed by a real orchestra.  Two, I saw a genuine opportunity, as both a composer and a software developer / author, to accomplish something that had never been done in this form before. There have been virtual concepts; the virtual choir, for example, but I wanted to see an entire orchestra playing my piece, so rather than the soprano, tenor, also and bass of a choir, this would be a piece consisting of 16 or more individual voices.  Third, as a working composer for television, I found it frustrating spending hours trying to "create" an orchestral sound, which is what the shows are all after, without actually having an orchestra. So I thought, "I wonder if this, once established as a 'musical network', could result in music being recorded in a beautiful and authentic way, no fake instruments, but a genuine orchestra. Something people just don't usually have access to.

But, there's another, major side to this that can't be viewed through technical goggles....

I didn’t know why, or perhaps, understand why I started this project until I started getting submissions. It wasn't until I started to hear the small pieces of my humble piece fit into place, and most of all, realized that each one was exactly correct, like pieces of a great puzzle. There have been contributions from Asia to South America and so many other places, yet each come together in a common virtual place.

This is not a piece I have heard performed a thousand times; nor is it a piece the world has heard a thousand times. It’s the first time, and it’s a global union, a project of peace and triumph. As a human I hear so many varied voices, and they’re all speaking the same language of music. As a composer, I am in awe and humbled to bring these pieces together in … perfect harmony.

I believe this project serves a purpose, and we all have yet to see what it will be.  Not because the music is profound, but because the human union is consummate.  It embodies the purity of energy in us all. The candid effort made by each musician is so sincere and contains a lifetime of practice, perfection, pain and satisfaction. I see it in their faces. Some with tears running down their faces as they play, and listen to the guide track.

With the energy put forth in the art, idealism is being created. An idealism of peace through universal connection. As long as the trio of the music, the conductor, and the musicians are balanced then all there can possibly be is harmony and complete anti-conflict.  Perhaps VOP is my voice... my Voice Of Peace.

What the conductor saw while looking around. The tripod is the base of the camera. All around the room, scattered pieces of paper indicate where the instruments are seated, so that he can cue and point to them in a spatially accurate manner.

How will people find out about this? Social Media? Traditional Advertising?

People are finding out about it through other people. That's the most amazing part! People are telling other people; who are telling other people - and word of mouth is spreading the message. Instrumentalists who want to play, listeners who want to hear; and simply the interested who want to know, are all taking interest, and spreading the word.  My inbox is inundated. Already, in two weeks, it has surpassed my expectations.  Now I'm just going to let it keep going; and see it play out. See its purpose unfold, so to speak.

What benchmarks will you use to keep track of "successes"?

The benchmarks of successes are changing rapidly. It was initially when the first sheet music was downloaded. Then it was when the messages and friends showed up and then subscribers. The big moment was the first 'submission' - from Taiwan, I heard my Flute 1 played beautifully. And it keeps accellerating from there; it's the bandwagon effect. Once people know that other people are interested, then they become interested. Nobody wanted to be 'first' - but then it happened, and now, it's steady.

So my personal goal was to hear even one single instrument play one single piece of sheet music from the piece; but that's now surpassed. The goal now, I suppose is the 'deadline', currently set at June 1st.  But I may reach an orchestral scope long before then, and then I may just keep going! Let it be the first 500 piece orchestra! It's striking a chord with people somehow.  (No pun intended.)

What have been some challenges along the way?

Initially, it was in the composition, which was composed for sound that computer could do well. Translating that to sheet music presented some challenges. But after consulting with some orchestrator and conductor friends, we found the voicing that split my five horn chords, for example, into a more even spread across the brass spectrum. And that's one example.

Then there was the entire aspect of programming the entire system that would automate the process for me. Assigning numbers to parts (piccolo=1, flute=2, etc.), using international IDs for countries (US, CA, MX, CZ, ZA, etc.); creating the conductor video, which all had to be made before a single aspect of this could be released.

Then, there was a learning process along the way. Originally I thought a simple description, a few posts on Facebook would get the whole thing rolling. I was wrong. People needed to have a reason to listen to me. So I listed some of my credentials (2 time Emmy nominee for music, composer for the Oprah Winfrey Show, Dr. Oz, etc.).  That increased the interest, but just the general, untargeted interest. I needed musicians.

So I took a two pronged approach.  First, I approached the music departments of almost every major college and university, and asked if they'd spread the word amongst their students. That was mixed, partially because I was missing the third piece of the puzzle ... a visual.  Despite the fact that I could not actually produce a video, I had the computer rendered song, and I had the conductor. So I found as many agreeable photo subjects as I could of instrumentalists, and created the final 'look' (which will definitely not be final, in the end).  But at least then people understood what a virtual orchestra was, how it would look, and, how it might sound.

Armed with the:

1. Credentials - Here's why you should listen to me.
2. Example - Here's what it will look like.
3. Description - Here's what to basically expect the process to be like.

I finally got momentum. It's paradoxical; humans avoid 'effort' - but the more people who've done it, the more likely they are to make the effort.  So, at first I imagine many of the submissions didn't do it because they simply didn't want to go through the effort of setting up the camera, the sheet music, practicing a bit, recording, uploading.. But, as people are beginning to submit, the effort is becoming not so bad, and worth being part of the whole.

And I've had an unexpected help from the numbers of people who simple love the idea. Just the idea alone. Like the old Coke commercial from the 60's, they see the benefit of a world 'playing' together in perfect harmony - and want to be part of that experience. These are not my participants - these are my word-spreaders.

Technology in the Arts thanks Glen for his time and generosity in providing us with such an intriguing interview. Make sure you take a minute to subscribe to the Virtual Orchestra Project's Youtube Channel !

Museum crowd-curation and the way we live now

Should more museums follow the Brooklyn Museum’s lead?

Recently, I helped curate Split-Second: Indian Paintings, a show for the Brooklyn Museum.  To do so, I simply visited their website and participated in an online activity.  It took me about ten minutes, and it involved briefly looking at images, clicking on those paintings that I found most intriguing and rating other paintings on a sliding scale.

My participation in this process got me thinking not only about Indian art, but also about how my own perceptions of art in general might be shaped, and how my aesthetic tastes might compare to the sensibilities of the general public.  Even more interesting to me was that this experiment in crowd-curation felt like the inevitable extension of the movement towards a more participatory culture.

What is it?

Museum crowd-curation enables the general public to become a part of the curatorial process by helping to determine, through an online platform, the artwork to be included in a physical exhibition displayed in a museum’s gallery.

The Brooklyn Museum pioneered crowd-curation three years ago with its photography exhibition Click! . First launched through an open call for artists to submit photos related to the theme of “The Changing Faces of Brooklyn”, the artwork was then made available online for anyone to curate.   Perhaps most interestingly, the Brooklyn Museum staff took a transparent and scientific approach to the experiment, publicly sharing data and thoughtful analysis every step of the way.  Check out Brad's Technology in the Arts podcast with Shelley Bernstein from 2008 to learn more about Click!

Selection of photographs from Click! by the Brooklyn Museum

Now, Bernstein and the folks at the Brooklyn Museum are offering a new spin on crowd-curation by injecting theories of connoisseurship to Split-Second: Indian Paintings. Based on ideas from the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, Split-Second seeks to explore how our first impressions might affect our perceptions of art as well as the production of a museum exhibition.  In the end, we’re left with an engaging viewer/curator experience that subtly mixes the professional with the amateur.

Why is crowd-curation so intriguing?

Increasingly, we are becoming a culture of curators, especially in the virtual world.  We spend our time organizing media according to preference, grouping our memories into online photo and video databanks, and “liking” and commenting on things that other people share.  What this means is that arts audiences are coming to the gallery with a newly emboldened sense of organizing and presenting content.  Arts organizations therefore need to play an active role by creating opportunities for meaningful engagement.

Screen shot of Split-Second's crowd-curation process by the Brooklyn Museum

Organizations that are at the forefront of online audience engagement are presenting ideas that go beyond simply offering information about programming.  Instead, they are experimenting with different ways that audiences can become co-creators of content, which can then lead to a sense of ownership in the institution.  But crowd-curation should not be simply a matter of presenting art works and having a voting contest in the sense of American Idol.  Rather, arts managers need to envision a place of meaningful dialogue between their organization and their audience.

Crowd-curation is exciting because it is a clear illustration of the changing dynamics of the audience/museum relationship.  It takes creative online participation and literally translates the collective online vision into physical space.  Along the way, it can stimulate creative thinking by:

• Getting the participant/curator to think about her own internal perceptions of art, and perhaps inspire her to dig even deeper through self-reflection. What struck me most in my experience as a curator of Split-Second was how successful the exercise was in getting me to think about not only the art in the show but also my own understanding of visual culture.

• Creating discussion, based upon the collective decisions of the audience, about big-picture questions, like: How is artistic value determined? Is general consensus achievable in determining artist merit?

By putting the internal and collective processes together, crowd-curation has the potential to achieve multiple levels of meaningful contemplation.  Of course, arts managers may feel like they are taking a significant risk.  They may fear that the artistic content chosen by the masses will not constitute a “quality” exhibition in the traditional sense.  And, perhaps worse, if crowd-curation IS able to produce a quality exhibition, then what is the point of having all of these professionals around?  However, as sites like Wikipedia or perhaps the “comments” section of any website have shown, opening up the production of content to crowds is precisely the time when professional, articulate viewpoints are needed most.

This is not to argue that crowd-curation methods should or will replace traditional curatorial models.  In fact, it doesn’t make sense for all art museums to try it (based on a number of factors such as the nature of the audience, resources available, the nature of the exhibit, etc.)  Even so, crowd-curation is an innovative approach to breaking down the barriers between art museum and audience, and it’s a fascinating reflection of the way we live now.

Social Media Spotlight: Crowdsourcing Archives with Richard McCoy

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

Making the arts a more participatory experience is an exciting idea being developed by many arts organizations across the globe. Visitors to some institutions can now digitally tag artwork with their own unique descriptions or add photos of themselves to a community Flickr pool. Taking the role of participation even further, some organizations are turning to crowdsourcing, inviting the audience to help in the creation and documentation of art.

I recently had a chance to chat with Richard McCoy, Associate Conservator of Objects & Variable Art at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, about his use of crowdsourcing and public access tools to get the public involved in documenting public art.

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How did you get interested in documenting artwork online?

By 2008 basic versions of all of the tools that cultural institutions use to create, store, and share documentation about their artworks were freely available online (Wikipedia, Flickr, and YouTube), so I’d say my interest really got serious around this time.  I know it’s a bit nerdy, but I keep a pretty good record of my interests in documenting artworks online over on my Wikipedia User Page.  My basic thought was why not do it?  The investment is low and the potential for return is enormous.

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Why involve the public in the process?

To properly care for an artwork you have to care about an artwork; you have to recognize its existence within your community.  Many public artworks on display around the world are overlooked, their context and meaning forgotten on daily basis.  So to have the public involved is an important aspect of this project.  The more people that are involved in caring about and for public art and helping to document it, the better.

I think Clay Shirky has done a good job over the years explaining how the participatory web is radically different from our traditional notion of information sharing and collaboration.  His 2005 Ted Talk is still ahead of its time.  I agree with him in that we are just waking up to the notion of a large-scale participatory process that involves broad audiences using their “cognitive surplus” productively.

My interest has been more in community than public, though.  Documenting public art should be a community effort.  While it’s not the easiest thing to do, it’s a process that we have taught and developed with more than 40 IUPUI students.

We’re at a point where we can begin seeing that this is a project that should be operating on a global scale.  Right now there could be folks documenting a mural in L.A. and a small town in India.

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Where did the choice to use wikipedia as a teaching tool come from?

I first started using Wikipedia as a teaching tool in the fall of 2009 when professor Jennifer Mikulay invited me to co-teach an IUPUI Museum Studies Program graduate-level course, Collections Care and Management.

We created a project for our class to document all of artworks on and around IUPUI’s campus.  That semester our students created 42 new Wikipedia articles and uploaded 375 new images of the IUPUI artworks into Flickr. The result culminated in the creation of the IUPUI Public Art Collection and the beginning of WikiProject Public Art, which was first called Wikipedia Saves Public Art.

This year I taught the course by myself. I used WikiProject Public Art as a final project to document the artworks inside and around in the Indiana State House.  My students made 37 new Wikipedia articles and uploaded 272 images into Flickr.  We did all of the work within the confines of Wikipedia.  My hope was to model a project that could and should be repeated all over the country.

In addition to creating the Indiana State House Public Art Collection, I assembled all of the articles into in an easy-to-download book.  I wrote a summary of all of this documentation work in the article New Systems for Documenting Public Art on Liam Wyatt’s blog.

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I understand you and the class were recently recognized by the State of Indiana for this work.  What was that like?

We were tremendously honored to have both the House of Representatives and the Senate of the State of Indiana recognize our work with Concurrent Resolutions.  I’m most pleased about this recognition because it furthers the mission of the project: to raise awareness about the artworks at the Indiana Statehouse.

While  this recognition can be personally gratifying, the project is designed with the hope that the students will take ownership of it and its outcomes, as they are the ones who did the lion’s share of the documentation.

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Can you talk about the Public Art Documenter Project? How does it work and what are your goals for the project?

For a long time, I’ve wanted a mobile app that would allow for the easy documentation of public art.  The most basic component of any kind of documentation involved three components: location, photography, and the basic tombstone information about an artwork.  This would seem fairly easy to do with a mobile app.

Image via appbrain.com

When I found the mobile app creator, EpiCollect, which was developed at the Imperial College London, I was pretty excited.  With this tool I was able to quickly make the Public Art Documenter.  There are some down sides to this app, mainly in that it was developed with Google Apps, so it works really well on Droid phones, but not so well on the iPhone.  It’s also pretty tech-heavy, so it’s not all that easy to use.   I’ve been in conversation with the folks at Imperial College London who are in the process of creating the next version of this app which apparently will improve a lot of the iPhone bugs.

Also, with a number of friends, I’ve experimented with the potential for location-based applications such as Gowalla and Foursquare to serve this function.  With Gowalla, I’ve made a couple of “Trips” including the “Top 10 Public Artworks in Indianapolis” (http://gowalla.com/trips/557).

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Was there a specific reason you chose not to go through process of building an app of your own?

We’re really in an experimental stage with a mobile app.  We’ve considered applying for grants to develop and expand the project, including creating a mobile app.  But more than money, what the project really needs is a few institutional partners that are interested in using current technologies to document public art, or artworks in general.  While we’ve explored this with what would appear to be a few natural partners, including the Smithsonian Institution, who holds the archives for the important project Save Outdoor Sculpture!, we’ve yet to get anyone to directly support any aspect of the prospect.

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Crowd-sourcing archives is an exciting idea, but I can see some people arguing that it cannot compare to traditional documentation methods. How do you view your projects fitting in with current and past archival and documentation techniques?

This is a really interesting point to consider, and it goes not only to the storage of information, but the ownership of information and data.  When you work in Wikipedia you are applying a Creative Commons license to the information you create.  Also you are working collaboratively with a shared goal in a system that can be updated instantly by anyone in the world.  Because the information is built with this structure, it’s then actually owned by everyone and really no one.  This is a fantastic notion to consider vis-a-vis traditional documentation and sharing methods.

For example, compare our project to Philadelphia’s MuralFarm.org, Indianapolis’ Public Art Locator, or the Save Outdoor Sculpture! data. While this is all good data and information about public art, it’s stuck behind a website that is controlled by a very small handful of people.  All of these systems were designed to increase access to information about public art, but none are able to offer the kind of inclusion that’s possible with Wikipedia.

Plus in using Wikipedia you are actually invited to download the whole data set and keep it for yourself.  In fact, the information is licensed such that if you wanted to, you could use their book creator tool (the one I used to make the book about the Indiana State House Public Art Collection), create a book and then sell it for a profit, or just print it and have it on hand.  This is what the State House did with our information, so now they have the most complete records of their artworks in the more than 100 year history of the State House.

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Your projects all focus on primarily documenting public art, do you see these ideas and methods working well for other areas of the arts?

Of course! I recently had an intern working for me at the museum that developed an e-volunteer program that invites people to create Wikipedia articles about artworks in cultural instituions.  While we have a pilot underway at the IMA, we hope that other cultural institutions follow suit and invite their patrons to help document their collections.

Not only do many institutions lack the resources to basically document their collections, but few have recognized the value of incorporating a participatory audiences in the process.

The lack of cultural institutions with decently documented collections was famously spelled out in the Heritage Health Index Results, and reinforced in the 2009 Salzburg Global Seminar, “Connecting to the World’s Collections: Making the Case for Conservation and Preservation of our Cultural Heritage”, but few have recognized the need to open the doors and encourage a broad spectrum of participation.

A Guide to Mobile Marketing, Pt. 2: Check-In Platforms

In part 2 of this Mobile Marketing Series, let's examine the value of two mobile-based check-in platforms: Facebook and Foursquare. We'll take a look at how to properly set up your organization on these platforms and explore some creative ways to run check-in campaigns. Foursquare

As of December 2010, Foursquare reported over 5 million registered users worldwide. These users often use the platform to see what their friends are up to and discover nearby businesses and organizations that may interest them. Foursquare allows users to "check-in" via their mobile phones, collect points, let friends know where they are, and earn badges.

Foursquare Screenshot

Here's how to get your organization setup properly on Foursquare:

• To register with Foursqaure, visit: http://www.foursquare.com/businesses.
• Registering with Foursquare allows you to edit venue information, view analytics, activate and deactivate specials, and add employees.
• One of the most valuable benefits to registering your organization is the ability for venue owners to view real-time stats like: total daily check-ins over time, your most recent visitors, your most frequent visitors, gender breakdown of your customers, what time of day people check in and the portion of your venue's check-ins that are broadcast to Twitter and Facebook
• Bonus Tip: Just as with Google Places, your check-in campaign will be most effective if you ask customers to check-in. During the registration process, a business may request for Foursquare to mail them a free promotional sticker that invites users to check in.

Make sure to claim your FREE sticker when you register!

Facebook Places

Another popular mobile check-in platform is Facebook Places. A recent Merchant Circle survey (the largest online network of local businesses owners) suggested that Places is gaining popularity over other check-in services like Foursquare and Gowalla.

Facebook Places Screenshot

Here's how your organization can get setup in Facebook Places:

• To claim your Place, search for your business name on Facebook via the normal Search bar.  If your business’s Place already exists on Facebook, click on it to  visit its page. At the bottom left side of your Place there will be a  link that says "Is this your business?" Click on the link and you will  be directed to a claiming flow.
• By claiming your Facebook Place page, you can manage your place’s address, contact information, business hours, profile picture, admins and other settings.
• Facebook also allows you to merge this Place page with any existing Facebook Fan Pages you may have. To do this, visit a place that you have successfully claimed, and scroll to the "Merge with existing Page" link in the left side navigation menu. Click this link, and a prompt will appear to walk you through the process.
• Bonus Trip:  Facebook offers a fantastic resource on offering deals after you set up a Place page.

How Arts Orgs Are Using Check-In Platforms

Here are a few examples of how arts organizations are currently using check-in platforms:

• Austin-based film and music festival South By Southwest decided to turn this process into a game.  The festival's website lists what types of badges users can compete for. In addition to competing for badges, points are also awarded to users who check in at unusual places or at early hours of the morning.
• The Whitney Museum recently partnered with FourSquare on creating a custom badge. Users who unlock this badge can present their smartphones to the front desk and redeem a $5 admission to the museum. This is a great example of how organizations can offer deals to customers.
• Brooklyn Museum      offers great incentives for customers who unlock the coveted 'Mayor' badge. Foursquare mayorships are awarded to customers with the most days checked into a venue over the last 60 days. If a customer is Mayor on their Target First Saturdays events, they can receive a 1st fans membership for one year. Brooklyn Museum's community page also utilizes      FourSquare's API to show who has recently checked in, what badges their customers are unlocking, and who has obtained the title of 'Mayor'.
• These types of services could also be used for arts events like gallery crawls or for arts organizations to partner with local restaurants. A gallery crawl could provide a similar type of adventurous environment where users could compete for special badges and earn points based on how many organizations they check-in with during the span of the crawl.

So what about your organization? Are you registered with location-based social media sites?  If so, how are you using your presence there?  (Please, share your thoughts and experiences in the comments area below.)

In the upcoming parts of this series, we'll take a look at QR Codes, SMS, and mobile app creation!

Opera by You: How to crowdsource a production

By this point we’ve all heard about crowdsourcing. It's a way to outsource a project and let a large group of people create it online. (See video at the end of the post for a fuller explanation, complete with animated fish.) We’ve heard about crowdsourcing logo designs, requests for proposals (RFP's) or even determining which paintings to show in an exhibition. But how about an full-length opera? Well, one company is crazy enough to try it.

The Savonlinna Festival in Finland has been developing an opera through the collaboration platform wreckamovie since 2010. The Opera by You initiative has been developed in five phases, some of which overlap. First, the crowd collaborated on a plot and name for the opera in July 2010. They decided on the title Free Will and the following plot, as described by Paivi Salmi, Project Manager of Opera by You:

God has had enough of all the misery that people are suffering from and calls a meeting with the angels. They decide to send a few dead geniuses back to Earth to make things better. They are supposed to make a huge difference in science and art and create world peace. The geniuses are Joan of Arc, Oscar Wilde and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Second, writers began work on the libretto (or script) to the opera. The process is halfway completed and is set to be done in May. Third, the composers in the group began setting the words to music in September. Fourth, the project coordinators launched the visualization plan. Salmi described the process.

Visualization means to us creating the concept of “environment” on the stage: the era of the opera, stage sets, wardrobe, lightning etc. We have decided together with the community that the story of Free Will will take place in our modern time and now we proceed on deciding how the different scenes look like visually.

Visualizations of Hell in the year 2012 from Opera by You

The libretto, composing and visualization plans are set to be ready at the end of May 2011. In the last phase, the whole concept will be moved to the hands of the Savonlinna Opera Festival for production, and that is where the crowdsourcing will end when it comes to the live opera production. The opera will be produced during Savonlinna’s 2012 summer festival season. The crowdsourcing will continue in that the existing community within the wreckamovie platform will work with the current plot, creating an animated movie version of the live opera. To see the opera creation in action, visit http://operabyyou.wreckamovie.com.

Paivi Salmi manages the web community creation process as well as the marketing and community partnership initiatives. I caught up with Salmi and asked her about the collaborative process of crowdsourcing the opera.

How did this idea originally come about? The Savonlinna Opera Festival has been frontrunner in developing opera genre in Finland. We have had several projects for instance for creating operas for kids. This spring we will again launch this kind of project where kids create opera as part of their normal school work. The Savonlinna Opera Festival has had several Finnish world premieres with quite unusual productions. We are actively searching new ways of reaching new audiences for the opera and also new ways of creating the opera. So in the spirit of “Web 2.0,” we decided to try the collaborative product development or crowdsourcing in the web also in the field of the opera.

How did you choose wreckamovie as the platform to create the opera? The wreckamovie platform provides the basic tools for collaborative discussion and working. It is also well-known in the Europe at least and already has lots of members interested in collaborative working on the web. We also plan to create an animated movie about the plot of our opera and for that second phase of the project, wreckamovie will the best available tool.

With so many people collaborating on one project, how do you select the best ideas? How do you deal with differing opinions on the direction the project should take? We have five operatives in the team who are experienced opera creation professionals (a script writer, a stage director, a composer, a production specialist and a visualization expert) who will guide the creative process in the web. Their task is to select best ideas, give the "developing” tasks for the community.

Opera by You Community Members by Country.

Who are the people collaborating on the project? Do you know the make-up as far as country, age, and profession? Do most have an artistic background and collaborate on areas of the project they specialize in? When it comes to age, they are average 35 years old, mostly motivated by composing and visualizing. We don't collect any information about their profession or education, so we do not know if they already are professionals in the field of opera or classical music.

How do you plan to distribute the opera once it is produced at the festival in 2012? Will the footage be available online, recorded or streaming? The opera will be performed 3 times during summer 2012 in the Savonlinna Opera Festival. If some opera house is interested in the project, we will naturally export the production. We plan to make footage available and also animated movie which will be distributed online. The project was launched at the Opera America annual meeting in L.A. last June.

How are you addressing intellectual property issues for the contributors to the project? Every member has to sign user agreement and accept Wreckamovies terms of use where the member gives all rights to the project. So there will be no intellectual property issues.

What has been the response from the online community and the opera community at large? The community has been growing steadily, but only certain members are active in all "production lines". It goes so that some are writers, some others composers and some only interested in the visualization part. But mainly people are very excited and willing to work "for free". We also want make it easy to just anyone without any classical music or opera experience to participate to the collaborative work. We have reached a very good visibility to our project in the internet. For instance in the launch phase of the project there were lots of articles in online media for instance in Latin America, India and Europe. The larger opera community has been very interested and curious. We have been asked to present the project in several conferences and seminars. People are also very interested in the process itself--how has it been ”structured” etc. within opera community but also in the larger community of art, theatre and even social media.

Here's a more detailed answer to the question "What is crowdsourcing?"

Three days left to complete the Ticketing Software Satifaction Survey!

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

The 2011 Ticketing Software Satisfaction Survey is closing Friday, February 18!

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. 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! Results will be sent to survey participants in April 2011.

Fill out the survey today!

If you have already filled out the survey, please share with colleagues by clicking the "ShareThis" icon below.

The State of the Mobile - The 2011 Museum & Mobile Survey

Image via intomobile.com

This past month the results came in for the 2011 Museum & Mobile survey. The survey is part of an ongoing research project focused on the uses and trends of mobile technology in museums.

The survey launched last September and had more than 700 responses, with professions ranging from museum employees to mobile technology vendors and researchers.  The effort was international, but the majority of responses (80%) were from the United States, with the United Kingdom (5%) and Canada (4%) as the next largest group of respondents.

The survey points to some interesting trends that are cropping up with mobile development for museums. There is a ton of information in the survey, but here are some of the interesting things I pulled from the presentation:

• Of the 738 survey respondents, 30% already have some form of a mobile program in place and 23% planned to develop one. 36% of institutions had no plans to go mobile and the remaining 11% were responses from vendors and researchers.

• When asked which terms best described their current or planned mobile program, the most common responses were: Some sort of audio tour, free for visitors, and visitors were expected to provide their own hardware (i.e. smartphone, iPod).

• The goals for the mobile programs were most commonly described as providing supplementary information and diversifying the visitors’ experience. Personally, I loved that the next two most common goals were an emphasis on experimentation and creating an interactive experience.

• What was most challenging for museums with mobile programs in place? Encouraging adoption among visitors, producing the content, and keeping that content up to date.

• The largest challenge for those planning to develop a mobile plan? The implementation costs.

• Looking ahead five years, most institutions said that implementing in-house content development was a definite goal.

• And what is least likely to be implemented in the next five years? Institution-wide WIFI, real time location services and augmented reality.

• What I found promising was that respondents to the survey had a strong desire to see more research done, even among those who had no mobile plans at all.  The most requested areas of research were: Guidelines for user experience design, methods for conducting visitor evaluations and analysis of different technology systems.

So beyond these points, what are some of the larger takeaways from the survey? Well, for one, the survey goes to show that mobile technology is more than a fad. Mobile programs are becoming more common and less of an anomaly among museums. The survey also provides a snapshot of some of the concerns about development and adoption of a mobile program.

It was a little disappointing to see that among the technology being definitely implemented in the next five years, new tech like RTLS and augmented reality were the bottom two. Personally, I would not underestimate the possibility of this technology becoming an expectation among visitors, even within the next few years.

Also, the survey pointed out that 50-55% of respondents consider having a mobile-friendly website as something that should be definitely implemented in the next five years. An organization’s website will often be the first portal of entry for a mobile user, and having a website that is optimized for mobile platforms should be a higher priority.

Overall, I think the biggest takeaway of the survey is that the future of mobile technology in museums will not be just some flashy app. Throughout the field, serious thought is being put into how these programs can be developed in a way that are both substantial and engaging for the user. It was awesome to see institutions describe the goals of their current or planned mobile programs as experimental and interactive.

There were a lot of interesting results from thus survey, the above points were only a few that jumped out at me. For the more in-depth results of the survey visit Museum & Mobile’s website to view the full presentation.

Livestream, Ustream, We all stream: A practical guide to streaming platforms

With so many choices when it comes to streaming video, what's an arts organization to do?

A few weeks ago, I highlighted some emerging trends in arts marketing for 2011.  One of the trends was “changing media consumption”, part of which includes arts organizations streaming performances live, whether to ballparks or online.

So let’s say that your organization is interested in streaming a performance live as it is happening or streaming a pre-recorded performance at a scheduled time. What are your options as far as platforms for streaming that video? And which organizations are out there using these platforms?

YouTube: The Non-option for Live Streaming

YouTube is the big name for online video, but livestreaming on YouTube will only be available for content partners. YouTube has not announced when livestreaming capabilities will go live. Approved by YouTube, content partners are people and companies that post regularly to the site and so that they can monetize their content with ads and rentals, obtain better digital quality for their uploads, and use YouTube’s Insight analytics tools.

You can apply to become a YouTube content partner to gain the above benefits. They have a special program specifically for nonprofits that currently includes arts organizations like Anaheim Ballet, MOMA, and Pilobolus Dance.

So when should you use YouTube? As of now, it’s the most mainstream choice for video, and therefore the easiest platform on which to build a community. YouTube has also streamed major events involving the arts community, like the Guggenheim’s YouTube Play Event. You might use it to post clips of the streaming event after the event is over and to host videos long-term; but right now, don’t depend on YouTube to release streaming capability any time soon.

Brightcove/Ooyala: The Gold Standard

Brightcove is the high-end gold standard for streaming. Many major corporations use it, as well as arts organizations like San Francisco Ballet and the Royal Opera House. It’s best for larger companies with highly valuable and highly demanded content as well as companies who want to fully integrate their streaming efforts with other components of their technology portfolio, via APIs, SDKs and other programming tools. Ooyala has a similar high-end set up used by companies like TicketMaster and ElectronicArts. Brightcove and Ooyala are great for larger companies with a lot of resources at their disposal. However, the price may not be affordable for organizations likely to use livestreaming once a year and only intend to stream to computers or existing mobile platforms—as opposed to a projector that would require higher quality video or a customized mobile platform that would require extensive development.

Livestream, Ustream, and Justin.tv: The mainstream for livestreaming

You may be thinking, “Okay, Brightcove sounds great, but my organization is not nearly as big as the Royal Opera House.” The most popular choices for streaming video amongst American arts organizations are livestream.com and ustream.tv. Both platforms offer mobile integration, easy interfaces and most any other feature you would want. Livestream even offers monetization opportunities.

Justin.tv appears to be gaining market share, but fewer arts organizations are on it, and its audience tends to skew younger and more male than the other platforms. Organizations like Wolf Trap have streamed pre-recorded events on livestream, a necessity when subtitles must be entered. Last summer the organization’s opera company streamed a cabaret performance of two world premiere operas Bastianello by John Musto and Lucrezia by William Bolcom.

Lee Anne Myslewski, Administrative Director, described the opera’s choice to use Livestream. “We chose Livestream because the interface was the most intuitive and it seemed to work the most consistently on all platforms/browsers. (Intuitive is important!) We were also specifically looking for an integrated chat function so that the audience and the artists could interact in real time during the broadcast. The process was smooth – easy for even a non-video person to create. We did have some viewers struggle with the speed of the file and intermittent pauses, but that could have been due to any number of causes - file size, their connection speed, or traffic on the site. If we go forward with the project we’ll likely use them again.”

One of the most notable successes on Livestream was Misnomer Dance Theatre’s stream of a performance in April 2010, which reached 2,000 viewers in 19 countries. Organizations are not only using LiveStream and Ustream to broadcast perform footage, though. They are also using it for production diaries like Second Wind Productions, press conferences like the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and educational initiatives like the Orange County Public Schools Orchestra Programs.

DaCast: No fuss monetization

Increasingly, companies want to monetize online content, and a recent Pew study (good summary here by ReelSEO) shows that people will pay for it.  Monetizing content can basically be done in two ways: generating revenue through advertising, or having the consumer directly pay for online content (pay per view), which can be on a one-off or subscription basis.

LiveStream requires $350 a month for their premium service, which includes opportunities for monetization. However, if you want to monetize your content with less financial commitment up front, DaCast is a sensible option.

DaCast describes itself as self-service model. In a way, all streaming services are self-service, but DaCast allows companies to monetize their content in the same self-service way that you can upload a video to YouTube. The only fees that you pay are for bandwidth, with a minimum $5 commitment. (The first 10GB are free, too.) Most excitingly, DaCast has developed a plug-in for Flash which allows users to pay directly on their video screens, rather than clicking through to another page.

The question is: could a paid model be right for your organization? As DaCast CEO Stephane Roulland said, “This is an excellent question.” Aggregated sites like classicaltv.com and Ovation are already monetizing content. Classicaltv uses the pay-per-view model while Ovation uses the ad-based revenue model. The Metropolitan Opera’s Met Player might be one of the one of the only single-organization streaming sites. The key is figuring out if your organization will break even on the fees to secure the rights and the fees to stream.

More resources:

• Here's a handy comparison chart from Streaming Media.
• If you are interested in learning about your options when recording said performance, check out our Making a Video webinar.
• You may also be interested in our Social Media, Video Footage & The Law white paper to read about clearing rights.

Data Sharing & Arts Organizations - Take Part in the Conversation

Our friends at Fractured Atlas are relaunching their Issue Brunch series and have asked me to facilitate a discussion on the benefits and challenges of data sharing among arts organizations. As Tiffany Bradley, Development and Marketing Specialist for Fractured Atlas, recently wrote:

As more organizations lead collaborative efforts, the implications of sharing data come to the forefront. Data sharing - whether for marketing, ticketing, fundraising purposes - raises a host of issues. Does pooling information about patrons lead to greater revenues for all parties? Or do organizations risk a negative response from patrons? Integrating the range of software that arts organizations use is also a problem in its own right.

This panel discussion will be streamed live on February 11, 2011 at 1:15 pm EST via UStream at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/fracturedatlas. Online participants will be able to engage one another in discussion and submit questions for the panel.

Panel participants include:

• Deborah M. Abramson - The Pew Charitable Trusts
• Joe Harrell - Alliance for the Arts
• Adam Huttler - Fractured Atlas
• Barbara Janowitz - Theater Subdistrict Council/City of New York
• Chrisopher J. Mackie, Ph.D - Open Health Tools
• Maris Smith - Situation Interactive

So what has your experience been like with data sharing among arts organizations?  What benefits have you received?  How did you approach the organizational and technological challenges?  Leave a comment below and be sure to join us on Friday for what is certain to be an engaging conversation.

Putting New Work on the Map

The ways in which we interact with maps and geography has changed dramatically in the past two decades. The use of interactive, online maps has become a commonplace activity, especially since the advent of Google Maps. The ability to visually discover and explore information is greater now than ever before. The technology of interactive mapping is now being applied to the arts. Two new projects are presenting exciting ways to visually explore and discover new works: With the New Play Map, visitors can visualize where new theatrical works are being produced in the United States and the ways in which they are connected. The website Hitlantis has created a sort of ‘heat map’ that lets users visually explore the new music being produced around the world. Both projects are fun to play with and the technology makes them extremely accessible and easy to use. Here is a little closer of a look at both these projects:

The New Play Map

Launched this past month, the New Play Map is a pilot project created by the American Voices New play Institute at Arena Stage. The institute began collaborating with web development company Quilted last spring to create a map that allows users to visually explore new theatrical works in the United States. The map gives visitors a visual snapshot of the new play sector and acts as a resource for those seeking out collaborators.

How it works

The New Play Map’s content is user-generated and visitors can explore and track new plays being developed throughout the US from information uploaded by the playwrights themselves.  The New Play Map is free to use and navigating the site will come naturally to anyone who has even a basic experience with a site like Google Maps.

To use the map, zoom in on a region of interest and click on one of three icons. Clicking an icon will bring up a sidebar with additional info and connections. The icons that look like people link to the playwrights, the calendar icons are the plays, and the building icons are the theatres themselves. Each icon’s sidebar includes a short bio of the playwright or synopsis of the new play. The sidebar also contains a list of related projects and affiliated organizations.

An example of the connections and sidebar menu that pop up when an icon is selected.

Red, dotted lines will also appear when an icon is clicked, showing the links between that specific work/playwright and how it is connected across the country. Each connection is numbered and corresponds to a description offered in the sidebar.

Filters can be applied on the map, and what sets this apart from something like Google Maps, is that the filters are not limited to geography alone. The filters are specific to the theatrical community with parameters such as operating budget, organization type and national membership affiliations. The ability to filter by special interest is also available, giving visitors a custom map of plays that are contemporary, experimental or focused on a specific multicultural group, for example.

Version one of the New Play Map is up and running with new plays being added everyday. Head over and check it out at newplaymap.org.

Hitlantis

Hitlantis, an internet startup from is a Helsinki, Finland, wanted to create an easier way for music lovers to wade through the multitude of new music online. Their solution is a sort of ‘heat map’ that visually groups and displays new bands based on their popularity. Users of the site can zoom in to their favorite genre and get a visual snapshot of what the hottest new bands are.

Movement on the map is based on a band’s popularity in the built-in social network of the site.  A band cannot just buy their way to the center of Hitlantis, they have to earn their visibility from the fans.

How it works

Popularity on the map can be read in two different ways, the proximity of a band to the map’s center and the relative size of that band’s icon. The closer a band is to the center, the 'hotter' they are, and this proximity determined by how often a song is played, ‘liked’, or purchased.  The better the music a band makes, the faster they move to the center of the map.

The band icons vary in size and the larger the icon on the map, the greater the overall visibility. The band’s icon size is determined by their number of fans, how much revenue has been generated by song purchases and the amount of audio the band uploads.

A closeup view of a band on Hitlantis and a typical sidebar menu.

All visitors can register with the site and set up a basic profile, but only the bands will appear on the map. A band’s profile contains biographical info, a comments section, a list of their fans, and most importantly, their music. Songs are played through a built in music player along the bottom of the map and the ability to create playlists is built into the player.

It’s important to note for bands that for all of the music they upload, they must retain 100% of the copyright. In addition to that, the music cannot have been previously published or be involved with any copyright agencies.

Registration is free or visitors can log in using their Facebook ID, but is not required if you just want to check out the site.  Hitlantis is free to everyone, but a monthly charge is required if bands wish to sell their music through the site. Try the map out for yourself at Hitlantis.com.

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These maps are fun to play with and aid in the process of discovering new work. The New Play Map may shape up to be a powerful tool because it offers many in the theatre community a easy-to-navigate resource for discovery of new works and sources for collaboration. Hitlantis is great because it aids up and coming bands with a free way to share their music and grow a fan base. Personally, I see the bigger takeaway from both projects being that both groups took advantage of a widespread and commonly understood visual format and utilized it in a unique way to fit their own missions. It's an interesting use of a tool and just begs the question, what other platforms are out there that we can leverage for the arts?

Tumblr Is Headed For The Creative Community, Should Arts Organizations Follow?

A vast repository of pop culture memes & internet humor, the blogging service Tumblr has grown significantly since its launch in 2007. With over 12 million blogs and with the recent raising of $30 million in funding, some see Tumblr's future as taking on blogging services like WordPress and Blogger. The site’s hallmarks are its streamlined posting dashboard and reblogging feature. Add on likes and short replies, and this gives the site a familiar feel to social networks like Flickr, Facebook and Twitter.

So this is all well and good, but how does Tumblr relate to the arts? As mentioned on mashable.com recently, Tumblr is going to focus more on developing the growing creative communities on the site.  As Tumblr’s founder David Karp stated:

“You look in fashion, creative writing, photography, music, so many of these creative circles,” said Karp, “and we have these really substantial communities that now live on Tumblr.”

Should arts organizations take advantage of Tumblr’s new direction and add it to their group of social networks? Before getting into that, take a look at Tumblr’s differences when compared to blogging platforms like WordPress or Blogger. I’ve used tumblr myself for a personal blog and here are a few of the features that stood out to me and made it feel more like a social media site:

The posting dashboard. Image via tumblr.com

• The Dashboard Streamlined for different types of media, the dashboard contains buttons that takes bloggers to posting forms customized for the content. This speeds up the posting process and makes posting media content such as audio, video and photos, a lot faster than traditional blog platforms.

A typical submission form on tumblr. Image via tumblr.com

• The Submission Feature: This feature is especially driven towards community-oriented blogs, where the author can invite his community to write and contribute their own content. Posts can be submitted by followers to their favorite blog through a built-in form and since the posts are automatically formatted, all the author of has to do is hit publish. This is probably the feature I feel would be most attractive to arts organizations, since it asks the constituents to not only read and comment on the organization's blog, but be a driver of content as well. x
• Reblogging: Probably my favorite feature of Tumblr. This works almost the exact same way that a re-tweet does on Twitter. Pressing the reblog button will instantly re-post someone’s post onto your blog. The feature is impulsive and probably the number one reason content spreads so quickly through the site.x

An example of the tumblr dashboard and update feed. Image via tumblr.com

• The Update Feed Imagine the feed of updates on Facebook or Blogger, Tumblr operates in the same way, aggregating all the Tumblr blogs you follow into one stream. All of the posts appear in a uniform format with the options to like, short reply or reblog.

Tumblr’s features make it easy and accessible for the individual blogger, but that doesn’t necessarily make it great for organizations. Here are a few issues I saw with how the site operates that might be irritating for some arts organizations:

• Tumblr is a Clique: While a Tumblr blog can be viewed by anyone, features like reblogging and replies are only available (and visible) to someone signed into a Tumblr account. This is true of many social networks, but since Tumblr is essentially a blogging platform, there is an expectation that the level of engagement should be available for all visitors. Organizations can lose out on connecting with non-Tumblr visitors who cannot “like” or comment on a post that really engages them. x
• Kept Out of the Conversation: Another problem for engagement on the site is the system for comments - it's extremely difficult to create a conversation. Tumblr users can leave short replies, but there are no systems in place to let authors and other bloggers reply to that comment. What follows is a mess of reblogs and screen captures of comments in an effort to make a threaded conversation. Some Tumblr bloggers have tried to solve this problem using a service like Disqus, but then a problem is created for the Tumblr community. Visitors outside Tumblr can engage, but the comments will not show up in the regular feed or be accessible for Tumblr users through their accounts, and the two communities remain disconnected from one another. x
• Customization on the site can be tough: The options are limited and those options change completely based on which theme you have installed. Some themes severely limit your options for color choice and background image, making branding difficult. Other themes do not allow for visitors to have a reply option, even within Tumblr. x
• Remember all those reblogs, short replies, and likes? While these show up in your update feed, there is no built-in way to track them. It’s an exciting experience to see a post go viral and get re-blogged multiple times, but tracking that effect through Tumblr over time is extremely difficult. x
• Managing the Archive: Managing past posts is difficult and while a mass editor exists, this just gives a visual overview of your posts over time. It’s hard to track a post from more than a few months back and there is no way to export your archives.

So should an arts organization take advantage of Tumblr anyway? If you have an existing, integrated social media strategy and primary blog in place, it may be worth a shot. Tumblr has a fairly clean interface with Facebook and Twitter, and could be a good way to provide content to an ever-growing community of bloggers.

If your organization is thinking of making this their main blog, I would hold off since it will be harder to manage in the long run and success metrics would be a pain. It will be interesting to see how Tumblr is going to improve the site to focus on the creative community and what effect it may have on how people interact with blogs in the future.

Technology Adoption and Implementation in Arts Organizations

Technology in the Arts has just published the results of a  survey regarding technology adoption and implementation in the arts and cultural field. (Access the PDF publication here).

In order to uncover emerging trends and differences in the use of technology amongst arts and cultural organizations, we asked arts managers to provide us with baseline information as well as a self-assessment of the role of technology in their organizations.  Respondents shared information about where they are now, which technologies they hope to adopt in the coming year, and how they find the resources they need to implement and maintain technology.

This report, which includes responses across a broad spectrum of arts and cultural organizations representing a variety of disciplines in the United States and Canada, reveals a snapshot of how the field approaches technology.

What did we discover?  Here is a small sampling of the findings that emerged:

• Over three-quarters of organizations with annual budgets of less than $500,000 spent under $5000 on technology in the past year, while half of organizations with budgets of $5 million or more spent over $100,000.
• Nearly half of organizations with budgets between $2.5 million and $5 million have no full-time technology staff, and that figure jumps to 82% for organizations with annual budgets of less than $500,000.
• Organizations with annual budgets of less than $500,000 currently use static websites at a higher rate than dynamic websites, while all larger organizations are more likely to have already moved away from static websites.
• A large percentage of respondents, regardless of organizational budget size, did not respond with any specific technology plans for the next year--which may indicate an overall lack of planning for future technology.

Want to find out more?  Check out our report and see how your organization compares.

Social Media Spotlight: The ToonSeum

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

How to allocate time and money towards both social media engagement and online marketing is different for every arts organization. To get a different perspective Technology in the Arts decided to talk with a smaller organization, the ToonSeum, about how they achieve their social media and online marketing goals with a limited staff. I had a chance to chat with Joe Wos, Executive Director of the ToonSeum, about his approach:

So Joe, what is the ToonSeum?

The ToonSeum is Pittsburgh’s Museum of Cartoon Art. It is one of only three museums in the country dedicated to the cartoon and comic arts. We offer rotating exhibitions covering all aspects of cartoons and comics, from animation and anime, to comic strips, comic books, editorial cartoons, illustration and much more. We also offer ongoing workshops, screenings and lectures.

It really is one of the most unique museums in Pittsburgh. Every city may have a version of a children’s museum or traditional art museum, but there are only three cartoon art museums! New York, San Francisco and Pittsburgh. We take great pride in our unique place in Pittsburgh.

What kind of marketing and PR challenges does the ToonSeum face?

Our number one challenge as with any small non-profit is budget. We are a small museum up against juggernauts! We are up to the challenge.  If anything, budget limitations have led to creative thinking. You aren’t going to see us investing a lot in “traditional” advertising.  Being a smaller museum also eliminates a lot of the fear of change you see from larger venues. We don’t have a huge investment in outmoded technology or ideas, so we are more inclined to let go and move forward to embrace new ideas in both marketing and tech.

We have been very lucky, the media both locally and nationally has been very supportive.  Part of that attention is because of our approach to marketing. We use online marketing to create interest in “real world” experiences. We innovate new ways of reaching out. How many museums can say they had their own beer? Illustration Ale was a great success. We didn’t mail out postcards we used facebook.

In February we will launch our own themed hotel room in partnership with the Wyndham Grande downtown. It’s all about immersive experiences, translating virtual experiences we enjoy in gaming and through cartoons into the real world. That’s the kind of creative thinking we embrace.

A limited budget forces truly creative thinking.

Why did you choose to go with social networks/online marketing as a solution?

We are a fan-based museum. It’s a new approach to museum management, marketing and even exhibitions. Comic and cartoons by their very nature, are a fan-based medium. We embrace that. Just look at San Diego Comic Con, why is every major movie launching there? Because of the power fans have via social networks. We tap into those same fans. We are a geek museum, and proud of it. Our audience is very tech savvy, early adopters who can market virally better than anyone.

We know that the ToonSeum is a real world extension of a fan based virtual world. We are a museum of characters, icons and avatars. We want to become a real hub for comic and cartoon fans, and the only way to do that now, is through creating online connections and then inviting them to join us at the ToonSeum. Once we get them here, we know, they will tell their friends, strangers, tweet, blog, post, and tell the world about us.

We also recognize that it can’t be just virtual, you have to take it to the fans! We have booths at major Comic Cons, from San Diego to New York. We also host Blogger events and Tweet Parties at the ToonSeum. If we can get the word out to them about our exhibits and programs they will help us spread the word.

Beyond the standard social media efforts, such as a Facebook page and a twitter account, what other types of online efforts are the ToonSeum trying?

I worked for twenty years with a museum that had a real aversion to technology, it took a decade for them to come around. The ToonSeum is the opposite. We want to be the first. We were the first museum in Pittsburgh to have an I-Phone App. We may still be the only one! MailChimp, EventBrite, every new social marketing tool that comes out we give it a try. We were among the first to participate in KickStarter (we were even featured in the New York Times in an article about it.) I attend the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas just because I know we need to stay at pace with the public. The technology in most museums is outdated, kids can do more advance and exciting interactions at home. So we reach out, we are a Beta Test museum. We put ourselves out there to new technology and say, let us try this out first!

We have an ipad docent at the entrance. Any guests who wants to experience more online while in the gallery can use it as a tool.

For light up night we launched lights in our windows that can be controlled from the outside via an iphone. The guest has control over their experience before they even enter the door.

I am a self-professed geek and nerd, I attend the Consumer Electronic Show in Vegas every other year, I attend the Toy Fair in New York. I bring those innovations and ideas back to the ToonSeum and find ways to integrate them. So the ToonSeum has a giant screen projection in the center of our ceiling that loops cartoons. It is of course blu-ray 3d as well.

We have worked with Behar-Fingal to integrate QR codes into all our exhibitions. This allows guest with smartphones to link to additional content online. Whether it is a wikipage entry on the artists, or video we provide of the cartoonist at work. This is a great tool to take our exhibits beyond our walls and is also cost effective. People are walking around with access to all the information they need. In the future museums won’t need placard after placard of explanatory text. They will just need to provide a link. Their curiosity will take them beyond your walls. Each and every work of art is a potential jumping off point to a world of discovery in the world wide virtual museum.

We know that the traffic has to flow in both directions. A museum should be a destination from those on the web looking for real world experiences, but a museum must also be a gateway to curiosity that can be infinitely explored in new and exciting ways online.

Despite our using technology in so many ways, the ToonSeum is still ultimately about art on the walls. Because we have integrated ways to put the technology in your hands we don’t have to use a lot of monitors and computers. It makes it an individual experience, which is something we learned from social marketing. Everyone wants to interact on their own terms.

I know you operate on a small staff, how does this affect how you manage your various online efforts?

We have a social marketing intern whose only job is to tweet and post. That’s a must! The museum has to have a presence online that allows for immediate interaction. So we respond to every tweet that mentions us, every facebook post. It’s time consuming but it is the most important aspect of social marketing… being social!

All of our staff also has access to post to our various accounts. So we are updating daily. More important though is the fact that our fans are out there, retweeting and posting everything for us. It gives us a much bigger presence.

They also know to speak with the ToonSeums voice. It’s always connected to our mission and not personal. I have seen top-notch museums whose official facebook page has post about their kids getting the flu! Unless there is an epidemic of every kid visiting your venue getting the flu, how does a museum have kids that get sick? It doesn’t. Your venue has to have a virtual identity, a voice that your fans can interact with and it has to be consistent.

This is all easier to accomplish with a small staff. There are no committees, no approval process, no budget meeting, we identify what needs done and do it!

Does your staff size affect how you track the success of all of your online projects?

Every guest that comes in is asked how they heard about us, and their zipcode. We track every single opened email and clicked link. That data is all placed into a matrix we use to measure our success. It doesn’t take a big marketing firm, it just takes a commitment of a few minutes each day.

Can we talk about the Bloggers Blast? What is the event and why focus on bloggers?

I was at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas and attended about 5 after parties. What impressed me was they were all geared toward bloggers and social media. I knew this was something the ToonSeum had to do in Pittsburgh.

Traditional press is great, we love them! But today even they are pulling content from bloggers. Bloggers have fans, just like we do. It comes back to embracing a fan-based culture. So we wanted to let those bloggers get a sneak preview at our upcoming exhibitions and programs for 2011. We have special guests, a preview of the art, prizes and every single blogger will get a flash drive filled with all our press releases, promo art and more. If you are reading this and are a blogger, contact joe@toonseum.com for your invite.

We will be following this with tweet parties, where everyone is admitted free if they tweet about the exhibits.

You have mentioned that the ToonSeum was one of the first Pittsburgh museums to develop an iPhone app. What does the app do and what was the development process like? Has there been a good response?

Going to back to my previous experience with another museum, I was often frustrated by the phrase “we’ll look into it.” I began to realize that phrase meant, we don’t know how to do it and aren’t willing to learn. Forget the yellow pages, the phone book is dead. It’s all about web and apps. We knew we needed an iphone app. It provides immediate access to enhance the guest experience. It also goes a long way to legitimizing you to tourist. It’s one of the first things I do when I visit a venue in a new city, I check them out online and then download their app.

Creating an app can be an expensive prospect, thousands of dollars. That was out of the question for our budget. So, I just learned to do it myself. I applied for an apple developer license, found a great site that would allow me total control over the creation of the app, submitted it for approval and that was it. Total process took about five hours, not counting waiting for approvals, which took three weeks. I used rss feeds so that info on our hours and events could be changed on the fly. I created a framework that would allow our youtube videos to be viewed from within the application. As a cartoonist it was easy to do most of the graphic design work myself and there you go. It’s done. Our social marketing intern can update it from anywhere. I can even update from my iphone when I am out of town.

If I am going to run a museum I should know how to do every job. I better know how to market, run the register, curate an exhibition and even mop the floors. I can then have a better understanding of how difficult a task is and more important I can lend a hand when it is needed.

I am working on an android app right now and we are doing a complete web overhaul in spring.

We are geeks, we love this stuff.

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!

And please share with colleagues by clicking the "ShareThis" icon below.

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.