Social Media, Funding & Prom Queens

American Express recently started a grant program funding arts organizations through online voting instead of traditional non-profit success metrics. Quality of art, financial stability, and community impact were not the deciding factor in who received a $200,000 grant this summer, votes were. In a scene reminiscent of American Idol or Dancing With the Stars, arts organizations compete for the grand prize. Twitter, Facebook, and E-mail, took center stage as organizations launched their online campaigns. A competition was born and America voted to determine the winner.

American Express’s use of the high school prom queen method to choose a winner evokes many new questions for funders and fundraisers alike:

• Does the idea of a contest remove art from arts funding?
• Is the best organization being rewarded?
• Is this a popularity contest or a social media war?
• How do you send a message for support without degrading the integrity of your opponents?
• How will social media be affected through this type of funding?

Galloping ahead of many traditional forms of communication, technology and social media have taken the arts community by storm over the last few years. This contest adds yet another facet to their use: fundraising. With the voting apparatus hosted online, social media makes perfect sense as the advertising weapon of choice, but is this a good choice for the arts?

Building communities, starting conversations, and sharing information top the list of ‘the best ways to use Social media.’ Advertising and sales lead the least effective uses. In an attempt to gain votes, organizations risk alienating their supporters through using inflammatory messaging or hyper focusing on their votes and forgetting the online communities they created.

Bashing the competition, touting superiority, or focusing on why one organization ‘needs the money more’ represent strategies and messaging that could easily be adopted. These messages are uncomfortable for many people and can fracture the arts community. However, without competitive messaging the prize would simply go to the organization with the highest online presence, essentially starting the contest on an unfair playing field.

Assuming an organization crafted an effective campaign without causing any damage, the biggest question still remains unanswered. Should grants be determined by popular vote?

On one hand supply and demand compose the framework of the funding structure. The organization with the highest public demand receives a reward to create more art. On the other hand, many see this as a popularity contest with the biggest flashiest organizations gaining a clear advantage. Unfortunately, art comprises no part of either approach. This funding model is not based on the organization, what they do, who they do it for, or why they do it: a counterintuitive approach in my opinion.

While increased online support and a focus on technology use to reach constituents could provide benefits in this funding model, the prom queens method of distributing support should probably be left where it belongs: high school. This model has no way of insuring the best organizations reap the rewards or that the most efficient and effective programs receive funding. Popularity does not always equal quality, but it will always decide the winner in this funding model.

Audience 2.0, Part II: Thoughts for the Future

Check out Part I for an overview of the NEA’s recent report Audience 2.0: How Technology Influences Arts Participation While Audience 2.0 gives some useful statistics on technology and media participation in the arts, the report does not provide the answers or the data that I am looking for regarding arts participation and technology.

• How does arts participation through one technology affect participation in other technologies?  For example, how does participating through television affect web participation?
• What impact has social media had on arts participation?
• How do people participate in the arts digitally and online?  What are they doing on the web when they are participating?
• Has participation in the arts via technology affected online giving to arts organizations?

Audience 2.0 draws into question the timeliness of national arts research, the vehicle being used to conduct this research, and the understanding of where arts audiences are heading in the future. This report was a useful audience analysis for 2008, but the survey upon which Audience 2.0 bases its analysis lacked a sense of forward motion as well as the ability to predict future arts participation through rapidly changing technologies.

The data used in Audience 2.0 was gathered three years ago before many current technologies were available and before many new technology users had invaded the digital market.  In his blog post Back To The Future, on Danceusa.org, Marc Kirshner states that:

Since the beginning of the 2007 survey period [for the 2008 report]:

• Four generations of iPhones have been released [and the Android network has been launched]
• Facebook’s user base has grown from 20 million to 400 million users
• The entire book publishing industry has been turned upside down by e-readers, such as the Kindle, Nook and iPad
• Millions of set-top boxes, Blu-ray DVD and home theater PCs have connected televisions to broadband Internet
• Hulu launched its online video service to the public
• More than 300,000 people viewed simulcasts and encores of the Metropolitan Opera’s Carmen
• The first 3-D network began broadcasting

The three year time gap between data collection and report publication created a lack of focus on many forms of new media and social networking platforms currently leading many technology discussions in the nonprofit arts industry today. Correspondingly, the relevance of the report in our current environment is brought into question, and we must remember that the report represents a snapshot in time more than a study of current habits. Due to the speed with which technology advances and its usage changes, traditional forms of data collection and publication no longer appear as useful for tracking these trends.

The survey asks about participation in the arts through technology, but Audience 2.0 does not provide answers about specific actions and their effects. The survey does not ask participants if electronic and digital media makes them more or less likely to attend a live event, but the report draws based upon a perceived correlation in the participation data. Without causality data, this correlation leaves us with a “chicken or the egg” dilemma.  Does electronic/digital/online participation in the arts lead to an increase in live participation, or are participants in live arts events simply more likely to participate in electronic/digital/online arts events?

I would like to see more direct questions being asked of people who responded that they participated in the arts through electronic and digital media. Obtaining this next level of understanding will provide us with a deeper understanding of the effects of electronic and digital media on arts participation.

Audience 2.0 raises more questions than it provides answers, but it does show a commitment on the federal level to assess the impact of technology on the arts. I am hopeful that future reports will delve deeper into the seemingly symbiotic relationship between technology and arts participation by focusing more specifically on the  digital/online arts participant.

Guggenheim + YouTube = Awesome Biennial

Video may have killed the radio star, but it has done wonders in shifting the paradigm of visual art.

Since the 1960s, video art has been challenging preconceived notions about how art was supposed to look. At the time, these video artists had to fight to be recognized as worthy enough to be hanging in the same space as Monet or Picasso. And nowadays, you cannot walk into a contemporary art museum without some type of video art installation. Barriers were successfully broken down. Hooray!

Let’s take a quick look at the opposite end of the art world spectrum. A magical little land on the internet where hours (and probably days) at a time can be spent: YouTube.

With the dawn of YouTube, absolutely anyone can have his or her two minutes of fame.  There is everything from a rapping weatherman to the music of Windows XP, Daft Hands and the post-it Mona Lisa… and seriously? Can you even imagine life before this guy? I know I can’t.

So we have the art world, which is harder to crack than a walnut frozen inside a glacier, and then YouTube, which could not be easier.

What happens when these two worlds join forces? YouTube Play. A Biennial of Creative Video

The premise is to receive video art submissions from around the globe by people who may or may NOT consider themselves artists.

New. Exciting. Different. Weird. Animated. Confusing. Anything.

“We’re looking for things we haven’t seen before,” says Nancy Spector, deputy director and chief curator of the Guggenheim Foundation.

No pressure.

So what happens after videos are submitted? A panel will review all of the videos and narrow it down to 200. From those 200, 20 will be selected to show in the first Biennial of Creative Video at the Guggenheim Museums. Yes, museums. The show will be simultaneously running at the Guggenheim in New York City, Berlin, Bilbao, and Venice. All 200 finalists will have their videos shown on the YouTube Play Channel.

Partnering with the Guggenheim and YouTube, is Hewlett-Packard, who will be providing all the equipment at the museums to display the videos, as well as online tutorials about video basics such as editing and lighting.

So even if you know absolutely nothing about videos or video art, your work could be shown in one of the most renowned museums in the world. Interesting. And exciting. I think.

What are your thoughts? Will this produce great art worthy of showing in Guggenheim museums around the world? Is that even the point?

Now there is a question worth exploring… In this rapidly changing world where absolutely anyone with a camera, phone, or computer can create “art,” how do you define what is museum worthy anymore?

I think there are two schools of thought on the matter. On the one hand there are the purists who think the art world should remain an elusive and elite club that few artists ever manage to penetrate. Unfortunately, these limitations of access are crippling to the sustainability of our field. Which is what the focus should be, according to the second group. Yes, the art world must educate, question, and preserve beautiful and interesting things, but if you can’t get people to walk through the doors then what is the point? Keeping today’s audience engaged with art, regardless of the means, has become a focus for both visual and performing arts organizations. Technology is a great entry point, because everyone understands it and uses it on a daily basis. The same holds true for artists. Almost every artist I am friends with uses technology in some fashion to produce their work. They are creating amazing things, but the likelihood of top curators and critics ever hearing about them is slim to none. Which is why YouTube Play is such a great concept.

Obviously, there will be no way of creating installation style pieces similar to Bill Viola’s piece for the 2007 Venice Biennale, Ocean Without a Shore. But in this case, that is ok. Unknown artists get to show their work, interesting pieces will be created, and the museum doors will be as convenient as your computer screen.

The other day, we talked about crossing into different genres of art than you are used to… well here is your chance! Everyone is an artist.

Interested? Absolutely anyone in the world can apply by uploading your video (less than 10 minutes and created in the last 2 years) to the YouTube Play Channel. The deadline is July 31, 2010, so start creating!

Foursquare: Helping You Find Your Favorite Playground

Foursquare is one of the newest social media platforms to be embraced in the last year and one of the most promising new applications for businesses. According to the website, foursquare is “a mobile application that is a cross between a friend-finder, a social city-guide, and a game that encourages users to explore their neighborhoods and rewards them for doing so.” The point of the application is to help users explore their surroundings, discover new things and share their experiences with others. Foursquare uses micro-blogging similar to twitter and interfaces all of the check-ins (posts) with a virtual map. In doing this, users tag locations, businesses and events that they are currently attending for their friends to see and read about. It is a way to share knowledge, play a game and receive promotions and rewards from businesses simultaneously. Due to the mobile aspect of the application, most Foursquare users interact with the site through smart phone applications.

The game portion of Foursquare is what sets it apart from other applications that allow users to tag locations with their posts. In foursquare, a user gets points and earns badges for checking-in at different locations, the frequency of their check-ins and the uniqueness of where they travel. An example would be the Starbucks honorary barista badge. If someone checks into five different Starbucks locations, they become an honorary barista and earn the barista badge. Starbucks is tying this badge into their customer loyalty program and offering promotions and discounts to their honorary baristas.

Collecting badges has become very trendy in many urban settings and adds a fun aspect of competition to social media. Badges are just one option that Foursquare is offering for businesses to promote themselves on the site.

Many businesses are using:

• Mayoral specials – specials unlocked by foursquare to the person who has checked-in most frequently over the past 60 days
• Frequency specials – specials that are unlocked by foursquare to users every ‘X’ number of check-ins
• Check-in specials – a one time special unlocked by foursquare after ‘X’ number of check-ins or for checking-in at a specific time or date
• Wildcard specials – not managed by foursquare, but verified by the businesses staff

Once a business sets up an account with Foursquare and tags its location on the Foursquare map, users can click on the location to receive a brief description and a To-Do list. The To-Do list is a list of recommendation that the business and other user have provided for the location. A museum might add an exhibit, event or activity to their to do list along with whatever recommendations other users have added. This along with check-in based promotions adds a new level to social media marketing and community building technology for arts organizations.

How businesses can utilize Foursquare:

• Tag the location and business on the Foursquare map
• Add a brief description of the location to the map
• Link twitter account to Foursquare to increase activity
• Add items and recommendation to the To-Do list of the location
• Integrate check-in and badge based promotions
• Use Foursquare as a part of a customer/patron loyalty program

Foursquare is also providing an analytics system for businesses. Foursquare analytics has a personalized dashboard for each business that shows which users are checking-in at their locations most often, what time the location has the most Foursquare traffic, and how many check-ins are being linked to other social media plat forms. It gives a demographic breakdown of their Foursquare patrons and provides information such as total check-ins, total unique check-ins, and statistics based on daily, weekly, monthly and annual traffic. This type of data is priceless to organizations and adds a way to track profitability, return on investment, and patron use.

Foursquare is less than two years old and already has over 500,000 users. The integration of social media, entertainment and business prowess makes this company a very promising investment for the arts community. Foursquare has shown enormous potential and incredible growth. It has the possibility of becoming the next Twitter and is offering much greater potential for businesses to harness the power of social media while creating a new outlet for promotions, marketing, and community building.

We Have A Castle, Write Us An Opera!

Every good castle needs an opera company, or so the Savonlinna Opera Festival of Finland would lead you to believe.  They have been performing at St. Olaf’s Castle in Savolinna, Finland since 1912.  The festival took a 50-year Hyades between 1917 and 1967, but since its re-inception in the 60’s has been known for its cutting edge works and operatic premiers. Starting in their 2010 season they have decided to push the envelope of innovation even further. The Savolinna Opera Festival is crowdsourcing an opera for its 2012 season through a new project: Opera By You 2012

They are asking the public to write an opera from beginning to end for their 2012 season. They want the world to create everything from the story, set design and costume design to the music and libretto. Savolinna is providing the performers, the crew, and an orchestra; the public is providing the opera.

To my knowledge this has never been done before in Opera and certainly not to this extent. The Savolinna Opera Festival is taking advantage of wreckamovie.com to host their crowdsourcing forum. The site was originally set up for crowdsourcing movies, but also seems to be working well for opera. The only major problem I could find was the lack of music sharing technology on the site. It is still not clear how the composers will collaborate on the score for the opera.

Currently, members are working on the plot synopsis for the opera within the online forum. There are ideas ranging from aliens to sea monsters and insurance salesman to princesses, a true amalgamation of creativity. The opera is still in its early stages of creation and nothing has been set in stone yet.

I was a little frustrated that I could not find any information on how they are going to decide which ideas to use. It is not clear from the website if the management is making those decisions or if the public is going to vote. I am personally a fan of putting as much ownership on the collaborators and public creators as possible. The idea that an opera company would forgo control and perform whatever the public wants to see is very exciting.

Opera By You 2012 has the potential to change the world of opera and set a new benchmark for the use of technology in the ‘high arts’. This project is breaking many of the stereotypes typically associated with this art form and opening opera to a much wider audience. Opera By You 2012 is not about tradition or ‘the classics’, it is about making new art and opening up an opportunity for the masses to interact with opera.

Technology is helping this arts organization reach out to the world and break down some of the barriers that keep many people away from the classical music realm. Crowdsourcing taps the collective creativity of everyone involved and creates a product that is not only designed for an audience, but by them. This type of innovation is what keeps the arts current in our society. It will be very interesting to see how this opera materializes and the impacts that it will have on the world of opera.

How to Opt Out of the Facebook Mistake

Facebook’s privacy settings and the wave of controversy they caused have created a new level of user awareness when it comes to personal information on web-based technologies. The Palo Alto giant decided to roll out a new program where people were automatically opted in to share their personal information across the web that they had saved on Facebook. Facebook coupled this roll out with a poor explanation of what it was, who it was affecting, and how users could manage it. The convoluted privacy controls and constitutionality were hit hardest, but they were not the real problem in this case. The actual problems here lie in communication and choice. I agree with Mark Zucherburger that a more open Internet is a better Internet and that the more people share, the more social the Internet will become. Unfortunately, sharing ones personal information needs to be a choice and users need to understand how and why they are sharing their information. “Because it’s good for you” is not an acceptable answer for most people.

Arts organizations in the US need to take this Facebook quagmire and use it as a case study for their own e-marketing and e-mailing policies. Communication and choice will lead to stronger web based support and a happier constituency.

Things arts organizations should keep in mind:

1. E-mail and e-marketing should almost always be opt in for supporters
2. Organization should explain why and how they will be contacting people
3. If possible, users should be able to customize what they receive
4. Opting in and opting out should be very easy and take little effort
5. Safety measures on how the organization will protect a users personal information and contact information should be clearly stated on the website and reiterated in the first e-contact

Opt in policies are generally the most effective and considered to be best practice. This is where Facebook made their fatal mistake and where arts organizations need to ensure they are excelling.  Organizations only want people to receive information that want to receive it. By allowing people to opt in to programs, the organization is letting the individual take responsibility and targeting individuals who want more contact with the organization.

Once someone has opted in to e-marketing and/ joined the e-mail list for an organization, they should be able to choose what they want to receive information about. Maybe they only want information on ticket sales or a certain type of programming. Maybe they only want the annual report and education programming. Being able to customize what information they receive will help keep them more engaged with the organization and make them less likely to opt out or stop reading e-blasts.

Finally, people should feel safe giving an organization their e-mail address and personal information. With all of the information sharing, spamming and possibilities for profit, consumers are very wary of giving away any contact information these days. Post on your website and in the confirmation e-mail how you are protecting their identity and their personal information. These practices will help any organization build a strong e-mailing list and e-marketing campaign.

Micro-donations: Proving Size Doesn’t Always Matter

The Obama campaign, the Nelson Mandela Foundation, and The American Red Cross have all embraced electronic micro-donation campaigns as an effective tool in gathering financial and community support for their causes. The prominence of these cases and their rampant success provides the evidence necessary for arts organizations to begin adopting this new technology to enhance their current giving campaigns. These organizations altered the traditional view of contributed income by looking at three hundred $10 donations as equal to and in many ways greater than one $3,000 donation. This logic has very little to do with the amount of money being given and much more to do with the amount of people giving it. Micro-donation campaigns are about involving as many people as possible and using their collective support to raise awareness as well as funds. They are not just about filling the coffers. They are about educating donors, building support, and cultivating future participation and giving.

A micro donation can be defined as a small gift usually given through electronic media and most often associated with the support of a cause, project, or individual. Point-and-click web based interfaces, e-mail, and SMS txt messaging are the most popular and effective platforms.

Reasons to start a micro-donation giving campaign:

• Small time commitment from management
• Little implementation cost leading to a large return on investment
• Widening donor market segments
• Generating new donors and interest
• Creating ‘buzz’ and word-of-mouth support
• Ease of social media integration
• Building momentum, education, and visibility of the organization

Having acknowledged these benefits, micro-donation campaigns have not been proven effective for annual giving platforms, large gifts or operating funds. They have been proven effective in supporting specific projects, programs, campaigns, and Individuals.

A recent article written by Rich Mintz, the man behind both the Obama Campaign and the Haiti relief effort by the American Red Cross provided 5 big tips to help organizations set up a successful micro-donation campaigns and/or internet giving program.

1. Make it easy to give money and sign up online
2. Reward people who have just signed up with useful follow up contact and content
3. Communicate how much donations matter (even the very small ones)
4. Create online participation opportunities
5. Give people a sense of what’s going on backstage – and in your back offices.

To elaborate:

• Micro donations should be the easiest way a person can give money to an organization. It should take less than three clicks on a website or the simple task of responding to an SMS txt message or e-mail.
• Donors want to know more about an organization once the feel they have invested in it. Send an initial personalized e-mail or SMS text message to donors within 24 hours elaborating on what they are supporting and how they helped.
• Every donor even one who only gives $5 should feel like they have made a difference and created impact. By framing their support this way, the organization is setting itself up for future involvement and donations.
• Creating an online community and an interactive online space provides an outlet for people to be involved with the organization outside of the physical space.
• A behind the scenes look at an organization shows transparency and provides a sense of community. It puts faces, personalities and people with the names, this is important when building support,

Technology has provided a new and proven opportunity for cultivating contributed income in the current economy. If adopted, these campaigns will soon be key in cultivating new donors, creating new support and sheering up funding for new and innovative projects in the cultural community.

Tweet the Arts on National Arts Advocacy Day

Next Tuesday, April 13th, is National Arts Advocacy Day, when more than 500 arts advocates will be talking to their government officials in Washington, D.C. about the power of the arts and the need for arts education and arts funding. Whether or not you can make it to DC on April 13, please take the time to create a tweet featuring the hashtag #arts on your Twitter accounts and tell you friends to do the same.   If we get enough tweets with #arts we’ll push “arts” into Twitter trending topics for the day.

More information can be found at http://www.tweetartsday.org

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

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

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

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

Make it easy

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

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

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

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

Don't assume

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

Image originally found here.

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

Get analytical

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

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

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

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

Keep your site current

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

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

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

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

Get listed

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

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

Get linked

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

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

So, to sum it up:

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

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

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

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

Building Audience Diversity Through Social Media, Part Three

Watercolor style theater renovation by Gordon Tarpley (from flickr)

In part 2 of this 3-part entry, I interviewed social media managers from different regions, artistic disciplines, and mission focuses about how diversity drives their social media strategy. I found that, for most, online community-building came first and diversity factored in minimally, except in terms of age. When I first came up with the idea for this blog series, my first instinct was to do a quick search of the niche social networking site BlackPlanet.com. It showed groups for black actors, a very large poet group, a few artist groups, etc. Lots of jazz fans. Lots of fans of activities that researchers are constantly associating with arts attendance. But not one LORT theatre is on the site. Not many theatres period, except the stray comedy club.

In analyzing the responses of the social media managers and the notable absence of non-profit arts organizations on these niche social networks, I was puzzled. Then I thought, “Am I asking the wrong question here?”

Would most American theatres (most of which produce, on average, about one play by a black playwright a year) have a place on these networks that exist to connect black people to one another and to black culture? Maintaining a profile on one of these sites while you’re promoting Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit could be a bit of a stretch.

But even maintaining a tenuous connection to this community, such as an ad, could get a whole new community of people looking at your org, right? I decided to talk to an expert. Gerry Eadens is a media buyer who has worked in advertising for nearly 20 years and now works at Kansas City Repertory Theatre. She specializes in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and other online media. She did a cursory search and found at least 100 sites through the Google ad network that are meant to serve a specific cultural or ethnic group.

Research shows, however, that advertising is not a replacement for a social networking presence and vice-versa. Eadens cautioned me, “Typical display ads are not recommended for the best response from social network users since they are often ignored. Research has shown that advertisers garner greater results from more engaging activity with their audience such as posts that appear within news feeds.” Add to that the difficulties that online marketers often have in knowing how to focus an ad toward their intended audience. There’s no ethnicity category on the Facebook ad set-up interface, and I’m guessing that the company probably won’t add one in the near future.

So what can we do and more importantly, what’s worth our time to do?

At long last, the diversity question has come around to the classic “old vs. new” debate: When faced with declining arts attendance, is it better to “pick the low-hanging fruit” and focus on maintaining and growing our existing audience demographics ("the more return on investment for less energy" approach) or make a long-term investment in trying to attract new groups of people to our performances?

In a recent cultural policy article I read, I came across the question, “In our art, we place great value on experimentation and innovation—why not in our management practices?” I thought this was a great question, and I also bought into it, at first. Innovation seems to be the hot buzzword these days, and I think that generally, it’s a great value to have. However, from listening to the reasoning of the social media managers in the previous entry, I would argue it may not always be the most important one, especially from a user’s perspective (as opposed to a developer’s). They have tailored their social media presence to be purpose driven, tailored to their mission statement and aimed toward staying connected with their current audience while gaining new audiences, although not specifically diverse ones. Timothy Platt of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society writes about purpose-driven marketing on his blog Platt Perspective:

Good online social networking means sharing value and even paying it forward and taking the initiative in starting that process. But true online communities always carry this greater, synergistic value and are bound together by the cohesion and momentum that it brings. It is in the communities of members and supporters that good nonprofits gain their strength…

When I interviewed Thomas Cott of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, he spoke about his org’s purpose-driven strategy. “Since social media works best when you don’t try and push sales too directly, we’ve been using Facebook as an outlet to expand our ‘brand awareness’ and we’ve succeeded in attracting fans from many countries.”  For an organization with an international presence, the brand awareness angle is especially valuable.

More local or regional orgs, on the other hand, value building community locally. Brian Hinrichs of Madison Opera commented, “Our Facebook page very much feels like a community–fans comment and interact, they want more blog posts and photos, etc. Twitter doesn’t yet feel so cohesive: I’m interacting mostly with local media and other opera companies and nurturing those relationships. If our local paper re-tweets a ticket link or production photos, that is extremely valuable, but this is not where most of our fans are…yet.”

No matter your geographic focus, social networks are fundamentally about forming a community and having conversations. Therefore, having a clear purpose in mind when you choose your networks is essential. We’ve all heard the adage “the medium is the message.” It means that the method by which your audience receives your message becomes an inextricable part of the message itself. The phrase was coined in the 1960’s before the advent of the social media frenzy. But think about what it says to us today. Your show is its logo. Your season is the email blast that announces it. Your theatre is your Facebook fan page. But there’s more to it than that. With social media, the audience becomes both medium and message. Your audience is your identity. Who your fans are says something about who your organization is. If someone chooses to invest themselves in your product or purpose by becoming a fan or making a comment, then they become part of your organization in a way that’s visible. They become a message that your organization is worth following.

Think about the last think you received a postcard from an arts org. Chances are, they wanted a private, one-way, and perhaps institutionalized response from you (like buying a ticket, perhaps?).  Outside of social media your level of engagement with the organization is determined by those ticket purchases and other statistics available exclusively to the organization. Not so in the world of social media.  Think about how different the message is between a postcard (Buy a ticket!) and a Facebook page (Interact with us!). There are many ways to interact, and many messages a fan can send you. By creating a presence on a specific social networking site, you are signaling that you are open to communication with the people on that network. So what does it say if your organization is not present?

Arts and Technology Round-up

Oh the joys of Google Reader! I love reading through the blogs and news articles of my fellow arts managers. They remind me of the larger world out there beyond the Masters of Arts Management program, especially after the drudgery of mid-term week! (If you're unfamiliar with Google Reader, it's a handy way to access all the blogs and newsfeeds you want to read on a regular basis in one place. C/NET has a great guide.) I sifted through a few of my 1000+ accumulated new articles last night and found the following articles: Music education meets technology: Michael Bradley of Pima High School in Arizona uses Apple's Garage Band software to teach kids how to integrate music and technology. "There's a ton of different career opportunities in the technology side of music and being able to work in a recording studio or to manage and operate an auditorium," Bradley said. "You have to have the technology knowledge to be able to do any of that." Full article here.

After July 12, you might not be able to use wireless mics in the 700 MHz range. Joe Patti has the breakdown over at Butts in the Seats.

When a Carnegie Mellon grad makes robots for a living, it usually isn't a big news story. But this CMU grad makes musical robots. Eric Singer was featured in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for his creations (video below), which include computer-driven guitars (see video below), marimba, vibraphone, orchestra bells and other percussion instruments. He has worked with artists like They Might be Giants and Pat Metheny. Full article here.

Drew McManus covers how to create value outside of the performance itself --"what else of value, besides the actual music, do orchestras have that is interesting enough to potential ticket buyers and donors that it can be given away as a free gift" in two blog entries: The Three Keys To Social Media Marketing For Orchestras and Uncovering Hidden Value.

And speaking of creating value, is giving music samples away theft or promotion? Composer Alex Shapiro weighs in on newMusicBox in an article entitled "The Economy of Exposure: Publicity as Payment?".

Building Audience Diversity Through Social Networking – Part Two

In part 1 of this 3-part entry, I left you with the burning question: What are arts groups doing to build audience diversity through social networking? I decided to ask arts organizations around the country two questions that are relevant to any arts organization with a social networking strategy (and not just during Black History Month):

1. How is your org are selecting which social networking sites are worthwhile?
2. Are you taking diversity into account when forming these strategies?

"St Petersburg - Alexandrinsky Theater" by thisisbossi / CC BY-SA 2.0

This can be a very sensitive issue and I am very grateful to the orgs that chose to take on this question. I contacted organizations of different sizes and different artistic disciplines. The answers I got were very in line with conventional wisdom of creating and streamlining a social media presence. Brian Hinrichs of Madison Opera says that he tries to focus on the two websites with both the most users and the most relevant users to his organization, Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook has the most users. We do have a MySpace page, which I understand has a more diverse user base, but that was not intentional. MySpace proved to have a large singer community, but I was not finding Madison Opera fans… Most of our MySpace friends, which is very few, also have Facebook accounts. Anecdotally, I find that to be the case in Madison and so for convenience of updating I am focusing most of my efforts to Facebook.

Thomas Cott of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (and the daily arts newsletter You’ve Cott Mail) also advocates focusing on a few sites rather than less coverage on more networks. Ailey boasts the largest Facebook Fan base of any nonprofit arts organization, at over 32,000, and is planning on rolling out pages for other programs like Ailey II and the Ailey School.

Ailey has focused its attention primarily on Facebook and YouTube (we’re phasing out our MySpace presence), because we feel it’s too hard to be everywhere at once… Of course, maintaining a robust presence on a social media site like Facebook requires a lot of staff time, and even for a big company like Ailey, we don’t have an endless reservoir of staff time to devote to this.  That’s the main reason why we haven’t pursued Twitter or some of the newer outlets like Foursquare.  It’s also why we haven’t put our attention to more ‘niche’ websites like blackplanet.com.  We feel we are reaching a diverse audience on Facebook and YouTube, and since they are the biggest sites out there right now, we felt that was the best place for us to devote our attention.

Paul Montenegro maintains the social networking sites of GALA Hispanic Theatre in Washington D.C. He chooses to focus on Facebook and Twitter said that he focuses on the website’s functionality in his choice of networks.

I personally find the sites to be more user friendly when it comes to making events or sharing information. If there are sites out there are can do a better job or similar one, I would be looking into it to ensure that we can contact patrons via the web.

I contacted several other arts organizations who, like GALA, had mission statements which specifically focused on sharing the artist achievements or preserving the heritage of one ethnic or cultural group. I had hoped that they might be able to tell me how they decided which social networks to create a presence on, but they declined to comment. However, groups who did not have a mission statement that focused on one culture or missions to serve the community-at-large, were willing to talk about their choice of social media sites in the context of diversity.

Like many of these social media managers, Courtney Perez of Two River Theater Company in New Jersey cited universality of the social networks in her choices.

In regards to diversity, I must say that was not a direct factor in choosing these sites. I guess you can say these sites were appealing because they seem to be used by all ages & races therefore allowing us to reach a very broad audience. The formats of these sites are also quite uniform so the information we put up isn’t too targeted.

None of the respondents directly cited diversity as a factor for choosing to advertise or have a social network presence, except in terms of age diversity. Catherine Guarino, Director of Communications & Ticket Sales with Lansing Symphony Orchestra cited ease of use as a reason for her choice of Facebook and, recently, Twitter. But the purpose of social networking, for the symphony, was to find a younger audience.

I chose the two most popular social networking sites in hopes of reaching a younger, hipper audience. We didn't factor race into the mix at all, and I'm not sure we really ever do. Our goal with social marketing is just to stay in people's brains - to show up on their screen and remind them that we're here… What I found is that more and more older (for Facebook - say, the 50-60's) people were finding us and becoming Fans. We do have a decent college following, but the Fans that interact most with the page (comment, RSVP to events, write on our wall) are older.

More to come in part 3 of 3 of this article! We'll talk more about how arts orgs choose social media site, I'll chat with a media buyer, and more. Stay tuned...

St Petersburg - Alexandrinsky Theater

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now go have some fun.

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

Misnomer Dance Theater's "Breakfast With You"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Post-NAMP 2009 Reflections

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

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

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

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

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

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

National Arts Marketing Project - Day One

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

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

National Arts Marketing Project Conference - Preconference

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

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

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

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

Google Chrome Exposure Tarnished by Brand Names

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Filtering for Information: The Value in Streamlining Online Presence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Non-Technical Difficulties: Unions Block Online Stream of Live Theater Performance

The "boys" of PICT's "The History Boys."  Photo courtesy of PICT.

In 2006 Stephanie Riso, Operations Director of the Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theater (PICT), recognized the limitations that performance space imposed on ticket sales for her popular Cabaret Pittsburgh project. She considered ways to expand the audience of the musical revue without finding a new location or having to take the show on the road, and landed on the possibilites afforded by internet streaming.

Riso discovered that, with the exception of the Kennedy Center's free online performances of Millennium Stage musical acts, there was no precedent for streaming live performance online. With fellow Carnegie Mellon alumnus Alex Geis, and his company 21 Productions, Riso developed a live stream for Pittsburgh Cabaret.   Upon seeing that "the (sound and video) quality was amazing, "  she determined that she could use this technology to live stream PICT's theater productions.

“PICT’s long-term goal is to create a new revenue stream that will help to sustain the organization and live theatre into the future," explains Riso. Like so many theaters, PICT is small, limited by region and budget, and cannot tour under the Actors Equity SPT contract. So Riso conceived LIPLO™ (for "Live In Person and Live Online"), a hub where tickets could be sold to online streams of live performances and watched in real time.  What was once just a dream of live theatrical streaming is -- almost -- a reality.

"Online presents great promise to theatres, but only if there is something worth watching; no one goes to a theatre website to ‘hang out’ and read about the upcoming shows. They go to the website simply to get the necessary information so they can attend a performance if they happen to live in that city. But, if there is a place online where a person can go and be entertained with a high quality experience – that changes the conversation and opens up potential ad revenue and customers/patrons,” explains Riso.

Last Saturday was to be PICT's inaugural, open-to-the-public, free  LIPLO™ test stream (of PICT's production of Alan Bennett's "The History Boys").  Unfortunately, with less than a week to go, AEA and AFTRA could not agree on contract terms, and Riso had to pull the plug on the stream.   "[W]e had secured the rights from Alan Bennett (the author) plus Fox, who owns the film, new media and broadcast rights – which was a very big deal. . . .Knowing that Actors Equity would be the biggest obstacle, I approached them in February 2009 to start the conversation.  Their initial email response was that at the time they were not giving permission for actors to participate in live streaming.  However, upon further conversations with their filming and taping department they encouraged me to talk with AFTRA (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) and were completely open to the possibility – although Actors Equity kept stating they would likely expect 2 weeks contractual salary for the actors plus rehearsal which seemed out of sorts with the proposed free trial project.  When AFTRA finally negotiated a favorable conclusion and all actors agreed, Actors Equity backed off and was not willing to move forward."

Riso is now caught in a Catch-22 in which she cannot have a bargaining conversation with the unions about money without data collected from test runs--which cannot proceed until the unions agree to allow the stream.

Provided the unions agree to allow LIPLO™ to proceed, theaters around the world may be able to implement this technology to expand their audiences. This may prove a popular method for watching theater, and precisely the tool that performing arts need to find new ways to make money and raise awareness of the art. Once the unions can get on the same page, "the only thing that stands in the way from any organization using LIPLO™ is whether or not the organization has the permission or right from the author, actor, designer, etc to live stream the work."  If organizations are interested in implementing LIPLO™, the LIPLO™ team would "adjudicate the organizations and their work prior to acceptance within LIPLO™ to ensure there is a level of expertise and quality for the LIPLO™ audience."  Following that, LIPLO™ has an all-inclusive team that would work with the organizations to put their work online.

Though Riso is confident that the technical components of the stream are dependable (it has undergone at least 15 trials without a hitch, and Geis will be online for every stream to troubleshoot viewers' problems via messenger), additional details rely on feedback from viewers of what were to have been three practice streams (including "The History Boys," PICT has streams planned for each of their season's final productions).  For example, would viewers prefer a single or multiple camera feed?  Is Paypal the best way to sell tickets to online streaming?  Would the tickets be priced lower than in-life tickets?  How will advertisers most effectively be placed during the stream? Will advertisers be local or could they be national and international?  And most importantly, will this truly reach a new viewing demographic?

It is this writer's hope that the unions recognize the need to update contracts to open the possibility of alternative methods of viewing live theater.  It increases exposure for all the artists involved in a show, and greater exposure could lead to greater demand for the artists.  The  tools are in place to expand audiences beyond the Baby Boomers, and hits the Millennials, and even Gen-Xers, where they live--online.  In theory LIPLO™ is the perfect marriage of technology and art, and could do what simply expanding or altering marketing approaches may not: it could get new people watching live theater.

To view Riso's Quicktime community address, and to read additional information, including her request for supporters to contact these unions, visit the LIPLO™ website and follow the simple log-in procedure.

Update: AEA refused to discuss the matter with me.  Spokesperson Maria Somma replied, "As you may have read in the media, Actors' Equity Association will not comment on the situation in question."