Colonialism has consistently been a force in the global purview, including the technological space. In recent years, the expansion of artificial intelligence has vastly increased corporations’ global influence. As the world’s technologies continue to advance and innovate, individuals must keep a watchful eye on the ways in which digital colonialism might repeat harmful practices from the past.
Due to the popularity and booming business of video games, Hollywood studios have capitalized on popular game titles by developing new content based off of their intellectual property (IP). This study sets out to better understand video game IP’s impact on film and television markets and what specific elements might impact an adaptation’s success.
Sustainability and AI were at the forefront this year at the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) Future of Museums Summit. What role will museums play in creating climate-friendly communities? And how can AI be used to maximize efficiency, increase accessibility, and deepen engagement? Read key conference takeaways from Xueer Ho and Dr. Brett Ashley Crawford.
An overemphasis on data-driven work within the nonprofit sector has been shown to result in cycles of disempowerment, driven by third-party data demands of funding bodies.. This compounds due to the many market orientations nonprofits need to adopt, particularly prevalent among the arts. A key to navigating these markets and funder requirements lies in identifying a specific data culture best fit for your organization and investing in resources and training in order to achieve that framework sustainably.
With AI’s ability to automatically produce content and process complicated datasets with high accuracy, museums worldwide are exploring ways in which this innovative technology can help them better achieve their missions and advance accessibility efforts. Through case studies, learn about three applications of this technology: content digitalization, language accessibility, and visual description.
Roving arts management reporter, reporting for duty! I’m taking a brief break from my summer gig at Wolf Trap Opera Company to resume my TitA duties and re-cap the delights of the Opera America Conference this week in Los Angeles. Conferences are great places to exchange ideas. I always come away with a list of things to check out.
Here are a few great free tools on my list:
Box.net—Simple online file sharing. Can be used instead of a share drive, OR as a way to upload your season brochure for easy patron download.
Pitchengine.com-the social PR platform—Make fuss-free digital press releases with easy links to multimedia. No coding, no WYSIWYG editor screwing up what would otherwise be a reasonable task.
Twitalyzer.com- Does a slogan like “serious analytics for social relationships” take the fun out of Twitter? No way! Track your impact through hard data, not just anecdotal evidence.
Polleverywhere.com-create polls that audience members can answer via SMS text messages, Twitter, or the web. Some great advanced features for a little extra money, too!
[And I won’t assume you don’t know about Foursquare.com. If you’re not offering people who check in (or your “mayors”) something cool, look into it.]
And I must mention one that is not free (but cheap): Wildfireapp.com is ideal for setting up campaigns, coupons, and sweepstakes. Great way to capture data on your patrons.
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.
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'sFriendship 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.
The Crown of the Moon by gilderic
Organizations too often overlook the hidden powers of e-mail marketing, a relatively inexpensive powertool if used correctly. As Gene Carr of Patron Technologies will tell you, a strong e-mail marketing plan is a critical component of your online presence. "Why? Because the average arts consumer doesn’t. . . go to an arts website to browse around to see what’s happening next Tuesday. [Now,] when they get an e-mail in their inbox, they say 'OH! That’s happening next Tuesday!' and they forward it to their boyfriend and they send it on. So I say, get your e-mail marketing program great, you’ll solve half your problems."
How do you do this?
I was fortunate to attend a great session at NAMP called "Beyond the Blast: E-Mail Marketing Well-Done" featuring a panel of Playwright Horizons' Bradford Louryk and The Book Report Network's Carol Fitzgerald, and moderated by Carr, who chatted with me for the blog. Following his "Three B's" I offer you some take-aways.
BUILD YOUR LIST
You must have a strong list to have an effective e-mail marketing campaign. Building a list can be challenging, and is often seen as secondary to other elements of the e-mail or newsletter (design, content, etc.)--but Carr argues that building the list should take 75% of your time. To collect e-mail addresses and learn what these individuals want to receive takes time and finesse, and involves regular (about thrice-yearly) follow-up surveys to define their interests and ensure that your messages are hitting their appropriate mark. If you are sending out one blanket e-mail to everyone on your list, you are blasting, and are likely seeing a low return on such messages. It also may decrease your revenue: "You won’t advertise a $5 ticket lottery to a full-season subscriber. You really have to think about who is getting what messages," reminds Louryk.
BE PROFESSIONAL
Exercise professionalism when managing your e-mail campaigns: "[p]lan a schedule in advance, get (the e-mail) proofread, get great graphics, send it to outside readers (to look it over before you send it to your lists). All the things that professional publishers do," explains Carr. "It doesn’t mean that your newsletter can’t be in a personal voice;" you should cultivate a specific tone and feel to make your organization accessible and relatable. Set the sender's name to appear as a person in the organization rather than the company's name. "But there better not be any typos in there and it better come on Tuesday if you say it’s going to come on Tuesday."
And don't underestimate the power of timing: your communication should be timed to coincide with reviews, published profiles, podcasts, etc. Driving traffic to other locations where your organization receives publicity demonstrates that you are connected and aware of how your organization is being represented and perceived.
BE INTERESTING
Once you have determined who your segmented audiences are and established how your campaign will be structured (once monthly newsletters? event-specific?), remember that every recipient will read the subject line of your e-mail. 100% of them. Their decision to open the e-mail is based on what they get from that subject line. So be engaging, intriguing, exciting--but exercise caution. A "tantalizing" subject may get filtered as spam.
Within the message, Louryk stresses the importance of representing your organization's mission, expressing its urgency and importance. Integrate your logo but vary the colors, designs, header graphics to reflect the particular content of each message. Remind your audience who you are and why they support you.
Everyone wants to feel like an insider. People want to catch a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the inner workings of an arts organization. This may take the form of staff blog entries, artist personal stories, backstage video tours, or any number of personal touches that will give your audience a taste of the other side. Fitzgerald regularly shares personal stories with organizational information, authors of featured books write newsletters, and readers keep reading. Newsletters are not just about the sale, but about making connections. The more your audience feels a vested interest in what your organization is doing, the more they are to come around in real life. Give them the opportunity to receive special discounts, participate in lotteries, and get additional details beyond the website--and acknowledge those who open every e-mail with personalized thank-yous.
FINALLY
Don't despair if your organization already has established an e-mail marketing program that is less-than-effective, Carr is confident that that is not a death knell if you are prepared to put in a little work, figure out what makes you unique, and what your recipients want to read.
"We have an e-mail newsletter that goes out to seven- or 8000 arts managers every month. We’ve been doing this for eight years. And about a year ago we started sending an interview, first it was an interview format, then we switched it to a video format. And we were spending a lot of time taping the person and then editing it, and the open rates were abysmal. Terrible, really terrible. And we were, depressed, we spend all this time, and (each interviewed person) was really excited, and nobody was opening it. So we threw out the interviews, rethought the content, and started writing about things we knew people were interested in: Facebook and Twitter, started putting contests in and quoting from clients and just totally reinvented the content. And the open rates jumped." The lesson? "Basically the reason people are tuning out is because YOU’RE BORING. The content that you send is what you’re about. It’s almost like you’re a magazine publisher and you don’t really pay attention to what is in the magazine. People are not getting your magazine because they like a bound thing showing up in their mailbox. People are tuning out because you’re not interesting."
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!
The Museum Computer Network, an org that specializes in sharing information about new museum technology and its most effective uses, is holding its annual conference next week in Portland, Oregon. This year’s theme: “Museum Information, Museum Efficiency: Doing More with Less!”
The org is webcasting several of its sessions for free on Thursday, Nov. 12 and Friday, Nov. 13:
(All times Pacific)
Museum Data Exchange
Thursday 12 November, 1:30-3:00 PST
Tweets to Sweeten Collaborations for Archives, Libraries, and Museums
Thursday 12 November, 3:30-5:00 PST
Libraries, Archives, and Museums: From Collaboration to Convergence
Friday 13 November, 11:15-12:45 PST
Ramping Up while Scaling Down: Strategic Innovation in Challenging Times
Friday 13 November, 2:00-3:30 PST
Instructions for accessing the webinars will appear at the MCN site on Wednesday, Nov. 11.
MCN is encouraging Twittering during the session with hashtag #mcn09oL. You will be able to submit questions during the Q & A sessions via Twitter as well.
More details at MCN.
Worried about your local arts critics being cut? How about the impending demise of your local paper? Don’t worry; the future is here! Last week the USC Annenberg School for Communication announced five projects that will present at The National Summit on Arts Journalism. The School put out an open call for projects that represent the future of arts journalism. The five winning projects will be announced at the conference on October 2 and another five made the cut to present:
Sophie: A new authoring tool for multimedia developed by the Institute for Multimedia Literacy that suggests new possibilities for presenting critical response.
The Indianapolis Museum of Art: With its Art Babble and Dashboard, the IMA is an example of a cultural institution extending its reach into areas that have traditionally been the province of journalism.
InstantEncore.com: An example of an aggregator attempting to gather up everything about an art form (in this case classical music) and making it accessible in one place.
NPR Music: An example of a traditional big media company that is reinventing itself across platforms. NPR Music blurs the lines between journalism, curation, presenting and producing.
Gazette Communications, Cedar Rapids Iowa: An example of a local media company trying to reinvent the idea of what it considers news and how it might be gathered and presented to a local community.
I, for one, find it incredibly encouraging that journalists are finding new paths to write about the arts in the face of the layoffs and budget cuts. As the newspaper industry struggles, the first cost-cutting measures always seem to involve pulling more things from the wire and less local reporting. Many of us in the arts industry have felt the burn from the epidemic of local arts critic firings from major papers, or conversion to a part-time or freelance status. In turn, people find it less satisfying to read the paper as these local writers are cut and circulation decreases further as more people choose to go online to read wire reporting rather than pay for it in paper form. In an effort to save themselves, it seems as though the papers are cutting the very thing that makes them a viable business model.
So how does this decrease in arts journalism affect your local arts organizations? Arts orgs lose out in two major ways: 1) One of their advertising mainstays becomes less effective as less potential performance /exhibit-goers see the orgs' ad in print and 2) as more critics are cut from newspaper payrolls, coverage of arts events is decreased. Since reviews and articles are typically a great revenue generator, arts orgs find themselves hurting for objective reporting and distribution that their own blog doesn’t quite cover. But through the Summit, the search is on for the new model of profitability in this brave new paperless, everything-free-and-now world.
However, the Summit is tellingly vague on what that could mean. Especially interesting was the note about viable business models on the USC site:
"We had noted on the submission form that we were interested in viable business models. Admittedly, the definition of what constitutes a business model these days is unclear. Strictly speaking, an operation that relies on donated labor and sweat equity has yet to find a sustainable business model. A project that relies solely on philanthropic contributions also has no business model in a strict sense. What we're looking for, therefore, is not so much a commercial business plan but some indications of long-term operational viability."
I’d like to echo that question above-- what is a viable business model anymore? The situation with newspapers has gotten so desperate, some are saying non-profit status is the way to go. But companies like Facebook are relying more on “ownership” of the social media market to determine their company’s value, rather than real revenue. So what hope does that leave these start-ups? Can they hope to go national, or international? It seems like a near-impossible task to take “ownership” of the information of thousands of arts organizations. Unlike many other forms of journalism, arts journalism seems confined to being primarily local, because of the limitations of a performance or an exhibit. To report on a play, the writer has to be at a theatre at a specific time. There’s not really a good way to get around that. Because of this, many of the projects are confined to a specific city or state. The national sites face the additional problem of collecting these local voices into one comprehensive site (InstantEncore seems to do an impressive job with this).
No matter which sector of the arts you work in, this is definitely an area to keep an eye on. On October 2, you can stream a satellite summit live and participate via text or Twitter if you contact summitinfo@najp.org or register here.
I've been wanting to write something about this site for a while now, but I've had a hard time figuring out what exactly to say about it beyond just describing what it is, who's involved, and what they do.
ArtBabble is more than just another collection of videos about art. Each video comes with a sidebar of notes and more information that the viewer can dive into in order to explore more aspects of what the video is presenting. At times this sidebar can be a distraction, and other times can lend more depth to something like an Art21 video about Jenny Holzer that you've seen a few times.
The bulk of the videos come from MoMA, SFMoMA, Art21, The Indianapolis Museum of Art, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The New York Public Library, and the Smithsonian. By and large, the content is geared towards the art novice, but there are some incredibly poignant videos for arts managers on the site, like the Museums and the Web 2009 video posted below.
So far my favorite video series has been the Behind the Scenes at the MoMA, but all of the videos I've watched are really high quality and very informative.
In an Update, last night ArtBabble won a Gold Muse award from the AAM for best online presence.
The AAM Media and Technology Committee announces the 20th annual MUSE awards competition. Presented to institutions or independent producers which use digital media to enhance the museum experience and engage new audiences, the MUSE awards celebrate scholarship, innovation, creativity and inclusivity. Projects must be produced by or for a museum, including websites, podcasts, multimedia installations, interactive kiosks in the museum, cell phone audio tours in a garden, etc. Winning projects for each category are chosen by an international group of museum media professionals and the awards will be presented at the AAM annual conference in Philadelphia, PA from April 30-May 4, 2009.
Proposals for sessions and workshops are currently being accepted for the 2009 Technology in the Arts: Canada Conference to be held in Waterloo & Stratford, Ontario from May 10-12, 2009. This year's conference is being held in conjunction with the Canada 3.0: Defining Canada's Digital Future Conference.
The deadline for submitting your proposal is Monday, January 19, 2009.
The conference has two primary types of programming - Hands-On Training Workshops and Breakout Sessions.
Hands-On Training Workshops: Sunday, May 10th: Held in a computer lab environment on the University of Waterloo campus, Waterloo, Ontario, these workshops will provide "nuts & bolts" instruction to guide participants through technical processes toward concrete solutions to work-place challenges. Each hands-on workshop will last 2 hours and 30 minutes. Workshop leaders should anticipate using 25% of the time for informational lecture and the remaining 75% of the time for hands-on instruction.
Breakout Sessions: Monday, May 11th & Tuesday, May 12th: Held in breakout rooms at the Stratford Rotary Complex, Stratford, Ontario, conference sessions may use a number of possible formats to cover relevant issues relating to the use (or potential use) of technology in arts, heritage or cultural management and/or production. Breakout sessions will last 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Proposal Criteria:
A panel of arts and technology practitioners will review all submitted proposals to select the final program in late January. Sessions will be selected based on the following criteria:
Exploration of new or compelling ideas, technologies or practices
Speakers' expertise and/or experience with the topic
Session's relevance to the conference
In addition to the above criteria, the panel will be charged with selecting workshops and sessions with an eye toward providing a well-rounded program of topics and ideas for conference attendees that will include managers, staff and artistic/curatorial personnel from the arts, heritage and cultural sector, as well as individual artists.
Benefits for Presenters:
Presenters will receive complimentary access to the conference for the day on which they present, and discounted registration for other days they wish to attend. All session participants will be responsible for their own travel and hotel expenses.
Proposal Components:
To be considered, proposals must include the following information:
Session title
Session type - Hands-On Training Workshop or Breakout Session
Session format - For Breakout Session proposals only
Description of proposed session
Explanation of relevance to the conference
Contact information for session leader
Other potential presenters and what expertise they would add to the session
The 2009 Technology in the Arts: Canada Conference is a partnership between the Centre for Cultural Management at the University of Waterloo and the Center for Arts Management and Technology at Carnegie Mellon University.
