The arts and technology communities are coming together this week to explore a new framework which looks at the power of technology through art.
10 Takeaways From the 2011 Emerging Practice Seminar
CultureLab, a partnership between an informal consortium of arts consultants and the Cultural Policy Center (CPC) at the University of Chicago, recently held an 'Emerging Practice Seminar' in April. The organization was formed to break down the silos of research, policy and practice, and create a new capacity and approach to tackling challenging issues. The topics at this year's seminar were:
- Uses of technology in audience engagement
- Revenue management and dynamic pricing
The seminar's website features all of the speakers' presentations (both videos and slides) and is an extremely helpful resource!
Here were my top 10 takeaways from the 'Use of Technology in Audience Engagement' portion of the seminar.
1. Embrace technological innovation, there's nothing to fear! Tim Roberts of ARTS Australia provided an introduction to the day's topics. Tim's introduction called attention to the unfortunate fact that any arts managers and organizations still view technology as something they are fighting against. He quoted NEA chairmen Rocco Landsman as saying "the arts are battling the technology invasion". Roberts argues that many also believed cable television to be the death of television and photography to be the death of painting and that technical innovation has not caused the death of an artform but has contributed to its spread and created new audiences.
Uses of Technology in Audience Engagement - Tim Roberts from Cultural Policy Center on Vimeo.
2. Engagement is an ongoing process: Technology is least effective when it's not used in a proper context of engagement. This process of engagement often begins prior to the audience coming through the doors. Likewise, the process shouldn't end after the performance or visit ends. Technology can help to provide context to a piece of art or performance, personalize the experience and even augment the experience. There are many options when it comes to sustaining a deeper level of audience engagement.
3. Layered Arts Experiences are cool! This type of technology has been extremely underutilized in the performing arts sector. Layered Arts Experiences offer audiences options for real-time assistance imperative during arts programs. They can come in the form of supertitles for opera and dance performances. The Columbus Symphony Orchestra had a device called the 'Concert Companion' which enabled patrons to read something about the piece they were hearing as they listened to the concert.
4. Museums continue to lead the way when it comes to adapting technology: Another common theme during the seminar was the overwhelming lack of technological innovation in performing arts organizations. Even though there were examples of organizations using layered arts experience tools and mobile interactions, it seemed as though they were few and far between and many had even stopped using these tools.
5. The verdict is still out on Tweet Seats: A 'Tweet Seat' is simply a seat reserved in a theater for Twitter users. Tweet Seats have many benefits, including: encouraging a younger audience demographic to get involved in the performance, having this demographic spread the word about the performance to their Twitter followers, and cutting down on distracting other audience members by blocking off a section for Twitter users. The question, however, remains whether or not people can truly become immersed in a performance if they are multi-tasking with other technological devices.
6. Mobile Interaction isn't just limited to QR Codes in Museums Ron Evans of Group of Minds had some great ideas about ways to engage audiences via mobile devices. Evans suggested placing a QR Code on tickets for previews of the show. Evans also suggested distributing digital keepsakes after shows. He also discussed the importance of using these mobile technologies in the proper context of audience engagement. Unfortunately, most technology has focused on the pre-performance and pre-sale with the sole intention of making the sale and increasing attendance. Engaging audiences should also involve increasing their understanding and appreciation of an artform. The 'during' and 'after' is just as important to leading people to the next experience.
Mobile Interaction: adding content and context - Ron Evans from Cultural Policy Center on Vimeo.
7. Location Based Servies has a long way to go: Devon Smith presented the findings of a research study she conducted on arts organizations using location based services. Location Based Service is simply a service that uses the geographical position of a mobile device (Foursquare, Yelp, Google Maps). Applications like Foursquare can be useful in providing real-time analytics on the demographic of those who are "checking in" to a venue. Smith's study found that only 36% of the 76 nonprofit theatres she tracked, had properly claimed their venues on Foursquare, yet 97% of the venues had a mayor. Even though claimed venues had 3% more activity, the real-time analytic information could be very useful to any organization.
8. Blogging Isn't Dead!: Thomas Wickell of Malmo Opera shared one of the most interesting case studies of the day. Wickell emphasized the importance of viewing the stage from the audience's perspective as opposed to looking out at the audience from the stage. With this key distinction in mind, Wickell and his team found that the audience they wanted to attract was not responsive to traditional channels of advertisement (newspapers, television, etc). Since most of their target audience were highly engaged online, the team created a blog that was centered around the life of a character in an upcoming opera. The blog became so popular, at one point in time, traffic to the blog surpassed that of the company's main website! The staff even invited readers to a ceremony for the character (since she does not survive) and over 100 people came to pay tribute to her life. The blog can still be found here!
9. Technological Innovation Often Requires a Culture Change Within an Organization : Linda Garrison and Thomas Weitz at Steppenwolf Theatre gave an overview of helpful practices for creating video content. An important theme during this presentation was the importance of finding allies when seeking to implement any changes. Whether designing a new video campaign or placing QR codes on marketing material, implementing new technology can often mean a culture change within an organization. Finding out who your champions, advocates and contributors are beforehand can make a world of difference when proposing any sort of change. It's also well worth your time to watch the Steppenwolf videos here.
10. Know Your Target! The Steppenwolf and Malmo case studies highlighted the importance of understanding who the target audience is prior to implementing any of the strategies and tools listed above. Steppenwolf researched and found their audience tended to be highly educated, comfortable with direct marketing and confined to a very specific geographic location. As a result, Steppenwolf decided that an online video campaign could be effective in engaging their audience. The Malmo Opera worked backward and began by envisioning what type of audience they wanted to attract. Either way, this process is extremely effective when the target audience is clearly defined.
What's the Big Idea? 5 Key Takeaways from the Museums and the Web Conference
Arts and Technology Round-up: Museums and the Web Edition
Happy Friday everyone! For this arts and technology round-up we decided to try and hone in on a few of the awesome projects that we saw at the Museums and the Web conference last week. Up first are our picks of some of the best and most innovative projects. After that, the winners of the Best of the Web 2011 awards from the conference.
Technology In The Arts Picks
Zooniverse - This group marries together the researching needs of the scientific/historical communities and the power of crowdsourcing. By creating a series of interactive web portals, Zooniverse creates communities of "Citizen Scientists".
PhilaHistory - Philly based GIS firm Azavea worked with the City of Philadelphia to create a platform for linking historical photos of the city to their real world locations using geo-location and augmented reality.
One To One with the Artist: Ai Weiwei - A simple idea with a great effect, this project from the Tate allowed museum visitors to record and upload a video in the gallery and have a video dialogue with the artist Ai Weiwei.
The WALL - The Museum of Copenhagen's giant multi-touch multimedia screen installed in one of the central squares of Copenhagen.
ARTfinder - A new recommendation engine for artwork, this site works very much like Last.fm, taking your current interests and using them to introduce you to new works.
The Collective - Sounding a little bit like a bad 50's sci-fi flick, The Collective is the Denver Art Museum's interactive website/online programming space and a new way of connecting and bringing in the Denver community.
MoMA Learn - An extremely in-depth arts education web portal, the Museum of Modern Art's education department went all out on this one.
ARtours - The Stedelijk Museum's innovative augmented reality program.
The Best of the Web 2011
Education & Best Overall: The ACMI Generator
Mobile: The AB EX NY iPad app
Exhibition: Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century
Social Media: One to One with the Artist: Ai Weiwei
Innovative: Nationnaal Historisch Museum / Museum of National History
Museum Professional & People's Choice: Smithsonian Web and New Media Strategy Wiki
Long-Lived: Exploratorium.org
Research/Online Collection: Portable Antiquities Scheme
Audio/Visual/Podcast: Access All Areas podcast
Project by a Small Institution: ASI: Archaeology Scene Investigations in North County Louth
Museums and the Web 2011 - Thomas's Recap
The 2011 edition of the international Museums and the Web conference wrapped up this past Saturday and was a 4-day whirlwind of presentations and workshops. Presentations covered many of the exciting new technology projects currently in place and coming up from museums around the world. Topics at the conference ran the gamut from mobile technology to augmented reality to ways of creating interactive communities of constituents online.
All of the papers from the conference can be found online at the Museums and the Web’s conference website. Here are just a few of the themes and tidbits that stood out to me from the 4-day conference:
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Crowdsourcing - Now in 6 delicious flavors!
I attended an unconference session, roundtable talks with topics proposed by conference attendees, that aimed to crowdsource the idea of crowdsourcing. The overall feel I got from the discussion was that many museums are taking crowdsourcing very seriously these days. The talk brought up a lot of cool new projects, ranging from including constituents in collections and archives work to new ways to display crowdsourced material.
Johan Oomen, Head of Research of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, presented his ideas on how crowdsourcing can now be defined in 6 distinct ways:
Out of the Museum, into the streets - taking advantage of geo-location
Geo-location was a popular theme, using GPS and mapping to take information and media from the museum and attach it to a location. Many presentations touched on how this idea could really help visitors build a strong connection to the history and importance of objects and sites of a community.
Some notable projects included PhilaPlace and the Rock Art Mobile Project.
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Access, access, and more access
There was a lot of discussion around how to not only get more content on the web, but also make that content easily accessible. The types of content being made available on the web, for free, ranged from things like online collections to projects like online teaching portals. There was a general call to standardize access to this content and data and to use more open systems to encourage data sharing among organizations.
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Intuitive design - What's the point of building it if no one can figure out how to use it?
The conference featured a variety of opportunities for museum professionals to gain feedback on their projects, one of the most popular being the Mobile Crit Room. A reoccurring theme of these critiques was the emphasis placed on the user experience, how easy was it for someone to use your mobile app/website? The Rock Art Mobile Project led the charge, along with a few others, in insisting that any project's user experience needs to be designed in a way that is both intuitive and immediately easy to use. Building around this concept will ensure that users of all ages and skill levels can take part in a project, not just the tech-savvy ones.
Check out the range of mobile projects from the conference’s Mobile Parade.
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So now you want to build an mobile program? Better be up on some of the new business models.
One of the most informative presentations I attended was the “Getting on (not under) the Mobile 2.0 bus”. This talk featured case studies by MoMA, SFMOMA, Balboa Park and the Smithsonian on the new business models that now exist for developing a mobile program.
Some of the subjects from the presentation included: Digital retail (app/download sales), Donations (e.g. by text message), Sponsorship and ad-supported content, Monetizing data from mobile social media and Using mobile to support membership and other revenue channels. The full paper is available here.
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The Rise of the Mobile Internet
Kristen Purcell, from the Pew Research Center Internet and American Life Project, gave the opening plenary of the conference. Kristen presented on some of the changes in technology from 2000 to 2011. Some pretty surprising stats were thrown up during the presentation. Among them:
- 1 in 3 adults do not have broadband Internet access.
- 69% of Internet users watch online video content, 14% of Internet users upload/create video content.
- 85% of adults will own a cell phone by 2011, making 2011 really the Year of the Mobile. (Purcell stated respondents had difficulty being able to distinguish between what was and was not a smartphone, so that statistic was not available)
- Mobile usage varied among different ethnic groups, Latinos and African Americans were shown to be in the highest percentage of users actively engaging with mobile content.
- 11% of mobile users use their phones to make charitable donations. (These numbers may be skewed by mobile donation drives for large natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the recent earthquakes in Japan)
- 35% of adult mobile users have apps on their phones, but only 24% use them.
- The 90:9:1 rule for understanding the level of engagement on social media. It states that 90% of social media users are lurkers, just observing content and never really interacting or contributing. 9% are regular contributors, the ones who often like, retweet or comment on online content. 1% are the super users - always online, always engaged.
These were just a few highlights, for me, of the conference. Coming up, Molly will do her recap on what she found interesting at Museums & the Web 2011. Definitely go to the Museums & the Web conference site to check out all of the presented papers from the conference.
NAMP 2010 - Day Three - Chip Conley and Providing the Peak Arts Experience
To conclude the 2010 National Arts Marketing Project Conference, Chip Conley delivered an inspired closing plenary to encourage arts organizations to provide "peak" experiences based upon their audience's hierarchy of needs. Conley is the author of Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow, an arts lover, as as the founder and CEO of the Joie de Vivre Hospitality. In his address, Conley shares his unique prescription for success based upon Maslow's classic Hierarchy of Needs. Conley illustrates how audiences are ultimately motivated by peak experiences and discusses how arts organizations can give those experiences to their audiences. Americans for the Arts streamed Conley's presentation live via Livestream. The recorded version is embedded below. (Skip to the 16 minute point to get to Conley's presentation.)
Watch live streaming video from 2010 National Arts Marketing Project Conference at livestream.com
NAMP 2010 - Day Two - Recap Discussions
David, Corwin and Amelia report out on Day Two of the 2010 National Arts Marketing Project Conference. Items discussed: disembodied panelists, Vimeo analytics, the Audience Engagement Platform, the value of quantifying intrinsic impact, and more.
NAMP 2010 - Day One - Recap Discussions
David, Corwin and Amelia report out on Day One of the 2010 National Arts Marketing Project Conference. Items discussed: keynote by Chip Heath, breakout sessions (pros and cons), designing conferences for people with varied experience levels, social media rock stars, and more.
On the Way to San Jose & NAMP 2010
Corwin, Amelia and I are heading out to San Jose for the National Arts Marketing Project (NAMP) Conference this weekend.
In addition to presenting a panel on using performance video to motivate audiences and leading roundtables on Twitter and search engine optimization (SEO), we will be interviewing various presenters and arts marketing superstars for upcoming podcast episodes.
We will also be chatting with conference attendees to find out what useful information and experiences they will be acting upon when they go home.
If there are particular people whom you would like us to interview or particular questions you would like us to ask conference participants, then drop a note in the comments area below.
If you are on Twitter, you can read our thoughts about the conference by following TechInTheArts. You can also follow the #NAMPC10 hashtag on Twitter to read the chats taking place during the conference.
Stay tuned for more from NAMP 2010 in San Jose!
Raising More Money for the Good Work We Do
This afternoon, I had the pleasure of working with Jerry Yoshitomi on a conference session dedicated to grassroots fundraising for the attendees of The Association of American Cultures (TAAC) conference in Chicago. Below are the slides for each of our presentations. Jerry's presentation on grassroots fundraising:
Grassroots Fundraising
Download presentation here.
My presentation on online tools and practices for grassroots fundraising:
Online Tools and Practices for Grassroots Fundraising
Download presentation and notes here.