Technology in Arts Advocacy

Fellow TITA bloggers Corwin, David, and I attended Arts Advocacy Day yesterday in Washington, D.C. Americans for the Arts hosts this event every year. Over 500 arts professionals attended this year to learn about the issues and then lobby their Congresspeople. I thought I was a pretty good arts advocate. I always took the time to explain to people about the arts and how they change people's lives and enrich communities. But what struck me is how much I could have been doing this whole time that I hadn't been doing.

I assumed that you had to know ALL the facts, ALL the budget numbers, ALL the studies on the arts to be an effective advocate--or an advocate at all. But you don't. Facts help. Personal stories are even better. Simply taking action at all is the most important part, though.

Just because today is the day after Arts Advocacy Day doesn't mean it's too late to make an impact. (This is an excuse I'm ashamed to say I've used before.) There are going to be 364 more days after Arts Advocacy. While a designated day helps us focus everyone's efforts, our organizations, our funders, our artists and the cultural welfare of our nation need our voices continuously.

At its heart, this blog is about the ways that arts professionals and artists can use technology to create the future of art and culture. This may be as complex as building robots that make music. But it could also be as simple as one of the three ideas below.

Three simple ways you can speak for the arts today:

1. EASY: Write one paragraph about why the arts matter to you. Add a sentence encouraging an increase in NEA funding to $180 million this year. (more info here) Send it to your Congresspeople. (email form)

2. EASIER: Tweet a condensed version and tag with #arts. This was a trending topic yesterday and the tag is still pretty hot.

3. EASIEST: Join the Arts Action Fund (sponsored by Americans for the Arts). Click here, enter some info. It's free.

Wasn't that easier than building a music-making robot?

Does technology appeal to some sixth sense?

The iPad (insert hackneyed joke about the name here) may be the most powerful indicator of the new direction of our experience of museums and reception of art.  Interestingly, the iPad coincides with the release of Nina Simon's book, The Participatory Museum.  Worth a read, her book refines (and, in a sense, re-imagines) the institution of the museum, casting it as a changeable form that can relate and react to the visitors' experience. This got me thinking. As children we learned about our world through our senses, and an important sense was our sense of touch.  Our understanding of our environment was shaped by the information that our tactile experiences relayed, and the power we did or did not have to change the physicality of our surroundings.  Space was something that we inhabited, and in so doing, we left some sort of a tangible mark on the world.

Certainly it may be argued that our travels in cyberspace leave trails as well.  But are our senses diluted when filtered through technology--and, as consequence, are we reinventing the role of art in our lives?  As more and more people receive art from their computers, cell phones, digital devices, is some part of the artistic experience lost?

Certainly, there are many purists who will (and have) vehemently replied, "YES!"  Have you ever heard the phrase "the smell of the greasepaint, the roar of the crowd"?  Art, whether experiencing or producing art, is a multi-sensory experience.  Although digitization of art enhances collaboration and enables the appreciation of a piece by a broader audience, does technology actual remove part of the essence of what it is to both create and receive the artistic experience?  Or is the unique way in which the audience interacts with digitized art the new sixth sense?

As a student, I have become acutely aware of the manner in which I interact with my computer-based work compared to that which I can hold in my hand and mark up with pen or highlighter.  I find that I am more present, and more focused, when it is not just me and my glowing computer screen.  I don't care to read a book electronically, and though I have tried repeatedly to listen to audiobooks (so that I can, surprise!, mult-task), the book-experience is much less fulfilling when it does not involve a tangible, dog-earable, paper-and-ink product that I can hold in my hand.

Producers of today's art  can, potentially, consider myriad factors involving reproduction, dissemination, and audience that change as rapidly as technology.  The longevity of an artistic reproduction depends on the longevity of the media used to reproduce it.  Watching the Met perform in high definition might, in some ways, be better than getting a nosebleed seat at the real thing--but is it as emotionally powerful as seeing the show live?  How about appreciating the "Mona Lisa" daily as your desktop image, only to be startled by the appearance of the actual painting, which, in real life, may have hues you'd never seen?  Even music pumped through headphones as you run on the treadmill or ride the subway--your other four senses (and likely your brain) are occupied by the business of existence: you are not a captive audience.

Is a diluted experience in order to reach more people a fair exchange?  Are we willing to compromise (or perhaps I should say "accept a differently-imagined") artistic experience for the knowledge and understanding that the pixels reach further than the atoms of oil paint: if there are twice as many eyes or ears or minds receiving the art, does it matter that the collective attention of this audience may be only half as riveted as it would be experiencing the art live and in person?

What do you think?

Eric Whitacre dreams of his Virtual Choir Machine

This morning I had the pleasure of watching Eric Whitacre's latest virtual choir release (see video below). This effort, the composer's second, combined 185 individual singers from 12 countries recorded independently.  Whitacre conducted the choir through a YouTube video. The videos were then combined together by producer Scottie Haines in a very familiar formation--the videos look like they are on risers, with Whitacre in the traditional conductor's position.

Whitacre has always been looked on as a sort of "rock star" composer in my peer group (I define them as "20-something music nerds"). My college choir was ecstatic to sing his pieces--they sounded new, modern, but with elements we could connect to both as musicians and listeners. They had cool titles, like Leonardo Dreams of his Flying Machine. (I mean, who writes choral pieces about Leonardo da Vinci's sketchbook?) And, of course, they contained those famous "shimmer" chords that we loved to sing. His "rock star" positioning is evident in his YouTube page. (check out the promotional photo that proclaims Marvel Comic/Criss Angel style "I. AM. ERIC!") Projects like this cement his reputation, and you have to admire him for it. Good music, marketed well.

Why is this project so fascinating? It's new, sure, but seeing the singers' heads, framed by their "natural surroundings" was especially compelling to me--more so than a simple video of a performance, like the YouTube Symphony Orchestra. Digitally created music presented in a digital medium rings true, more so than traditionally created music presented in a digital medium. It's the same reason why I've only been to one Met HD broadcast--I crave that feeling of "genuine-ness".

I've been doing a lot of research lately on video footage of the performing arts and have heard many different views on how video footage (especially streaming of entire performances) will either preserve or destroy the live performing arts industry. This debate exemplifies the inherent friction we sometimes find between the arts and new technologies. (There was a great speech given on this topic by Ben Cameron at the TEDx conference, if you haven't seen it yet.)

But I can't help coming back to my simple love of live performance. Nothing replaces it, in my mind. Maybe I'm atypical of my generation in that respect. Or maybe the fact that I get equally excited about Whitacre's 'Lux Aurumque' YouTube video and the Bach Sinfonia performing Bach's complete motets live in a concert hall shows that I am fundamentally and irrevocably a part of it.

Whitacre has always been looked on as a sort of "rock star" composer in my peer group (I define them as "20-something music nerds"). My college choir was ecstatic to sing his pieces--they sounded new, modern, but with elements we could connect to, and those famous "shimmer" chords that we loved to sing. His "rock star" positioning is evident in his <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/EricWhitacresVrtlChr">YouTube page</a>. (check out the promotional photo that proclaims Marvel Comic/Criss Angel style "I. AM. ERIC!") Projects like this cement his reputation.

Upcoming Webinar - Putting Social Media Strategy Into Action

March 23, 2010The Arts & Social Media, Part II: Turning Strategy Into Results 2:00pm-3:30pm Eastern Presenter: Rebecca Krause-Hardie Registration: $25.00

You've dabbled with social media; you've got a general sense of how to think strategically; now what? In this session, we'll go beyond the jargon into the nitty-gritty and practical details of executing a successful social media plan. This is a highly interactive session. As the starting point, we'll explore your goals, questions and your projects and clarify the steps needed to turn them into reality.

In this engaging 90-minute session, you will:

Learn how to create a step by step action plan to get you going

Look at some great case studies from other arts organizations

Identify and define 5 practical steps you can take now to have your project soar

Rebecca Krause-Hardie is a project manager, facilitator/trainer, social media strategist, & arts blogger, helping arts and non-profits use the web and social media effectively. Rebecca has over 20 yrs experience in new media, business, marketing, finance and project management. She developed and has been the Executive Producer of the award winning New York Philharmonic's Kidzone website, now in its 10th year. Representative clients include the Boston Symphony, NY Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, MAPP International, Canadian Museum of Nature, NYS/Arts, Caring.com and the Paul Taylor Dance Company and Dance/USA.

Please Note: While this session builds upon ideas discussed in The Arts & Social Media, Part I: From Experiment to Strategy, this webinar is a stand-alone session appropriate for all artists and arts administrators.

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?

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

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.

We ask that you now turn ON your phones! Enjoy the show!

Fail Phone by Rammikins!

Today on the Technology in the Arts blog, a further investigation of the burning question--mobile phones: good or evil? Last week, we investigated the evils of mobile phone technology in the context of arts audiences. This week, it’s time to turn on your cell phones and explore how mobile phones can help the audience engage with arts organizations on a personal level.

There are quite a few examples of mobile phones being used quite creatively for marketing and audience development initiatives. I’ve heard of a few different arts orgs twittering backstage during performances.  Most notable is the Broadway show Next to Normal, which tweeted an entire performance in short little 140-character spurts. You can still read the archived tweets here. And by this point, many orgs have mobilized fans through social media via their smartphones or even with texting services offering discounts. The artistic and production staff are harnessing the power of a mobile social network, too. In July, the Old Vic’s invited audiences into the creative process of its 24-Hour Play Marathon, with tweets from followers shaping the direction of some of the plays. During the national staging of The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, audience members used Twitter from their phones at many theatres to ask questions at post-show forums. In addition to coordinating the Q & A sessions, theatres across America that participated in the project used Twitter to sync their production with the “lead” show at Lincoln Center. For a unique national project like The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, an application like Twitter that is easily accessible from a cell phone is perfect to coordinate artists, production staff, and audiences.

If we drift away for a minute from the concept of cell phone use during the show, we see people starting to discover with their inner arts-lover with all kinds of cool apps being developed for smart-phones:

• There’s the Gustavo Dudamel iPhone app, where you can conduct "March to the Scaffold" or "Dream of a Witches' Sabbath" from Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique.
• There’s the bizarre, yet popular ocarina app, which turns the phone itself into a musical instrument. (video footage below)
• Most of us have now heard of Pandora Internet Radio, which recommends songs based on songs you like.  Pandora apps are available on the iPhone, Blackberry, Palm Pre and a variety of other phones.
• Zoozbeat, which allows users to compose their own songs with a variety of instruments by simply shaking and moving their iPhone, was recently featured on CNN.com.  
• If you are more the theatrical type, the complete works of Shakespeare are now available on an iPhone app.
• In the visual arts arena, your phone can become your canvas with the Brushes app, an iPhone finger-painting tool. (Gallery of Brush app art at the end of the post.)

Will apps like the ones listed above increase the audience's desire to flock to the theatre? Hard to say. But one thing is certain--show time is still a boundary that none of these apps and few of the organizations using smartphone technology seem willing to cross.

In pondering last week’s entry on the evils of cell phones in the audience, I began to wonder if proper cell phone etiquette is merely a question of our expectations for the specific venue. For example, I doubt anyone would be bothered by people texting at a broadcast of an opera in a baseball stadium, or perhaps even an outdoor lawn concert. This summer, the National Symphony Orchestra started twittering program notes to audience members in lawn seating. Sure, some people might still be bothered by the LCD lights and the “text-offender”’s inattention to the performance at hand, but outdoor concerts have a different aura about them. It’s like people expect to be distracted by the sights and sounds of nature, especially if they are sitting on picnic blankets with a cooler of beer next to them. But, then again, it’s a sliding scale. When I think of the last two outdoor venues I attended in Kansas City, my reaction to texted program notes would have been quite different. The first is Heart of America Shakespeare Festival, a rollicking good time with a temporary stage and lawn seating. Audiences are encouraged to bring their own picnics and drinks to the show. On the other hand, there’s Starlight Theatre, which brings in touring Broadway productions every year. The performances take place in a large (permanent) amphitheatre with a stage and seating approximating a large indoor performing arts center.  Texted program notes at the Shakespeare Festival? Great. Starlight, I’m not as enthusiastic. It’s too close to an indoor venue and part of me feels like the same rules should apply.

So maybe it’s a question of societal expectations. As we are often told, social etiquette at the theatre was quite different “back in the day” when, watching the performance was optional and (sometimes they’d seen it multiple times), talking was almost expected. The overture was initially conceived as a signal for all to get to their boxes. In some of the more low-rent houses, audiences would jeer the performers or even throw vegetables. (sometimes they still do…) But today’s cultural values center around respecting the artists on stage. It’s sewn into the experience of going to a live arts performance in America. We’ve experienced a cultural shift in expectations in the opera house since the old days. Perhaps we will again with the advent of these new technologies.

Bottom line: with great smartphone power comes great responsibility. A responsibility to our audience to engage them on their level, balanced with a responsibility to respect the experience of art for both the audience and artist. These two duties will come into conflict more and more in the coming decades, and it's also our responsibility to wonder--and determine for our own organizations--at what point the two can meet.

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 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"?)