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.

Emergency Preparedness for Artists, Part II: Is Your Organization ArtsReady?

Nobody ever wants to be in an emergency situation, but let’s face it, they happen. Hurricanes, floods, fires, terrorism, I.T. failures, and even epidemics are a real concern in today’s world.  Last week we talked about disaster planning for artists, but what about the organizations? Almost every for-profit organization in the country has some type of emergency preparedness plan and training for staff members. But for some reason (money, time, human resources), arts organizations are a little behind this vital curve. Which is where ArtsReady comes in! This initiative was developed several years ago by South Arts as a way to help organizations with emergency preparedness.  As you probably know at this point, developing strong management practices regarding emergencies is becoming a national conversation. (Read the Green Paper published earlier this year!)

ArtsReady Program Director, Hannah Leatherbury, explains that, “We want arts organizations to start thinking about a readiness plan like they think about a strategic plan.”  We conducted an interview with Hannah last September, and the podcast gives some great information about the history of the organization and importance of continuity planning.

There are three main components to ArtsReady:

(1) “Be ArtsReady” awareness campaign, which provides resources and guides for organizations to create “what if?” plans. Join the campaign!

(2) In-progress development of community source software, which will be a web-based tool to help arts organizations be more resilient after both minor disruptions or major crisis.  It will allow organizations to assess their risks, have a secure backed-up location for readiness documentations, and be connected to other arts organizations to share resources and stories. Check out the demo presentation for this online tool.

(3) Membership in the Coalition for Artists’ Emergency Preparedness, a voluntary task force which is committed to organizing a nationwide support system (resources, education, advocacy) for artists and arts organizations before, during, and after disasters. **Be sure to check out, "When Disaster Strikes, Are You Prepared?" a workshop they are conducting during the Americans for the Arts Half Century Summit on June 26th at 4:00pm.

What experience have you had with emergency preparedness? Does your organization have a plan in place? We love to hear what you all are doing !

Emergency Preparedness for Artists, Part I: Cover Your A's

"Emergency preparedness is possibly the only topic in the world that is both terrifying and boring," quips Studio Protector's Craig Nutt. Disaster planning is easy (and risky) to put off for another day.  As we enter the Atlantic hurricane season, now is a good time to consider your own emergency preparedness.  In this two-part series, we will look at resources that can help arts and culture organizations both prepare for and recover from flood, fire, and other disasters.

One resource specifically designed for artists and artisans is Studio Protector, an information toolkit created to help you "cover your A's: Art, Assets, and Archives."

Studio Protector goes beyond general preparation tips to include advice relevant to artists working with a wide variety of media.  For instance, after a flooding disaster, the "First Aid for Your A's" section explains that freezing wet items can buy time, but that not all materials are okay to freeze:  textiles and books, yes; paintings and ivory, no.  This kind of information can help you prioritize your time in a salvage situation.

The idea for Studio Protector grew out of lessons learned by artists during and after Hurricane Katrina.  Visual artists developed the tool in partnership with the Craft Emergency Relief Fund (CERF+), which provides direct grants and loans to artists who need help in emergencies.

Studio Protector is comprised of two parts:

(1) The Wall Guide contains tips and checklists that help you start small and build your disaster response plan incrementally.  Five subject-specific pullout guides, which can be easily taken off site in the event of an emergency, focus on topics such as evacuation, clean-up, and salvage.  The entire kit is the size of a calendar and is designed to hang on your studio wall.  The online video demonstration is a good introduction to what the guide looks like and how it works.  The kit is currently available through CERF+ for $16 plus shipping and handling.  Profits from the sale of the Studio Protector Wall Guide go towards CERF+ programs.

(2) The Online Guide* is designed as a supplement to the Wall Guide, with artist-to-artist videos and links to additional resources.  Because it contains a lot of basic information as well, it is a good first stop when working on your emergency plans -- or when beginning the recovery process.  The Online Guide is available for free on the Studio Protector website.

Although it is geared for visual artists and studios, Studio Protector has advice and tips that can also be useful for performing arts organizations -- particularly those with a large investment in costumes, scenery, stage equipment, or digital archives.

*Web development for Studio Protector's Online Guide was a project of Center for Arts Management and Technology, home of this blog.

Four free online tools you should know about

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.

Also, this is pretty sexy: operabyyou.com

Look for conference interviews by yours truly coming up on future Technology in the Arts podcasts!

Thanks to Ceci Dadisman and Palm Beach Opera for many of these sites!

Bravo! Hats Off to Innovative Technology!

Congratulations to the 2010 winners of the 21^st annual MUSE Awards! We all know that without a collection or traveling exhibits, a museum would not exist. Period. But how long can that museum, despite an amazing collection, exist without connecting to the public in new and exciting ways? It is impossible. Especially in this ever-changing digital age, museums have to get creative! (Slightly ironic, since they are housing creativity to begin with...)

Which is why, every year, the American Association of Museums’ Media & Technology Committee celebrates innovation and creativity of digital media in the museum sector with the prestigious MUSE Awards.

Over 200 entries from museums around the world were reviewed by an international jury of museum professionals and media experts, and the results were presented at the AAM annual conference in Los Angeles.

For full descriptions of all the winners, click the category! But in the meantime, check out some highlights and favorites.

Audio and Visual Tours

Imagining Lincoln and Juarez; Chicago History Museum and Ed Herrman

The Chicago History Museum has developed pre-programmed iPods and accompanying worksheets, to immerse students in the exhibition with sounds that created the mood and engage them with the collection.

Community

O Say Can You Sing? National Anthem Singing Contest; National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution and Night Kitchen

The National Museum of American History held a singing contest to engage the American people with the story of the flag and national anthem.  Over 800 eligible entries were submitted via YouTube, and thousands of people rated and commented on their favorites.  The winner was invited to perform at both the museum and the Baltimore Orioles game on June 14, 2009 (Flag Day)!

Games

t.a.g. Open Museum

The Association Game (t.a.g.) is a non-verbal educational game for grownups where an image is chosen at random from the Open Museum collection, participants respond with an image that is somehow associated with or reminiscent of the original image, everyone votes on what they think is the best successor, and then the winning image becomes a starting point for the next round. There are three rounds a week with an average of 15 images submitted for each round. **One of my personal favorites because anyone can sign up for free and play the game now!**

Interactive Kiosks

UMMA's DialogTable; University of Michigan Museum of Art and Kinecity & Night Kitchen Interactive

The UMMA DialogTable is a dynamic new interactive storytelling and social learning tool located in the Vertical Gallery of the University of Michigan Museum of Art's new Maxine and Stuart Frankel and the Frankel Family Wing. The DialogTable engages audiences with art and ideas, prompting new conversations and creative connections. Since the Table is located in the extended-hours zone of the Museum, visitors can engage with the collection even after the galleries are closed!

Interpretive Interactive Installations

Worldwide Animal Viewers; Museum Victoria and Megafun Pty Ltd

Melbourne Museum in Victoria, Australia recently opened a new biodiversity exhibition, “Wild: amazing animals in a changing world,” which has 770 mammal and bird mounts from all over the globe. Designed for a broad audience, the interactive interpretive device needed to be developed for all types of guests to use.  Museum Victoria worked with Megafun Pty Ltd to create the PANORAMIC NAVIGATORS, in this case referred to as "Worldwide Animal Viewers," a surprisingly easy and fun system which accesses additional information about every specimen in the exhibit.

Multimedia Installations

Beyond All Boundaries; National World War II Museum and The Hettema Group

Beyond All Boundaries, the signature 4-D cinematic experience at The National World War II Museum was designed to attract both new and existing audiences to the Museum, and to bring World War II to life in an entirely new way.  The words and stories of actual WWII participants are brought to life by many of today's leading actors, and viewers experience the war in first person through state-of-the-art special effects where they feel the vibrations of B-17 bombers and see snow falling inside the theater during the Battle of the Bulge.

Online Presence

We Choose the Moon; John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum and Domani Studios & The Martin Agency

We Choose the Moon is an amazingly integrated website which recreates Apollo 11's lunar mission, minute by minute, with an interactive experience that let visitors experience the mission as it happened, using archival audio, video, photos and "real-time" transmissions on the site and via Twitter.

Podcasts

Audio on demand program; National Museum of Australia and Icelab Pty Ltd

The National Museum of Australia's Audio on Demand program is an evolving collection of recordings of lectures, forums and symposiums held at the Museum's building in Canberra.  There is a wide range of topics relating to social history, and especially the Indigenous peoples of Australia since the museum has such a strong collection.

Public Relations and Development

Raising Spirits; Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and The Arts Lounge

Raising Spirits is a comprehensive public relations package designed to promote a traveling, multimedia art history presentation showcasing the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco's permanent collection. The package takes the world-renowned collection "on the road" via a plasma screen into private dining rooms of our patrons, while host Kirsten Shilakes tells tightly woven stories about art, food and wine, taking guests on a multi-sensory aesthetic and culinary journey.

Teaching and Outreach

Teaching and Outreach Videos; Art Institute of Chicago and Angle Park, Inc.

Collectively directed towards educators, parents, and caregivers, the Art Institute of Chicago's teaching and outreach videos demonstrate meaningful and effective strategies to engage young audiences on their visit to the art museum. Dynamically accessible in the museum and online with both English and Spanish subtitles, this group of videos created by the Art Institute of Chicago and film company Angle Park, Inc., helps teacher-student and parent-child audiences make the most of their museum visit.

Video

Buck Ramsey's Grass: Anthem; Nevada Museum of Art and FLF Films Inc & UeBersee Inc.

The Nevada Museum of Art has created a moving piece which effectively transports the viewer into a land where the enduring tradition of cowboy poetry is a rich and vital form of cultural expression in the American West. This film was created and produced for the 2009 exhibition Between Grass & Sky: Rhythms of a Cowboy Poem, and is inspired by the Texas poet Buck Ramsey widely-celebrated poem Grass.

Honeysett & Din Student Award (new this year!)

Concept Design: Touch the Unreachable—Looking for Finnish identity; Virva Emilia Auvinen, Aalto University School of Art & Design-MediaLab Helsinki, Finland

"Touch the Unreachable" is a concept design on how to use interactive storytelling techniques, video, 3D animation and graphic visualization for art education purposes. The "Touch the Unreachable" concept is an application designed for a museum environment and aims to promote knowledge of Finnish cultural heritage.

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What are your favorites? How can these remarkable projects help you and your organization integrate more technology in innovative ways? We would love to hear what YOU are doing!

Giving Habits, Technology and the Millennial Misunderstanding

In a recent study focusing on the giving and technology habits of millennial donors from Achieve & Johnson Grossnickle Associates, researchers found that many people under 40 are willing to become donors but are not being approached in ways that lead to increased patronage and giving. The study found that Millennials prefer their primary contact with an organization to be Internet based, with e-mail being the preferred form of direct communication and Google searches, web pages and social media outlets ranking highest for researching organizations and building relationships. While this in itself is not shocking, the rest of the study revealed some much more interesting facts about younger donors.

• Millennial donors were over 91% likely to give a gift to an organization when asked face-to-face, as opposed to 51% likely when asked through e-platforms, and only 17% likely when asked through direct mail.
• When asked what type of information they wanted to see before they would give to an organization, over 53% of Millennial donors wanted financial documents and proof of stability, and 86% wanted documentation of current programs, services, and community impact.

These facts could easily represent the traditional donors of any arts organization in the United States; this similarity should be a red flag to non-profits about their misconceptions surrounding younger donors. Millennials are concerned with the health of the organization, Millennials do want to get involved, and Millennials require face-to-face personalized interactions to become donors. Studies like this help to show that Millennials are not that different from the traditional donors which arts organizations are already cultivating. The differences emerge in how Millennials prefer to gather information and communicate with organizations rather than in the information itself.

So how can arts organizations mix the technological communication preferences of Millennials with their need for face-to-face contact?

Some recommendations for communicating with Millennials:

• E-mail annual reports instead of direct mailing them or make them available as a downloadable pdf from the organization website
• Update projects and project outcomes on websites and blogs in real time
• Continuously post pictures, testimonials, press and videos to social media
• Create an interactive online environment that allows donors to feel involved with the organization even when they are not at the physical space
• Use events, parties, fundraisers, shows, and exhibitions to begin the personal face-to-face cultivation of the new donors

The objectives of these techniques mirror traditional forms of development, but the tactics have been updated for a fresher approach reflecting the technology based millennial lifestyle.

All of these online efforts support the face-to-face meetings and personalized mailings that are already in use by many organizations. Millennials can and will support organizations that take the time to reach out to them. The misconception that Millennials are not a target market willing to donate is simply leaving cash on the table and failing to connect arts organizations with their future funding base.

Four Free Analytic Tools for Facebook and Twitter

Fan Page Analytics This tool helps you learn more about your Facebook fans by seeing what other pages they like. This easy, fun, and free tool is a nice complement to Facebook’s simple analytics. Knowing what your fans like can help you build your case for potential sponsors. The site's map function shows you states or countries where the highest concentrations of your fans live. This information could help you to place more strategic Facebook ads – especially if you’re a touring artist or group. Try it for your organization, and let us know what you discover.

Twitalyzer

This robust set of metrics and reports creates a nice snapshot of your current Twitter usage. The Dashboard tool also gives you advice for improving metrics like impact. A recent write-up from Mashable directed an overwhelming amount of traffic to Twitalyzer’s servers yesterday – We’re looking forward to exploring more of the features when things calm down a bit.

TweetEffect

Find out what posts coincide with your account gaining or losing followers. TweetEffect lists your recent posts, displaying the posts in green or red as you gained or lost followers. Interesting information, but don’t forget that correlation isn’t necessarily causation…

Tweet Psych

Enter your twitter account name, and Tweet Psych creates a “psychological profile” of your account. The profile shows how often your tweets fall into general categories, theoretically giving you insight into your online persona. According to our profile, TechInTheArts tweets most about learning and work. What a serious bunch we are!

Which Vendor? Simplifying Online Grant Applications

Does anyone actually enjoy the grant writing process (aka the most frustrating, time consuming, and essential activity virtually every arts organization must go through at least once a year)? To those of you who enjoy all the paperwork, I salute you. For everyone else, I’m sure you will agree that the development of online grant systems have been a tremendous asset over the past several years.  Unfortunately, they do not always simplify the process. Passwords are forgotten, the grantee cannot preview the full application, every year the same information must be reentered, supplemental files are unable to attach, and heaven forbid there are not enough opportunities to save work.  Grantmakers, on the other hand, have to deal with potential duplicates in the database, an inability to format or customize applications, interim reports that are not integrated with the original application, and hundreds of applications from organizations and individuals who are not even eligible for their funding.

With all of these potential hassles and multiple vendors to choose from, how can grant makers possibly ensure they select the online grant application system that will work best for them?

Thanks to another informative report from Idealware, vendor selection does no longer have to be such a completely overwhelming process. 

“Streamlining Online Grant Applications: A Review of Vendors” is a collaborative effort between Idealware, Project Streamline and the Grants Managers Network to assist grant makers in comparing various systems against the same criteria.

Vendors reviewed in the report include:

• EasyGrant by Altum
• eGrant* by Bromelkamp
• WebGrants by Dulles Technology Partners
• Grant Lifecycle Manager by Foundant Technologies
• IGAM by MicroEdge
• Common Grant Application by Ocean Peak
• PhilanTrack by PhilanTech

It is important to note that the review’s main focus was not every specific functionality of each vendor, but rather those features which best reduced the administrative burden, such as:

• Getting Started: Ease for Applicant
• Getting Started: Reuse of Information
• Overall Ease of Use
• Good Form Design: Self Service
• Flexibility of Forms
• Support for Multiple Stages
• Information Sharing: Collaboration
• Information Sharing: Data Export/ Access
• Product Background

I would not recommend making a decision based on just the paragraph summaries of each system, which did not always compare the same criteria.  Instead, take the time to look through the complete report wherein each system is evaluated in the above categories through various “essential standards” and “gold standards.”   These include elements as simple as required fields and word counter to things as complex as branch logic and extranet capabilities. Additionally, further information is included in the full report, such as costs, technical setup, technical support, current number of clients, and product history.

Although the systems reviewed in this report are not the only tools available, this report is a great starting point and resource for all grantmakers looking to simplify their grant application process.

For more detailed information, download the full report from Idealware for free!

*eGrant began as a product of the Center for Arts Management and Technology, home of this blog

May the Fourth Be With You

As a special shout-out to fellow sci-fi fans in arts management, the staff at the Center for Arts Management and Technology bids you Happy Star Wars Day!  To celebrate this joyously geeky tradition, we used the always-fun, put-yourself-in-the-video tool JibJab to create a version of The Empire Strikes Back starring...us, of course.  Enjoy!

Featuring: David Dombrosky as Luke Skywalker Shryansh Mehta as Han Solo Melody Fleishauer as Princess Leia Josh Futrell as Lando Calrissian

Is this thing on?? Important news for performance spaces that use wireless microphones

The FCC officially decided in January to clear the "white space" that exists at the 700 MHZ frequency for particularly designated usage. While the FCC fielded arguments from big cellular and broadcasters in determining white space authorization, "unauthorized users" of microphones operating on a 700 MHZ frequency were depicted as "squatters" and intruders, since many have, technically operated in this space illegally for years. Unfortunately, this may have a serious impact on venues that use wireless microphones. Theaters, concert halls, stadiums, and others, will no longer be able to use technology that uses the 700 MHZ frequency. The FCC is giving organizations that use mics on the 700 MHZ frequency until June 12 to transition to another frequency.

This means that you need to know if this is something you need to know. This could be hugely expensive to organizations that have equipment that operates at this frequency. If nobody in your organization knows this, or knows where the equipment manuals are, you can check the FCC's website.

If you find that your equipment will have to be replaced, try contacting the manufacturer and/or the retailer where it was purchased. Some companies are being very good about offering discounts on new equipment or switching out the old free of charge, according to sources at a conversation at Arts Advocacy Day.

For a complete story and many additional, helpful links, see The Future of Music Coalition's blog.

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.

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.

Anonymous input, please!

We're putting together a webinar on digitizing art, and want to know what YOU want to know.  Please help us make this an experience that benefits you by filling out this 3-question survey. I promise you--it will take less time than it took you to fill out the Census. Even if you are the only person living in your household.

Thanks!

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?".

Shouting it from the grassroots rooftops: Wolf Trap Opera and the digital season launch

Midnight Launch by Temari 09 (from flickr)

For arts organizations, February brings with it the final throes of determining next year’s season. Some have renewals out already; others are still mired in scuffles with artistic, production or finance offices over which productions and dates will make next season the best it can be. Regardless of where you are in the process, if you are in marketing or PR, your thoughts have probably turned to how you will get the word out about the new season.  You may have perfected publicizing your season through renewal mailings and paper season brochures, but how do you “shout your season from the rooftops” online? Kim Witman, director Wolf Trap Opera Company (WTOC), has embarked upon an innovative new campaign to launch the company’s season this year. Located just outside of Washington, D.C., Wolf Trap bills itself as the "future of opera", a slogan that the organization seems to have taken to heart both in its programming and in its marketing efforts. As a researcher of how non-profit arts orgs use technology, I have been continually impressed by Wolf Trap’s leadership in online social media, particularly in their creation of a ning (a customized social networking site)—one of the first performing arts orgs to do so.

This season, Kim aims to get the word out to existing fans and potential audience members with a "digital season launch", combining elements of technology, grassroots campaigns, and social networking. She will celebrate today’s announcement of the WTOC 2010 season by doing guest blog posts and interviews in a few places across the blogosphere (see a complete listing at the WTOC blog).

I caught up with Kim about a week ago--a busy week for her, as she was returning from the classical Grammys. Wolf Trap was nominated for Best Opera Recording for their 2009 recording of John Musto’s Volpone. As she prepared to launch the season today, February 9, she took the time to answer some questions about launching a season digitally.

Q. In previous blog entries on Technology in the Arts, we’ve talked about digital season brochures (such as the London Symphony Orchestra) and other ways to publicize your season using technology platforms. What exactly is Wolf Trap’s concept of a digital season launch?

Kim: Wolf Trap Opera’s season announcement is only a small part of a large kick-off for the entire 2010 season of the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, and within that context we don’t have the chance to provide a whole lot of detail and texture for the opera performances. My guest posts and interviews on colleagues’ blog sites give me a chance to tell many sides of our story while creating a bit of a buzz on our little corner of the web.

Q. So today is the big day of your season launch online. What is rolling out today and what are you doing today to “shout your season from the rooftops”?

Kim: The WTOC blog is a spot from which readers and fans can fan out to dig deeper into the parts of our season and the aspects of our company that are of particular interest to them.  In addition to linking to posts on the other blogs participating in today’s effort, we’ve cranked out the news via our Facebook fan page (become a fan!), our Twitter feeds (www.twitter.com/WolfTrapOpera and www.twitter.com/kimpwitman) and the WTOC Hotspot.  Phew.

Q. You drew inspiration for this campaign from marketing guru Seth Godin, who is publicizing his latest book not through newspapers, TV or any so-called “traditional” means, but instead through blogs and other online outlets. How did you modify this idea to fit Wolf Trap Opera Company’s specific needs for the digital season launch concept?

Kim: I kept the guts of Seth’s approach intact. (I wrote him before embarking on this project, in the spirit of imitation being the sincerest form of flattery.  He wished me luck.)  I contacted the writers of a few blogs that I read regularly, and I offered to write guest posts or engage in interviews that target the area(s) of interest between my readership and theirs.  My effort isn’t nearly as massive as Seth’s was, but the goal is to focus a critical mass of attention on WTOC for a day!

Q. I have heard of surprisingly few arts organizations engaging in a digital season launch. Which aspects of your organization and its marketing channels made a digital season launch a good idea? Do you think this sort of effort will become commonplace in the future?

Kim: Our small company doesn’t typically have a lot of traction with traditional media anyway, so this isn’t a huge shift.    For the last 10 years, our main vehicle has been the website, along with the two direct mail pieces that go out later in the spring (calendar with entire Wolf Trap season, and WTOC brochure mailed to a smaller target audience).  We will continue with those traditional efforts.

The nerve center of this season announcement is the WTOC blog and its readership. The daily interchange between bloggers and their readers is vital, interactive, dynamic, messy and wonderful – and that’s the kind of energy we need to tap into.  Clearly, I could’ve compiled all of the guest posts and Q&A’s and put them on a web page, but there would be something too clinical and linear about that.

These types of initiatives are becoming more common, and the trend will undoubtedly continue.  Digital media make it possible to tell your story, no matter your budget.  The challenge is to do it wisely and in a targeted fashion.  All of the social networking initiatives are tremendously time-intensive, and they can rob a small organization of its precious human resources.  We’ve chosen to ride this wave, but we’re constantly weighing its assets and liabilities.

Q. You mentioned the time-intensive nature of investing in social media and also touched on how different platforms serve your followers differently. WTOC currently has a blog, ning site, and Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube accounts. How do you manage which content goes on which site?

Kim: It’s an ever-moving target, but this is how we’ve been focusing our various initiatives:

• Facebook: By becoming a fan, you can get our updates (including my blog posts) through your Facebook feed.  We look at this site as a way to deliver WTOC highlights to FB users without them having to go to a separate site.
• Hotspot (ning platform): The content is pretty much a clone of Facebook, with the added attraction of a comprehensive calendar.  It exists primarily to inform fans and patrons of our non-ticketed events (artist panel discussions, free concerts, etc) and to provide one-click clearinghouse for non-Facebook-users.
• The WTOC Blog gives us a distinctive and informal voice.  It allows me to speak in detail (and when appropriate, in industry jargon) to aspiring singers and other opera geeks.  And it allows me to speak more frankly and conversationally than a traditional web page.  (I love that the words “traditional” and “web page” can now exist next to one another!)
• Twitter still serves a niche audience.  Although (when we’re not in season), both of our Twitter accounts often run the same updates, they are differentiated in the summer.  I view mine as a conversation between me and my arts industry colleagues.  And the WTOC twitter feed is intended to allow us to communicate with fans and patrons.
• The YouTube account isn’t terribly active because we are still struggling with artist rights and releases in order to be able to post content, and because we don’t have media staff in house to spend the time needed to do the pre-production work on video clips.

Q. How are you spotlighting the Season Launch through these networks?

Kim: We’ll simply be putting the WTOC blog link front and center, encouraging folks to link through and start exploring!

Q. Anything else you would like to tell us in closing?

Kim: My son is a software programmer, and I get most of my geek fix through him.  He is quick to remind me that all of our technological tools are not effective until they disappear into the fabric of the task at hand.  It takes some energy to ride the wave of the technological flavor of the day, but our goal is to conquer the learning curve and allow the technology not to be an end in itself, but a tool through which our real message is conveyed.

Kim Witman of the Wolf Trap Opera Company is celebrating today’s announcement of the WTOC 2010 season by doing guest blog posts and interviews in a few places across the blogosphere.

Link back to Kim’s blog entry at www.wolftrapopera.blogspot.com for a complete list – all of the links should be active by midday on Tuesday, February 9.

Kim Witman assumed directorship of the Wolf Trap Opera Company in 1997 after having served the Company since 1985 in a variety of roles:  principal coach, assistant conductor, music administrator and chief of music staff.  A graduate of The Catholic University of America (M.M.) and Elizabethtown College (B.S. Music Therapy), she has also been a visiting faculty member in the opera departments of the Peabody Conservatory of Music and the University of Maryland.  In addition, she has been music administrator, chorusmaster and assistant conductor for The Washington Opera, adjudicator for the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and assistant conductor for Washington Concert Opera. Ms. Witman has been active as an opera coach and recitalist in the Washington, D.C. area since 1981.  She has performed at the Kennedy Center, the Philips Collection, the White House, and at New York’s Merkin Hall.  Committed to de-mystifying the opera business for fans and aspiring professional singers, she writes at www.wolftrapopera.blogspot.com.

Is your organization in the cloud?

"Towering Clouds" by James Jordan

Nine months ago, when I first began interning here at CAMT, I spent a lot of my first couple of weeks filling in gaps in my knowledge, reading other blogs, trolling the web for information, making sure I was up to speed. On these forays I encountered much discussion of mystical-sounding "cloud computing."

Interestingly, for as little as this term tends to be understood, the concept is one that could cut costs and improve efficiency for organizations. Cloud computing, as Wikipedia will tell you, involves storing data offsite--no longer in a server room somewhere in your organization's building or on individual desktops, linked together by an intra-office network, but "out there," essentially in the clouds. If you want to get more in-depth, there are myriad resources online that delve into the subtleties of the definition of cloud computing. One example is that given by Ismael Ghalimi of the SociaMediaToday blog who writes that cloud computing is "predicated upon the sharing of a common infrastructure by multiple groups of users, often referred to as tenants. . . .Cloud Computing creates virtual slices of resources from clusters of servers and storage devices, perfectly sized to fit the specific needs of multiple users."

So...

If your organization stores publicity photos on Flickr so that the press and others can download high-resolution copies without you having to save them on your office computer or network and then send them, your are using cloud computing.

If you store and share documents in Google Docs so that you and others can access and edit them from anywhere, you are cloud computing.

If you upload videos to YouTube so that people can see your art in action, but don't post them on your website so that you don't use up too much bandwith, you're cloud computing.

If your website is hosted off-site, for example, by an organization like CAMT, you are cloud computing.

These are not the only examples of cloud computing, which is a concept that encompasses nearly every form of off-site data storage that you could imagine. Cloud computing may save your organization the (hefty) cost of purchasing its own server (and regular cost of replacing or maintaining that server), or free up space on the server it already uses.  Companies like ADrive.com offer free and fee-based storage plans that enable your organization to upload, access, edit, and share files without having to use its own server or bandwith to do so. DivShare, another online hosting site, makes it possible for you to store your media on their servers but embed it in your webpages.  This is all very cool, and it's easy to get swept up in the clamor for jumping on the cloud computing bandwagon.

With increased popularity of cloud computing, however, come reports of the dark lining to this silvery concept. Security is always of utmost concern when it comes to data--especially sensitive data--and when those files are being hosted off-site, on a server that is hosting hundreds of other users' data as well, there is a risk of security breach.  This may be because the contract that your organization entered into allowed the service provider rights to your information, or it may be because of a malfunction in the server's security. Google experienced this in March of 2009 when a software bug meant that some users were granted access to documents that were never intended to be shared with them--and theirs with others. Or, in the case of last summer's Twitter hack, the company's usage of cloud storage meant that a hacker was able to easily and remotely access a plethora of sensitive documents.

A security breach is not the only risk that comes with cloud computing. As with any server, there is the chance of crashing, which can lead to inconvenience at best and irretrievable data loss at worst. For a recent example, see autumn's Sidekick phone crash, which affected all users of T-Mobile Sidekick phones and completely wiped out any information stored in their phones. The counter to this fear about the cloud is that, no matter where your organization stores its data, the data should always be backed up. This may mean that your organization has two cloud-based copies of all data, one for regular usage and one to back up the first cloud. Or perhaps your organization operates out of a cloud, but has all of that data backed up in the office. Conversely, your organization may have its own server, but use the cloud as a backup in the event of a malfunction.

Cloud computing is a powerful development in the way we can store and share data, and organizations would do well to examine the ways that utilizing the cloud may help cut costs. But this is not an experiment that should be taken lightly. Definitely ensure that your organization fully understands any contracts that are involved and who retains ownership of any data being stored offsite. And, it bears repeating, regardless of where you store it, regularly back up your organization's data.

Mobile apps and the arts: where we are and where we're going

Expressway at night by The Pug Father (from flickr.)

2009 saw many new technologies first start up (like Google Wave), slowly emerge (mobile apps), or explode with popularity (Twitter). In the past year, we at Technology in the Arts have been writing a lot about the emergence of mobile technologies in the performing arts, particularly the emergence of mobile apps. We’ve highlighted disagreements between artistic and administration staff about the role of phones in the audience, as well as the new and unique ways orgs are promoting the arts through apps. We featured a short video of mobile marketing guru Ron Evans of Groupofminds demonstrating new apps as part of a webinar hosted by the Center for Arts Management and Technology on “Mobile Applications for the Arts: Where Are We” (more on webinars at the freshly made-over CAMT site.) I caught up with Ron again around New Year's to discuss where mobile technology is now and how we might expect it to develop in 2010 and beyond. Amelia: What do you think arts patrons want in a cell phone app? What are the most successful examples that you’ve seen at giving the intended audience what they want?

Ron Evans: In a study I recently completed for the Artsopolis Network (who is considering building a mobile application to allow patrons to access their arts calendaring portal), of patrons aged 48-64, surprisingly one of the top results to your question is "Parking." People really want to know what parking options are available to them before the event, how much the parking costs, etc. This is a perfect example of some of the answers one might overlook when focusing on the arts organization's presentation of "the art" and is really very practical and useful information to know. Other responses that score high include restaurant information for pre/post show activities, availability of events near the users location (and the event start times), getting directions to the event, and being able to purchase tickets through the app (hopefully with discounts). These are all practical responses, and that's ok right now -- we're in a phase of early adoption, and outside of these functions that they are already familiar with (using Yelp to find restaurants, or using the iPhone's maps to get directions to a location) people don't really know what they want yet. They will be attracted to new phone technologies/capabilities that are cool as they develop.

iPhone Transparent Screen by edans (from flickr.)

A: In the current marketplace, what are these apps useful for? Is it simply audience engagement and a connection with the organization? Is it selling tickets? Or do you think that at this point they serve more as publicity devices—the organization that comes up with a cool app gets written up in papers, and gets a reputation for being forward-thinking?

RE: I feel that it is all of the above. If your arts organization creates a mobile app, it still feels like magic. Since many groups are local or regional and not national in scope, it doesn't really matter if an arts group in Boston creates an app similar to the one you just created in San Diego -- to your local community, you're cool. You're looked at as a forward-thinking organization with resources to spend on research and development, and I've seen several funders interested in funding new technology like this. Now, there aren't many examples of financial return on investment for the creation of an app. But similar to social networking, there are many examples of a visibility return on investment, and that's of course quite useful in many cases. But some people have to be the pioneers, who build things because they are fun and cool and give a new spin on the experience -- those people are the ones that eventually find the ROI. But to finish your question, apps can be designed to serve a variety of purposes, from deepening audience engagement to simply helping people find events to attend in the first place.

A: Back in the 90’s, there was a big “everyone needs a website” push for all commercial and non-profit orgs. Now everyone wants their website to be mobile-accessible. Is the next step that everyone needs a mobile app for their organization? In short, are apps right for everyone?

RE: Let's draw a quick distinction between mobile accessibility and mobile apps. The former is simply having a website that looks good when viewed in a mobile browser, and this is an absolute must-have. The latter is the creation of a new software program that people can download from places like the Apple AppStore, and is not a requirement, but is certainly cool. For a mobile-accessible site, your web designer should create a mobile-friendly version of your site, and you should try it out on various phones. If you use a content management system such as Wordpress or Drupal, there are free plugins that will do this for you automatically -- it's quite easy, and has the advantage of working for any phone with web-browsing capability. Mobile applications however, only work on the phone they were designed for, so you need different applications for the iPhone, the Droid, Blackberrys, Nokia's, etc. New tools are looking to make this a bit easier: for example, there are software coding environments that allow you to code your app in a general way, and then spit out "flavors" of apps that work on different phones. New technologies like this should bring down the cost of creating apps significantly.

iPhone sunset in the Andes by Gonzalo Baeza Hernández (from flickr.)

A: What type of organization could benefit the most from creating a mobile app? How do you suggest an organization research and decide if a mobile app is right for them?

RE: I don't think the use of an app would be better or worse for a specific arts genre. If you're doing interesting things, an app would offer a new medium to communicate that information. Before deciding to move forward on any development, I'd do two things. 1. Research what's out there already -- do some searches in the app store of your smartphone for organizations like yours, and see if apps exist already, what they do, and how you might use them if you were to contact the org that made them. 2. Ask your patrons -- send them a survey and tell them you're considering creating mobile access to the arts experience, and ask them what they would like to see, with an open-ended comment option. I've taken arts organizations through this process and answer analysis, and the information received is fantastic in focusing your development, saving you money, and ultimately increasing your chance of "success" in however you define it for your creation.

A: I’ve been researching streaming video in arts organizations and I have been finding there are many performing arts organizations that are having trouble obtaining the rights to stream video. Similarly, there are many modern museums and galleries that cannot obtain permission from artists to put a photograph of their art on their website, much less a mobile app. Do you see this as a significant barrier to arts organizations developing apps?

RE: Yes, it is a huge barrier. People that own the rights need to lighten up and realize that capturing the likeness of a piece or an event to share the act of participation isn't the same as being there in person and participating. But this is really only a barrier to apps that are designed to display this sort of content. There millions of other ways an app could augment my arts-attending experience, and many organizations are focusing on those ideas right now.

Samsung mobile phone by Milica Sekulic (from flickr.)

A: Do you foresee a huge demand for on-demand video on smartphones? How do you think the market reconciles the hi-def video craze with viewing performances on a low-def platform (i.e. tiny screen, tinny sound quality)? What sort of apps do you see emerging in the future, based on current trends?

RE: Actually, on-demand video, no. You can do it already and that will just become easier. The next big thing is going to be live streaming video -- sharing the experience you're at right now, with yo friends who aren't there with you. The iphone already has this capability (although you can't use it unless you break your contract with Apple and "jailbreak" your phone). AT&T also doesn't want you to have this capability right now, as it will be a huge drain on their mobile network resources. But as 4G speed and more becomes standard in the next couple of years, you're going to see this capability emerge, and instead of asking people not to take pictures, many arts groups will be asking people to not stream capture the entire event on their phones. This is going to be a big battle. But again, I point out that watching a show through a cell phone camera is not the same thing as attending the show in person in all its glory. One should be a "taste" of the other, intended to drive interest and participation. But many rights holders and arts organizations aren't going to see it like that for a long time.

I also think there will be more and more location-based apps, that know where you are in relation to everybody else, and your friends. For example, it is going to be easy and precise for you to be able to find your friends in a crowded 1800 seat concert hall -- you'll be able to point your phone like a compass to find them, as well as see them represented on a map that includes the walls etc. of the physical space you're in. There are already apps being worked on that help you find friends to attend with, identifying people of similar interests and tastes. And apps will start asking you for permission to do the things you do most -- do you usually go out to dinner before shows? Your phone will know that, and ask you "should I make a reservation at X restaurant for you?" You just give the ok -- the default will be that the phone asks for your approval, not the other way around with you hunting for a restaurant and trying to tell the phone you want to make a reservation. Sound like the stuff from science fiction movies? It's closer than you think, and it will all be based on the continued constant recording of your preferences and actions, in order to try to predict your future behavior. Getting your DNA examined to know your physical traits is pretty commonplace today -- getting your behavioral preferences mapped will be the goal of tomorrow. Sounds potentially Orwellian, I know. But if you can get beyond that, it's pretty exciting stuff, and we are just starting to play around with ways to enhance the arts experience itself using these technologies -- interesting stuff to come!

Ron Evans is the founder of Groupofminds.com Arts Consultants, and is a leading developer and researcher of arts marketing and audience development using technology. His firm assists arts groups to explore emerging technologies and measure their impact on patron behavior in expanding arts audiences. He can be reached at http://groupofminds.com/contact-us

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.

What Google Wave means for arts organizations

Wave, the latest Google creation, was released October 1 to much excitement amongst early-adopter techies. What is Google Wave? As Google puts it: "We set out to answer the question: What would e-mail look like if we set out to invent it today?"

Three words jump to mind when describing the experience promised: real-time, collaborative communication. Each conversation is a "wave", similar to an email conversation or instant message. Each individual message is call a "blip." Participants can embed video, documents, and apps into a wave, embed the Wave itself on their site or social networking profile and more. It's open-source, so the possibilities are nearly endless. Mashable has a great guide to the new platform.

Picture from Google

Google only released about 100,000 invitations to preview Wave and will slowly be rolling out more, but there's already talk of Wave as the death of e-mail. In fact, creators Lars and Jens Rasmussen hope that Wave will one day replace it. There's talk about how Google Wave will change a lot of things, but being an arts management student, I set out to investigate how will Google Wave affect arts organizations. Here are some ideas I came up with:

On a small scale, Wave can simplify basic projects within arts organizations. Take the annual report, which in most development departments is passed through at least a dozen pairs of hands and even more revisions. Wave serves as a central place for the document to be revised. No more sending out the final proof to 10 coworkers and getting 10 different versions back. No more worrying about saving the wrong version. It’s updated simultaneously. So consider the possibilities. Collaborators on a script could wave on the latest set of edits or the marketing department could wave the season brochure for approval throughout the organization.

But there’s a larger way Google Wave can connect us. Besides an extension that allows the social-media savvy organization to update all its accounts at once (Hallelujah!), Google Wave can help us accomplish our core mission as arts managers--taking away barriers between artists and audience. Here’s an idea of just a few things that will be possible when Google Wave gains wide usership: Invite potential single-ticket buyers to opt into a public wave and create a rich-media wave for each show in the season—include show descriptions, video interviews/webisodes, discussions with cast members/directors in real time, reviews, and whatever else you want to embed. Once your audience has seen a show, the org can poll audience members with an extension that allows you to poll for yes/no/maybe questions. Google Wave would allow audience members to discuss the show with each other or review it. The education department can effectively crowdsource their learning guide and teachers can discuss with other teachers what worked and didn't work for them. More on Google Wave and its social media implications for non-profits here.

Another neat feature is the ability to build Wave robots. Robots are automated participants that you can program to respond automatically to questions. (Right now, access to the Sandbox where these robots can be built is open to developers only.) In browsing around some external sites, I found robots that will tweet your blip on Twitter, play roshambo (rock/paper/scissors) with you, translate your wave into 40 languages and more. A simple robot could be programmed with information from an arts orgs website to answer simple questions like “What time is the show tonight?” or “I’m lost, show me a map to the theatre.”

Additionally, there’s been a lot of talk on what this means for the future of journalism. For an industry that has been (and some would argue, still is) so reliant on reviews and newspaper advertising, arts coverage is a continuing issue. Google Wave has the potential to transform journalism. With stories as waves, the journalist can add and transform stories as more information is available. How relevant that could be to a review of "Coppelia" is hard to say. But opening the Wave to people who can discuss and add to the story with links, videos, and more has potential. However, as more arts organizations are finding with any online journalism, people have to opt in first to read the arts stories, and that will not change with Google Wave.

I’ve heard from arts administrators who worry about encouraging open discussions or reviews on their website or social networking presence, thus missing out on a prime opportunity to create dynamic, relevant content. It’s my assertion that you can’t worry about people giving your show a bad review online. If you want to encourage positive word-of-mouth, negative word-of-mouth will inevitably occur sometimes. Particularly out-of-line or offensive comments can be deleted. But social networks are about community, and that will not change with Google Wave or any of the emerging technologies that will come along in the near future. Don't worry about people talking about your show. They already are. Worry more about not knowing what they're saying.

But don’t get me wrong, I haven’t drank the Kool-Aid yet. For now, Google Wave reality for me is how it is for most people. I have about 4 friends on it that Google culled from my Gmail contacts, and only 2 I really talk to, but they are rarely on. I searched the public waves for things that interest me and found some noisy waves and some quiet ones, none related to the arts yet. In writing this blog entry, I actually waved it to one of my contacts and we collaborated on it. The experience was odd--like standing over someone's shoulder as they proof your work. Plus, there's the interesting phenomenon of wanting to instant message about the document while working on the document itself. So, we ended up having instant message exchanges in the document itself. But all in all, pretty successful. Here's a screen shot:

Google Wave is not by any means a must-have tool for arts organizations… yet. There’s good reasons to wait (one of them being the difficulty it is to find an invite!) and devote your resources to the social media networks that work for you now. The temptation in the social media universe is always to jump on board the "next big thing" as soon you hear it could be the "next big thing", but doing that could mean spreading yourself too thin or choosing a social network that won't help you in building a community or increasing sales. Right now, the number of people on Wave is simply too small to make it worth consideration for most mid-size or even large organizations. We'll be hearing a lot more about Google Wave in the future as the kinks are worked out and developers create new apps that promise to revolutionize. That's the fun part about this new technology; all we have to do is wait to see if it catches on... and in the meantime, dream about all the possibilities.

Technology as the Art

“Molotov Alva and His Search for the Creator,” by Douglas Gayeton, a film made using machinima. Technology and the Arts...it's what we focus on in this blog, on this website, and in our offices. Dictionary.com defines technology first as "the branch of knowledge that deals with the creation and use of technical means and their interrelation with life, society, and the environment, drawing upon such subjects as industrial arts, engineering, applied science, and pure science."

Today, however, I would like to liberate “technology” from its seemingly ubiquitous linkage with other, more concrete and easily definable terms, and examine technology as art.   Technology is about creation, it is creative in its very definition, though it is too often regarded by artist-types as out of our realm of right-brained comprehension. This may be the reason that we consider art and technology, as if those two elements naturally remain separate.  When the first maths-based technology was utilized to create visual imagery, the products were considered not art because they were so often created by scientists.  (That relationship is explored in this piece by Lewis Dartnell.)  In this day and age, however, it is evident that technology can, in fact, be the medium in which the art is created. It can be the palette, the orchestra, the voice, the film.

It is a difficult distinction to make: at what point do we consider technology as an artistic medium?  Eight-track is a technology.  As is infrared film.   For our purposes I will be considering technology as digital, computerized.   I am interested to hear thoughts, because it can be a very difficult determination to make--at what point does technology actually comprise the art rather than merely facilitate it?  Is this a distinction that needs to be made? Is technology ever truly a medium, and if so, does the technology we discuss here necessarily happen with computers? And if so, does the art need to happen on a coding level to be considered created in the medium of technology? If the art can be created without a computer (for example, audio reel-to-reel), can we classify it as relying on (our definition of) technology?

So, without further ado, a few examples of what I would consider technology as the medium in which the below art is produced. (Additionally, the piece at the top of this post.)

There’s digital rotoscoping, mainstreamed in the 2006 feature film ”A Scanner Darkly," which combines digital filmmaking with a computerized version of traditional rotoscoping.

The Rhizome "Tiny Sketch" competition set a 200-character limit for coding to design tiny sketches. This is not unusual, and there are countless areas where code is used to create visual art. It is more clearly obvious in many cases, but is also easily taken for granted with continued computer usage, as it is code that gives us the graphics that we see as computer users.

Toplap, a musical group that performs live by writing code in real-time to produce music. (Video courtesy of the BBC on YouTube.)

Virtual composer Emily Howell, an independently-creating creation of David Cope's.

Watch Information Hunter Gatherer @ Electric Art in Entertainment Videos |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com “Information Hunter Gatherer” by Stephen Belovarich