An eventful March unfolds in the arts, technology, and entertainment space. With the sale of TikTok still pending, well-known tech investors like Perplexity, Microsoft, and Oracle throw their hats in the ring. And, though ethical debates of AI-generated and AI-assisted work are ongoing, it is finding success in the auction houses and award ceremonies. Meanwhile, recent tech acquisitions may signal a shift in the music industry, and South by Southwest (SXSW) is making a strategic adjustment following this year’s festival. Read the highlights.
In an age when content creation is set to hyper-speed and cast across chaotically-changing social media platforms, journalism has become embroiled in the crossfire. Some approaches to the form have embraced such change, turning to more decentralized and personality-driven forms of reporting and analysis to survive the ever-choppier digital waters. Learn how AI and social media giants are impacting this evolving journalism ecosystem.
With this increased competition form live service gaming, consumer expectations continue to shift and grow. In Part II of this capstone research by Heinz College Master of Entertainment Industry Management students, the team has employed data-gathering methods such as interviews, a survey, and social listening to better understand factors influencing player engagement and retention.
Live service games, or LSGs, are one of the largest drivers in gaming revenue. However, as the market continues to saturate, game developers are finding it difficult to sustain players. In part one of this capstone study by Heinz College Master of Entertainment Management students, learn more about the background of these games and what has made them so successful.
In the middle of awards season, major announcements in the media and entertainment industry defined February’s news. While Spotify prepares to ramp up its product offerings, new AI-powered tech is winning Grammys and helping make magic happen on the big screen. All this takes place in the shadow of some major policy announcements regarding copyright and AI.
Last week YouTube did a two-day test to preview streaming capability, a move that would place them directly in competition with streaming sites such as livestream, ustream, and justin.tv. Streaming capability was available to four select YouTube partners — Next New Networks, Howcast, Young Hollywood, and Rocketboom for two days. Like the existing streaming sites, YouTube will allow for real-time comments and, eventually, embedding in widgets and archiving old streams.
In all of YouTube’s communications , they only address giving this capability to their “content partners” anytime in the near future. YouTube content partners are people and companies that post regularly to the site and apply to YouTube in order to monetize their content with ads and rentals, obtain better quality for their uploads, and use YouTube’s Insight analytics tools. (Note: YouTube has a special program for non-profit partners. Check it out.)
Evan Rosenberg of Anaheim Ballet, a member of YouTube’s nonprofit program, produces the series “Anaheim Ballet: More Than Dance…” (See below for an excerpt.) He described the company’s hopes for its channel.
“YouTube has made it possible to not only showcase ourselves (Anaheim Ballet), but ballet in general to a global audience to the tune of over 24 million views. We look forward to using this additional tool (live streaming) in our continuing effort to spread the art of ballet across cultural, age, and economic boundaries.”
What are the implications for performing and performance arts organizations as streaming video becomes more and more ubiquitous? As a company or an artist, live performance is our product. Thus, we have faced issues with online video platforms since their rise in popularity:
We wonder if capturing that artistic product and distributing it online dilutes the aesthetic appeal.
We wonder if we should side with our artists and unions who deserve credit, payment, and a future in their industry, or with the insistent board member who says we must post video to capture the elusive younger market segment. We wonder if these interests are indeed in conflict.
We wonder if it cannibalizes box office revenues. And we wonder if we should give our audience members more credit; we know the difference between live performance and video, and so do they…right?
Online video is here to stay. This announcement is one more step in a long staircase of live streaming video becoming the norm. Fifteen years ago everyone had to have a website. Four years ago everyone had to have a Facebook page. Last year, everyone was going to mobile apps. With YouTube’s announcement, it’s easy to see performance footage moving from the movie theatre and the ballpark to laptops, phones, and iPads.
Alan Cooke knows arts donors. This opera-lover also happens to be a master marketer (formerly with Hewlett Packard) and he puts his passion and his skills to good use at fundraising software company Convio, specializing in systems for non-profit organizations across the spectrum.
Convio’s most visible campaign is likely the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure team fundraising efforts. (They have also done a fantastic job with Pittsburgh’s own Carnegie Museum.) However, Convio provides a range of different tools—at the core is Convio online marketing, which is a collection of tools—email marketing, website design, platforms for peer-to-peer fundraising, etc.
I recently interviewed Alan after seeing his presentation on online fundraising at the Opera America Conference in June.
Arts organizations, more often than other non-profits, have two messages that they’re getting out there. They’re asking people to buy tickets and on the other hand, they’re asking for a donations. How do you find that different from your other non-profit clients when you’re working with performing arts organizations?
The ticket-selling organizations are a little bit different from the majority of our organizations which only have contributed income. I think that, in terms of opera companies, many people really don’t understand the economic model of an opera company very well. I certainly did not understand that when I was an occasional single ticket buyer for the opera.
Perhaps one of the things that needs to happen is that organizations need to do a much better job, first of all, of making the case that simply selling tickets is not going to cover the cost of the productions. A lot of that is just education. You can make that case pretty well on your website and also through your communications with people, but you do need to make that case. Secondly, there’s the question of where you want to start. In the case of ticket-selling organizations, it’s logical to optimize your website for ticket purchases. There are things that you can do after someone has actually purchased a ticket where you can start to move them down a path and start to make your case--really simple things, like when they buy a ticket give them the option of making a small donation or trying to get people on a monthly plan where they’re giving a relatively small contributions every month. It’s automatic, you don’t have to worry about it and typically the lifetime value of those donors is very, very high.
One of the things that I have seen with digital communications in arts organizations is that you have the marketing department… And then you have the development department. Sometimes they play together very well, but sometimes, you’ll see accounts that are very obviously controlled by one or the other, and not a lot of overall relationship building. Your thoughts?
This problem of silos is a very common problem throughout the whole non-profit world. I think we have marketing departments that have their own agenda and their own tools and then you have a development department that has their own separate tools and they don’t talk about it to each other very much, which causes all kinds of confusion. Breaking down those organizational silos is easier said than done. Often smaller organizations have an easier time because they have fewer people, but as organizations get large, those walls sometimes can become very, very strong. It’s true that there is a lot of marketing chatter, which often doesn’t have very much to do with relationships. I think we’re starting to figure out how to build relationships the way that the development people have always done—you can do those same things online.
A lot of organizations are getting people’s email addresses after they’ve attended one performance and then they get an email asking for, for example, a $150 donation. Marc Van Bree has made the point that that’s like asking someone to marry you after the first date.
That’s right. It’s all about relationships. The online world is not dramatically different from the real world. You need to ask permission and you need to build a relationship with somebody before you start hitting them up for money. That’s a simple thing to do but there’s a surprising number of people who don’t do that.
Then how do you build that relationship and making the case for support to new pools of donors? In your Opera America session, you mentioned the concept of a welcome series.
So, the idea of a welcome series is that when somebody takes that step of raising their hand and saying, “I am interested in what it is that you have to offer” by giving you their email address, at that point you can’t just ignore them. You can’t just take it for granted and then immediately start asking them for money. Just like you would in a normal face-to-face relationship, you need to welcome that person to your community and you do that by seeking out some spaced email communications thanking the people for getting to know your organization and giving them some background information. Gradually, as you move down what we refer to as the relationship pathway, you give them more and more ways to become involved and to get more deeply embedded in the culture of the organization.
One of the very good things about using a technology platform is that you can automate all that, so you don’t have to write these things every time. It can be completely built out beforehand and automated. And we have found that by doing that, by making sure that as soon as someone joins your list, they get put into that communication stream. Not only are the open rates higher, but the conversion rates are much higher. And once they actually convert and donate, becoming a financial supporter of the organization, you can take them out of that stream and put them in a different stream. All of that can be automated and set up quite easily.
One of the ways that you mentioned non-profit arts organizations could combat the current economic climate is to reposition themselves as a community resource. How can an organization do that via digital means?
This came out of a conversation that I had with the general manager of my local opera company in Austin and I think that what they had said was fascinating. The difficulty that they encounter, especially in a medium-sized market like Austin, Texas, is that it’s not easy to sell opera. There is a relatively small audience for opera in that kind of a city and particularly in times of recession, it’s difficult to make the case. So this was an enormous struggle for the opera company in Austin, as I feel it is for many opera companies.
What they decided to do, which I thought was very clever of them, was they built an excellent music school on the premises right next to the concert hall and they started to garner quite a bit of attention in the city because of the quality of the music education that they offered to children. They had promoted that pretty heavily on their website and they have started to build a whole new pool of supporters for the opera who are people who would have never been on their list before—parents of children who now go to the school at the opera. It’s a completely new donor pool for them and it’s a donor pool that is amenable to different techniques, so they have started to do a fair amount of online fundraising to that audience, and that’s been pretty effective. They are obviously younger people and people who are not perhaps as familiar with the opera as the traditional audience. It’s basically given them a new pool of donors.
I heard that you recently added a database component to your collection of online tools. Tell me about that.
The database component an interesting new development for us. There are obviously a lot of vendors out there that sell databases to non-profit clients, but it became apparent to us that a lot of clients didn’t only want a set of on-line tools. They wanted a set of online tools, but they also wanted an entire CRM [Customer Relationship Management] system, where everything worked together. I think we have done a pretty good job in the past of integrating with programs like Raiser’s Edge. Data flows back into the master database and flows the other way. But it became apparent that a lot of those database tools were expensive and were relatively complex and that there was an opportunity for us to build a more integrated system together, and that was really the approach that we took.
What we decided to do rather than actually building something from scratch ourselves is we partnered with Sales Force. Sales Force has what they refer to as a non-profit template, which is a kind of a database for non-profits based on their commercial product. We built on top of that core piece and we built a product which is called Common Ground™. It’s a database specifically for non-profits, which talks to our online pieces.
So, if I were a development director, sending out emails and getting fine return on investment, but I really want to take my fundraising to the next level, what’s the first thing I should look into from Convio?
Rather than even looking for a tool, Convio is known for extremely interesting and high-quality research. For someone who is just thinking about how to get to the next level, I think they are thought-provoking. Obviously, they are not going to get you there automatically, but there very interesting. For a technology company, we do a lot more research than many technology companies and I think that’s one of our great assets. It depends on who you are; if you are a small organization, I would hope that you are really at the point where you are strongly thinking about bringing in technology to help you get to the next level, I would hope you’d look at product tours, which are short. They are a pretty good way to see what’s possible.
Welcome to the first installment of the Social Media Spotlight, our monthly feature focusing on arts organizations’ social media strategies.
Vancouver Opera’s social media presence, headed by photography/fashion buff and technology maven Ling Chan, goes where few opera companies have gone before. In order to achieve their goal of increasing brand awareness and facilitating two way communications with their followers, the $9 million opera company has launched initiatives like manga (a traditionally Japanese style of comic) and an annual animation contest, for instance. Currently on the company’s blog is a serial feature written in the voice of the main character of their world premiere opera, Lillian Alling.
Vancouver Opera takes ideas that many non-profit arts companies might deem risky or unsustainable and, through a combination of sheer creativity, thorough execution and diligent tracking, have made the Vancouver Opera social media sites vibrant, interesting, and unique.
Social Media Manager Ling presented her work this summer at the Opera America Conference. I caught up with her to chat:
Everything in the Vancouver Opera social media presence looks so vibrant. When you first set out, what were your goals for your organization and your audience?
Thanks! Vancouver Opera is a vibrant and innovative company that loves to engage with our community. When we first started out with social media, our goal was to put a face on the organization as well as increase awareness of the art-form of opera through educating and entertaining our tech savvy, minimally to moderately engaged supporters.
Vancouver Opera was one of the first arts organizations to really use social media tools. From the start, we were committed to reaching the next generation of opera lovers using the media of the times and integrating it into our marketing/PR mix.
Your summer blog features keep your readers captivated during Vancouver Opera's off-season. Tell me about Opera Mania 101 and the other summer blog features.
During the summer months, we needed to come up with ways to keep our followers engaged, so we came up with some regular features for the blog.
• Operamania 101 is a feature I came up with and thought would be helpful for the opera-curious. It’s opera education from a pop culture perspective. Everyone’s heard snippets of opera in movies, TV shows, cartoons and commercials and yet people might think they don’t know opera. They are more familiar with opera than they think.
Some other blog features have included:
• Bizarre Opera Videos where we post odd, unusual, or notable performances of opera found on YouTube.
• Tuesday Trivia where we come up with opera themed quizzes.
• Top Ten Lists where we invite readers to vote for their #1 choice. For example: Top 10 Villains, Top 10 Opera Tearjerkers, Top 10 Fantasy Operas
• Other features: 20 Questions with an Artist, Everyone’s a Critic, Lunchtime Poll, Opera Props
Lego Carmen, one of the "Bizarre Opera Videos" posted by Vancouver Opera to keep interest in opera during the summer months
You have a background in photography. Was this the impetus for Flickr Fashion at the Opera? What are the goals of the program and what inspired you to create it?
I love taking pictures and I have always had a passion for fashion. I went to fashion design school years ago and worked as an assistant stylist on a couple of magazine and music video shoots.
While working down at the theatre during Eugene Onegin in November 2008, I couldn’t help but notice how many young people went all out, dressing themselves “to the nines” for our operas. It wasn’t all just formal wear either. Our audiences mixed dressing up with elements of street, punk and preppy fashion, bringing a whole new flava to the world of opera.
The people who dressed up for our operas inspired me to come up with Fashion at the Opera, which you can find on our Flickr.
Describe Blogger Night at the Opera. How did it engage new audiences? Did it show an increase in sales?
Our very first Blogger Night at the Opera was in January 2009 for our Carmen opera. A prominent local blogger named Rebecca Bollwitt, aka Miss 604, came to our Eugene Onegin that previous fall and she ended up blogging about the experience on her own personal blog. We got to talking and she suggested we coordinate a blogger night, which we did and it has since became so wildly successful that other opera companies started calling us to find out how to set it up for themselves.
We invited bloggers who were opera newbies to join us, blogging pre-show and during intermission their thoughts on the opera and the whole experience of being at the opera. We gave them backstage tours and also invited them to mingle with cast, staff and guests at the post-show party on opening night.
We live streamed their web links on our VO blog, so that our readers can follow along in real time. This was great exposure for us and a way of getting the next generation interested in opera. Most of their readers have never been to the opera. But after reading about Blogger Night at the Opera, they became excited about our operas and what we’re doing with social media and bought tickets to the next performances. I had a few of them seek me out on the theatre floor to tell me they were here because of Blogger Night at the Opera.
What's Opera Ninja and how did you come up with the idea? How do other people in the organization feel about giving control of their communications over to (basically) a volunteer?
Opera Ninja evolved from Blogger Night at the Opera. We had blogger night on Opening Night. What should we do for dress rehearsal? We came up with Opera Ninja March 2009 for our Rigoletto dress rehearsal.
It was inspired by Welsh National Opera when they tweeted 12 hours in the life of the Welsh National Opera's The Marriage of Figaro, including a live relaying of the performance (also translated into Welsh).
On our dress rehearsal nights, the Opera Ninja would live tweet. Followers were engaged with seeing an event unfold and have an insider view of what was going on behind-the-scenes. The tone of Opera Ninja is cheeky, fun, irreverent. We didn’t necessarily want it to be a play-by-play of what was happening on the stage. Instead it could be the Opera Ninja’s reactions to what was going on. Our followers have found this entertaining and fun. They would add comments and also re-tweet our tweets to their own followers.
I was the original Opera Ninja but have since invited our bloggers to take on the character in their own voices. I give a lot of freedom to our Opera Ninjas in what they tweet because I trust them. They are high-profile and active Twitter users. They know the etiquette, the advantages and the drawbacks of Twitter. They understand that they can have fun as the Opera Ninja but as they’re also representing VO for the night, they have to be professional too.
Vancouver Opera has started publishing manga, a comic book based on the opera. Manga is sort of an unusual foray for an opera company to take. What inspired you to take the stories of operas to this new medium?
It may sound like a strange combination but the partnering of opera and manga has worked extremely well for us. We were approached by Vancouver artist & editor Roy Husada of Rival Schools four seasons ago with the idea of “manga-nizing” our operas. It started out in black & white and written in Japanese, but has evolved into colorful mangas in English. The mangas are eye-catching and it helps give readers an idea of what the opera is about, thus sparking their interest in coming to the opera. Our mangas have proven to be very popular with our followers.
By my count you have at least four Twitter accounts for Vancouver Opera. Why? What are the advantages to have many accounts? And how do you track and get a good picture of your audience?
We have 4 Twitter accounts:
1. Vancouver Opera which is our main Twitter account where I tweet daily. It's the one with the most followers and the most activity, so it’s this account where I keep track and measure all our questions, responses and re-tweets.
2. Operabot which was started for our Operabot contest, an animation contest for our Golden Anniversary season. Professional and student animators were challenged to create animated shorts of one of the four productions last year. The tweets posted to Operabot related to updates on the contest, the submissions received and any fun or wacky robots related links.
3. Opera Ninja – We wanted a dedicated Twitter account just for our exclusive “behind the scenes” tweeting during dress rehearsals.
4. Where’s Lillian – For our upcoming world premiere, we wanted to introduce our Twitter followers to Lillian Alling as she makes her epic North American journey from Ellis Island to the wilds of British Columbia. She travels on foot in search of a man named Josef. We have someone taking on the persona of Lillian Alling and tweeting in their own voice the adventures and hardships that the real Lillian Alling might have encountered. From these tweets, we hope that followers will become intrigued with Lillian Alling and want to come to the opera.
Each Twitter account serves a different purpose and we wanted to have a dedicated account for the audience who wanted just Operabot updates or just Opera Ninja updates. Also it frees up our main VO Twitter stream by not bombarding our followers with too many tweets or random-sounding trains of thoughts.
What have been the results of all of these programs for Vancouver Opera? Many times it is difficult to track the effects of social media programs. How have you been tracking your initiatives at Vancouver Opera?
Our social media initiatives have garnered a lot of positive attention from newcomers to opera, opera lovers, our peers in the industry and the media.
I track and report data to measure the impact of our social media efforts in various ways:
• Blogger – Google analytics, Like This / Tweet This buttons
• Facebook – analytics
• I use the Bit.ly shortener for our tweets to see how many people click on our links
• Through promo codes in our Tessitura software, I can find out how many tickets were purchased whenever a sales offer was put forth on our social media channels.
Any initiatives for the 2010-2011 season that you'd like to preview for us?
I have some exciting things planned but it’s a surprise. Everyone will just have to stay tuned to Vancouver Opera.
Crowdfunding websites are a simple way for artists to solicit and accept donations online. One of the best-known sites is Kickstarter, which hosted the record-breaking crowdfunding of Diaspora.
With Kickstarter, you set a fundraising goal and have three months to achieve it. If you reach your goal within three months, you keep the cash. If you don’t, the funds are returned to your backers. You design a menu of rewards to motivate backers to give. And, you keep 100% of ownership over your project -- an important consideration for artists dealing with copyright and distribution issues.
Helen DeMichiel, who funded a series of webisodes with Kickstarter, says the all-or-nothing structure is a great motivator. “You have to hustle,” she explains, and your backers get caught up in the excitement.
A previous project backer and current project starter, Tirzah DeCaria points out that most projects are funded largely by backers within the artist's existing network. She advises artists to look at Kickstarter as an opportunity to consolidate and mobilize your network rather than as a tool for reaching large groups of new fans.
Of course, Kickstarter isn’t for everyone. The site is curated, and in addition to an application process, projects must have a U.S. address and a U.S. bank account. And there are the guidelines.
In a quick scroll through Kickstarter’s current projects, I came across many projects posted by individual artists or small groups, as well as projects by a design studio, a non-profit performance company, and a video game developer. Kickstarter clearly doesn't exclude businesses, but established organizations aren't the primary users. If your organization is considering a project, Joe's post on micro-donations has some good thoughts and advice. And, again, consult Kickstarter's guidelines.
Other crowdfunding sites for artists:
Projects on IndieGoGo can be based anywhere in the world. Unlike Kickstarter, the site isn’t curated, so projects cover a broad spectrum -- creative endeavors, causes, and entrepreneurial work. And, IndieGoGo is not an “all-or-nothing” enterprise. You can keep any funds you raise along the way. IndieGoGo also has several innovative partnerships, including a fiscal sponsorship program through Fractured Atlas and the San Francisco Film Society.
RocketHub is another “all-or-nothing” crowdfunding site geared toward artistic and creative projects. RocketHub is not curated, though projects must be legal and “in good taste.” You must have a PayPal account to start a project.
What is your experience with crowdfunding art? Should established organizations stay out of it or join in the fun?
American Express recently started a grant program funding arts organizations through online voting instead of traditional non-profit success metrics. Quality of art, financial stability, and community impact were not the deciding factor in who received a $200,000 grant this summer, votes were.
In a scene reminiscent of American Idol or Dancing With the Stars, arts organizations compete for the grand prize. Twitter, Facebook, and E-mail, took center stage as organizations launched their online campaigns. A competition was born and America voted to determine the winner.
American Express’s use of the high school prom queen method to choose a winner evokes many new questions for funders and fundraisers alike:
Does the idea of a contest remove art from arts funding?
Is the best organization being rewarded?
Is this a popularity contest or a social media war?
How do you send a message for support without degrading the integrity of your opponents?
How will social media be affected through this type of funding?
Galloping ahead of many traditional forms of communication, technology and social media have taken the arts community by storm over the last few years. This contest adds yet another facet to their use: fundraising. With the voting apparatus hosted online, social media makes perfect sense as the advertising weapon of choice, but is this a good choice for the arts?
Building communities, starting conversations, and sharing information top the list of ‘the best ways to use Social media.’ Advertising and sales lead the least effective uses. In an attempt to gain votes, organizations risk alienating their supporters through using inflammatory messaging or hyper focusing on their votes and forgetting the online communities they created.
Bashing the competition, touting superiority, or focusing on why one organization ‘needs the money more’ represent strategies and messaging that could easily be adopted. These messages are uncomfortable for many people and can fracture the arts community. However, without competitive messaging the prize would simply go to the organization with the highest online presence, essentially starting the contest on an unfair playing field.
Assuming an organization crafted an effective campaign without causing any damage, the biggest question still remains unanswered. Should grants be determined by popular vote?
On one hand supply and demand compose the framework of the funding structure. The organization with the highest public demand receives a reward to create more art. On the other hand, many see this as a popularity contest with the biggest flashiest organizations gaining a clear advantage. Unfortunately, art comprises no part of either approach. This funding model is not based on the organization, what they do, who they do it for, or why they do it: a counterintuitive approach in my opinion.
While increased online support and a focus on technology use to reach constituents could provide benefits in this funding model, the prom queens method of distributing support should probably be left where it belongs: high school. This model has no way of insuring the best organizations reap the rewards or that the most efficient and effective programs receive funding. Popularity does not always equal quality, but it will always decide the winner in this funding model.
Reluctance to embrace social media as an appropriate avenue for reaching arts patrons has often been blamed on the demographics of the user base. Many people look at sites like Facebook and immediately write them off as platforms only representing a younger generation. Not any longer.
In 2010 educated adults over the age of 40 comprise the fastest growing demographic on Facebook, the age group 55+ grew by over 900%, and 40 million Facebook users in the US are now over the age of 40. This exposition of established professionals opens up the world of social networking even wider and begs the question: Are we properly using social media in the arts?
With 10 million Facebook users over the age of 55, Baby Boomers are staking their claim in the world of social media. This new demographic is college educated, professionally employed, and comprised of over 60% women. If that sounds familiar, you might be recalling the audience profile for the average arts patron in the U.S. The fastest growing segment on Facebook matches the traditional arts patron in the United States almost perfectly.
Other social media platforms have experienced similar growth outside of the traditional 18-34 age bracket. Currently users between 35 and 55 comprise the largest age bracket on Twitter. LinkedIn’s primary constituents are over 50 and MySpace continues its strong hold on original members now between the ages of 30 and 50.
These statistics along with the growing momentum around interactive websites, electronic outreach, and digital networking make social media the next frontier for audience development in the arts.
Innovations in social media within the arts have already sprouted around the country with great success:
Characters from plays now have their own Facebook accounts to entice theatre goers to interact with them before and after the show.
Interactive confession booths in galleries across the country load videos directly online for audiences to view and interact with.
Viral online marketing is playing a larger and larger role in making buzz around productions and increasing web traffic.
But is it enough?
We can look to Australia for a prediction. Australia adopted social media faster that the US, UK or mainland Europe, with the highest user rates per capita in the industrialized world and the highest percent of users over the age of 35. Arts organization in Australia use Social Media to interact with patrons before, during, and after performances/exhibitions.
In the article Geeks, tweets and bums on seats, Elissa Blake discusses the adoption of social media in Australia and its affects on the arts. In the article, she writes about a production of King Lear where a woman asked permission to tweet during the performance. When asked why she did so, her response was:
It's about sharing your emotions and your experience of the show. You might have a favourite scene or a line that you love and you want to share it instantly. I thought King Lear might be dry, but it was really interesting, and I wanted my friends to go and see it...
Many Australian arts organizations and artists see social media platforms as a way for audience members to interact with companies, individual artist and each other. This interaction builds new passions for attending live performances as friends that could not attend receive enticing updates through their Twitter feed. This free viral marketing increases audience participation and makes Australia a leader of innovation in social media for the arts.
Fee Plumey, the digital program officer at the Australia Council for the Arts stated:
If arts companies want to attract new audiences, they have to jump in and chat about the minutiae of what's going on, Audiences are not just interested in a celebrity on stage. They really want to know how the show works, how the set was made, how it was cast, who's doing the lighting and what goes wrong… [social media provides that outlet].
Australia is a great case study for how social media can affect the arts. Now it is time for the US to see how social media can be creatively applied in audience development within our own country.
Many arts organizations have experimented with using “trailers” to promote upcoming performances or exhibitions. But what if you don’t have the time, equipment, or expertise to film and edit a video? What if all you have are photos?
Enter Animoto, a free tool that lets you quickly create short videos using a combination of photos, text, and/or video clips of up to five seconds in length. You can choose background music from Animoto’s library or upload your own.
To try it out, I created this 30-second promotion for Misnomer Dance Theater's performance back at our 2008 conference. It took about 20 minutes, including the time I spent actually finding the photos on our Flickr account.
The process is a pretty straightforward drag-and-drop design. You can add text and choose particular images to “spotlight” with extra screen time. Once your elements are arranged, one click mixes them together into a flashy 30-second video.
Other than changing the order of your elements, though, you don’t have a lot of control over the final product. Because Animoto automatically mixes the elements together for you, there’s no opportunity to fine-tune individual transitions. This is great if you’re looking for something quick and easy, but it can be a real downside for the more detail-oriented user.
Throughout the process, there is a strong push to upgrade your account, which can get a little annoying. If you’re with a 501(c)3 organization, you can request a free Pro account (normally $250/year), which allows you to make full-length, high resolution videos that are downloadable. The Pro account also includes a commercial-use license.
What have you created with Animoto? Do you have other favorite video tools?
No guards. Always open. And I assume you won't have any alarm surprises.
Welcome to the latest frontier in arts meet technology: Adobe Museum of Digital Media, the world’s first virtual museum.
What is a virtual museum? This is not simply a museum website where you can view the collections by clicking an index. Nor is this a museum placed in a virtual world such as Second Life (which interestingly enough has a thriving art scene).
The mission of the AMDM is to “Showcase and preserve digital work and illustrate how digital media shapes and impacts society.” Adobe "has changed the world...and we wanted to celebrate that,” says Rich Silverstein, Museum Director.
Keith Anderson, Creative Director, says the main question asked when developing the idea was, "how would this work in the real world?" Architects and designers were hired to create a museum that could theoretically be placed in any city in the world. There is an outside atrium, gallery space, and towers where the archives will be housed.
So how do you walk through this virtual space? There are no avatars. Instead, a sea-jelly-meets-futuristic floating machine eyeball is your guide to the space (complete with cute old-school-computer-takes-an-underwater-journey sound effects).
One of the greatest aspects of this new space is the freedom to create work that would be impossible to show in a traditional museum. Often, digital pieces are printed out on paper, or projected, and depending on the artist, a lot of the meaning behind the piece is lost (not to mention quality). It's like taking a Polaroid of The Birth of Venus. Sure, the photograph might turn out amazing and some people could like it better than the original because it has a neat 1960's quality to it... but I doubt that was the image Sandro Botticelli had in mind in 1486.
I’m excited and a bit hesitant at the prospect of this museum. Yes, I think a virtual museum will have enormous potential for artists who work in digital media. Images of many artists’ work do no justice to their pieces. However, I am someone who likes to be physically immersed in a museum. It is an escape from the real world into another universe: sometimes confusing, sometimes controversial, sometimes just beautiful, but always refreshing. It’s the same comfort as getting lost in a good book. I worry that, personally, I will not get the same satisfaction exploring the very cool looking structure from the 15-inch screen of my MacBook. But then again, I am also one of those people who refuse to use a Kindle because I like to physically hold a book. So who knows, it might be a heavenly solution to dealing with crowds and the hassle of checking your coat. And the fact that you never have to worry about hours or off days is pretty great.
What do you think? Is this where we are headed? Will virtual museums help create demand for the arts by allowing everyone to have access from the comfort of their homes?
The first show is entitled, "The Valley," and is curated by Tom Eccles. It will feature work by Tony Oursler, an amazing video artist who has already been pushing the boundaries of what digital media should look like and how it can be displayed (Did anyone catch his recent show at the Mattress Factory?). Oursler tends to highlight the strangeness of humanity in his work, and the medium of the internet and how it reflects society will obviously play a role in this new show.
Membership is free and just takes an email address. I am curious to see where the Adobe Virtual Museum goes from here. Will there be any social aspect to the museum? Will they ever partner with real life spaces for exhibits? Will they try to place a version of the museum in Second Life?
Opening night is August 2, 2010! I expect to see all of your sea-jelly-machine-eyeballs there so we can crack open a bottle of cyber wine and toast to the latest in technology meets museums!
Check out Part I for an overview of the NEA’s recent report Audience 2.0: How Technology Influences Arts Participation
While Audience 2.0 gives some useful statistics on technology and media participation in the arts, the report does not provide the answers or the data that I am looking for regarding arts participation and technology.
How does arts participation through one technology affect participation in other technologies? For example, how does participating through television affect web participation?
What impact has social media had on arts participation?
How do people participate in the arts digitally and online? What are they doing on the web when they are participating?
Has participation in the arts via technology affected online giving to arts organizations?
Audience 2.0 draws into question the timeliness of national arts research, the vehicle being used to conduct this research, and the understanding of where arts audiences are heading in the future. This report was a useful audience analysis for 2008, but the survey upon which Audience 2.0 bases its analysis lacked a sense of forward motion as well as the ability to predict future arts participation through rapidly changing technologies.
The data used in Audience 2.0 was gathered three years ago before many current technologies were available and before many new technology users had invaded the digital market. In his blog post Back To The Future, onDanceusa.org,Marc Kirshner states that:
Since the beginning of the 2007 survey period [for the 2008 report]:
Four generations of iPhones have been released [and the Android network has been launched]
Facebook’s user base has grown from 20 million to 400 million users
The entire book publishing industry has been turned upside down by e-readers, such as the Kindle, Nook and iPad
Millions of set-top boxes, Blu-ray DVD and home theater PCs have connected televisions to broadband Internet
Hulu launched its online video service to the public
More than 300,000 people viewed simulcasts and encores of the Metropolitan Opera’s Carmen
The first 3-D network began broadcasting
The three year time gap between data collection and report publication created a lack of focus on many forms of new media and social networking platforms currently leading many technology discussions in the nonprofit arts industry today. Correspondingly, the relevance of the report in our current environment is brought into question, and we must remember that the reportrepresents a snapshot in time more than a study of current habits. Due to the speed with which technology advances and its usage changes, traditional forms of data collection and publication no longer appear as useful for tracking these trends.
The survey asks about participation in the arts through technology, but Audience 2.0 does not provide answers about specific actions and their effects. The survey does not ask participants if electronic and digital media makes them more or less likely to attend a live event, but the report draws based upon a perceived correlation in the participation data. Without causality data, this correlation leaves us with a “chicken or the egg” dilemma. Does electronic/digital/online participation in the arts lead to an increase in live participation, or are participants in live arts events simply more likely to participate in electronic/digital/online arts events?
I would like to see more direct questions being asked of people who responded that they participated in the arts through electronic and digital media. Obtaining this next level of understanding will provide us with a deeper understanding of the effects of electronic and digital media on arts participation.
Audience 2.0 raises more questions than it provides answers, but it does show a commitment on the federal level to assess the impact of technology on the arts. I am hopeful that future reports will delve deeper into the seemingly symbiotic relationship between technology and arts participation by focusing more specifically on the digital/online arts participant.
In part I of this two-part post, I summarize the findings of Audience 2.0, while tackling the problems, questions and lack of answers in part II.Audience 2.0: How Technology Influences Arts Participation, the newest study released by the National Endowment of the Arts gives empirical quantitative data to support how technological trends affect arts participation, the health of the arts in the US, and the ways that arts patrons use electronic media to engage in the arts.
Audience 2.0 takes data from the NEA’s 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts and the three other SPPA studies from 1982, 1992, & 2002 and “examines how Americans participate in the arts via electronic and digital media.” The media platforms: Radio, Audio recordings, Television, Video Recordings, Internet, & Portable Media Devices were tracked, but there is not consistant data available from every study.
The study cited three main conclusions:
Technology is not going to be the downfall of live performances, the arts or culture in our society,
Technology provides a new outlet for people to experience the arts who may not otherwise have participated at all.
Participation in the arts through electronic and digital media actually spurs participation in live arts performances and exhibitions.
The study found that “people who engage with art through media technologies attend live performances or arts exhibits at two to three times the rate of non-media arts participants.” This statistic should quell many of the concerns arts organizations have about digital media replacing them and help arts institutions embrace technology as a way to reach enrich their patrons. The study shows that technology provides a way for people to interact with arts and culture outside of the traditional venue, but it does not replace attending the physical arts or event space.
“53% of US adults used TV, radio, CDs/DVDs, computers or portable media devices to view or listen to arts performances, programs about artists, art works, museums or programs about literature.” Far more people participate in the arts as a whole than those who physically attended arts events. This shows a greater interest in arts and culture from Americans than many people had previously thought.
“For every arts performance outlet besides theater, adults were more likely to view or listen through electronic media than to attend live events.” This statistic has many people concerned about the impact of technology on the arts, however; the data shows this to be a good thing because a majority of the participants who make up the media only category represent people who would never have attended an arts event in the first place. The NEA then draws the correlation that these people would not participate in the arts at all without media and electronic technology outlets. Technology helps to widen the breadth of reach for the arts and allows people to participate in the through new portals.
Adults who used electronic media and technology only to participate in the arts had a higher likelihood of lower-than-average household incomes, residing in rural residents, belong to racial and ethnic minorities, belonging to that age group 75+, and/or having achieved no more than some college in their life. This profile directly mirrors the profile of people who do not participate in benchmark arts events at all.
The big picture of this survey is that it really just repeated many of the SPPA findings from the past three decades through the lens of technology. Overall, Education still has the greatest weight in determining arts participation, racial and ethnic minorities participate less than non-Hispanic whites, and racial and ethnic minorities tend to participate more frequently in arts event that are associated with their heritage.
This study leaves more questions than answers and those will be tackled in part II of this series.
June is conference month for arts managers. We all know the drill: sit through sessions, hobnob, and think about trying to new things that you may or may have the guts to try when you get back to your desk.
I attended one of these conferences and have been listening to everyone’s feedback on the conferences they’ve attended and have come to the non-earth-shattering realization: we’re all having the same conversations.
The conversations that I had and heard about social media at Opera America were nearly identical to conversations that I've had with my friends in the non-profit theatre and orchestra industry. Yet when we try to have cross-disciplinary conversations, people start putting up walls—“Well, he works in with an orchestra. Tell me how that research relates to MY patrons.” Many of our problems are shared, we just don't get together to talk about them. Although we have the technology to collaborate, find conversations and have discussions—many of us simply don’t.
In the same sense, conferences bring us together, but they also isolate us. They affirm labels and barriers in some cases, and in others, break them. When we stand strong as orchestra managers, are we still standing strong as arts advocates? When we are united as arts marketing professionals, are we still loyal to our own organizations?
One of the sessions from the Opera America stuck with me. The session, New and Unusual Opera (a play on words with “cruel and unusual”?) was about new ways to think about opera as an art form--thinking outside the boundaries of our industry. Opera industry vet John Conklin started the session by playing "Nessun Dorma" sung by none other than Aretha Franklin. (See below.)
Of course, that got the expected chuckle from the audience. But Conklin went on to make the point that, for the majority of the American public, that’s opera. If people can embrace this music on their own terms, what are we doing putting up a barrier against their entry point? Why are we so against the crossover of pop music and opera, or opera market research and orchestra market research, or the marketing and development departments within our own organizations?
Challenge for this week: Have an experience in an industry outside your own. Subscribe to a development blog if you're a marketer. Follow an opera company if you work at a museum. New ideas spring from new experiences. Start having new conversations and start breaking down those barriers for yourself and for the arts industry.
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.
Every good castle needs an opera company, or so the Savonlinna Opera Festival of Finland would lead you to believe. They have been performing at St. Olaf’s Castle in Savolinna, Finland since 1912. The festival took a 50-year Hyades between 1917 and 1967, but since its re-inception in the 60’s has been known for its cutting edge works and operatic premiers. Starting in their 2010 season they have decided to push the envelope of innovation even further.
The Savolinna Opera Festival is crowdsourcing an opera for its 2012 season through a new project: Opera By You 2012
They are asking the public to write an opera from beginning to end for their 2012 season. They want the world to create everything from the story, set design and costume design to the music and libretto. Savolinna is providing the performers, the crew, and an orchestra; the public is providing the opera.
To my knowledge this has never been done before in Opera and certainly not to this extent. The Savolinna Opera Festival is taking advantage of wreckamovie.com to host their crowdsourcing forum. The site was originally set up for crowdsourcing movies, but also seems to be working well for opera. The only major problem I could find was the lack of music sharing technology on the site. It is still not clear how the composers will collaborate on the score for the opera.
Currently, members are working on the plot synopsis for the opera within the online forum. There are ideas ranging from aliens to sea monsters and insurance salesman to princesses, a true amalgamation of creativity. The opera is still in its early stages of creation and nothing has been set in stone yet.
I was a little frustrated that I could not find any information on how they are going to decide which ideas to use. It is not clear from the website if the management is making those decisions or if the public is going to vote. I am personally a fan of putting as much ownership on the collaborators and public creators as possible. The idea that an opera company would forgo control and perform whatever the public wants to see is very exciting.
Opera By You 2012 has the potential to change the world of opera and set a new benchmark for the use of technology in the ‘high arts’. This project is breaking many of the stereotypes typically associated with this art form and opening opera to a much wider audience. Opera By You 2012 is not about tradition or ‘the classics’, it is about making new art and opening up an opportunity for the masses to interact with opera.
Technology is helping this arts organization reach out to the world and break down some of the barriers that keep many people away from the classical music realm. Crowdsourcing taps the collective creativity of everyone involved and creates a product that is not only designed for an audience, but by them. This type of innovation is what keeps the arts current in our society. It will be very interesting to see how this opera materializes and the impacts that it will have on the world of opera.
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.
Facebook’s privacy settings and the wave of controversy they caused have created a new level of user awareness when it comes to personal information on web-based technologies. The Palo Alto giant decided to roll out a new program where people were automatically opted in to share their personal information across the web that they had saved on Facebook. Facebook coupled this roll out with a poor explanation of what it was, who it was affecting, and how users could manage it. The convoluted privacy controls and constitutionality were hit hardest, but they were not the real problem in this case.
The actual problems here lie in communication and choice. I agree with Mark Zucherburger that a more open Internet is a better Internet and that the more people share, the more social the Internet will become. Unfortunately, sharing ones personal information needs to be a choice and users need to understand how and why they are sharing their information. “Because it’s good for you” is not an acceptable answer for most people.
Arts organizations in the US need to take this Facebook quagmire and use it as a case study for their own e-marketing and e-mailing policies. Communication and choice will lead to stronger web based support and a happier constituency.
Things arts organizations should keep in mind:
E-mail and e-marketing should almost always be opt in for supporters
Organization should explain why and how they will be contacting people
If possible, users should be able to customize what they receive
Opting in and opting out should be very easy and take little effort
Safety measures on how the organization will protect a users personal information and contact information should be clearly stated on the website and reiterated in the first e-contact
Opt in policies are generally the most effective and considered to be best practice. This is where Facebook made their fatal mistake and where arts organizations need to ensure they are excelling. Organizations only want people to receive information that want to receive it. By allowing people to opt in to programs, the organization is letting the individual take responsibility and targeting individuals who want more contact with the organization.
Once someone has opted in to e-marketing and/ joined the e-mail list for an organization, they should be able to choose what they want to receive information about. Maybe they only want information on ticket sales or a certain type of programming. Maybe they only want the annual report and education programming. Being able to customize what information they receive will help keep them more engaged with the organization and make them less likely to opt out or stop reading e-blasts.
Finally, people should feel safe giving an organization their e-mail address and personal information. With all of the information sharing, spamming and possibilities for profit, consumers are very wary of giving away any contact information these days. Post on your website and in the confirmation e-mail how you are protecting their identity and their personal information. These practices will help any organization build a strong e-mailing list and e-marketing campaign.
Congratulations to the 2010 winners of the 21st 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.
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.
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)!
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!**
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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!
The Obama campaign, the Nelson Mandela Foundation, and The American Red Cross have all embraced electronic micro-donation campaigns as an effective tool in gathering financial and community support for their causes. The prominence of these cases and their rampant success provides the evidence necessary for arts organizations to begin adopting this new technology to enhance their current giving campaigns.
These organizations altered the traditional view of contributed income by looking at three hundred $10 donations as equal to and in many ways greater than one $3,000 donation. This logic has very little to do with the amount of money being given and much more to do with the amount of people giving it. Micro-donation campaigns are about involving as many people as possible and using their collective support to raise awareness as well as funds. They are not just about filling the coffers. They are about educating donors, building support, and cultivating future participation and giving.
A micro donation can be defined as a small gift usually given through electronic media and most often associated with the support of a cause, project, or individual. Point-and-click web based interfaces, e-mail, and SMS txt messaging are the most popular and effective platforms.
Reasons to start a micro-donation giving campaign:
Small time commitment from management
Little implementation cost leading to a large return on investment
Widening donor market segments
Generating new donors and interest
Creating ‘buzz’ and word-of-mouth support
Ease of social media integration
Building momentum, education, and visibility of the organization
Having acknowledged these benefits, micro-donation campaigns have notbeen proven effective for annual giving platforms, large gifts or operating funds. They have been proven effective in supporting specific projects, programs, campaigns, and Individuals.
A recent article written by Rich Mintz, the man behind both the Obama Campaign and the Haiti relief effort by the American Red Cross provided 5 big tips to help organizations set up a successful micro-donation campaigns and/or internet giving program.
Make it easy to give money and sign up online
Reward people who have just signed up with useful follow up contact and content
Communicate how much donations matter (even the very small ones)
Create online participation opportunities
Give people a sense of what’s going on backstage – and in your back offices.
To elaborate:
Micro donations should be the easiest way a person can give money to an organization. It should take less than three clicks on a website or the simple task of responding to an SMS txt message or e-mail.
Donors want to know more about an organization once the feel they have invested in it. Send an initial personalized e-mail or SMS text message to donors within 24 hours elaborating on what they are supporting and how they helped.
Every donor even one who only gives $5 should feel like they have made a difference and created impact. By framing their support this way, the organization is setting itself up for future involvement and donations.
Creating an online community and an interactive online space provides an outlet for people to be involved with the organization outside of the physical space.
A behind the scenes look at an organization shows transparency and provides a sense of community. It puts faces, personalities and people with the names, this is important when building support,
Technology has provided a new and proven opportunity for cultivating contributed income in the current economy. If adopted, these campaigns will soon be key in cultivating new donors, creating new support and sheering up funding for new and innovative projects in the cultural community.
The debate over dynamic pricing continues. Back in March, Gene Carr from Patron Technology wrote a great overview of dynamic pricing and voiced his support for the practice. Last week, Trisha Mead at 2am Theatre challenged the naysayers with a post about her own successful dynamic pricing experiment. And The Mission Paradox responded by cautioning readers about dynamic pricing’s potential to tarnish a non-profit’s image. While there has been plenty of discussion about audience impact, what I haven’t heard much about is the technology behind dynamic pricing.
Many ticketing systems are not designed to handle fluctuating ticket prices. Work-arounds can be frustrating and confusing for the ticket seller. Particularly in outlet situations, where ticket sellers handle the sales for many different groups and venues, the seller’s level of comfort with your ticketing setup and policies can make a huge difference in the customer’s experience.
In addition, as Carr notes, there is no “magic computer program” determining the best prices for your tickets at any given time. Organizations and consultants may have their own formulas or schedules, yet for the most part such changes are not programmed to occur automatically. A dynamic pricing strategy may have an effect on an organization’s bottom line, but it will likely have some impact on your staff’s time as well. How to implement dynamic pricing may be as important a discussion as whether to implement it at all.
What is your experience with setting up dynamic pricing? Do you know of a ticketing system that makes dynamic pricing simple?
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.
I recently watched Ben Cameron speak at the Emerging Leaders Conference at American University. He addressed the role of technology in the arts--that the internet was seen as the panacea for marketing but now it brings 6,000 competitors to our patrons' attention every day. (see below for similar address by him at the TEDx Conference)
Ben Cameron at TEDx
In the Tech in the Arts blog, Corwin and I often talk about the ways technology can enhance and promote the arts. But we don't talk as much about the competition that arises from technology. As a field, arts professionals tout technology as the future of the business, and some of us embrace it. But as much as it is our friend, it is also our competitor.
I’m not suggesting that database software, mail-merge, and online information-capturing haven’t saved hundreds of hours of work and made life generally less tedious. But it has also made entertainment more accessible and available than ever before.
I've spent my first year in graduate school at Carnegie Mellon researching how arts professionals view and use video footage. There's much concern about video of performances competing the performances themselves, especially amongst the artists themselves. And I suppose there's a way to protect your organization against that--just don't produce video. And that's the route many smaller organizations take, when faced with musician's union fees or the reticence of an artistic director, or even just not being able to get a straight answer from the legal department. But then there’s competition from other arts companies, and entertainment industry. In many ways you can't protect your organization against the wider world.
People are getting used to consuming their entertainment in the comfort of their homes, or accessing it on the fly from mobile devices. They get it on demand. They get it personalized.
I still think the live arts add so much value to society—I wouldn’t be in the Master of Arts Management program or writing for this blog if I didn’t. I feel strongly that live arts have a lot on technology: the uniqueness of audience interaction, connection with large groups of people simultaneously, the shared experience of a story, and so much more.
I know I’m not the only one that feels that way in my generation. But I also feel like I’m in the minority. For every person like me who can recognize a Bach fugue or would much rather go see Il Trittico than Letters to Juliet, I know that there are probably 10, 25, maybe 100 other 26-year-olds out there who are happier consuming their entertainment solely via Glee on Hulu or playing Rock Band.
Last week YouTube did a two-day test to preview streaming capability, a move that would place them directly in competition with streaming sites such as livestream, ustream, and justin.tv. Streaming capability was available to four select YouTube partners — Next New Networks, Howcast, Young Hollywood, and Rocketboom for two days. Like the existing streaming sites, YouTube will allow for real-time comments and, eventually, embedding in widgets and archiving old streams.
So, the idea of a welcome series is that when somebody takes that step of raising their hand and saying, “I am interested in what it is that you have to offer” by giving you their email address, at that point you can’t just ignore them. You can’t just take it for granted and then immediately start asking them for money. Just like you would in a normal face-to-face relationship, you need to welcome that person to your community and you do that by seeking out some spaced email communications thanking the people for getting to know your organization and giving them some background information. Gradually, as you move down what we refer to as the relationship pathway, you give them more and more ways to become involved and to get more deeply embedded in the culture of the organization.
The database component an interesting new development for us. There are obviously a lot of vendors out there that sell databases to non-profit clients, but it became apparent to us that a lot of clients didn’t only want a set of on-line tools. They wanted a set of online tools, but they also wanted an entire CRM [Customer Relationship Management] system, where e
In 2010 educated adults over the age of 40 comprise the fastest growing demographic on Facebook, the age group 55+ grew by over 900%, and 40 million Facebook users in the US are now over the age of 40. This exposition of established professionals opens up the world of social networking even wider and begs the question: Are we properly using social media in the arts?
No guards. Always open. And I assume you won't have any 
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.