It doesn’t take much to define “assistive technology.” Put simply, it is technology that assists people. It makes something easier to do. It helps.
Wait a minute—isn’t all technology “assistive”?
Research Update: What is the Cloud and Why Should My Arts Organization Use It?
According to a recent report from the Consumer Electronics Association, a stunning 96% of U.S. adults use cloud services. However 36% of those surveyed couldn’t define the cloud, and only 19% said they “know a lot about the cloud.” Cloud computing has become quietly ubiquitous, and almost everyone has daily interaction with cloud services, even if they don’t know it, in the form of social networks, webmail, and content providers such as Netflix and iTunes.
Research Update: Creating Online Audiences for Orchestras
As a frequent concertgoer and prospective arts manager, I am intrigued by the question of how to create online audiences for symphony orchestras. What does it mean to create such an audience? And moreover, how does an online audience for an orchestra differ from the audience that comes to the concert hall? Or does it?
Keeping up with the times: Photos vs. Video
Just when we thought photos was the new rage in social media, video steps into the mix. I’m not talking about the typical YouTube video providing “how to’s”, news clips, music, or hilarious propaganda, I’m talking about the 30 to 15-second video applications now available through Instagram and Vine. I’m a huge photo sharer on Instagram, especially when I’m attending a cultural event; I love sending photos to my followers from my seat before a performance begins. Video, however, is becoming more and more prominent in our everyday social media lives. What does this mean for the arts?
Summer Vacation Brings Back-to-School Changes
To Tweet Seat or not to Tweet Seat: A Perspective
To tweet seat or not to tweet seat; that’s the question on everyone’s mind. After a rather engaging conversation at the Theatre Communications Group Annual conference in Dallas, I went home thinking about the pros and cons of new technology and how it can be used to engage today’s audience. If our audiences are evolving, why are we still connecting with them in the same manner as the previous generation of administrators?
Mapping Social Networks -- Present, Past, Future
Mapping and networks feel modern and hip. In today's increasingly connected world, we assume that social networks are real-time, technologically relevant, but networks of influence far precede our internet-focused era. Significantly, mapping networks offers an understanding of how ideas travel. Visual and performing art historians, professional dramaturgs and curators all know that mapping people, objects, or ideas across time and space can broaden an understanding of an art piece or process. Administrators can also benefit from studying networks.
Technology and Immersive Audience Engagement: Part I of II
Last week's Theatre Communications Group conference presented a changing perspective on audience engagement that uses technology. Tweet Seats are definitely on the outs. This 2 post series, however, focuses on the more immersive experience with two organization's successfully engaging their audiences. Their audiences must engage in some if not multiple forms of technology to partake in the theatrical story itself. The two organizations are Dog and Pony DC based in Washington DC and Rude Mechanicals based in Austin. Both use technology before, during and after the show. Dog and Pony DC's company member, Colin K. Bills, presented as part of a panel led by David J. Loehr of twitter handle @2amt (and 2amtheatre.com).
We Have 10,000 Followers! ...Now What?
I don't know if you know but Technology in the Arts has a Twitter account - it's true! And @TechInTheArts has reached its goal of 10,000 Twitter followers! Huzzah! Break out the champagne! We're going to dance all night, such an achievement has never been reached by mankind before!* Unless, of course, 10,000 is an arbitrary number that just seems important. Sure, it's a milestone, but what does that really mean for an organization? What does that mean for Technology in the Arts?
What Can We Learn? Part 3: Charity: water
So far in this series, we've examined some of the strategies that non-arts nonprofits are using to engage and promote participation among their constituents, as well as their implications for success in the arts. To wrap up, we'll look at Charity: water, a nonprofit that aims to bring clean and safe drinking water to the 800 million people in developing nations who do not have access to it yet. Charity: water operates with a distinctive funding model: 100 percent of public contributions are used to directly fund mission-based projects, while operating costs are funded by other sources such as foundations and private donors.
What Can We Learn? Part 2: Public Radio
A while back we examined some of the creative ways in which the Nature Conservancy uses its web presence to promote engagement with its constituents. The arts and our public radio comrades have much in common with regard to audience development and engagement challenges. In the spirit of pledge drive season, we'll take a look at what regional public radio institutions are doing online to create a stronger sense of community and participation, even without the benefit of a physical space.
Opera America: Celebrating 13 Companies’ Strategies for Audience Development
This week, Opera America announced the thirteen opera companies selected to share $300,000 in grants to support programs and projects that increase first-time opera attendance and return visits. The individual grants range from $7,500 to $30,000. The thirteen companies (and their projects) are:
Gamification in the Arts part 4: Gamification for Marketing
In past articles we tackled analysis of gamification as a tool for arts organizations as well as some methodology about how to design a game or game elements. This post will relate to how gamification can be used as a tool for marketing efforts. Gamification can be message, channel, and even marketing education. A game can be a marketing channel of its own for your organization or it can reside within a number of other channels.
When Arts Play with Data
As a new buzzword, “Big Data” is all over our daily lives. However, the tech industry specializing in data collection and analysis doesn’t mean that other industries haven’t found value in using data. For anyone who knows baseball (or has watched Moneyball), we know that data analysis has become part of the player selection process. From a business perspective, big data enables companies to mix their patron data into a broader pool of consumer data and extract correlations that help them know with unprecedented specificity who are most likely to respond to their appeals. The great thing about data is that it replaces guesswork with facts and gives these corporates reliable answers, clear directions and predictable results. The not-so-great thing is that it replaces personal expertise and human intuition with cold hard math, a process that arts administrators who’ve built their careers on creative management practices might have trouble getting used to.
What Can We Learn? Part 1: The Nature Conservancy
In the arts, it's only natural to look to peer organizations in our field for gathering new ideas and benchmarking our success. However, there are countless technology and engagement lessons we can learn from institutions unrelated to the not-for-profit arts sector. Over the next few weeks, we'll be looking at creative web engagement strategies used by such institutions that can serve as inspiration for the arts industry.
HintMe: a Shared Mobile Museum Platform on Twitter
FIRST: I want to direct you to this website where you can read an interview about HintMe with Merete Sanderhoff, a researcher at the National Gallery of Denmark, and a case study about the Danish museums using Twitter. But for the fast facts…
Who: The National Gallery of Denmark (Statens Museum for Kunst) and 11 additional Danish art museums.
What: HintMe is a shared mobile platform with the aim of opening up museums' collections by making content re-useable and freely sharable. At the same time, the platform has the potential to increase user engagement with the museum, its artwork, and between visitors themselves. Here is why it is brilliant: HintMe makes use of an existing platform, Twitter, and a style of communication that has become increasingly familiar and popular, the hashtag. #sohotrightnow
Modern Website Design: The Rijksmuseum
What art museums do you know with great websites? The Walker Art Center? MoMA? Can you name any that do not focus on contemporary or modern collections?
Spoiler alert: I can - the Rijksmuseum.Yes, I am on a Rijksmuseum kick.
In honor of the Rijksmuseum’s gorgeous restoration, let’s talk about how an art museum with an extensive traditional collection can successfully leverage good website design. I would argue that a contemporary or modern collection is not a prerequisite for an engaging website.
Flipboard: A Design and Data-driven Future
The news-reading app Flipboard just rolled out a major update—allows users to create their own personalized “magazines” for public viewing. The feature allows users to pull articles from a variety of sources, including Facebook, Twitter, SoundCloud, LinkedIn, Instagram and Tumblr. Users can also pull articles from the Web browser by adding Flipboard’s new bookmark “Flip it.” In a video below, Flipboard founder Mike McCue picked up a magazine built by a fan of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. It looked pretty neat, full of news and stories about artists performing at the event, together with relevant videos and even music that you can tap on and have playing in the background. Everyone can comment on the magazines.
Health, Happiness and the Hospital Hallway: An Interactive LED Installation
At Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, a children’s hospital, designer Jason Bruges has installed an interactive exhibit that is truly on a child’s level. Bruges embedded 70 LED panels comprised of 72,000 LED lights in the walls of a long hallway leading to an operating theater where young patients undergo anesthesia and then surgery. On the walls, Bruges applied custom-designed, graphic wallpaper. The display is called ‘Nature Trail’ and animates different scenes and animals from nature using light patterns.
50 quick resources online for arts managers engaged in arts education
Lisa Cheeses’ exploration of 50 approaches to arts integration offers arts educators a fresh perspective to examine their lesson plans. In addition to arousing children’s interests in art, arts education is playing a more powerful role of inspiring children to learn the world in creative ways, ways they like. This article inspires arts managers and arts education to rethink arts education from an integration perspective: why not add mathematical or scientific elements to the arts education programs?