Earlier this year the NEA expanded its analysis of the 2012 Survey of Public Participation in the field to better understand the drivers behind various types of participation, from attendance to art-making. This study, entitled "When the Going Gets Tough," not only provides insight into what barriers affect different types of audiences, but also reveals that there is a significant core group of "interested non-attendees."
Operatic Analytics
It is easy to see the ways that the production and consumption of opera have changed to match the needs of the 21st century consumer. However, it is difficult to identify similar changes reflected in the way that opera is managed. Opera companies have altered the product they are offering, but have they come up with new metrics to measure and manage their success?
What Leaders Should be Measuring: Six New Metrics from TRG Arts
Between CRM systems, social media management, and Google Analytics, arts organizations today have access to more data than ever before. Indeed, this unprecedented access has allowed for arts leaders to measure their performance more accurately and holistically than in the past. But in this ever expanding sea of data, how does an arts leader decide what information is the most important to focus on extrapolating trends on?
SecondSundaySurvey: Trends in Digital Video Consumption
More and more arts organizations are investing in digital video production as a means of engaging audiences who want to know more about arts programming. These audiences connect across a spectrum of devices, so knowing how audiences consume video will help organizations create the best format for engagement. A new survey conducted by Ooyala illuminates these patterns and provides vital insight to the conversation surrounding video distribution.
Data Sharing & Arts Organizations - Take Part in the Conversation
Our friends at Fractured Atlas are relaunching their Issue Brunch series and have asked me to facilitate a discussion on the benefits and challenges of data sharing among arts organizations. As Tiffany Bradley, Development and Marketing Specialist for Fractured Atlas, recently wrote:
As more organizations lead collaborative efforts, the implications of sharing data come to the forefront. Data sharing - whether for marketing, ticketing, fundraising purposes - raises a host of issues. Does pooling information about patrons lead to greater revenues for all parties? Or do organizations risk a negative response from patrons? Integrating the range of software that arts organizations use is also a problem in its own right.
This panel discussion will be streamed live on February 11, 2011 at 1:15 pm EST via UStream at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/fracturedatlas. Online participants will be able to engage one another in discussion and submit questions for the panel.
Panel participants include:
- Deborah M. Abramson - The Pew Charitable Trusts
- Joe Harrell - Alliance for the Arts
- Adam Huttler - Fractured Atlas
- Barbara Janowitz - Theater Subdistrict Council/City of New York
- Chrisopher J. Mackie, Ph.D - Open Health Tools
- Maris Smith - Situation Interactive
So what has your experience been like with data sharing among arts organizations? What benefits have you received? How did you approach the organizational and technological challenges? Leave a comment below and be sure to join us on Friday for what is certain to be an engaging conversation.
Want to Save Your Online Data? There's an app for that...
In May, I participated in a webinar hosted by the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies that focused on creative technology strategies for state arts agencies. One of the issues that came up during the Q & A was backing up communications from social media platforms. As entities within state government, many state arts agencies are required by law to retain copies of their communications. But how do you archive communications that take place on social networking platforms like Twitter and Facebook?
Over the past two months, I have been using a potential solution. Backupify provides daily online backup for your social media and software-as-a-service data. They are the only online backup and storage provider to seamlessly back user data to the Amazon S3 cloud with its strong security and data duplication policy.
So here are the pros and cons of my experience with Backupify...
PROS
- Backupify provides a centralized backup location for a number of online services, including: Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Google Docs, WordPress, Basecamp, Gmail, and many more.
- Businesses utilizing Google Apps can back up all of their data at relatively low cost.
- Quick and easy setup.
- With the free account, you are able to backup one account per online service. The premium account level backs up an unlimited number of accounts per service for just under $60/year.
- Users are able to choose whether their accounts are backed up daily or weekly.
- Users are also able to opt for a daily email notification of backups, weekly email notification, or no email notification.
- The system maintains a backup history identifying when accounts were backed up, whether or not the backups were successful, and how many files were backed up per online service account.
CONS
- There is no standardized format for backups because the backup file type is determined by the service providers. For example:
- Facebook photos are backed up on the site as photo files, but other Facebook elements (friends, statuses, links, notes, and events) are stored as an XML (Extensible Markup Language) file - which I view using Microsoft Excel.
- For Twitter accounts, users can download a PDF workbook containing the following data: profile, updates, received direct messages, sent direct messages, favorites, and mentions. Users may also download XML files for each of those individual data pieces as well as an XML file containing information about the user's Twitter followers.
- WordPress blogs and websites are backed up as a MySQL database in the sql.gz format.
- Currently, users may backup their personal Facebook profiles but not fan pages. I asked Backupify CEO Rob May if there are plans to add backing up Facebook fan pages to the service's offerings. He informed me that they are working with Facebook on this functionality over the next two weeks, so this option should be available in the very near future.
My personal experience with Backupify over the past two months has been a very positive one. Once the service adds the capacity to backup Facebook fan pages, it will be even more useful for arts organizations and governmental agencies using social media.