Authors: Grace Puckett, Michaela White

In this episode, Grace Puckett and Michaela White interview Aubrey Bergauer, the former Executive Director of the California Symphony, a consultant for arts organizations, and the Vice President of Strategic Communications & Executive Director of the Center for Innovative Leadership at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. They discuss some of Aubrey’s strategies for organizational growth, turnaround, data collection, and audience retention within orchestra management. For additional information on collecting and visualizing data to achieve organizational goals, check out the post on Increasing Data Collection Capabilities: Web Scraping and Data Scraping.

This interview was conducted on November 7, 2019 and as such, references events that may have passed.

[Introductory Music]

Hello AMT Lab listeners, and welcome to an interview episode brought to you by he Arts Management and Technology Lab. My name is Alyssa and I'm the Podcast Producer. In this episode, contributor Michaela White and Technology and Innovative Content Manager, Grace Puckett, sit down with Aubrey Bergauer. Previously, Aubrey was the former Executive Director of California Symphony, but she now works as a founding Executive Director and Vice President of Strategic Communications for the Center of Innovative Leadership with the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In addition, she is a featured guest speaker across the nation, working to change the narrative for the classical music industry. We hope you enjoy this interview brought to you by AMT Lab.

[Musical Interlude]

Grace Puckett: So, Aubrey, thank you so much for joining us today, as well as thank you, Michaela. For our AMT Lab listeners, joining me today is Aubrey Bergauer, the CEO of Changing the Narrative, former Executive Director of the … California Symphony [laughter], thank you my mind was blanking for a moment. And uh, additionally, Michaela, who, if you want to introduce yourself-

Michaela White: Yeah, thanks, Grace. I am one of the Master of Arts Management students here at Carnegie Mellon. Last year, the 2018 2019 academic year, I was also a contributor to the AMT Lab, so I'm excited to be back.

Grace: Glad to have you.

Michaela: And I'm particularly excited to talk to you Aubrey, my background is in orchestral education. So, I am here to learn so much along with our listeners.

Aubrey Bergauer: Great. Thank you, guys, for having me. This has been such a fun day on campus today.

Grace: Oh, thank you for joining us. Really quick, if you don't mind, would you give us a little bit of a background about yourself, the work you've done, and just how you kind of got into this space and your interests as well.

Aubrey: The story for me, I will try to keep it as short as possible, but it starts in high school and I played an instrument growing up, I played in the youth orchestra in Houston, which is my hometown. And I remember the orchestra going through an executive director change and realizing for the first time that there is a job managing the orchestra. And for me, that was the moment where I realized, Oh, my gosh, I can be so connected to this art form that I really love, but I don't have to play my instrument for a living for the rest of my life, there's this whole other body of work that I can do. [laughter] And so that just for me, set me on a path where you know, when I went to college, we didn't have a lot of programs like the CMU arts management program, and so I went to a place where I could get a degree in business as well as in music performance, trying to marry these interests together. And from there, I've been just so laser focused. My first job was at Seattle Symphony in fundraising, then I went to Seattle Opera in marketing, and the Bumbershoot Music and Arts Festival overseeing first marketing and then being promoted to overseeing all revenue, and I'm just now wrapping up five years of the California Symphony where this summer I said, I want to have an impact beyond one organization. And so since then, I've been consulting with different nonprofits, arts organizations of all different sizes all across the country, and about to begin working with the San Francisco Concerv-, Conservatory of Music where we're launching the Center for Innovative Leadership, where we will be running training programs for all facets of the arts management pipeline. And so, there's just a lot going on in terms of impact beyond one organization that is now entering this new space.

Grace: That sounds so exciting. And I know you just recently, today actually (November 7, 2019), you spoke to a wide degree of – excuse me – a large number of students here at Heinz College. You did a lecture, which, if any listeners are interested, that link should be up on the Heinz College [YouTube] website and you can see that lecture in its entirety online.

So, let's get started. Um, just to begin, as you mentioned in your lecture earlier today, a large part of what makes an orchestra relevant is not necessarily how an orchestra behaves, but how an audience itself interprets the orchestra. How should an organization position themselves, if they want their audience to view them as more relevant? Would you classify relevancy as a top priority or, you know, how would you go about doing something with that?

Aubrey: I think relevancy is absolutely a top priority, because if we are not relevant, we don't have an audience. We don't have supporters and therefore we don't have people in funding necessary to produce the art that we produce. So, I think relevancy is among our top priorities and I think, I mean, you said it so well, that we don't get to choose that as organizations.

Grace: Absolutely.

Aubrey: The audience, the community, patrons, donors, they choose it and they choose it by expressing their support for us whether it's a ticket sale, or contribution rate.

Michaela: In your long haul donor path model, one of your strategies is to only reach out to donors with specific asks depending on where they are in the model. And just to clarify for our listeners, this means that for first time attendees, your goal is to only have them attend a second concert, or for multiple ticket buyers, your goal is to have them become a seasoned subscriber. So, a donor isn't solicited until they're renewing subscriber in this model. Yet, the California Symphony had a 34% total income growth, or as of today (November 7, 2019) 50% growth, and this increased your audience, ultimately affecting the sustainability of the California Symphony. Could you give us some insight as to this model success, and then provide any recommend-, recommendations you'd have to organizations that would like to try and adapt this model?

Aubrey: That is a great summary of the long-haul model and for me, the impetus for creating this was in response to so much data and research that is already available to us in this industry. So, for example, we know as a field that at orchestras in America 90% of first time, attendees don't ever come back again. So, that number may not be exactly true for every orchestra, but the reality is, the vast majority of newcomers don't return and so what that means is it's a bucket list item for most people. And when our jobs are to cultivate sustainability and grow audiences and grow our donor base so that we have funding to produce this art, people coming once is really bad. So, another data point that is known in this field is if we can just get somebody to come for a second time within 12 months of their first visit, their lifetime value to the organization skyrockets, and we know this.

So for me, I started putting that together and thinking, “Okay, if that-, if those two things are so important, then the only thing I want a first timer to do is to come back, and then later I will be able to grow that relationship”. And so I just started thinking at every step of the journey and relationship with the organization, you know, what comes next? Okay, after somebody is a repeat buyer or multi buyer, they've come a couple times within the last year, then all the research tells us that those people are the top prospects to become subscribers. And so, we said fine, once somebody comes a few times, that's when they'll start getting that solicitation and then once somebody is a subscriber, another sort of alarming statistic in the field is that about half of new subscribers don't renew their subscription. And so that was another cutoff point where I thought, fine, we've got to figure out how to get that group to renew their season tickets, don't solicit them for donation yet either. And then lastly, all the research shows when somebody is a second-year subscriber or longer, not only are they very likely to renew their subscription at that point, they're kind of in at that point, where the time you've been a season ticket over two years, you're pretty loyal. So, they're in and then, not only that they have multiple years of engagement and connection with the organization, so they are also a top prospect to become a donor at that point.

So, I think, cerebrally this makes a lot of sense, I don't think anybody really argues with the data or the research that's out there. What happens is the pressure in these organizations – and I've been in these jobs, and I've been the one you know, having sleepless nights over how are we going to balance the budget, so I know the pressure is so real – in the short term that we're just sort of like, you know, just trying to keep our head above water so much of the time. And so, it took a lot of work to say “no, we will have discipline to not make these offers too soon”. And what ended up happening is it actually opened up the pipeline. It felt, you know, [inaudible] feels maybe like you're going to cut off a revenue stream, but instead it did just the opposite, it opened everything up because a couple things were happening. One, we were saving money on the expense side when we're not soliciting everybody, [with] every, every solicitation that went out whether it was a season brochure or a ticket mailing or a donor appeal, spending less because we're talking to more fewer, more qualified people. And then also, the response rates were so much higher, because you know, when you ask somebody to make a donation who has multiple years of history with you, yeah, they're more likely to respond. So, we ended up seeing at the California Symphony in our first year there, my first year there, first year of this model, 14% growth in ticket sales, I think about a 50% increase in donor households, even in just one year. And those numbers are really big, you know, was a turnaround situation, but the point is, through having discipline, we weren't restraining ourselves, we were able through discipline to excel.

Grace: And I'm just curious, where did you pull the data from? Because you've mentioned several times that it's data that's easily available. So, are you speaking of data that was, ah, accumulated in-house through a CRM system? Or are you talking about national studies, that kind of thing? I'm wondering if you could speak to that just a little bit?

Aubrey: Yeah, that's a great clarifying question. There are two sources of data. One is the studies that are beyond our organization. So, the League of American Orchestras is who produced some of those retention stats, first timers not coming back, we call that the “churn” study. The first-year subscribers not renewing, that's also either the churn study or they did sort of a second part study a few years after that. Anyways, that was also the League of American Orchestras in partnership with a consulting firm called Oliver Wyman. Big, huge consultancy, they did like nationwide data crunching on this. TRG (TRG Arts) is a-, another firm, they're an arts consulting firm. They've also done a lot of research on data loyalty from their-, they have massive data set of all their clients, both in or-, both in orchestras and in other arts disciplines as well. And so, they talk a lot about like the “stickiness” of a patron and the research about like, if somebody comes back with a second-, a second time within a 12-month period, or those types of things – that came from them. So, that's the external national research. And then for the California Symphony numbers, that was our internal data through our CRM. How are we seeing who's coming back? How are we looking at those renewal rates internally?

Grace: I'm just, really quickly, I'm-, just because I'm very curious about the CRM models. Do you guys have a specific system that you guys use and that seemed to help this transition? Or is it more kind of in-house? I guess I'm curious as to like, what kind of system you guys have used and if it would be recommended for anyone who's trying to implement this model.

Aubrey: I get asked this question all the time. [laughter] And I think the honest answer is, I do not think there's a great CRM system out there that solves all of our problems.

Grace: Good to know!

Aubrey: So, all the big organizations are on Tessitura. Tessitura definitely is the most robust for arts organizations. I've worked at those organizations, I don't think it's perfect, I think it is more robust than anything else. And then there's a whole bunch of other players in the CRM system world that none of them are perfect, and I've shopped around for a lot of different solutions, and all of them do something well, and something else that is just like, for me, soul crushingly bad. [laughter] So it's just, there's not a perfect solution. So, the advice I always give, cause a lot of people do ask, what's the-, what is the CRM to do all this? And the answer is there's not one, you got to shop around and find what's you know, what you choose is right for your organization, but more important is to know how to think about data. And so, if you know how to think about data, okay, I know I got to find a way to run a report where I'm looking at who came to this concert and has had any other history with us in the past year. If you can think how to do that, you can do it no matter the system, or in some cases, and even at the California Symphony, in Excel, which is, yeah. Wow. [inaudible speech, laughter] But that's the thing. And so, when I hear from people, “Wow, that's a lot of work” – yeah, it's work, but look how much money we made. We balanced our budget. I mean..

Grace: Yeah. I mean, the data clearly supports everything that you've been saying. So, having the ability to dig into that, and I'm, I know, it's a daunting task. I actually just left an institution that was kind of doing some of that digging and cleaning up the data a bit. And that was overwhelming on some days, so I appreciate you speaking about that. Thank you.

Aubrey: Yeah, you're welcome.

Michaela: I have a question for organizations who are considering adopting this model. Before you are able to present to your board that we're going to have a balanced budget and then 50% of our household donations are going to-, are, you're going to see 50% of household donations increase. Does that sound… [inaudible]

Aubrey: Yeah, yes.

Michaela: How did you get everyone on board from a leadership perspective?

Aubrey: I always say now, that an organization, the silver lining of an organization in crisis, is that there is more of an appetite for change. Because I was brought in for a turn around, and I made clear my interviews I said, okay, you want to bring me in, I've got a lot of ideas. And at my other jobs, even at these bigger institutions, I was doing work on loyalty and whatever my scope or roll[inaudible]for was, was experimenting with some of these ideas. And every time I was seeing success and revenue growth, and so when I was being recruited for the California Symphony, I remember being really clear about that, “okay, you say you want change, you say, you gotta grow or we're gonna die. Do you actually mean it? Because I got some ideas. And I'm going to, if you bring me here that I'm going to implement”. So, I got sort of the proverbial blank check, not a real blank check because there was no money [laughter] whatsoever, but got that, you know, that go ahead and that green light. And so, I made sure I set that up from the beginning and it is way easier to do that when you're, before you're in the position when you're being recruited to say these are the expectations, are we on the same page versus not. And so, because I do get this question, how do we get our board to come along? How do we do this? So, for that scenario, I say go back to the data. And I tell so many organizations, especially the ones thinking, oh, if I wait to solicit, how much money are we going to lose? Run the numbers. Our CRM can tell us this – look at last season, and see how many first timers were solicited for a donation and actually gave and how much money was that? Because let's think about this, like, new donors are not our big donors, new donors, they're giving you know, 100 bucks, or I don't know, like something that's not that much money. And so, run the numbers, how much is that and no organization has come back to me saying it has more than like, 2% of their entire annual budget. It's just not that much money. So, that's the advice I give for people wanting to do this and needing to bring others along: run the numbers, that's available to us in our own CRMs.

Michaela: Great advice.

Grace: Yeah. And I guess I, I'm curious, because when you're looking at all of this data, specifically, if you're a large organization, even if you're a smaller organization and you have a long history, there's a lot of metrics to go through. Um, and I know you mentioned a few, but are there any specific metrics that you might encourage as a starting point? I know you mentioned like run the data, see all of this, but when we're thinking breaking it down a little, would you want to compare, you know, my first timers versus first timers who came back a couple times in a year or that kind of thing? Like, what's the focus? Like, how do you want to read that data basically?

Aubrey: That's a good question. So, let me think through this, I always say metrics that measure loyalty are better than other metrics. So, for example, some organizations look at how many email addresses do we have. Well, if you've got a gazillion email addresses, and they've all been only once … okay? What are you going to do with them when they're completely cold and active and not doing anything?

Grace: Just because it’s a number, doesn’t really give you any depth.

Aubrey: It’s just a number, you’re right, you’re right. So, metrics that measure loyalty, retention rates, are always where I try to guide people. So-, but within that, I would say, first time retention, I think that's a huge one. Because so often, and I'm sure you guys and everybody listening has heard this, we say in this business, “we need new audiences, we need younger audiences”. [laughter] Okay, you're laughing so, hopefully that means you get it, right? [laughter, inaudible speech] The reality is, with a statistic like 90% not returning, that's not a new audiences problem, that's a retention problem. And so, we are actually very good at acquiring new audiences and we've become quite good because so much of our marketing efforts are focused on acquisition. And that's largely true on the development side too, a lot of efforts are focused on donor acquisition. And all of this is saying just flop that, flip that priority to focus on retention. We will get new people, we do that every year that I mean, our product is so good, we get new people. So even if we don't get bazillions of new people and get fewer new people, if we can get way more than 10% of them to come back, there's a lot of revenue in that. Bot-, both in the short term and in the long term. So that's the kind of stuff I would say. So, first time retention and then maybe the one other I would add for somebody just trying to sort out where to start is within the subscriber segment, separate first timers from everybody else.

Grace: Okay.

Aubrey: Because that's a really revealing exercise that-. Yeah, first time, this makes sense. First timers are less likely to renew than people who've been coming for a long time. That sounds logical and then when you run the data, you're like, yes, that is true. [laughter]

Grace: So, it sounds like it's a little bit of a shifting the lens that we view our data through a little bit.

Aubrey: I think so.

Grace: Rather than just the straight numbers, we’re actually looking at long term, not necessarily, oh, how many people did we get this year?

Aubrey: Mhmm. Right.

Grace: That's very interesting. You know, how, how can you shift, you know, where you're standing today, for that future growth. Things-, it's always a hard thing to do. For many of us, we're so ingrained in the tradition of how we've done it and it's always worked this way – which in some cases, can work. And you know, if it's not broken, don't fix it, that kind of deal. But when you're starting to notice that, like those downward trends that a lot of organizations have started to see in terms of these audiences, you know, how can we shift our way of thinking? So that's-, I think that's really interesting in terms of what you're doing. I'm very, very interested in this bit.

Aubrey: Good! Thank you.

Michaela: I'd like to extend a little bit farther on this data conversation.

Grace: Absolutely.

Michaela: So, one example that we looked at before you came was the multicultu- culturalism article on Medium and how you were running data on audience demographics. What platforms did you use to do this and what did you do with this data that you collected, and how can we as arts managers aim to get better data so we can make informed decisions?

Aubrey: In terms of running demographic data, I mentioned the firm TRG (TRG Arts) earlier. In my opinion and experience, they have the best platform for doing this. So, they have, it's called Data Centers, the platform, and it's available, I think, pretty much nationwide. Basically, without getting too geeky in the details, at almost every major city, has some sort of consortium of organizations [inaudible] a part of their local hub of this information. And so, the way it works is you upload your data to their system, and they have already done the work on the back end of getting like, axiom data – the same-, it’s like the same company that credit cards use when they're running demo data. So really reliable, clean demographic data, and you can then run your audiences through those filters to see okay, what is percentage of white attendees, what is my percentage of Latinx attendees? What is my percentage of African American and so on. Asian. And that is, like I said, in my opinion and experience, is the best and cleanest way to get accurate demographic data. And you can do the same thing with age, you can do the same thing with household income, whatever you're tracking, we can do that.

And I've got to say what not to do is do a survey. Because I get so agitated when organizations run a survey, because what happens, especially in demographic data, there's response bias. So only people more connected and loyal to the organization, they're the ones more likely to respond to the survey. So, then you're sort of over-indexing on these loyalists, when in reality, as we're trying to often measure either the whole picture or trying to get a better sense of these people we don't hear from a lot and it sort of just exacerbates the problem that, you know, why are newcomers not coming back? Well, they didn't answer the survey, so we don't know, you know. So, I just-, and in, in the case of demographic data, it's just not an accurate portrayal of who, of what the audience breakdown really is. So that's why I go straight to the source of, “no, I want some serious overlay of my entire, like, ticket buyer cohort”.

Grace: Yeah. And that sounds similar to what you were talking about when it comes to the hardcopy solicitations, when it comes to donors, that it's another piece in the mail that they have to deal with. And that a lot of us, as I'm sure you know, when we get mail, if it seems like it's junk mail, or it's something that, maybe there's not really that connection there, you might open it, you might read it. But then what do you do? You put it back in the envelope, and it sits on your kitchen table for months on end or it goes in the trash.

Aubrey: That's right.

Grace: So I find that really interesting that your-, surveys are no go. [laughter]

Aubrey: Yeah, I'm not a survey fan. I just think it's not a good way to get reliable data. And then I'll say one more thing in response to that comment of the direct mail. I don't think direct mail is about option, I think direct mail to everybody, including people who aren't as qualified isn't-, is not a good option. And I always say direct mail only is a bad option. So, what I mean by that is multi-channel campaigns, if you're going to send through the mail, you need to follow it up with an email and then they need to see it when they're scrolling through their Instagram feed or Facebook feed or wherever they are. Like, it's got to be multi-channel because, like you said, even once in the mail, sure, maybe some people open it and look at it, but even the most well intentioned people, we’re not making that ask whatever it is, again and again in different places, like no way. People are busy.

Grace: I think, Michaela, you had mentioned something about the platforms. Thinking in line with that, I think we mentioned yes, direct mail, yes, email: What about social media? Can you speak to some of that of how to maybe use the data you pull from the studies from axiom and things like that, and how do you implement that into those spaces? Is that something that that's a connection there?

Aubrey: Are you thinking paid advertising? Or just organic posts on a page?

Grace: Yeah. It could be paid, it could be organic. I guess I'm thinking a little bit of the SEOs that you can do that sort of thing, just to kind of, yeah.

Aubrey: Whoo, so many different things we can touch on with this. I think in terms, in terms of paid advertising, that's where segmenting and this data pull really starts to work together. Because in the example we were just talking about, if somebody, if you're mailing a solicitation to somebody's house, you can then take that exact same list, upload it to Facebook, Facebook will match – though any email matches though also have an account on Facebook – then you can say those are the people I'm showing the ads to. So, that's how you prevent the donate now ads going to people who shouldn't see them yet.

Grace: Right.

Aubrey: And only the people who got that solicitation would then get that reinforcement. So that kind of thing is really easy to do. And that goes for Instagram too, the ad tool is all through Facebook though. Demographically, it's great that you can segment if you need to, although I know Facebook's changing a lot of their segmentation policies right now because of everything they're going through. So, maybe that'll change in the near future, but um, but the positive side of that is that as a marketer, you can get very targeted and that's great. So, I love, I love digital for that reason, because you can get so focused on who you're talking to. That answer the question?

Grace: Yeah, it does. Thank you. I mean, it's always nice to know what people are doing when you're in the digital sphere, because there are so many options. So, it's always nice to hear how, how they're navigating that space.

Aubrey: Organic is harder, because you're writing a post that a lot of different types of people are going to see.

Grace: Right.

Aubrey: So, and I think-

Grace: Might want to rely on the bots for that one. [muted laughter]

Aubrey: Yeah.

Michaela: Well, I am excited to ask you, because you seem very optimistic about the orchestra, where do you see the orchestras in the United States in, let's say, 2050?

Aubrey: Yeah. For sure, we know that the demographics in America-. I say for sure, for sure the projection is that the demographics in America will be majority non-white by 2050. So, that key piece of information right there I think is going to really separate survival or not for a lot of organizations. And you started off by saying I'm very optimistic, that sounds like a very dire statement, but I think it's very, [laughter] I think it is kind of straightforward in that way. That you know, if by 2050 America is majority non-white and NEA data says that 83% of classical music audiences are white and then we ask ourselves, why is our audience seeing attrition, well look at, again, look at the numbers where we are over indexing on white audiences relative to the demographic breakdown of our country. And so, I really think that, you know, we can talk about sustainability and relevancy and all that, but I feel like that is such a key piece that if organizations, orchestras, any arts disciplines, doesn’t spend some serious time thinking how are we going to evolve along with our evolving demographics, that right there might mean that we're done. Because the pie, if we're only really, I don’t know what-, I know no orchestra saying I only want to serve white people, I know, nobody's saying that. We're good people in this industry. But if we don't start flipping that question to say, how do we serve majority non-white, or how do we serve-? Look, I mean, all of our communities are different, so what is the next largest demographic in that community? If we don't figure out how do we serve that group and welcome that group and make that group feel invited, then, like nothing else we're talking about matters because the pool of people available to us will be so much smaller that it's just not going to fund this work. But to sort of end on an optimistic statement, it can be done. We see this coming. We see this trend coming and we can respond to it and we do- I mean, in some ways, I do feel a sense of urgency that we've got to begin this work now, but also if we’re looking at 2050, okay, 30 years from now, like come on, we can do this. We can do this. We have time.

Michaela: Yes. Thank you.

Aubrey: Yeah.

Grace: I think, just to close this out, um you mention there is a video on Twitter, I think, I'm not sure if you're in it, or if it's someone else, but it's a video on Twitter, that whenever we are presenting information or convincing someone towards an action, we have to choose data over subjective opinion. This is really important so that organizations can make these kinds of informed, efficient, and effective decisions that we've kind of been discussing today. So, I guess to close this out, what do you think are some situations where this is particularly crucial, and any kind of recommendations of how to kind of maintain that discipline and keeping that kind of objectivity involved?

Aubrey: So, I talked about the pressure we face in our organizations and the pressure to respond to VIP type people is also very real. So, for example, board members. If a board member comes in and they have an idea, we feel pressure to respond to that, of course we do. They’re our board, they’re the ones governing our institutions. But the problem with that, and the problem is when we're not, when we're having these conversations without data, then that is the right answer. Okay, board member said, they want XYZ to happen, we do it. As humans, we have biases that we think our own experience is indicative of the majority of people and so, that board member thinks that idea is a great idea because clearly everybody else feels this way, or a lot of other people feel this way. But if we have the data, we can, we can say or measure., yes, that's true or no, that's not.

And so, there are things like, the applause question is one of them. We got a lot of, or not a lot, but some people saying you know, should you have people applaud between movements, do you allow that? And at the California Symphony, we said, yeah, applaud when you like what you hear and so, and we really didn't have a ton of pushback on that, but for the people who did, I got to say, we've doubled our audience. That's data, okay?! [laughter] Like, I will take that deal any day of the week. And so, another example is there-, another firm to drop in here is Capacity Interactive. They did a giant, that-

Grace: Yeah, I just spoke with Jess Bergson.

Aubrey: Ah, so good, okay. Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. So, they did this whole study, big study, among arts organizations of all disciplines, all sizes across the entire United States and one of the questions was when you were doing your last website, redesign or refresh, what were the different factors you were considering as you were strategizing what to build and which direction to go and all that kind of stuff. And I want to say, I don't have it in front of me, but I want to say it was like at least 25% of organizations named listening to the board as like one of the top three considerations in building the website.

Grace: Interesting.

Aubrey: And that is s-, and in terms of website, like I said, everybody's well intentioned, there's no like bad board member purposely giving bad ideas. But the problem is that if you look at a board member, they are like the tippity top of the like pyramid in terms of engagement with the organization. Their experience and their frame of reference for the work we do is so different than somebody who's just googling us for the first time. And so, for this example of a website redesign, we've got to look at the data and analytics of what, who is coming to our website. At the California Symphony, I think it was like 80% of people visiting were brand new, and I don't mean brand new ticket buyers, I mean, like brand new first time to californiasymphony.org ever.

Michaela: Oh, wow.

Aubrey: Like 80%, it really was something crazy like that. Similarly, we saw seven out of 10 people, so 70%, were on either a mobile or tablet. That's a lot, and so, - which I think for a lot of us, I mean, you guys are young, you’re probably like, yeah, I do everything on my phone. But even as like, as we were proving the website, I realized that I'm doing it on my laptop in the office and then I had to be like, no, we got to, like, proof this and go through these design rounds on our phone, because that's where the majority of people are. So, let's design for mobile first, instead of like, figuring out the desktop version. So anyways, I throw all those things out there to say, no, this is why the data matters because our own, my own worldview was the desktop in front of me, the laptop in front of me, so we had to, you know, reverse course on that a little bit. But um, that's, that's how we can make informed decisions that are serving so many more people, versus one or two well intentioned opinions.

Grace: Well, wonderful. Thank you so much, again for joining us here today for this AMT Lab podcast, as well as being here on campus today. I know I myself personally enjoyed it, because I was able to go to the lecture that you gave earlier. And thank you Michaela, for joining me today and helping guide this conversation. So, I really appreciated that.

Michaela: Yeah. It was fun, thank you Grace.

Aubrey: Thank you, guys. Total pleasure.

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Thanks for listening to the Arts Management and Technology Lab Podcast Series. You can read more on the intersection between the arts and technology at www.amt-lab.org. You can also listen to more interviews and discussions in our podcast series on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or Stitcher. Finally, drop us a like or comment on our Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn at our handle @techinthearts. Thank you for joining us.

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