I know I have been citing Seth Godin a lot lately, but he has had a lot of posts that seemed relevant lately. One of his recent ones addresses how marketing is expected to do a lot of the lifting for a company. In his post, he suggests that it is because no one has … Read more
Back in March Harvard Business Review (HBR) had a piece on how marketing will change post-Covid. It is definitely geared toward commercial business and often oriented toward business to business sales rather than individuals, but there were some interesting observations, some of which have long been points of discussion in non-profit arts. 4. Old truth: … Read more
Yesterday I noted that I was interested to learn that $5 million in revenue was something of a dividing line between theaters which supported themselves primarily by ticket revenue (above $5 million) and those that received the majority of their support via donations (below $5 million). That doesn’t mean that the larger revenue theaters don’t … Read more
There is a piece on the Forbes website discussing a recent study IBM did on customer satisfaction. The article title says “IBM Study Finds Consumers Are Disappointed By Marketers.” But as I read the article, what really appeared to be the problem was that the companies weren’t delivering the product or experience the marketers were … Read more
When I was studying theatre as an undergrad and grad student, there was one role in the theatre most of my fellow students never got a clear definition of, that of dramaturg. Most of our professors would wryly answer, “nobody really knows” when asked what a dramaturg did. There was also a sense of guilt … Read more
The assistant theatre manager and I had a meeting with our development officer today. I haven’t had a lot of faith in the foundation people since I took this job but today’s meeting gave me cause for optimism. In the past, my interactions with the foundation people have mostly consisted of them telling me not … Read more
There was an interesting article in The Atlantic this past July about how the Navy was working on crewing ships with a few generalists who would handle many jobs rather than many experts focusing on a narrower range of functions. At first, when they were talking about everyone being cross-trained to fill a number of … Read more
As I had mentioned yesterday, I had been looking forward to participating in the Society for Arts Entrepreneurship Education conference at Millikin University for a year due to their student run venture program which include in music publishing, a visual arts gallery, a theater space, a printing press, a publishing house, a printmaking studio and … Read more
Over the years I have made many posts riffing on the idea that marketing it is the responsibility of the entire organization, not just a single department. For that reason, I was happy to see a recent case study report TRG Arts posted on that topic. Working with Performing Arts Fort Worth (PAFW), they emphasized … Read more
Seth Godin says he figures Apple computers reached their peak about three years ago. Since then, we’ve seen: Operating systems that aren’t faster or more reliable at running key apps, merely more like the iPhone… Geniuses at the Genius Bar who are trained to use a manual and to triage, not to actually make things … Read more
Apparently Netflix Powerpoint presentation on human resources has been getting a lot of views this last month. I remember being able to read the accompanying article on Harvard Business Review at one time, but it seems to be protected by a registration requirement now. The Powerpoint presentation can be viewed however and has some interesting … Read more
Earlier this month, I read an interview with WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg about his company, Automattic’s, hiring process. The title of the interview, Hire by Audition, Not Resumes, is what caught my eye. What Automattic does is pay potential hires to do short term work for them so they can get a real sense of … Read more
The annual program review is a process we go through at the college both to provide evidence for our accreditation and to measure the general effectiveness of the programs in order meet organizational goals. This process helps the school identify “gatekeeper courses.” Some colleges and universities use gatekeeper courses to weed students out of certain … Read more
The president of my consortium went to a Western Arts Federation meeting and returned with some materials for the membership to read. One of the more provocative pieces was written by Numa C. Saisselin, Executive Director at the Count Basie Theatre entitled “Arts Presenting Is Dead.” (Full disclosure, I once interviewed with Numa for a … Read more
A couple incidents today reminded me about the short attention spans people have these days. There is so little time to catch people’s attention and hardly more to hold it. I was in a session today where the college marketing director was unveiling the new website design. She mentioned that one tip she recently picked … Read more
I have been closely watching a series of articles Drew McManus is writing on the topic “How to Save Classical Music.” He is using the docent program at the Denver Zoo as a case study of how to use volunteer labor to aid in the revitalization of orchestras. He begins by defining the problem, then … Read more
Yes, we have been undergoing a review of websites to make sure there are good contrasting colors for people. Since…
Interesting. The subject was brought to my attention just a few days aga from a customer who was looking at…
Hi Joe, Joe Leblang was my great uncle. His sister Jennie was my great-grandmother. Did you know that there is…