Arts in an Age of Technology

PURLs of Wisdom

by

I have been aware of the emergence of new technologies that are allowing companies to offer an experience that is tailored specifically to an individual for awhile now. For the most part though, it has been on the edge of my awareness until this week when I got smacked square in the face with it.

I received an email with a link to a survey for the conference I recently attended and I was warned not to forward the link to anyone else because it was keyed specifically to my email address. I don’t think it was associated directly with me since I had to fill name fields. If it was associated with my identity, that was pretty annoying to have to fill out my name and organization info.

Today I received an email from an artist agent that contained a Personalized URL that took me to a webpage listing all the artists the agent had suggested might be appropriate for my venue. The page contained little modules with photos and information about the artist and links to additional materials. The information was specific to me and didn’t include any extraneous information about other performers that might overload me with too much information and cause me to close the page.

I have heard of some arts organizations using personal URLs to provide ticket buyers with directions to the theatre from their homes and other helpful information. It is clear though that the potential hasn’t been plumbed yet.

As exciting as it might be to think about adopting these technologies as tools for your organization, in keeping with my philosophy that not all new stuff is appropriate for everyone, I want to point out why. First of all is the need to have someone creating and monitoring the basic content that is offered with these links. Even with the help afforded you by the companies who offer Personal URL service, doing something like this is going to consume time, personnel and resources.

Another problem with these services is that knowing your activity is being tracked can be a little off putting. I can’t answer the survey anonymously because it is linked to me. While it might take some digging to find out who I am, the survey could have been easily set up so that it was directly associated with my identity rather than my email.

The personal URL offers even less anonymity. It would take the agent almost no effort at all to see how many times I visited the page he set up for me and which artists I clicked through to the most times. Even if I shared the link with other people, it is most likely going to be those associated with my organization in the course of soliciting opinions about artists. When making a follow up call the agent will have a good idea which performers to steer the conversation toward based on the number of visits made to each page.

The other problem with personal URLs is that they can provide too narrow a selection of information. With my special link to a listing of 10 performers, I don’t have a lot of motivation to look at the other people the agent represents. Of course, I would have probably given the full website a cursory glance anyway given the number of people the company represents. If the agent has gauged my organization correctly with the questions he asked, he has probably improved my chances of contracting one of his performers by isolating these 10 from the masses.

Of course, not all uses of personal URLs will yield secret information about the user. Visits to the directions link may merely tell you that your patron loses directions a lot. Or it could indicate that they are not sure of where they are going which may inspire a phone call to check if they need any additional information. One of those cases where having insight into your audience’s need can be helpful or a little creepily intrusive.

So, as I have advocated before– When implementing the newest trends, procedures, technologies, etc., think about whether it really is appropriate for your organization and audience and how it might be received/perceived. This includes thinking carefully about how you integrate the use of these trends and tools in your operations. As I noted, it is one thing to call someone up asking if they need any additional information and another to mention that you noticed they were clicking on the directions section of their personal URL a lot this past week.

New Metrics To Damn Ourselves With

by

I haven’t had a chance to read through the report WolfBrown put together for the Major University Presenters on Assessing the Intrinsic Impacts of a Live Performance but I did just finish listening to the audio recording of the presentation on the work that Alan Brown and Jennifer Novak did at the Arts Presenters conference.

What was most interesting to me about the study they did was their ambition in collecting information about audience experiences. They randomly surveyed people during the period between the time they arrived and the start of the show about their readiness to receive the performance they were about to see and then asked the same people to take home a survey and return it within 24 hours.

I hope to address the study in more detail in another entry. I wanted to address the comments one of respondents on the session panel had about the study. Artist agent and APAP Board President Lisa Booth had mixed feeling about the report. She was happy that there was a measure of success being developed that didn’t evaluate an artist on the number of bodies he/she attracted to the venue but rather on impacts in other areas.

On the other hand, she worried that some presenters might use the report to justify serving only a small group rather than the larger community. Providing experiences of high intrinsic value for 10 people is anti-ethical to most arts organization’s purpose.

And while she was glad that there was a new metric of success being developed that wasn’t based in dollars or butts in seats, she was also concerned that in the eagerness to justify the value of the arts in some quantifiable way, the arts community was trying to measure what can not be measured.

This last bit was very interesting to me because Lisa Booth seemed to recognize the inevitable if these measures became widely used. If foundations and governments start basing their funding on the intrinsic value a performance has for a community, arts organizations will probably try to measure everything imaginable to show all the levels on which a performance meets funding agendas. Just as the arts aren’t well served by showing economic impact, they probably will be equally ill-advised to create numeric values for changes in things like self-actualization, captivation, social comfort level and questions raised.

As it was at least one person in the room at this convention of presenters, agents and artists had nagging doubts about the value of art in today’s society. One of the questions submitted to the moderators on an index card that was read but left unanswered was “What is the value of these impacts in a world with global warming and war?” The fact that the moderator choose to read the question as he announced time was up rather than ignoring it entirely is an acknowledgment that questions about our priorities as a society are ever present.

There is no short simple answer for the question but I offer this- After September 11, 2001 people were saying there would be no more comedy or laughter ever again. When I heard that I knew with 100% certainty that it was wrong and that even with the destruction of the Twin Towers hovering in our consciousness, recovery would come sooner than people expected. I had been through enough tragedy and grave problems in my life that I knew people couldn’t exist in with the absence of artistic expression in some form. My current concern isn’t that the arts will disappear. It is that I have no idea what media/channel/form it will best express itself in the future.

Send Me Your Press Releases…Now!

by

I don’t know how wide spread this experience is, but there is one area where I assumed that technology was making a window of interest smaller that I think it is actually expanding it– Press Releases.

One of the cardinal rules of writing press releases has always been to keep the subject matter timely. This often means releasing your information within a certain window where it is not so early that news people have more immediate events to cover and not so late that you miss the deadline.

As Internet connections got better and sending images and releases by email rather than hard copies through regular mail became more prevalent, there was a brief period where sending out information closer to a performance night seemed wiser and preferred.

Now I am getting calls from newspapers 4-6 weeks before a performance asking me for a release and images. It is a minority that seems to prefer the information two weeks or so out from the performance. My theory is that technology has made it easier for news outlets to organized stories. I am guessing I get the calls because they have inputted the calendar listings I send out in the Fall into some sort of software that reminds them to call me for information. I also guess technology is helping them put their story together and lay out part of the issue it will run in weeks ahead of time.

In a certain respect, my job has actually gotten harder because I need to be thinking about these shows weeks early than I used to so I have a release ready for the asking. I also need to be bugging the performance groups for information to support what I write and images to send to the press. With some artists and agents who are not well organized, this can create a problem.

There is a standard line in most every contract I get that says press materials will be provided to me a month before a performance. I have begun toying with the idea of researching the amount of information available about an artist online and changing that to 60 days for those with a dearth of materials.

Has anyone else had this experience or am I just surrounded by a well organized, zealous media?

How Do Leaders Learn

by

Next week I will attending the Association of Performing Arts Presenters conference in NY. Unlike last year where I was there for a week attending the conference and Emerging Leadership Institute, this year I am in and out very quickly in a weekend. I cringe at the thought of all that time on the plane. Once I get there, I know I will wonder why I ever resisted the idea because I get so much out of the experience. I enjoy the opportunity to see showcases, talk to artists and learn about new trends and philosophies in performing arts.

One of my biggest motivations for attending this year is to continue what was started last year in having Emerging Leadership alumni involved at the conference and advance an agenda. We have meetings and social gatherings planned this year. We were going to sponsor an issues session until we learned that Andrew Taylor’s students at the Bolz Center were going to be presenting findings from a study that was generally aligned with our purpose.

We also encouraging our membership (and anyone else interested in the topic) to attend the session at the conference, Learning to Lead: Where And How to Arts Professionals Extend Their Knowledge and Advance Their Craft. Andrew has a post about it on his blog today. Even if you aren’t going to attend, if you are an arts leader, please consider filling out the 15 question survey that will inform the discussion and findings of the session.

The survey asks questions about where one goes looking for knowledge and help in solving problems. Though it could probably comprise an entire research session of its own, I would have liked to see some questions asking people to measure the value of the guidance/help they receive. From conversations I have had over the last year, I suspect a good many people would comment that they weren’t getting the guidance they needed or perhaps were having a hard time identifying a trustworthy person with whom to discuss their problems.

And though it wouldn’t be scientific and might have been a little more time consuming, it would have been interesting if they asked where people got their initial training in the arts. I am just curious how many people have formal education and how many were mentored and learned on the job.

In any case, while Andrew will undoubtedly have an entry discussing the session, I intend to do one as well to present my perspective. I usually try to avoid duplicating the subject of his posts since I assume we share a lot of readers. But I am making a very long flights in very short time. I am gonna earn the right to bloviate a little. I am sure my approach will differ from Taylor’s to some extent any way.