Home Page

They Predicted The End of Paper Too

January 10, 2018

by:

Joe Patti

Apropos of my post on Monday about physical objects being valued more than digital copies, there was a fairly long piece in The Guardian about how a paperless society hasn’t been achieved yet. The implication being that people perceive a need for physical representations of ideas.

Since the death of various arts disciplines at the hands of technological developments have been predicted for ages now, there are a number of parallels with the arts in the piece.

The central focus of the article is on a paper manufacturers conference in Chicago last March. Since there has been discussion about a need to update pretty much every element and experience at the arts conferences I have attended, I had to wince when I recognized some parallels in the mild criticism of clinging to antiquated approaches at the paper conference.

…the latest issue of the Paper2017 Convention Daily, published in three separate editions for each day of the conference, and printed on obscenely large 16in by 11.75in glossy tabloid that serves as an oversized “screw you” to palm-sized devices. It is printed by O’Brien Publications, which also publishes PaperAge magazine, the newspaper of record for all things pulp and paper since 1884.
Advertisement

I stroll through the CL, drawn to an unmanned National Paper Trade Association table piled high with juicy-looking literature on paper’s many virtues. I take one of each and sit down at a cocktail table to thumb through my haul of brochures announcing paper “myths” and paper “facts”.

While the paper industry may be showing some resistance to the growing use of digital at their conference, they aren’t blind to the changing environment. Use of printing and writing paper has been in decline since 2008. At the same time, with Amazon packing small items in boxes surrounded by paper and placed in bigger boxes, and increasing resistance to plastic waste, there is growing opportunity for other types of paper products.

Mohawk Paper on the other hand, says they are ignoring the consultants and have been growing their business 3%-4% a year just focusing on the core value of manufacturing really great paper.

To make it work, they have been positioning their product in the context of the satisfaction found in a physical product. (my emphasis)

It’s not that Mohawk ignores the digital revolution; rather, they have made a choice to sell the ethos of paper to the digitally fatigued. Melissa Stevens, Mohawk’s senior VP of sales, hands me Mohawk’s Declaration of Craft, an absolutely gorgeous piece of printed material chock-full of new-agey thingness. Its thesis: “In an era of impermanence, an extraordinary movement has emerged. A movement of makers where craftsmanship and permanence matter now more than ever.”

Mohawk’s communication strategy is built around this “maker” movement, which is illustrated with hipsters throwing clay in their basements, forging wrought iron and side-hustling in saxophone design. It’s impossible to tell if this is brilliant marketing or sheer impudence, or both.

I see parallels for the arts and culture sector in this as well. First, is the renewed focus on personal creative expression advocated by groups like Arts Midwest

Even more immediately and literally, I emailed Drew McManus last night observing that since he updated the design of my website to include a print option in the social sharing tool bar, I have been surprised how many people have used it. I added that over on the Arts Hacker website, an entry that hasn’t been printed at least once is the exception rather than the rule.

Even though it may be more convenient to bookmark an article and access it on demand, people are apparently printing them off for themselves or to share with others.

I started to wonder–does the knowledge that an article has been printed out 1-4 times have more value for Drew and the Arts Hacker contributors than some number of times the articles are shared on social media since printing represents that extra investment of time and material?

Speaking for myself, the fact someone did take the time to print my last AH post out is probably worth 5-10 shares. On the other hand, I was really pleased when I saw the Pennsylvania Arts Council shared the post since they are influential. So it this issue really isn’t clearcut, especially since I have no concept of the identity or influence of the others who shared the post.

Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

3 Comments

NPO Execs Much More Concerned By Lack of Board Diversity Than Board Chairs

January 9, 2018

by:

Joe Patti

I recently published a short piece on ArtsHacker about how important the leadership of non-profit board chairs was to the success of the organization. Much of the information was draw from a webinar Non-Profit Quarterly hosted about Board Source’s most recent Leading With Intent report.

I just got around to reading the report in the last week. Since the finds are summarized pretty prominently on the Leading With Intent home page, I will leave readers take a look themselves and hopefully choose to focus in on areas of interest, if not read the whole thing.

Of course, general observations don’t give you the full story. While I wasn’t surprised to read that board membership isn’t becoming more diverse and their current composition is inhibiting efforts at diversity, I was interested to read that executive directors felt much more strongly than board chairs that the lack of diversity was a problem.

Sixty-five percent of executive directors versus 41% of board chairs were somewhat or extremely dissatisfied with the level racial and ethnic diversity.

It is possible chief executives express higher levels of dissatisfaction with the board’s racial and ethnic diversity because they are more exposed to the way it is affecting their organization. Seventy-nine (79) percent of chief executives say that expanding racial and ethnic diversity is important, or greatly important, to increasing their organization’s ability to advance its mission.

Additionally, chief executive responses highlight an understanding of the many ways that diversity (or lack of diversity) can impact an organization’s

reputation: 80 percent of executives report that diversity and inclusion is important, or very important, to “enhancing the organization’s standing with the general public.”

reach: 72 percent of executives report that diversity and inclusion is important, or greatly important, to “increase fundraising or expand donor networks.”

If an organization is facing issues and challenges due to a lack of board diversity, chief executives are wise to help the board understand these issues rather than continuing to make the case for diversity without the board fully understanding what is at stake.

My guess is that pretty much everyone in the arts and culture sector understands that the recent push for greater diversity in commercial entertainment and associated award shows isn’t just applicable to commercial or entertainment enterprises.

If you are under the impression that this is all just a fad and will stop at the edge of the televised red carpet, ooooh boy, you better pay closer attention. It wouldn’t be at all surprising if inclusion displaced overhead ratio as a primary measure of effectiveness and worthiness among funders, patrons and donors.

While lack of diversity in terms of race/ethnicity was the biggest source of dissatisfaction, lack of diversity in terms of socioeconomic status, age, gender, sexual orientation and persons with disabilities was roughly equal for executive officers (~30%) and presumably growing.

The neutrality gap between satisfaction and dissatisfaction in each of these areas varies widely and might be a source of interest to readers. (page 10 of the PDF, page 11 in printed version)

Advocacy, Boards, Leadership, Working In The Arts

No Comments

A Bird In The Hand Is Worth More Than Two In Computer Memory

January 8, 2018

by:

Joe Patti

Roger Tomilson tweeted about Harvard Business Review article that provides some food for thought about how people might experience arts and culture.

I’ll jump right to a quote since the article title, “Customers Won’t Pay as Much for Digital Goods — and Research Explains Why,” pretty much provides the all the introduction you need.

The greater value ascribed to physical than digital goods persisted when we accounted for people’s estimates of production costs and retail prices. It even held for goods with no resale value. Plausible alternative explanations, such as physical goods lasting longer or being more enjoyable to use than digital goods, also failed to explain this difference.

Only a difference in the extent to which people feel a sense of ownership for digital and physical objects explained their preference for the physical format. Indeed, the value gap disappeared for goods participants rented and expected to give back.

[…]

Because ownership entails a link between a person and an object, we found the gap in their value increased when that link was easy to form and disappeared when that link was hard to establish. Participants valued a physical copy of The Empire Strikes Back more than a digital copy, for instance, only if they considered the Star Wars series to be films with which they strongly identified. Participants who weren’t Star Wars fans valued physical and digital copies similarly.

To summarize: People value physical objects more than digital ones when the object represents something with which they closely identify, even if it has no monetary value, if they don’t have to give it back.

As much as I would like it to, this doesn’t really address whether people value physical encounters with transitory experiences like attending a performance or visiting a museum versus seeing a recording or a digital copy of a piece of visual art.

Even if I did try to wedge a rationalization in there, we’d still be left with the finding that, regardless of format, people place an equal value on things they don’t feel are relevant to them. Which means, people won’t automatically start to value art if they experience the physical manifestation. (You probably didn’t need research to tell you that.)

What I wondered is whether having something physical to take away from the experience facilitates in creating more value for people. Do well designed, informative playbills/programs/information sheets/gallery maps, etc help to solidify value for people even if they ultimately decide to toss it? Versus nothing or an digital media tour that is only available at the venue.

If so, does the effect increase if a hand-on activity is provided which produces something people can take with them? Is a link forged when someone executes an expression of personal creativity? It may have no value to anyone else but it is simultaneously allowing people to participate in the creative process and generating a physical manifestation connected to the experience.

Does this provide a greater sense of ownership and investment in the experience?

And if you are nodding affirmatively and thinking “yes” to yourself, here is the next question – Where do selfie pictures fit in?

They are creative expressions but in digital form. Research has shown people feel selfies and digital recording enhance the experience…they just can’t accurately remember the content of the experience. One potential way to mitigate this is to offer background and props for people to use in selfies as a way of saying, “we would prefer you not use your devices during the show, but we want you to remember this experience.”

Thoughts? Opinions? Ideas?

I would be interested to see if the presence of a gift shop/souvenirs increases value for people over places that don’t offer them. How many of you would stock cheesy snowglobes if there was a correlation with increased return visits in a 5 year period?

Art(ist) Education, Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, creativity, State of the Arts

2 Comments

If You Like Taking A Shower, You May Like Nudism

January 3, 2018

by:

Joe Patti

As soon as I saw the first four lines of a post Seth Godin made last month, I knew what I wanted to write.

Then he wrote a lot of it for me.

Want to go visit a nudist colony?

I don’t know, what’s it like?

You know, a lot of people not wearing clothes.

Show me some pictures, then I’ll know.

Well, actually, you won’t.

You won’t know what it’s like merely by looking at a picture of a bunch of naked people.

The only way you’ll know what it’s like is if you get seen by a bunch of naked people. The only way to have the experience is to have the experience.

He goes on to say that we often try to put a new experience in a familiar box in order to insulate ourselves from the fear of a new experience.

My initial impulse was to write about how seeing video of performance or pictures of objects in a museum doesn’t provide the actual experience of encountering these things live. I was also thinking of writing about how in recent years even those people who do travel to see something live use an electronic device to mediate the experience for them.

But I also got to thinking that the reverse is also true.

We in arts and culture like to criticize participants and potential participants for avoiding an authentic experience and deciding they know about the experience after accepting some form of substitute.

The truth is, the arts and culture sector reinforces to this by talking about their work in the context of other work. While this does provide a frame of reference for entirely unfamiliar experiences, it does the experience and the creators a disservice to frame their work in terms of “just like artist Y,” “if you liked Z, you will love X.”

It is done to sell an experience and we all gotta eat right? People increasingly look for this type of information since their online buying experience so frequently features this form of recommendation. Replicating this process helps people make decisions about participating in an arts and culture event.

But then you can’t turn around and accuse people of being averse to trying something unfamiliar if you continually use the simplest common elements to frame complex and nuanced experiences.

There were stories in November about the works of Jin Yong being translated into English, each which proclaimed him the J.R.R Tolkien of China. Amateur translations of those works have been a guilty pleasure of mine. I can tell you the comparison is only true in the broadest terms. (Like showers and nudism.)

Likewise, if you decide changing expectations and perceptions about what an artistic/creative/cultural experiences are will require rethinking the whole experience, simply scaling down current practices and placing them in novel settings isn’t ultimately going to be the answer.

In the article upon which I based my post yesterday about a health clinic in Minneapolis that started experimenting with pop-up arts offerings I saw some parallels with arts engagement practices.

Neighborhood clinics like the one depicted in the story are an attempt to bring health services offered at places like hospitals closer to the people who need to be served. That has helped up to a point (not to diminish the work of a clinic that has served a community for 45-50 years). The executive director identified barriers for people: disinterest in health classes/discussions, anxiety, distrust, etc.

Clinics like the one in the story have started to expand their definition of what health entails.

You’re doing the art sitting next to people and you start talking to each other,” Shella said. “It creates community and is therapeutic in the sense that the hospital becomes less sterile—it gives it a sense of beauty and helps people feel more at peace and connected to others.”

Shella said that such activities have emerged from health care providers’ desire to give patients a positive experience. This means seeing them as “whole people,” not just a specific problem or organ that needs fixing. “It’s the recognition that people also have psycho-social needs,” said Shella.

One of the tactics they started to employ is using the pop up arts events as a conduit for information, discussion and lowering of barriers with the focus less sharply on health and more on creating community.

In the same way, the recent trend in arts and culture has been to broaden the definition of what constitutes arts, culture and creative activity. As we have seen in the recent CultureTrack report, the general population has already changed their definition of these things to focus more on food trucks and less on museums.

In the long run, arts and cultural organizations are going to have to continue to re-imagine what it means to have a creative experience. I suspect that means a transition from doing things like scaled down pop-up performances in bars, shopping malls, airports, etc and manifesting in a way that builds community.

I am not saying there is anything particularly wrong with these type of experiences. Obviously, the intersection between health services and a scaled down creative experience has had significance in Minneapolis. I just don’t think that the concept of taking activities to where the people are should represent an end point. There is a next step and new manifestation(s) that haven’t been realized yet.

Audience Relations, State of the Arts, Terms and Ideas

No Comments