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Info You Can Use: Examining The Critical Path

November 5, 2013

by:

Joe Patti

Yesterday, Seth Godin made a post that seemed aimed at a few of the companies and organizations I have volunteered or worked for/with throughout my life. He addressed the importance of understanding the critical path to achieving a goal. He defined critical path as “The longest string of dependent, non-compressible tasks.”

He uses wanting to create a garden as an example.

“For example, in your mind’s eye, the garden has a nice sign in front. The nice sign takes about a week to get made by the sign guy, and it depends on nothing. You can order the sign any time until a week before you need it. On the other hand, you can’t plant until you grade and you can’t grade until you get the delivery of soil and you can’t get the delivery until you’ve got a permit from the local town.”

He notes the logical step is to take care of that permit first. “And yet most organizations focus on shiny objectives or contentious discussions or get sidetracked by emergencies instead of honoring the critical path.”

He discusses how important it is to identify the parts of a process that end up being the choke points of the critical path. He gives an example of how a company he worked for used color coded buttons to identify the people who were important points along that path for a project upon which the success of the company hinged. Everyone not identified as part of that potential choke point, including the president of the company, knew not to impede the progress of those who were.

This resonated with me because I recently discovered that the piece of software I use for tracking my task list has a pull down menu with “Waiting on Someone Else” as an option. When I started using that option to keep the list from periodically squawking that those tasks were overdue, I realized that nearly every task was waiting on action from the same two offices. At least in terms of the functions of my operations, those offices were part of my critical path.

As I read Godin’s post, I was reminded of the oft heard statement: fast, cheap, quality, choose any two. There are staff members that are frequently given tasks with competing priorities and are left to ask which of the crucial tasks are slightly less crucial.

Analyzing the critical paths by general project types would assist decision making about resource and time management within the organization. One notable thing about Godin’s example is that the project, rather than the organization chart, determined who were the most important staff members. If it took the president fetching coffee for the graphic designer to make the project succeed, that is what happened.

The president does play a crucial role in the organization and can’t be spending all their time fetching coffee, but their work may not represent a crucial juncture in the overall process upon which other activities depend. (Except for signing payroll, of course!)

Think about the critical paths in your organization. It may surprise you to learn what your critical paths are and may reveal some awkward truths about where resources really need to be allocated to meet the mission of your organization.

Though remember that this is more than just needing a lot of hands to help out with a process, it is about a chain of events that definitely depend on the prior step being completed. Needing 10 people to stuff envelopes on Wednesday isn’t part of the critical path if having six people start on Monday will accomplish the same goal of getting it all out by Friday. It is, however, if you are mailing out W-2 tax forms which, by law, need to go out by January 31 and the forms can’t be printed out until Tuesday because the payroll data isn’t available until Monday, because…

Info You Can Use, Leadership, Management Philosophy, Working In The Arts

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Is This An iPad I See Before Me?

November 4, 2013

by:

Joe Patti

Last week we hosted an Immersive Game + Simulations Technologies conference in my facility. This is an area in which I am only generally familiar so some of the speakers had some very interesting things to so. The keynote speech given by Simon Solotko provided me with an immediate vision of a likely intersection between live performance and technology.

Fair warning: Don’t read any further if you can’t tolerate the idea of cell phones and iPads being used in your arts facility.

Solotko addressed the idea of augmented reality where technology overlays some sort of information upon the “real world.” For example, if you pointed the camera on your cell phone down the street, an arrow might appear on the screen over the image of the street showing you which way to turn to get to a bakery.

Solotko’s thought was that you could use this technology to provide whatever information you wanted people to know about you, and only that information. If you were at a writers’ conference you might put information out on the Cloud that you were doing research on a book about the Civil War. When someone pointed their phone/iPad in your direction they would see that information, but know nothing more about you than that. So if they shared your interest or had some resources you were seeking, they might come over and speak with you.

Solotko noted that you wouldn’t want to use facial recognition to connect yourself to the information you put out there because it is far too permanent and identifiable to be able to retract. Not to mention that there would be problems in low light environments. (This has a lot of social utility and you might want to put some information out there while you are in a dance club, after all.)

According to Solotko, this is really what the Samsung Galaxy Gear is all about. Its utility is about more than just moving the functions of a phone to your wrist, but providing an platform to deliver the augmented reality experience Solotko envisions.

As he describes it, you would put some information out there on the Cloud then program your wristband with some distinctive pattern of color. When someone pointed their camera at you, it would pick up the pattern and provide whatever information you chose to share.

I immediately recognized live performances could use this to provide supplemental information about the artist performing; the character they are playing; provide stream a real time translation of Shakespearean speeches or Italian aria being delivered; and perhaps even offer another layer of characterization by revealing a character’s internal thoughts that belie their spoken sentiments. (Though if an actor is any good, they shouldn’t need a virtual thought bubble to communicate, but it could definitely have its uses.)

Of course, orchestras had this idea a long time ago with the ill-fated Concert Companion project.

As I noted earlier, this means actively encouraging people to hold up their phones or wear their Google Glasses and ceasing to worry that they are recording every moment on stage. Whether audiences and venues are ready to embrace this shift in the viewing environment is likely to depend on a number of factors.

Arts in an Age of Technology, Audience Relations, Info You Can Use, State of the Arts

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Welcome To The Emporium

October 30, 2013

by:

Joe Patti

There is a method of teaching math colleges have begun using called the Emporium Model. Basically, it is an inversion of the usual classroom experience. The student spends time watching videos of lectures or interacting with teaching software outside of the class period. During the class period, students essentially do “homework” with assistance from each other or the professor. The approach has shown some respectable success, especially with remedial classes.

I was wondering if a similar approach might be constructive for the arts. One of the things audiences say they value most about an arts attendance experience is the social aspect interacting with friends and other people.

It got me to thinking if there might be some value in setting up a situation where people could watch a performance or participate with some sort of massive open online course (MOOC) before gathering in an interactive setting. This interactive setting probably wouldn’t be a full live performance, but rather some sort of workshop/master class/discussion where people would have close contact with an artist/facilitator while also having informal social interactions with their friends.

This is sort of an imperfect application of the Emporium model idea because who would want to spend a few hours viewing a performance or participating in an online class of some sort in preparation for a social occasion with their friends?

Except, maybe they would. To those of us closely involved with providing live performances or opportunities to experience visual arts in person, it may seem absurd to set up a situation where we encourage people to substitute a recording or picture for the full live experience. But if people are increasingly interested in having these experiences on their own schedules, rather than ours, there may be some logic to this solution.

People can watch something in 20 minute segments throughout the week and then have fun with their friends at one of three facilitated sessions scheduled every day over the course of a week.

While this may eliminate the full live performance as we know it, it could also provide an entree to eventual attendance by making it seem like something you would inevitably do at some point. You have been going to workshops and discussions with friends for months now, why not actually attend one of those performances some time?

Peer pressure may not only motivate people to attend, but to pay closer attention to the materials they review in advance. If your friend asks why you fast forwarded past a particularly interesting section, you might be more apt to watch the video all the way through the next time and pay closer attention.

Those discussions about what was skipped can also provide hints about programming decisions to the arts group facilitating the sessions — a workshop and focus group in one!

I don’t claim this idea is full developed. It just struck me as an alternative way to use people’s desire for a positive social experience. Probably the biggest hurdle for arts organizations is making what is now seen to be their central focus ancillary to the education and social mingling.

But if colleges can make the homework the focus of the in class experience and the “lecture” portion secondary, it can be accomplished. Since it will require artists who have the skills to teach and interact as well as perform, it could provide more employment opportunities to artists.

I haven’t looked at the full active offering of MOOCs, but one benefit of this approach that I see is that a fair portion of the educational material and media has already been developed and placed in accessible locations. If the internet doesn’t already host suitable content, the distribution channels are available for anything you might create yourself.

Art(ist) Education, Arts in an Age of Technology, State of the Arts

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The Tao of Kermit the Frog (Be At Ease Making Green)

October 29, 2013

by:

Joe Patti

Over the last two months, I have found myself returning and pondering a review written by Maria Popova of the book, Make Art, Make Money, by Elizabeth Hyde Stevens. The book uses the example of Jim Henson to inform people’s creative careers.

Popova discusses Elizabeth Hyde Stevens’ use of Jim Henson as an example of a person who balanced himself between artistic and commercial success. In particular to “debunk this toxic myth” [that] …tells us art is necessarily bad if commercially successful, and commercial success necessarily unattainable if the art is any good.”

The book apparently start out talking about Henson’s 1968 Muppet appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show that sets muppets chanting business jargon against those chanting idealist credos. The idealists knock the business muppets down, but soon begin to take up their jargon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97iZQvyPinQ

Stevens notes that in 1968 Henson was doing commercial work for Getty Oil, IBM, Oscar Mayer and owned a print making business. He started working for Sesame Street in 1968, but didn’t decide to stop making commercials until 1969.

I didn’t take much from the stories about Henson being a capitalist who also walked around barefoot and got together to “sing, laugh, and play with puppets in the kind of collectivism that hippies celebrated.” The social dynamics of that era have passed and there is nothing to be gained by artificially trying to recreate that environment for yourself.

What did catch my attention was a comment made by a collaborator that Henson never saw the money as an end.

“..Fraggle Rock producer Larry Mirkin, who worked with Henson:

He viewed money as energy, the energy that makes concrete things happen out of worthy ideas. Money was not an end in itself. It could provide physical infrastructure or it could help him hire other artists and technicians to realize a nascent idea. I don’t ever recall him being the least bit concerned or afraid of money or obsessed by it, which many people are. It just wasn’t what drove him — at all.

Apparently an artist’s inability to disregard money as an end and find the balance between creative freedom and commercial success is where the perception of art being tainted by money originates, according to Stevens. Finding that balance and resisting the fear or obsession with money is a difficult skill to master.

It didn’t initially occur to me as I wrote this entry, but the Muppet Show might have reflected Henson’s outlook. It was set in an old dingy theater and there were occasionally plotlines where Kermit was worrying about paying the rent, but it wasn’t a constant plot point and the Muppets never seemed to be starving artists. (Granted, they didn’t have to worry about “being stuffed” at the end of the day.)

It always just seemed like a place Kermit was running to give his friends a place to express themselves, from the borderline inept Fozzie Bear and Gonzo to the hard rocking, enthusiastic Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem.

What I appreciated was Popova’s closing paragraph,

“…concept of “selling out” is just as oppressive as the very commercial ideology which it purports to defy, and that pitting doing good work against doing well robs culture of its dimension, flattening both art and financial stability into mere caricatures of real life.”

I liked the thought that extreme devotion to any ideal, whether it be art, money, fame, justice, education, becomes a “caricature of real life,” despite the frequent insistence that we are living authentically.

Art(ist) Education, Working In The Arts

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