Well I am back from the Western Arts Alliance Conference with much to tell. The first a controversial plan WAA has to change the format of the conference.

As I noted in my last entry, because the plenary speaker had to cancel, the Marketplace Committee report scheduled for Sunday was delivered on Wednesday instead. This was lauded as a happy incident because it would allow people to discuss the changes throughout the conference.

By annual membership meeting on Sunday it became clear that it might not have been such a good thing to have people talking about it all conference because people were very angry.

The proposal for the change is found in WAA Celebrates 40 Years of Community: A Commitment to the Future.

The biggest problem people had was with The Commons proposal. Instead of continuing to replicate the pipe and drape format that even Comdex follows, the taskforce envisioned something less structured.

The pipe and drape format, they felt, commidifies what the artists and managers exhibiting have to offer. The presenters walk around and get to pick and choose who they will talk to while the exhibitors stare longingly from within the confines of their booth hoping to make eye contact while the presenters try to avoid the same.

Under the new proposal, artists/managers/agents might set up shop in different formats. Perhaps in a suite, perhaps at a bar, at a table in a common area, etc.

I had a discussion with someone about this on a shuttle ride to a venue. Ultimately, a change of format will probably be necessary as younger people enter the field. People will be communicating via cell phones, text messaging, Blackberries, etc. rather than walking up and down rows. They will flock to showcases as word gets around about what artists look most exciting. Brochures and DVDs will be replaced by presenters asking artists to send them a link to a Bittorrented movie of their work.

The problem was, the taskforce didn’t offer any solid vision of what this commons would look like. Before the meeting on Sunday, I heard presenters opposed the change because it took power out of their hands, but at the meeting it was mostly artists/managers/agents who voiced their criticism.

Among their concerns were-

-If artists/agents were set up in bars, how would presenters know where to find them?

-If they were set up in suites, the line between the haves and have nots would be extreme. William Morris and CAMI would be able to fete presenters in style and comfort while others would bankrupt themselves just arranging for a room.

-If the Commons were going to be available for meetings around the clock, did that mean the small artist who only had one person representing them would have to exhaust themselves sitting there 14 hours a day?

Currently, the resource room where the exhibitors are is only open for 2-3 hour periods before and after professional development meetings and showcases. This gives insures the majority of people, including exhibitors have an opportunity to devote their attention to just roundtables, just showcases and just discussing possible performances.

I suspect the Commons being available all the time just means managers and presenters could arrange to meet outside of the offical time in that area rather than people always being “on.” They turned the lights out on an agent and I while we were talking because they wanted to encourage us to move on to the showcases. In the future this theoretically wouldn’t happen. (I actually went to dinner with an agent and members of my consortium)

I actually had an entirely separate problem with the proposal. However, I followed an irate agent who was flabbergasted that the conference administration had actually originally considered waiting until Sunday to present this proposal to the membership so my complaint was probably forgotten pretty quickly.

I was actually impressed by this agent’s fervor. He represents a rather prominent dance company and, as he pointed out, hardly needed to be at the conference to get bookings. He said he showed up to lend support to the other artists. I have to admit, the fact his company is represented there does lend to the sense that one can contract quality artists at this conference.

My problem was mostly philisophical. The suggested changes would mean that the conference would end up in California permanently. LA, San Francisco maybe San Diego and Denver are about the only cities in the region that might have a hotel large enough to house a conference since they seemed to be so set against, as the association president put it, returning to the ugly cookie cutter, conference centers with bad lighting and loud ventilation. (I really felt bad for the conference center staff standing in the room.) The fact the conference would be able to take advantage of the wonderful theatre facilities at Disney Hall, etc was lauded.

My comment was this- LA and Disney Hall doesn’t reflect the conditions in which most of the presenting membership operates. Like me, they are in smaller, less well appointed facilities located in smaller cities. There is more benefit to the membership in seeing venues like the National Hispanic Cultural Center (gorgeous facility and ironically, contains the Roy E. Disney Performing Arts Center.) and KiMo Theatre because we can walk away from them with applicable ideas about running our own theatres.

Just in case rumors that came to my ears about the conference permanently moving to LA bolstered by the denigration of conference centers were erroneous, I asked a person on the Marketplace Task Force who refuted my view in meeting point blank if I was wrong about the permanent move.

While he allowed that there was a slight chance that they could be talked into going back to smaller cities, he pretty much doubted it would happen. (This might have been his personal preference rather than an expression of the prevailing attitude since he really appeared to want to turn the conference into APAP of the West. (You want to talk about an atmosphere of commidification, attend that conference!)

It will be interesting now to see how things pan out in 2008 after the LA conference.