• American Opera Projects (Have a Voice), Brooklyn, NY
• Arizona Opera (¡Viva Opera! ), Phoenix and Tuscon, AZ
• Florentine Opera (Bohème Society), Milwaukee, WI
• Los Angeles Opera (Newcomer Project), CA
• Madison Opera (the Madison Opera Center), WI
• Opera on the James (GET REAL), Lynchburg, VA
• Opera Memphis (30 Days of Opera), TN
• Opera Theater of Pittsburgh (My First Time), PA
• San Franscico Opera (Community Open House), CA
• Sarasota Opera (Summer Screening Series), FL
• Seattle Opera (the Preferred Subscriber Program and Select Your Own Seat), WA
• Syracuse Opera (IDEAS Collaborative), NY
• Vancouver Opera (Transporting Opera Audiences), Canada

The thirteen grantees were selected from a pool of 67 companies competing for support from Opera America’s new ‘Building Opera Audiences’ grant program. In its first year, this new program is made possible by funding from the Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation. The thirteen companies selected are pursuing innovative projects to increase attendance through use of  technology and social media, special activities for the community, or meaningful discussion with community members to better understand the barriers that prevent the public from attending and listening to opera. Opera America will evaluate each program and project awarded.  Congratulations to the grantees- we look forward to following the outcome of these projects and programs!

A description of each opera companies’ specific project can be found in Opera America’s press release.

From a business perspective, big data enables companies to mix their patron data into a broader pool of consumer data and extract correlations that help them know with unprecedented specificity who are most likely to respond to their appeals. The great thing about data is that it replaces guesswork with facts and gives these corporates reliable answers, clear directions and predictable results. The not-so-great thing is that it replaces personal expertise and human intuition with cold hard math, a process that arts administrators who’ve built their careers on creative management practices might have trouble getting used to. Big data often has a negative connotation in the arts, a field where emotion and personal choice are highly valued. But does going with your gut necessarily lead to a more innovative arts organization?

Recently, arts administrators are taking advantage of the data revolution and gradually forming several predictions towards the whereabouts of arts.

Arts organizations should seize on big data opportunities and use them to improve their efficiency and build vibrant communities of interactive participants or supporters. This will help them generate more earned revenue, more individual contributions and larger, more avid support systems, thus giving themselves a better chance of surviving as audiences for traditional art forms continue to diversify.

Many organizations that embrace big data, however, use it to send traditional marketing messages to wider audiences and will probably fail to fully maximize their opportunities. Mining data to find more people who are willing to respond to half-century-old messages is a zero sum game, but the arts industry has a well-established history of neglecting to update its strategic message content. History also suggests that some organizations will consider data an end rather than a means. The goal of using data is to identify individuals with whom organizations can forge deeper, more meaningful human relationships, but many arts organizations will be satisfied with initial transactions and treat new customers as data clusters rather than as individuals. We do this now with small data. Big data will simply compound the efficiency with which we separate the humans who work in arts organizations from the humans who consume artistic products.

In the era of big data, many arts leaders are likely to find that their personal opinions, anecdotal observations, favorite styles, or even final executive decisions are not necessarily relevant contributions to the marketing process. That’s because data is asking art orgs to focus on professional, quantitative bottom line-driven strategies. Ultimately, data will end up being a temporary fix. A mining process that extracts leftover gas and oil from spent wells; data can only help managers squeeze more productivity out of a finite resource. Audiences for traditional art forms are likely to continue their decline and no amount of analytics will enable these orgs to manufacture new demand.

As to audience engagements, some administrators are predicting that audiences are diminishing largely because currently, many art orgs fail to make direct, meaningful, personal, human connections with the younger, more culturally diverse people on whom our futures depend. Hence, under the concept of “Big Data”, arts managers may be able to use data to make more efficient contacts with audiences, but if they fail to immerse themselves in their cultures and just let managers be influenced by the audience, they probably risk having used the whole investment in big data for the smallest of returns. The best outcome would be, art orgs have better ideas of audience through data; at the same time, they can leverage the information they gained and lead the audience.

Today we consider our first option, Artful.ly, from Fractured Atlas. Self-described as “a simple, elegant way to keep track of events, people, and your everyday work,” this online system is designed to facilitate and manage ticket sales, track contributions (cash and in-kind), and store personal contact information for each individual with whom your organization interacts. Its ticket-selling and fundraising functions work on an organization’s existing website, creating a streamlined interface for the user rather than navigating away from the organization’s site in order to complete the transaction. And Artful.ly’s recent integration with MailChimp allows individual email addresses and communication history to now be stored in the same patron record alongside sales, donations, and personal information.

For the nano-nonprofit, the chief attraction of Artful.ly is likely to be its price. Structured as six modules (“kits”),  Artful.ly is free to install, and three kits—People Management, Free Event Ticketing, and MailChimp Integration—bear no cost to use. The remaining kits—Paid Event Ticketing, Charity Donations, and Sponsored Projects (for organizations that receive fiscal support from Fractured Atlas)—incur processing fees for each transaction. The customer is charged a $2 handling fee per ticket, and Artful.ly deducts a 3.5% credit card processing fee from the base amount of each sale. So for a paid event with a ticket price of $10, the customer pays $12, Artful.ly receives $2, the credit card company receives $0.35, and the organization receives $9.65.

In addition to being cost-friendly, the nano-nonprofit will likely appreciate the accessibility of this online solution. Situated in the cloud, multiple users can link to the organization’s account, which can be accessed from any online device. For the small or beginning enterprise without a permanent physical office or still in the process of obtaining personnel, this flexibility translates into critical ease of use. Similarly, while a short piece of code is provided by Artful.ly to install its sales and donation widget onto an organization’s website, nano-nonprofits without a unique website can utilize those features by directing patrons to a hosted online storefront.

The caveat for nano-nonprofits considering Artful.ly is the system’s relative newness. Launched in September 2011, Artful.ly is still in beta mode, and while the status of requested fixes and features is updated regularly, limitations exist. An example: Data can be easily imported as CSV from existing systems, and Artful.ly will automatically match records by email address to merge duplicate patrons. However, the user is left to manually merge any other duplications that exist and because patron records cannot be sorted alphabetically, visually scanning for potential duplicates is a challenge.

The good news is that Artful.ly incorporates substantial arts industry feedback into its design and is extremely prompt in responding to customer inquiries. When we inquired about the inability to delete actions entered in an individual record (eliminating the option to correct data entry mistakes), we received thorough and thoughtful replies, suggesting that nano-nonprofits requiring technical support will find ample assistance.

Finally, potential users should know that Artful.ly is in the culminating phase of a significant redesign of its People Management module, which will address several existing limitations as well as add the ability to include social media handles, lifetime value, and prioritized actions to individual patron records. In the meantime, a “dummy” account may be a useful way for nano-nonprofits to experiment with Artful.ly to determine if this inexpensive, online system is a good fit for its organizational needs.

Coming up next: Patron Manager

But for the fast facts…

Who: The National Gallery of Denmark (Statens Museum for Kunst) and 11 additional Danish art museums.

What: HintMe is a shared mobile platform with the aim of opening up museums’ collections by making content re-useable and freely sharable. At the same time, the platform has the potential to increase user engagement with the museum, its artwork, and between visitors themselves. Here is why it is brilliant: HintMe makes use of an existing platform, Twitter, and a style of communication that has become increasingly familiar and popular, the hashtag. #sohotrightnow

Users can access HintMe on their mobile device to comment on a work of art in the gallery or read what others have said. Users can participate and engage with the shared content, giving each work of art a “human” voice. Not only is this content valuable for the museum, but it also offers a creative way for visitors to participate with the collection. The project provides proper “scaffolding” so users feel confident enough to participate- they understand and are familiar with the platform, the purpose of the mobile tool, the rules, and their options. Because of the platform, HintMe is inclusive, not exclusive, allowing all types of participants to engage- from those who want to contribute to the conversation and #hashtaglikecrazy to those who prefer to read the content others have generated.

When: Now. It is currently a pilot project. Though Beta tests and suggestions from users, the museum continues to discover opportunities to enhance the existing platform. They are open to feedback on how to improve the user experience.

How: HintMe uses the “open” collection model. Works of art have open licenses and can be shared freely and re-used. In order to encourage dialogue between museum visitors regarding pieces in the gallery, HintMe uses Twitter’s API. While in front of a painting, a viewer can access, read and respond to the comments of visitors past and present.

Thoughts on the case? On opening up collections and making content re-usable? #GetAtUs #TechInTheArts

Featured Image Photo Credit: Rikke Baggesen

Spoiler alert: I can - the Rijksmuseum.Yes, I am on a Rijksmuseum kick.

In honor of the Rijksmuseum’s gorgeous restoration, let’s talk about how an art museum with an extensive traditional collection can successfully leverage good website design. I would argue that a contemporary or modern collection is not a prerequisite for an engaging website.

The Rijksmuseum is no stranger to blending their historic values with modern aesthetics. Their renovated space presents the collection in an entirely new way – with only Rembrandt’s The Night Watch returning to its original position. This aesthetic is also clearly visible on their website.

The Rijksmuseum website is sophisticated, functionality wise (we’ve talked about how great Rijksstudio is before). The look is stylish yet mature, and appropriate for the collection it reflects (highlights of which appear in a rotating banner on the landing page). The three navigation bars convey appropriate and necessary information in a simple layout that does not feel simplistic. Perhaps the only criticism I can offer is a lack of centralized navigation – there’s no one location for all the links on every page. But, I am an adult and can use the back button and found the page easy to navigate.

Even as the renovation of the Rijksmuseum is an even further return to “tradition” – original ceiling arches have been restored, the original mosaic floors uncovered – their website stands as a wonderful example of what a museum website should be. It’s easy to navigate, visually appealing, and represents who the museum really is. So check it out – and if you’re in Amsterdam, get tickets to their reopening, April 13, 2013.

Can you think of any other museums with great websites?

“Inspiration came from the idea of viewing the patient journey as a ‘Nature Trail’, where the hospital walls become the natural canvas, with digital look out points that reveal the various ‘forest creatures’, including horses, deer, hedgehogs, birds and frogs, to the passerby.”

The LED panels were placed at various, low-level heights throughout the hallway. The light patterns, along with the wall paper, create the effect of movement through the forest. At low heights, the display is accessible to young patients, aged 1-16 years old, allowing them to move with the animals and engage with the magical lights. The aim of the ‘Nature Trail’ is to distract young patients from their upcoming operations and to temporarily relieve them from their anxieties.

This project is exemplary for a number of reasons: it is an innovative implementation of affordable technology in an existing environment; it creatively services and meets the needs of its target audience; it reflects a strong relationship and thoughtful collaboration between a designer, the participants, and a philanthropic organization; and it offers a replicable model, not only for hospitals.

The first installment aired on March 6th with a discussion of how to teach engaging online courses with the Director of Digital Learning from the Museum of Modern Art. For a schedule of upcoming talks, additional details on the discussions, to post a question to be answered or to comment, visit Google’s event page.

And secondly, this:

The next Google Art Talk will be held today, March 20th, at 8pm ET from the National Gallery in London (the last talk was just over one hour long). If you miss it live, you can view it afterward on Google Art Project’s YouTube channel. Tune in and let us know what you think of the quality of the discussion and forum.

One of the examples lies in the jewelry industry.  The jewelry designers are rethinking their manufacturing practices, using state of the art computer software programs for designs that they would have done by hand previously. The reason why traditional methods are left behind is these computer-assisted designs can be produced faster and cause a proliferation in the market.

Though the technology of Computer-assisted design (CAD) sounds familiar to most people, it is very unique for designers to apply the CAD technology to the production of art pieces and enhance their market values. In this field, CAD describes the process of creating a technical drawing with the use of computer software, which could assist in the creation, modification, analysis or optimization of a design. There are options such as “Emerald Builder,” “Cluster Builder,” “Bezel Builder” and additional palette tools to construct jewelry features onto an evolving, three-dimensional design. After rendering an intricate piece of virtual jewelry, the software can also display how it would look in different materials, such as silver, gold or platinum, with rubies, or sapphires or garnets. Even when using CAD or Matrix programs, the designer can add handmade touches at any point in the process, so that each piece is unique, or slightly irregular, or possesses a rough, or human, look and feel.

This may sound like computers, or at least computer programmers are taking over the art design world. But the traditionalists still don’t give up. While CAD can offer structural advantage to some pieces, the designer needs to know how to set and place various bits, whether using CAD or working by hand, so the art piece does not fall apart. As for jewelry’s charm, much of that is the result of an artist’s imagination and original design, which may or may not be enhanced by a computer screen, depending how fanciful or practical the piece may be.

Technology can make all of this happen. It will facilitate the production and the relentless march of computer-assisted technology could drive down the value of the art pieces because there is more supply than demand in the market. As the art and content becomes less and less commercially and economically viable, it can support fewer artists. As this happens, talented artists will enter other pursuits and endeavors with the original arts’ nostalgia. They keep thinking a question.

Are arts dying? Is technology killing them?

Barbara Becker, in her research paper of “On the Relationship between Art and Technology in Contemporary Music” gives her point. She said, “Certain preconceptions need to be dropped in order to allow for a creative use of technology in art today. The artist should not any longer be regarded as the sole source of artistic ideas but may appear as a mediator in the attempt to articulate them aesthetically. This leads to a different approach towards technology and appears to be the prerequisite for its creative potential to become accessible.” The technological possibilities could be explored in a playing manner in order to guarantee that they can be integrated into the artists’ expressive repertoire. Becker thinks this way of employing technology may result into a richness of nuances and a diversity that is in clear opposition to the technological habit of mind ruling our present culture.

Artists have been fascinated with robot capabilities, such as manipulation and locomotion, because of their precision and speed. Industrial robot arms have been programmed to draw, or to perform with dancers. There is also a growing interest in human-like robots and insect-like robots. In recent years this interest has heightened with robotics and associated technology being represented in many contemporary works of art. Arts technology is maturing and becoming an integral part of everyday life. Reciprocally, robotic art is pushing the frontiers of robotic research in many new directions processes, which is narrowing the socio-cultural gulf between the technologies and its end users, the society at large.

In a reversal of common belief and expectation, the boundaries of technological applications appear to be pushed not so much by relevant science or engineering but artists. One example is certainly the social virtual reality of Second Life, which was explicitly created to mimic the Metaverse described in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash. A leading role for art is also evident in human-centered robotics. When it comes to fathoming the depths and shallows of our future dealing with our new companion, the robot, artists have jumped the queue ahead of technical and commercial realization and have introduced robots into our lives. While there is an abundance of fiction literature and movies with robots as protagonists, here we refer to the performance art that have integrated robots in some way or another in their performances or even made the robot the work of art itself.

A good example is the enduring reappearing robot human symbiosis in the work of Australian performance artist, Stelarc. In such manners, artists ask questions about the future directions of robotics before the field itself might have become aware of them and have also envisioned robots that are yet to come. Another example lies in Carnegie Mellon University, which has launched arts-based robotics program
to increase technical literacy in the Pittsburgh region for four years. This establishment not only encourages individual efforts to connect art concepts with artificial intelligence, but also emphasizes educational and creative opportunities in robotics.

The CMU party, which we gave the tongue-in-cheek name Innovation City: Tomorrow’s Destination… Today, was co-hosted with the Pittsburgh Technology Council, and we used the late night event as an opportunity to showcase our city’s rising position in the modern U.S. economy. Pittsburgh was recently named by the National Venture Capital Association as one of the top cities for tech startups.

Distinguished service professor and director of the CIO Institute at CMU’s Heinz College Ari Lightman and I were on WESA 90.5’s Essential Pittsburgh last week talking about SXSW and the Pittsburgh party. You can listen to our interview online to learn more.

Listen Now >>

There were a few dominating trends at SXSW this year, one of which was an emphasis on hardware. This is unusual for a conference historically focused on software and mobile applications. Probably the most buzzed-about tech this year was the MakerBot Replicator 3D Printer, a desktop device that literally turns a 3D design into an actual, plastic item. (Allow me to offer a quick humblebrag, because we had three MakerBot Replicator 2 machines at the Innovation City party, courtesy of Pittsburgh’s new TechShop location.)

Geek heaven.

This was definitely the year of home 3D printing at SXSW. Sure, you’ll shell out more than $2,000 if you want a top-end device like the Replicator 2.0 (and more for the software required to create your designs), but when you think about the possibilities for artists and arts organizations, that’s really not breaking the bank. For instance, an artist could digitize his or her sculptures and sell scaled down versions at gallery shows.

Another supercool highlight of SXSW 2013 that had me geeking out was the Leap Motion controller, which employs hand and finger gestures for computer interaction. Remember in the movie Minority Report when Tom Cruise’s character waved his hands and moved things around on a transparent screen? Well, this is… not exactly like that, but we’re getting closer. The Leap Motion controller opens up a new world of opportunity for digital modeling and computer gaming. The elimination of physical devices like the mouse and keyboard is also great news for germaphobes!

Check out the Leap Motion controller in action:

Finally, I want to draw attention to a presentation I attended that was a bit off the beaten SXSW path. Katie Hill and Scott Stulen gave a truly engaging and inspiring talk, #catvidfest: Is This the End of Art?, about the Walker Art Center’s first ever Internet Cat Video Film Festival. More than 10,000 people showed up for the Walker’s festival, which was held in an open field beside the art center last summer. In fact, the event was part of the Walker’s “Open Field” initiaive, which is a summer endeavor that was launched as a relaxing and creative “gathering place.”

Through the cat video festival, Hill and Stulen made a very important point — even in our modern world of on-demand entertainment and online communities, we still crave physical interaction. The Walker has found an inventive and hilarious way to comment on modern “art” in this YouTube era, while taking the online offline and bringing people together in celebration of a common interest.

I encourage you to take a moment to read this piece from Jezebel by Madeleine Davies, who initially intended to rip the Walker’s Internet Cat Video Festival to shreds through online mockery. Davis discovered that “we’ve gotten to the point in which people gathering together and celebrating something positive is considered lame.”

Read the full Jezebel article >>

Speaking of cats, Mashable was at SXSW offering the opportunity for attendees to have their picture taken with the Internet’s famous Grumpy Cat. People waited longer than 3 hours. Seriously.

Grumpy Cat did not approve.

I’d love to hear from some of you. Are you using 3D printers, or have you experienced any cool artistic uses of them? Do you have ideas for the Leap Motion in your organization? And are cat videos art? Would you wait in line for hours to have your picture taken with a cat?

Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Painting Portal is connected to a set of public domain images of classic paintings, hosted by WikiMedia. The app acts as a “portal” to these images, and allows users to view and peruse them at their leisure. The app has four general “modes”, so to speak. The Home screen, a Catalog, Information, and the Game modes. Unfortunately, there are no in app instructions, but most functions are fairly intuitive. There is a Tutorial Video on their website, but if you’re playing on your iPad, it is hardly convenient to close the app and pull that up.

The Short Version:

The App: Painting Portal, $6.99 from the App Store

The Good: Great learning tool, featuring a diverse load of classic paintings and easy search functions. Game creates instant flashcards and is a great study tool for art history nerds.

The Bad: Doesn’t allow searches by painting style, lacks instructions, and isn’t the flashiest app out there.

The Verdict: My complaints are nitpicky – if you need a great art history study or teaching tool, or just love to learn, this app is for you. It’s a great resource.

The Home screen exists for viewing images. Users can bookmark specific images, zoom in and out, and play a slideshow of them from here.

The Catalog is where it gets real. Users can search for a painting or painter, or, if they have no practical knowledge (like me), search from a bevy of options. Users can search from paintings by date range, country of origin, or painter. The date range function is nice because it breaks it down by century, and also into 25 year increments for the more discerning user. A small preview image appears on the screen when the painting is selected – clicking it takes the user back to the home screen, where they can zoom, bookmark and create slideshows.

After selecting a painting, users can hit the Information tab. This tab brings up Google results for the painting or painter, and users can easily switch between the two. It’s an easy and quick way to get more info on a piece, without requiring a curated expertise by the app creator. It’s smart – and frankly, where I researching these pieces, how I would begin anyways. The Information tab is just saving users a few steps.

The real gem of this app is the game function –  again, without instructions I was a bit perplexed, but it becomes immediately clear that this would be a very useful tool for art history students. The “game” shows the user an image, and asks for the painter, name of the painting, country of origin, and date range that it was created in. A series of multiple choice answers appear for each question, and users have a short amount of time in which to select answers. After each round, the correct answers are displayed, along with a score and an average score for the user overall. Since users can select for the game to only display bookmarked images, it very quickly becomes a set of digital flashcards. A valuable study tool to be sure. I didn’t get a chance to test out the two-player mode, but I imagine it’s similar and would allow for competition between users.

There are a few drawbacks to this tool, besides the aforementioned lack of instructions. It’s not a very pretty app, with a very utilitarian design – but this demands the question of form versus function, and there’s no doubt in my mind that its functionality is far more important. Of course the paintings in the app only extend to 1925, again because of public domain usage, so those seeking later works are out of luck. The only real functionality improvement I can think of would be if paintings could be searched by style. Since styles usually correlate to the date of creation, I can see why it would be left out, but it would be a much easier search if I could call up all the impressionist paintings in one query.

Overall, it’s a good app. It runs smoothly, and I found it easy to understand once I was inside. It would make a great study tool for students and teachers alike. It’s available from the App Store for $6.99 now.

When most people conjure the image of a gamer they generally think of the past:  a nerdy 18-25 year old male, probably white.  The face of gaming has changed significantly over the last twelve years and now both men and women, young and old, and people of all races are engaged in games on a regular basis.  Simply put, almost every conceivable group of people is now engaged in gaming, just not all groups are engaged in all types of gaming.

According to a report put out in 2012 by the Entertainment Software Association, the average American households have at least one dedicated gaming consul, PC, or smartphone and 49% of US households have an average of two.  Roughly a third of game players in the US  are over the age of 36, one third are between the ages of 19 and 35, and the remaining third are 18 and under (meaning that two thirds of gamers in the US are adults and that the average age of a game player in the US is 30!)  Also, gender wise game players are now split evenly with 47% of all electronic gamers being women.

“What we are seeing in games is art at a world class stage design that is almost unmatched anywhere else.  It has been very exciting to me to see so many ideas that integrate social good and efforts to make the world a better place through games.”  -Al Gore, former Vice President of the United States

The way in which people are engaging with games is changing.  Console gaming (Microsoft X-Box, Sony Playstation, and Nintendo Wii) has been on the decline over the last couple of years while social media gaming and mobile device gaming has been on the increase.  Similarly board gaming has also been on the rise (according to the 2011 US Census section on Arts, Recreation, and Travel) for the last twelve years with the explosion of number and quality of titles and has drawn increasing numbers of ‘board game geeks’ who wish to connect with people in person in the face of an increasingly electronic world.

So who plays games?  What games do they play?  Electronic gaming wise, women tend to skew towards games like The Sims (which is the “World’s Biggest-Selling Simulation Series”, and “Best Selling PC Game of All Time”), dance and fitness games, and social media gaming.  Men tend towards first person shooters, strategy games, and sports games.  Both men and women tend to engage in role playing games in roughly equal numbers.  In the board gaming world less information is out there about consumption and engagement but it can be assumed, somewhat safely, that similar propensities exist throughout different platforms.

How can the arts harness this?  As arts groups such as The Tate, The Royal Opera, Jacob’s Pillow, and other groups explore game like content and applications they can use this data to fine target the apps they create towards market segments.  As an industry, any arts group can use a game dynamic in order to drive deeper engagement in marketing or development.  Activities such as the Glass Hunt on the Oregon Coast have proven successful at driving interest in art through a game layer, in this case, a scavenger hunt.  Other groups such as 2am theatre have used applications such as scavengr to drive similar efforts in a combined physical and electronic fashion.  In the arts, a typical marketing campaign has a one way thrust:  “buy tickets, come see our show”.  With games, can be enticed to have longer involvement time-frames and be induced to repeat engagement.

Has your organization explored the possibility of using a game dynamic?  Was it through social media, an app, or through an old school scavenger hunt?  What did you find successful?  What were your challenges?  This series will continue in two more weeks with an exploration of how to approach game design, test games, and implement them.  If you have questions regarding this topic or any others please ask them in the comments section!

The aim of Libro express is to increase accessibility of the city’s libraries for those too busy to frequent the brick-and-mortar structure. It does so by offering a selection of books in a vending machine on Platform 1 of the city’s main train station, Cercanías de Sol. It operates 7 days a week and is completely automated. The vending machine stores 135 books (popular titles) which can be accessed, selected, and taken out using its touch screens. Readers can browse the titles while standing at the machine or take one of the fliers nearby, catch their train, read through the listed titles, and select a book on their way home. Train riders can take out a book with their Bibliometro card, library card or Community of Madrid identity card (DNI).

The books have a 15-day lending period at which time they can be returned to the machine, renewed online or renewed at the machine for an additional 15 days. It offers a number of user-friendly services such as a receipt function to confirm the return of a book, a telephone and e-mail hotline to use in the event of an issue with the machine, and the option to renew titles online.

Within its first twelve months, more than 3,500 users borrowed over 10,000 titles from Libro express. Statistics from its first year indicate that 65% of the users borrowed a book using their DNI. This data suggests the majority of users are not habitual library patrons. As such, the lending machine did in fact meet its intended aim to make reading and books more accessible to Madrid’s working and commuting population- those without the leisure time to browse through the library’s stacks.

Why Madrid? According to a 2011 study on the Reading and Book Buying Habits in Spain, 34.6% of Madrilenians read on public transit, compared to the national average of 16.6%. Additionally, 70.2% of Madrilenians read in their free time, compared to the national average of 57.9%.

The Community of Madrid offers additional library-extension programs, reaching over 140,000 users who borrow more than 750,000 titles.

A number of similar projects have sprung up in Canada and the United States. We want to know who is using one and if it has been successful in increasing library patronage and readership.

Photos courtesy of: Elena Delgado Castro at the Consejería de Empleo, Turismo, y Cultura

Recent years have seen a burgeoning of Constituent Relationship Management systems (CRMs), about which a wealth of literature is available. But what data options exist for the smallest of artistic enterprises, those organizations in the early years of operation, with annual budgets under $60,000, and/or having a paid staff of 5 persons or fewer (if not entirely volunteer-run)? For these nano-nonprofits, what resources are most suited to their size and scope of operations?

Over the next 6 to 8 weeks, we will explore several CRM options through the specific lens of the nano-nonprofit, considering particular needs, constraints, and advantages of artistic organizations of that size. As we do, we invite readers to comment on what systems, if any, their small organizations use and what they most need help figuring out how to do.

Perhaps you’re one of the nearly half of all small and mid-sized organizations that store patron information in 4 or more places: Excel sheets, Word documents, the backs of money envelopes…the memory of your founder:

Source: Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council

Maybe the “Constituent Chaos” quadrant of Paul Hagen’s Relationship Matrix is all too familiar:

Source: Paul Hagen, Idealware, May 2006

Or maybe you’re still trying simply to capture the names and addresses of those who attend your events, ticketed or otherwise.

Whatever the current state of your patron information, the first step is to figure out what it is your organization seeks to accomplish. Who are your constituents? What do you want to know about each one? What type of support do they need? How do they attend events? Do you provide physical tickets? Where is patron information currently kept? Or is it? Who is in charge of maintaining those files? Are they digital or physical, stored on a hard drive or in the cloud?

If the task seems overwhelming, take heart. The small size, and often relative newness, of nano-nonprofits ideally positions them to take advantage of CRM potential. Institutional memory is young and easier to access; pertinent data are, typically, of a manageable proportion; and operational capacity is more agile compared to that of larger, established endeavors. All of these factors make it the perfect time for a small enterprise to get its information house in order. So come with us as we navigate the data jungle, and attempt to discern best practices for the artistic nano-nonprofit in the process.

“Most nonprofits have a ton of text, which is great information, but isn’t needed.”

- 2012 Millennial Impact Report

Now I’m not saying you need to run out and grab a Susan Sontag book, but we do need to discuss our current visual culture. The powers and nuances of the internet have become extremely sophisticated – and the same is true for visually-based social media. What do I mean by that?

A visually-based social media is one where videos or pictures are the main form of communication. Facebook may have extensive photo sharing capabilities, but that’s not really what you use Facebook for, right? There are so many other things that Facebook can do. The trend we’re currently watching, however, is the emergence of social media devoted to visual. That’s why Pinterest is popular, why Facebook bought Instagram, and why Vine has literally exploded on the scene.

If you’re unfamiliar with Vine, it’s the new video sharing service from Twitter. Users can share six second video clips – it’s fun, kitschy, and literally did not exist when I started writing this article. Twitter is a social media that is based on the written word, if only in 140 character increments. I think the development of Vine is a real sign that there is a demand for a way to communicate visually. Spektrix has an entire post about the possibilities of arts marketing with Vine.

Not only do users flock to these new visual tools, they’re furious when these tools are taken away from them. For example, the explosion that shook the net when Instagram disabled its Twitter card. Essentially, Instagram photos no longer appear in Twitter streams, now users have to follow links to see the images. What’s meant to drive traffic to Instagram is really only infuriating people who want what they want and they want it now.

This is not a radical idea for internet users, either. Almost half of internet users create content, picture or videos, and post them online. A Pew report about visual media as social currency refers to these people as “creators”. Additionally, the report found that over 40% of users share or repost images online with their networks. The report referred to these users as “curators” – which is another whole issue – but whether they’re “curators” or “aggregators” these individuals can be a powerful force on the web.

Take George Takei for example. Most of you probably know what I mean – either you or someone you know follows him on Facebook or Tumblr and shares or likes his posts. For those in the dark, George Takei, of Star Trek Fame, has found a unique niche on Facebook as an aggregator of memes. Three and a half million fans hang on his every post, which has allowed him to craft a book deal and champion personal causes. His posts are so popular that Facebook Stories, which profiles people using Facebook “in extraordinary ways”, created these marvelous visualizations of how some of Takei’s posts spread over a three month time span.

And all he does is post funny pictures – usually with a short witty pun or line introducing the piece. And in true internet fashion, most memes do have writing on them. It’s important to recognize that pictures can be meaningless if they do not have text attached to it. Images need credit and context to be relevant to your audience, to draw them in.

This is especially important if you’re looking to capture the Millennial or younger demographic. The number of “curators” on the net jumps to 52% when you look at those aged 18-29.

Why should you, the hypothetical nonprofit organization care about that demographic? It’s something I’ve said over and over and one of the greatest ignored facts – the Millennial generation is one that likes to donate. 75% of them did, in 2012.  They like to learn about non-profits and donate to non-profits online.

So maybe you should start speaking their language: which is entirely visual. Here’s some tips to help you get started:

3 Easy Tips for Non-profits

Lead with the picture

• I know it seems obvious, you’ve heard it before, and you probably already do it, but a picture will be the first thing that entices someone to your content. Also consider the importance of page breaks with your posts. A few lines of text gives your readers context and pulls them in, then hit them with a “read more”.

Consider a visual social media

• Is your organization on Pinterest? What about Instagram or Vine? If you’re using Facebook, Twitter or a blog to share pictures, you may be able to integrate more visual elements into your social media strategy.

Recognize your Curators and your Creators

• You’re probably tracking the buzz created by your posts, but who’s creating that buzz? Obviously it’s important to recognize those who share your work with their networks – and who’s sharing work back with you. It’s good to show these devoted folks love, especially when it relates back to your organization.

Is your nonprofit using visual social media in an interesting way? Why isn’t your organization making the choice to do so? Is it ironic I wrote an entirely text post on how important pictures are? Leave a message in the comments below or tweet us, @techinthearts!

An engineer who had the opportunity to try out the Google Glass released a video showcasing how she will use Google Glass in the future:

The tech giant has set up a competition on Twitter and Google+ to explore potential ways to use the new product and give some lucky winners the shot at owning a pair of Google’s glasses. “We’re looking for bold, creative individuals who want to join us and be a part of shaping the future of Glass” writes Google. If you didn’t think Google Glass may could impact Arts Management, you sure might after reading the following 10 interesting ideas posted @Twitter #ifihadglass :

• I would use it to show people how I make it through life and do to work on my art,missing my right arm.
• I’d treat the world as my canvas; I’d share the art that is the human experience, and rejoice in music, travel, life and love!
• I would record the process start to finish as I make new pieces of art.
• I would show the galleries and art exhibits for others to see the art if they don’t have time, and the art scene in San Francisco.
• I’d give free guides to tourists explaining the history and meaning of obscure pieces of art.
• I would like to use google glass in Art museums to pull up all information and references for each artwork I viewed
• I would be excited to test potential uses for museums, immersive experiences and digital learning about art, culture, history.
• Analytics and Art. Figuring out what parts of the day my brain drops from memory, where its focusing, and why.
• Explore the combination of the virtual and the real through performance art. Collaborate with fellow artists through what I see.
• If I had glass, I would redesign the way that we shoot videos and take photography, helping viewers immerse themselves in art.

One of the most amazing impacts of Google Glass would be that Google Glass  has the ability to offers a new perspective for audiences to appreciate art—from an artist’s perspective. Google Glass enables an artist to record and show the whole process of making an artwork, offering opportunities for audiences to watch every minute change the artist makes in the work. Imagine this, if Van Gogh had recorded his process from start to finish when he was painting “Sunflower”, how amazing it could be if his audience saw how Van Gogh mixed colors, sketched on canvas, drew lines, or grabbed a painting brush. Everyone is likely to think as an artist if he/she could watch the birth of an artwork from an artist’s eye. I believe that by appreciating artworks from an artist’s perspective, audiences will be moved and surprised by details that cannot be seen from the final artwork, or noticed from curators’ words, since the power of art lies in the creation process more than the final “product”.

In this high-profile conversation between the art world and the information technology world, Antonelli and Crossan essentially represent their very message: to build a bridge between those seeking answers in the deluge of cultural data online with those who have the story or answer to tell, and to give greater meaning to culture and art in the physical world by creating a life for them in the digital world.

If you, or anyone you know, is considering Tweet Seats, you should really read this post. It’s a great look at what happened when Tweet Seats were implemented for performances at the University Musical Society. I’m especially fond of the black “tweet boxes” provided to tweeting patrons to hide the glow of their phone.

Try and take some time this weekend to think, if my organization were going to implement Tweet Seats, how would be do it? And read the full post here.

——— Mark Zuckerberg

Have you ever thought to yourself, “I wonder who has gone bungee jumping, lived in New York, and eats Japanese food? ” A new feature “Graph Search” announced by Facebook on January 15 enables users to discover new connections by searching the interests, location, and preferences of their friends.

Graph Search could be a new social element to arts marketing. Imagine, arts managers can easily understand the audience’s preferences of artworks by searching terms like “What exhibitions did the page fans go to in 2012?” “Which artists do my page fans like? ” Preference information helps arts managers figure out the potential audience for a new show, an effective marketing plan to attract the target audience, and an appropriate objective of an arts event. More importantly, the Graph Search allows arts marketers to identify the characteristics of target audience by finding their photos of a CD or interests associated with a specific genre of music. “A person’s music preference tells what kind of person she/he is,” said Psychology Professor Adrian North, who found surprisingly tight similarities between music genre and personality. The in-depth insights of target audience’s personalities could also help development professionals to cultivate relationship with donors in a more personal way.

From the audience’s perspective, the Graph Search could help them discover like-minded friends and create new groups. Given art is an expression of the human condition, the most intelligent sources of information about desired experiences come from people’s friends rather than web searching engines. Google may tell the information about an exhibition while Graph Search helps you find the right person to go to a show with. For example, if you like contemporary art while most of your friends do not, you could easily find like-minded friends by searching “People who like contemporary art and live nearby”; consequently, a new group will be created to share your experiences about contemporary arts.

Even as an early product, Graph Search shows a completely new way to get information on Facebook. It could have an increasing impact on the way we find, consume and share arts.

If you want to start using the new feature, you can sign up for the beta by heading here.

What: A positioning system using LED lights enabled with the capacity to broadcast location data in indoor spaces, in real time, and without WiFi or GPS. Little satellites, if you will.

When: ByteLight tours are offered at the Museum Saturday-Thursday, 10am-4:45pm and Friday, 10am-7:30pm.

Where: the Cahners ComputerPlace at the Museum of Science in Boston

Why: The LED positioning system benefits both museum participants and the museum administration. Firstly, the positioning system can detect a museum goer’s location in the museum and provide additional information on the object, exhibition, or installation the individual is viewing. Secondly, it allows museum administration to access valuable data about patron traffic and engagement with exhibitions-information staff may previously not had been able to collect or collect with such ease. It is a rather tempting technology because for most venues, the infrastructure for ByteLight bulbs already exists. If you have light bulb sockets, then you can have ByteLight. The question is not how to implement  the ByteLight bulbs, but why.

How: See that flash? No? I didn’t either. Within each LED light bulb is a chip that flashes a pattern, pulsing too fast for humans to see but the perfect speed for the camera lens of a mobile device. Users must download the ByteLight application to their mobile device in order to access the technology. The mobile device, such as the iPad in the case of the Museum of Science, picks up the light signal transmitted by the LED bulb and tracks the user’s location with incredible accuracy and speed- within one meter and in less than a second, according to the company. In the ComputerPlace, visitors can borrow one of the Museum’s programed iPads to take a guided tour of the space, to seek additional information on the objects before them, and to discover other installations in the museum of interest. With this new technology, visitors can explore the space they occupy with a heightened sense of place and in greater detail.

A smartphone/tablet device demodulates the visible light signal via the existing cameras. The mobile device then consults a cloud-based server, which maintains an association of light identifiers, content, and physical location. -Bytelight.com

As with any new technology, there are a number of issues museum administrators must address before moving forward and implementing ByteLight. Consider these possible obstacles before pre-ordering your Bytelight Bulbs:

1) Even though this is an “opt-in” technology, how will museum visitors react to the “tracking” feature of the bulbs? Their concerns may include but are not limited to:

Why do you need to know my whereabouts in the museum?

To whom are you selling the data?

Am I being audited by the IRS?

Am I the newest contestant on the Amazing Race?

2) The light signals emitted from the LED bulb will not reach a mobile device located in a visitor’s purse, pocket, diaper bag, backpack (oops here comes security, you almost made it through the museum without storing that bag in a locker).

3) There is no doubt this is a game-changing technology, but does it fit with the museum’s aims, culture, needs, resources, and goals for the visitor’s experience? Will the need for a mobile device in order to access this technology exclude certain patrons?

If these are not concerns, then become a ByteLight backer! ByteLight is currently campaigning. As of today, February 6th, the campaign has 161 backers, 8 days left, and $65,407 to go. The public can pre-order packages of various price levels ranging from a nifty ByteLight t-shirt for $29 to 200 ByteLight light bulbs, the iOS and Android mobile app, and access to the online editor for custom plugins, all for $8,500 (don’t worry, there are other two and three-digit price packages as well).

Dan Ryan, co-founder, writes, “What is exciting about the potential we’re seeing with indoor technology is around engagement.  I think there’s something very interesting about delivering highly relevant digital content that’s targeted to your location. Location based gaming, social networking, photos, and augmented reality are all spaces that can benefit from better contextual awareness enabled by ByteLight.”

While ByteLight certainly offers museum visitors and administrators greater access to information and a more accurate alternative to other location-based services (WiFi and QR codes), it comes at both a hefty price and risk. Is the museum setting a promising environment for this technology? Or should it be marketed toward supermarkets and retailers like Target? Do visitors need digital navigation assistance while wandering through galleries? Have similar systems for providing location-specific information proved successful in the museum setting (think QR codes)? Will museum visitors be motivated to download the mobile application if they have an iOS or Android device? While it is clear museum administrators will benefit from increased data on visitor behavior and traffic, the advantage for museum goers may require a closer look. If you have the chance to test drive the program at the Museum of Science in Boston, be sure to share your opinion with us on Facebook, Twitter, or below.

The Pew Research Center recently did a survey and report about how various arts organizations use technology including the internet, social media, and mobile technology.  The report confirms that the arts are adapting to the overwhelming saturation of technology, particularly the internet and social media, and are venturing into deeper levels of engagement such as blogs, podcasts, and educational content.

The report shows that engagement of technology in the arts organizations that responded is high with 99% of respondents maintaining a website, 97% having a presence on a social media platform, and 72% selling tickets and admissions online.  This is a clear indication that the vast majority of arts organizations understand the intrinsic  value of technology to the arts.

The challenges discussed in the report:  education and funding are present and palpable issues.  According to the study 49% of organizations surveyed sought funding for technology including internet based technology.  Many respondents, according to the report, expressed frustration in finding sufficient funding to keep pace with market shifts and to fund entrepreneurial initiatives.  Furthermore the

Beyond funding there is concern being raised by about half the field that the availability of digital technology is “negatively impacting audience members’ attention spans for live performances”.  A smaller percentage is concerned that digital technology is hurting in-person attendance of arts events or diluting the quality of arts by democratizing distribution of arts.

It is reassuring, however, to see that a large number of arts organizations see technology as an opportunity  first and foremost.  63% of organizations agreed that the internet is important to improve efficiency and 92% say they believe technology and social media have made the arts more participatory and 83% believe that technology has enabled the arts more diverse.  Attitudes towards technology in the arts by arts organizations have made a leap over the last ten years and this will greatly assist in helping the field to adapt to future changes.

What is your organization’s story?  Do you find that most staff are open to the idea of engagement online and through technology?  Do you have resistors to entrepreneurial thought around technology initiatives?  Advocates for them?

As part of the project, Tommasini asked readers to share their own experiences of musical treasure. Overwhelmed by the response (to date, the query has received 875 replies and counting), what followed is a nine-part video and blog series in which Tommasini takes off the hat of critic and dons the role of teacher. Each video dissects one particular musical moment. Seated at his piano, Tommasini plays through the passage in question, simultaneously discussing its musical narrative and highlighting the particular nuances that cause it to grab the listener just so.

Like any fine instructor, Tommasini presents the subject matter with enthusiasm and knowledge. But unlike a lecture from an expert, the relevance of the session is derived as much from the audience as the teacher. Essentially the project asks devotees of an art form to reflect on their devotion. The subject is important not because an expert declares it so, but because the listener does. Tommasini comments in a follow-up essay on December 9 of the passion, intelligence, and clarity with which readers replied. Of the end of Debussy’s Clair de Lune, one writer comments on the change of a single note, resulting in a “subtle change of harmony, like the instant of recognizing first love on a moonlit night.” These moments, though brief, are deeply felt and moreover, personal.

As an engagement tactic, it’s a strikingly simple concept. Ask your current audience what moves them. Nudge them to remind themselves of their passion for what you do. In the process, create a forum for lively conversations to occur and then listen to what is shared. Tommasini’s “Musical Moments” project, of course, is able to utilize the human, financial, and technological resources contained at The New York Times. But with such a fundamental question driving it, we wonder if any arts organizations have taken on similar endeavors. To current arts managers who follow our blog, how does your organization garner feedback from the audience about their motivations for the art form you present? To arts patrons, have you participated in anything along the lines of the “Musical Moments” project? Would you want to?

Image Credit: Jillian Tamaki, Copyright 2012 The New York Times Company.

——Jon Schwartz

Can you believe a six-year-old child is as proficient as you do in Photoshop and blogging? Yes! That is what’s happening at Garrison Elementary School located in Oceanside, California. Jon Schwartz, a blues guitarist and a second grade teacher, creatively uses the blues, blogs and Photoshop, as tools to educate kids. Jon’s teaching endeavors, creativity and energy seem highly relevant to arts engagement opportunities for organizations across the country.

“The Kids Like Blues”

The Kids Like Blues Band Program is about using blues music and lyrics as a springboard for teaching academic content standards in reading, writing, listening, speech, social studies, and the visual and performing arts. Based on a careful song selection, Jon chooses lyrics with the appropriate cadence, imagery, and kid-friendly content. Students then sing out the vocabulary given the rhythm, and in turn practice reading through repetitive and engaging activities. The kids themselves are encouraged to choreograph cool dance moves and motions to help them define and recall complicated vocabulary.

These activities provide children an encouraging and exciting environment that motivates them to learn new knowledge and unleash their creativities. Chuck Berry’s “Let it Rock” is one of the most popular tunes.

Students who are learning English, have speech difficulties or other learning disabilities, and just plain shy kids seem to develop more confidence as they learn the songs since the material presented to them is an engaging group practice, rather than them needing to talk by themselves in front of the whole class.

See how a Japanese girl benefits from the project:

Additionally, both high achieving and struggling students who have made tremendous gains tend to take leadership roles in their enthusiasm generating  creative opportunities, such as designing dance moves, coaching others, blogging the artworks.

See how children create artworks through Photoshop and Blogging:

“Perhaps most importantly, my students’ self esteem is soaring and they are becoming passionate about lessons that would have otherwise been dull..”said Mr. Schwartz.  These strong emotional responses to the arts are exactly what arts education wants to generate in the children, what arts organizations want to generate in their audience and what arts wants to generate in human’s soul.  Mr. Schwartz’s model of creative participation and engagement can be translated to audience engagement models through online groups or onsite post-experience workshops. The opportunities abound for the arts to become as exciting to your audience as they are to these students.

Resource:

You will see all of the articles, TV features and 4 videos on their official website www.kidslikeblues.org

“Marketers looking to get more the most bang for their buck with […] advertising might skip social media altogether” – Lauren Gores (Mashable)

The words stopped my social media manager heart cold – Facebook barely contributed anything to Black Friday sales and I can already hear the complaints now: Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year. Everyone goes shopping on Black Friday. Everyone advertises on Facebook. If Everyone didn’t use Facebook to make purchasing decisions on Black Friday THEY NEVER WILL and we might as well give up now.

I could hear hypothetical red buttons being pushed as non-profits all over the country shut down their social media outreach. I was panicking. But were my fears entirely founded? Could non-profit organizations have a profit-driven relationship with social media, or is it strictly for community engagement?

This matter is irrelevant if non-profits are not using social media. Fortunately, the 2012 Nonprofit Social Network Benchmark Report indicates that nonprofits are extremely present on social media. Ninety-eight percent of the nonprofits surveyed reported they had a presence on Facebook, and 72% maintained a presence on Twitter. This is especially impressive when you consider only 66% of American adults online use Facebook (Brenner) and only 15% of online adults utilize Twitter (Smith). Additionally, nonprofits manage an average of 2.9 pages on Facebook and 1.43 accounts on Twitter (“2012 Nonprofit Social Network Benchmark Report”).

Why are these organizations so aggressively creating spaces for themselves in these realms? The organizations themselves identified marketing and fundraising as the top two purposes for maintaining a social media presence (“2012 Nonprofit Social Network Benchmark Report”). These purposes are separate and not equal, however, as 93% identified marketing as a purpose while only 55% identified fundraising. Most reported that the responsibility for their social media pages fell to the Marketing department in 2012. This was a departure from every previous year, when the task fell to Communications. It is pretty clear that nonprofits feel their social media presences are vital marketing tools in a digital age.

Of course, I should return to the original question – should we panic at the concept of using social media to hawk one’s wares because mega retailers couldn’t hack it on Black Friday? Maybe. IBM reported that Facebook generated only 0.68% of online sales on Black Friday – less than last year’s Black Friday and actually much less than the sales generated on the Friday the week before (a whooping 0.82%) (“IBM 2012 Holiday Benchmark Reports”). Twitter contributed a grand total of 0% of the revenue – that’s not rounding down. That’s just a 0. Additionally, the IBM report also notes that the conversion rate of shoppers was only 4.58%, meaning that less than 5% of Americans who visited a webpage actually purchased anything on Black Friday.

Before anyone actually gives up hope for internet commerce, let’s consider these mysterious Black Friday shoppers. Marketers would have you believe it is Everyone who shops on Black Friday, as a matter of American tradition. This falls a bit short of the truth. A Gallup poll conducted before the actual day shows that only 18% of respondents planned to do any shopping on Black Friday (Newport). The majority of these respondents, 95%, listed the good sales/cheap prices as an “important reason” for their decision to shop on Black Friday. This is consistent with such a low conversion rate – potential shoppers visited webpages to search for deals and if they could not find them, simply left. So the idea of social media advertising being a failure is less true than it first appears: only a small percentage of Americans shop on Black Friday, most who visit a webpage do not purchase anything, so social media could not play a huge role in these sales because there was no huge role for it to fill. Additionally, as a Mashable article on the story pointed out, social ads “are a part of a larger strategy” that move people off their computer and into stores (Mashable).

Which brings me back to the question of whether or not social media should be used to sell things. The non-profits arts community has been considering this question recently as well. The past National Arts Marketing Project Conference (NAMPC) featured a panel on the subject. “Meet Your Customers Where They Live: How to Harness the Sales Power of Facebook” generated a lot of buzz on Twitter as attendees livetweeted the core messages of the panel. Twitter user Katy Peace (@katymatic) suggested the panel “has finally made a compelling case for this FB ticketing app.” Nella Vera (@spinstripes) quoted panelist Lisa Middleton in her tweet, “Lisa Middleton: FB sales for arts will succeed for same reason it failed for other retailers. Buying tix to cultural event is SOCIAL. #NAMPC”. Reinforcing the social element, Facebook profile pictures appear in the seat the user has purchased, creating a holistic, engaging experience.

“Tickets purchased on Facebook show Facebook profile pics in the seats purchased by that person. Brilliant. #NAMPC” – @ASC_CathyB

For me, that’s the rub. Social networks are called “social” for a reason. Social media marketing creates engaged online communities, and engaged communities will support a nonprofit. Only one third of the nonprofits who use Facebook to fundraise utilize individual giving (“2012 Nonprofit Social Network Benchmark Report”). I think there is a real missed opportunity for non-profits to use social media as something more than marketing, and it lies with the few people who are willing to shop on Black Friday.

There is an interesting correlation between the users of social media and Black Friday shoppers. The largest group of respondents (34%) who indicated they would go shopping was ages 18 to 29 (Newport).  Social media usage tends to skew towards younger users as well; half of Facebook and Twitter users fall between the ages of 18 and 35 (49% and 60% respectively) (Hampton). These users fall within the age range of the Millennial generation. Millennials know what they want and are interested in advancing a nonprofit’s mission. The majority (55%) prefer to learn about a non-profit organization through social media and even more (67%) have interacted with a non-profit on Facebook (“The Millennial Impact Report 2012”). Millennials prefer to give donations to non-profits, and an incredible 75% of them gave a financial gift to an organization in 2011.

In theory, this seems like a perfect recipe for success. We have a large population (the Millennials), who likes giving to organizations, and we know how/where they would like to send their contribution. And yet, only about half of non-profits actually fundraise on social media and these efforts are coming from Marketing, not the Development department (“2012 Nonprofit Social Network Benchmark Report”). Where’s the disconnect happening?

Perhaps it correlates to the size of the gifts: Millennials tend to give less than $100 to any single organization (“The Millennial Impact Report 2012”). Many small non-profits may not have the time or resources to invest in cultivating such small gifts. These organizations have to consider the future investment of these individuals, however. Seventy percent of Millennials did give online last year, they prefer to give online, and that probably won’t change any time soon.

At this time, a profit-driven approach to social media is still a fringe idea within the non-profit world. There are options for organizations who want to be on the cutting edge, like ticket sales and fundraising through social media platforms. These ideas, while nascent, have been used to a degree of success by the organizations brave enough to adopt them. For the rest of the non-profit community, utilizing social media as a marketing tool is still a good strategy. And, while it’s disheartening that social media contributed so very little to Black Friday sales, it probably is not relevant.

The catch is that to be eligible to vote, participants must first visit at least five artist studios, which in turn requires that the museum be able to track where people go. The answer is a multiphase project begun this past September and culminating in an exhibit of Brooklyn artists, on display through February 24.

To participate, the museum first asked individuals to register on the GO community project website. Then, over a two-day open studio event involving nearly 1,800 artists in 46 Brooklyn neighborhoods, participants “checked-in” at each studio visited by way of a unique number displayed onsite. By sending that number to the museum either by text message, a free custom iPhone app, or the web, participants documented where they traveled. Those who checked-in at five or more studios received an email with instructions on how to vote, having earned the opportunity to nominate up to three artists. The museum tallied the results, sent two of its curators to review the work of the top ten nominated artists, and selected five to exhibit.

But GO didn’t stop when the voting was done. By asking participants to check-in, the museum was able to analyze how many people went where, when, and what platform they used to check-in, all of which was then shared in a series of posts on both the GO blog and through the Statistics section of the GO website. (Among those findings: Despite multiple mobile-friendly options designed especially for the event, nearly half of the 6,100+ participants chose to simply write down studio numbers throughout the day and check-in via the project website once back home, surprising project coordinators.) The website also provided a forum for participants to discuss (in real time and afterward) what they did and did not like about the process, share stories from their studio visits, learn about nominated artists, receive updates on the creation of the exhibit, and provide reactions to the final exhibit itself.

The exhibit has been criticized by some for not aptly representing the rich artistic quality Brooklyn holds, and is generating commentary on the age-old curatorial question of who should decide what constitutes “good” art. While a worthwhile debate, it seems to belie the larger point of the project: to expose people to the creative process, and ideally, to facilitate a better understanding of it. On that score, GO appears to have succeeded mightily. As project coordinators tagged entries in the Shared Stories section of the website, one of the most frequent themes to emerge was that of discovery. It seems that by opening studio doors, inviting people to participate in the curatorial process, and sharing reactions online, GO fostered meaningful interactions among artists, voters, volunteers, and museum staff, and in the process, created an innovative approach to engage audiences in the arts.

EQ: Andy, you crowdsourced submissions for Looking at the Land. What were your expectations? How did it feel to be completely dependent on the public for their contributions?

AA: I had images in mind that I wanted to include but I’m a big believer in looking outside my own frame of reference for new possibilities. I regularly turn to my online photo colleagues for recommendations and started this project the same way. Since the exhibition is about understanding how contemporary image-makers are using their cameras to respond to the land, it was important to open myself up to serendipity so I could be sure I was seeing as many perspectives as possible. The response was overwhelming — photographers from around the globe submitted more than 5,500 images and I learned about people and pictures I’d never seen before. When you embrace the Internet like this, wonderful things can happen.

EQ: Landscape is a very physical entity, but it is exhibited here in the virtual realm. Does this challenge the meaning of landscape or the physicality of it?

Astoria Pool
Angie Smith
New York
2005

AA: I don’t think so. These are representations — photographic perspectives that describe the American landscape and the way these photographers feel about it. Most of my projects involve digital technologies so the formal qualities of the ‘virtual’ are baked in from the beginning. Looking at the Land is about more than the pictures it presents; it’s about the ideas and experiences that move the people who made them. Early in the process of organizing these images, I interviewed each of the contributing photographers to understand the motivations that drove their work. I realized that these first-person accounts added new meaning to my viewing experience and should therefore accompany the pictures they inspired. We designed the website accordingly, making room to include these stories alongside the images. Some of the responses are quite lengthy; we never would have been able to include these extended conversations in a physical space. I’m interested in experimenting with the web browser as a unique exhibition venue unto itself.

EQ: How did you determine which and how many photographs to exhibit?

AA: This was a relatively arbitrary decision. I always knew the website would be the lasting home for this project but the RISD Museum of Art commissioned a video projection so most of our decisions followed from that assignment. There were few constraints — I set out to show a selection of ‘photographs depicting landscape in the United States since 2000.’ Timing and pace are crucial elements in a video projection so the running length of the final piece determined the final edit. I would have included more images if I could have but I found the restrictions comforting.

EQ: Can you talk about the sequence and arrangement of the photographs?

AA: Sequence is always intentional but in this case, it isn’t driven by a formal narrative or pre-existing structure. This project was very much about crowdsourcing a visual definition of 21st century landscape photography and understanding how the conventions of the tradition are evolving. I’m interested in knowing why people photograph places and what compels artists to make images of the land. Are their intentions similar or different than previous generations? The sequence emphasizes the variety in the content and style of the images — balancing color, composition, and tone — so the pictures play in harmony with one another.

EQ: Viewers have the power to pause, rewind, and fast-forward the exhibition. How does this affect their experience?

AA: The advantage here is that you can literally take the exhibition home with you — so you get to browse it on your own time, at your own pace. I love seeing print exhibitions but I don’t usually get to spend more than a few hours in the room with the pictures. The hope here is that a spectator can linger as long as they like.

Slack Water
Corey Arnold
Gulf of Alaska
2010

EQ: Have you prepared a physical exhibition before? Can you compare or connect the two experiences?

AA: From the beginning, I hoped these images would travel — across the Web and the world. Following the RISD Museum of Art projection we presented a selection of 20 images in print at the FotoWeekDC festival in Washington, D.C. That show was the first time this project was materialized with physical presence and we bridged the online/offline realms by providing a URL with each print that linked to its backstory on the website. I don’t see the two experiences as significantly different but it was extremely novel to be in the room, watching people react to the images. I forget that sometimes — how enjoyable it is to look at pictures in the presence of other people. It’s a very social experience.

EQ: Was this exhibition marketed exclusively online, to complement the medium?

AA: We did print a postcard for the FotoWeekDC show but for the most part we’ve marketed this exclusively online — using email and social media. The advantage of a group show like this is that our eighty-eight contributing photographers all do their part to support the show by promoting to their respective networks. And we designed the exhibition website so that the audience can share the photos/stories they like in their social networks. You can actually deep link to specific photographs and share them on Facebook or Twitter. People keep emailing me with requests for a Looking at the Land book — that might be interesting.

Two Structures
Ian Baguskas
Death Valley, California
2008

EQ: Viewing images online is often a solitary activity, as opposed to physical exhibitions which encourage social interaction. Does online viewing affect the ways in which viewers receive and consume photography?

AA: Absolutely. I worked with a talented design & development team where I live in Madison, Wisconsin and we knew from the beginning that we wanted the digital exhibition to be an intimate experience, like reading a book. I saw the photographer John Gossage speak last year and he called photography books “objects of fascination.” Elegantly designed websites are objects of fascination too. Since more of us are using touchscreen tablets to look at photography online we designed Looking at the Land so it would render beautifully on those devices. You can actually thumb through these images, taking your time, like the pages in a book. I hear lots of concerns about how the Internet diminishes our ability to really pay attention to the photographs we see online. This is our attempt to challenge that notion — to present an engaging, thoughtful photographic experience.

Connect with Andy on Facebook or Twitter if interested in collaboration, promoting a photography project on Flak Photo.com, or to simply touch base with the forward-thinking, game-changing leader of contemporary photography publishing. Always a pleasure, Andy!

Every physical thing in an arts organization from the stage lights to the copier machine to the building itself will eventually fail or need maintenance.  As technology is frequently outdated, technological failures can happen through breakage but also through communications incompatibilities  discontinuation of support from the manufacturer or author, and through failure of a connected system that enables the technology.  There are several different aspects to failure and avoiding additional loss when it happens, indeed many large corporations have entire departments dedicated to failure and maintenance analysis, risk assessment, loss mitigation, and analysis of these issues.

Whether you are looking at a minor failure causing inconvenience or a major failure that endangers lives it is incumbent upon arts managers to minimize risk proportionate to the danger to people, operations, and physical collateral.  Most of the arts sector has a replace it as we go mentality with a budget for facilities and equipment maintenance and replacement.  Some organizations also rely on insurance to mitigate against catastrophic equipment failures.  There are sometimes even departmental or organizational plans and schedules.

If not present already, incorporation of a regular organization-wide facility, technology, and equipment assessment should be a high priority for organizations of any size.  These assessments can then be used to accurately determine how much risk and what type of risk is present and how likely failure will be to happen.  Risk assessment should be given a monetary value that reflects the type and severity of the nature of the potential failure and assigned proportionate weight in budgets.  For instance, a technological failure resulting in a breach of network security can lead to personal information of patrons being compromised and not only effect the finances of your organization but also those of your patrons.

It is not enough to rely on a vendor to determine risk in many situations.  Software companies of all sizes test for security but it is notable how often failures occur.  Vendors are frequently the authors of software, the testers for the products, as well as the salespeople and support staff.  As such it can be difficult to get an unvarnished assessment of the true strength of software from vendor.

To combat this you need to do your research.  When reviewing any new or existing piece of technology, hardware or software it is wise to take a multi-format approach.  Read reviews and talk to colleagues in both your field who are using the product but also those in the software field.  Often times there are chat boards that can also offer illuminating insight as to the strength of software based on or interfacing with another piece of software (such as Apache for databases).  Any system is only as strong as its weakest component and, at an application level, you will be looking at not only the strength of the application but also the operating system that it was written for, their age, and their compatibility with other applications (including operating system based security, application based security, and network security.)

Finding a balance between planning for the future and available money can be a challenge but on the other hand planning for the future can also save your organization money, heartache, and increase efficiency over time.  Nonprofit Technology Network and Idealware both have resources and education for technology planning and can help get you started.  If you have additional resources that you would like for your colleagues to be aware of please post them in the comments!

Please note that actually building a cell phone jammer is against the law in the US and many other countries.  Having said that, Wired recently published instructions for how to create a device that broadcasts disruptive signals on the same frequency that cell phones use to communicate with towers.  These devices would be enough to disrupt a cell phone signal in a mid sized theater, thereby making the cell phone functionally inoperative.

The idea around cell phone jammers isn’t new, but it does call to question whether or not the performing arts community has outgrown this idea of creating a quite, even sacred space for performance.  Innumerable performing arts institutions now give permission, even blessings, to smart phone users in some performances or in certain parts of the house.  Even more, however, still ask patrons to turn off all electronic devices before a show begins.

So, is it time for a cell phone jammer or is it time to bring smart phone seats to your house?

(Image 1)

Some people wondering what could we get from 10 billion pixels? Google Art Project’s pursuit for an extremely high pixel count for each piece ensures audience a high level of exploration experience for artworks. For instance, the Havesters painted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in 1565, gives you a general view on the artwork at the first glance (Image 1). Gradually, you will probably be curious about several detailed part of the paintings. What are people doing in the triangle 1 and triangle 2 areas (Image 1)? As you zoom in triangle 1 area, you will clearly see expressions on each person’s face.(Image 2)  Then you will really want to go deep. As you playing around, you will find something going on over there in triangle 2 area.  As you zoon in the triangle 2 area, you will find that the artist depicted a scene of kids beating something (Image 3). Apparently, it seems to be a quite popular game. After I did a little research on Google, I found this was a game called score which involves in beating the goose with sticks. You see, I learned something from the exploration process for the painting.

(Image 2)

(Image 3)

This high standard of pixels also enables people to observe the details about brush strokes and to see how an artist actually creates the masterpiece. As I deeply go to the favorite part of the painting Starry Night painted by Van Gogh. Interestingly, as I zoomed in, the cracks noticed seemly closer the distance between Van Gogh and me. I’ve never gone into the Starry Night like this before.

Another amazing feature of this project is the collection button. This button enables any one of us to create our own museums online by creating our own collections out of all these images. Moreover, you can introduce your museum to your friends via sending an email and really get a conversation about what your feeling is when going to these masterpieces.

Additionally, we also see some potential values of this project for the arts education field. This could be a great tool for arts teachers to better get to the interpretations of interesting details of the masterpiece in class. For now, the Google Art Project seemly performs well at a technical level. However, from a management perspective, some people doubt its problematic execution? Others concern whether implication of their Art Project is that in the future there will no longer be any need to visit a museum. This is not our focus of this post, but we are curious about your opinion about this project. Leave a comment below!

Andy’s newest success, “Looking at the Land: 21st Century American Views,” is a digital exhibition of 21st Century American Landscape photography. The exhibition, prepared in collaboration with the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, is a discussion (both in photographs and in interviews) with eighty-eight photographers on the practice and meaning of landscape photo-making in the 21st Century. On the website, Andy discusses the current status of the exhibition, including the presentation of twenty of the photographs in physical form at the FotoWeek DC 2012 festival.

Andy and I again had the chance to discuss the themes of photography and online-presenting, but this time focused on the process of organizing a digital exhibition, his experience with crowdsourcing creativity, and his thoughts on the effects of digital projection on viewing. While my full interview with Andy will be posted here on Technology in the Arts soon, I encourage you to view the online exhibition beforehand (available for viewing below).

Check back in next two weeks for more of Andy’s insight on the future of photography, digital exhibitions, and crowdsourcing creativity.