Archives for 2005

I’m still reconstructing my keynote from the Arts Alive conference in New Jersey. I was inspired to rewrite the whole darn thing just hours before, so I have to rework my original draft. My thanks to the organizers for inviting me. And stay tuned for a posted version of my comments. In the meanwhile, I […]

The opening keynote of the New Jersey conference I’m attending was Andy Goodman, a communications consultant to nonprofit organizations with a previous life as a television scriptwriter and radio syndicator. Goodman reminded us of the power and humanity of storytelling when communicating a nonprofit’s message, and he showed painfully familiar examples of how far many […]

I’m in New Brunswick, New Jersey, today and tomorrow for the New Jersey Theatre Alliance conference: Arts Alive! Staying ahead of the curve. I speak at the end of the event tomorrow afternoon, so today I’ll just be lurking and listening. In fact, I’m off to do so right now. More details tomorrow.

My weblog neighbor, Drew McManus, has been slogging through orchestra web sites for his second annual Orchestra Website Review, which this year ranks 80 websites of professional orchestras based on his detailed criteria. This year, he decided to teach an important lesson to symphony marketing departments about the on-line world, specifically, the importance of grabbing […]

Trendwatching.com has a feature on the emergence of the ”minipreneur,” defined as: …a vast army of consumers turning entrepreneurs; including small and micro businesses, freelancers, side-businesses, weekend entrepreneurs, web-driven entrepreneurs, part-timers, free agents, cottage businesses, seniorpreneurs, co-creators, mompreneurs, pro-ams, solopreneurs, eBay traders, advertising-sponsored bloggers and so on. Evidence includes the 724,000 Americans who claim eBay […]

The folks over at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst have an interesting forum topic coming this academic year: The Forum on Social Wealth (thanks to OnTheCommons.org for the link). The program overview states the problem rather well: Our common wealth is endangered. The natural wealth of our ecosystem, the social wealth of our families […]

September 6 was supposed to be the day the U.S. Senate voted on permanently repealing the estate tax — that percentage the federal government takes when folks pass away and pass along more than $1.5 million in assets to their young’ens. The permanent repeal seemed on track until the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, which many […]

Those who still believe that ”policy” is a stale and detached endeavor — the stuff of three-ring binders on dusty shelves in the Human Resource department — should attend the tale of Blockbuster, and the chaos wrought by a single policy change. Back in December 2004, the company announced its bold plan to discontinue its […]

Interesting stuff, as always, from arts market researcher Alan S. Brown…this time in his work with the University of Pennsylvania’s ”Social Impact of the Arts Project,” and their efforts to benchmark cultural participation in and around North Philadelphia. There’s lots to dig through in the final report by project leaders Mark J. Stern and Susan […]

Fred Kirschnit in the New York Post rants about what’s wrong with America’s top conservatories, suggesting they focus on technical excellence over creative voice. Says he: I’m not suggesting that the practical side of the classical music curriculum be ignored, but the conventional conservatory wisdom is so antithetical to artistic excellence as to be positively […]