Archives for 2005

It had been so long since I read it, that I had almost forgotten. But a friend reminded me of Garrison Keillor’s short story, ”Jack Schmidt, Arts Administrator,” the other day, and I finally gave it a fresh reading: hilarious, thoughtful, biting, insightful…please go read it if you haven’t. It’s more than 20 years old […]

As consumers, we’ve all been tracked for decades based on what we buy, where we keep our money, what credit cards we use, and what ZIP+4 we live in. We’ve even become used to individual web sites tracking our page choices, visit duration, and viewing sequences (Amazon.com even tells us what else we should buy). […]

Public funding for cultural activities is often either diffuse (spread among many departments) or fairly passive (responding to standard grant requests around conference tables). But the Allegheny Regional Asset District is neither, offering a concentrated chunk of annual cash to regional nonprofits (including cultural organizations), and using the opportunity of that big carrot to demand […]

So many of the rules and filters of social interaction are implicit, never stated out loud. So it’s fascinating to see software developers struggle to carry those rules and filters into virtual communities on the web. Such vague variables as ”authority” or ”trust” — which we silently apply to people around us in the fleshy […]

From the Charity Governance blog comes an admonition to any organization seeking or negotiating a naming gift: include a clause that allows you to remove the name if the future behavior of your donor warrants it: Specifically, the charity should include a ”bad-boy” clause in every agreement or ”letter of understanding” specifying the conditions under […]

The web site They Rule lets users map the interconnections of corporations and board members, suggesting the dense cross-influence of a few people on a lot of money and corporate activity. Cooler still, users can build their own maps to explore different connections (like this one, showing connections between New York Times board members, and […]

In recognition of BlogDay 2005, an initiative to encourage bloggers to recommend other bloggers on August 31, 2005, I’m posting some pointers to other places. To spread the love, I won’t include links to my neighbor ArtsJournal bloggers (except for that one), despite their worthiness and intriguing posts. Instead, I’m suggesting five that might be […]

Researchers at the University of Michigan have some helpful insights if you feel like you’re making less money than your peers…you were likely too short as a teenager. According to their study: Using data from the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and Britain’s National Child Development Survey, [researchers] found that each additional inch of […]

Thanks to Media Influencer, I stumbled on this CNET story on two Beethoven enthusiasts working to explore the unperformed archives of the composer’s work. Says CNET: Mark Zimmer, a tax attorney in Madison, Wis., and Dutch composer Willem Holsbergen are the creators of the Unheard Beethoven Web site, a sprawling digital archive of unfinished, unrecorded […]

For those cultural managers who make every extra effort to provide context, background, depth, and framing around their upcoming productions, in an effort to engage the potential audience with meaning and purpose, this story out of the U.K. will likely drive you mad. The new play by film director and playwright Mike Leigh has sold […]