Friend and colleague Adrian Ellis received a nice profile in the New York Times yesterday, emphasizing his distrust of organizational growth as a sign of success. Instead, Adrian has focused much of his consultancy on providing a ‘reality check’ to organizations considering new buildings, new projects, or new funding initiatives. For some organizations, he’s become […]

It may sound a bit like Wild Kingdom or some Nova special, but more cities and states are hunting and tracking young professionals. As the perceived importance of this link in the economic food chain rises, and the size of the available pool dwindles (thanks to birth rates a few decades back), governments and civic […]

A strange story out of Illinois suggests that charities can have their identities stolen too. According to this article in the Chicago Tribune, the Illinois Attorney General has filed suit against one nonprofit — United Front Inc., and its president Alex Brooks — for reinstating a defunct United Way chapter just to sign over its […]

Copyright counterforce Lawrence Lessig is taking a new approach to revising his 1999 treatise on technology, culture, and regulation, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. For the revision, he’s opening up the original text to public comment, criticism, and editing through a rapidly growing web protocol called wiki. On a wiki web site, visitors not […]

If anyone needed convincing about the depth and complexity of the collective creative experience, a quick visit to Ticketstubs should close the deal. Here’s a collaborative weblog, open to public posts, that simply asks its visitors to scan a favorite ticket stub (to an arts event, sports event, rock show, whatever), and post the image […]

Boston Globe architecture critic Robert Campbell has discovered that major universities are today’s urban planners. As city government planning offices have become underfunded and politically weak, universities have picked up the slack, extending their efforts beyond classrooms and dorms and into multi-use neighborhoods and mixed-use downtown areas. Emerging from a panel on the subject, Campbell […]

In an effort to engage their loyal (and potentially loyal) audiences for an upcoming subscription push, many arts organizations have attempted a ‘season sampler’…a CD full of selections from the music or shows to come, occasionally with an audio track or two from the artistic director, talking about why it will be their ‘best season […]

Faithful readers will notice a whole new look to the weblog starting today. I’ve just switched from our old blog system to MovableType, the up-and-comer in the weblog world. The new system will allow all sorts of new options and opportunities, but most of the benefits are under the hood…making this weblog more compatible with […]

The 2002 merger of the Utah Symphony and Opera is a story worthy of, well, an opera (it’s already the subject of a Harvard Business case study, which is sort of like an opera with financials). Full of intrigue and trials, the merger was intended to shore up and streamline the efforts of the two […]

Financial troubles at the Sydney Dance Company (SDC) and other SOBs (symphony, opera, ballet) in Australia are being laid at the feet of government, at least among some in the arts industry there. Says this article: The financial crisis at the Sydney Dance Company, and the dismal affairs of the three state orchestras singled out […]