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 […]

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 […]