My friend and colleague, Doug McLennan, is celebrating the seventh anniversary of ArtsJournal.com today. In a move I’ve come to expect from him, he’s celebrating that milestone by reaching even farther and working even more. Beyond his daily filtering of hundreds of articles on arts and culture, he’s now writing his own blog, Diacritical. In […]
Off to Alaska
I’m off to Anchorage next week to speak to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies Leadership Institute, a collection of some 100+ board members, executive directors, and deputy directors of state arts agencies. I’ll try to post my keynote address shortly after I deliver it on Tuesday (okay, give me until Wednesday). I’m also […]
Fan Taylor’s code of excellence
Through my work here in Madison, I’ve had the great honor and pleasure of getting to know Fan Taylor — a formative force in the creation of the master’s program in Arts Administration I direct in the School of Business, and in defining and developing the professional field of arts presenting. She’s an icon among […]
Live vs. mediated
Those interested in brain science and its value in exploring the cultural experience probably already know Daniel Levitin and his work at the Levitin Laboratory for Music, Perception, Cognition, and Expertise (there’s a Boston Globe article on him here). But those with a specific curiosity about the difference between live performance experience and mediated experience […]
Witness and Response
The events of five years ago today, and the world that followed, demand I write only a short post today, pointing us all to the absolute power and passion of creative expression in times of grief and confusion. A few thousand cases in point are available through the Library of Congress and their Witness & […]
Managing the magic list
There is perhaps nothing more essential to the earned revenue of most arts organizations than a clean, current, and accurate customer list. The names, contact information, and transaction profile of anyone who has donated, visited, bought, or registered in some other way are the key to the large majority of your future revenue. Not a […]
Anticipation and memory
Recent studies in brain function have reinforced the idea that anticipation of an event plays a powerful role in the clarity of memories of that event. Says this report summary: The UW-Madison scientists found that two key regions of the brain — the amygdala and the hippocampus — become activated when a person is anticipating […]
A weblog-worthy quote
Eco-advocate Anna Lappé suggested the vital and organic role we all play in forming the world around us when she said: “Every time you spend money, you’re casting a vote for the kind of world you want.” An interesting exploration of this idea comes from Design Stream and their Emissary Credit Card, a forward-looking concept […]
The promise of portable video
If you’ve had your tech antennae up lately, you’d have noticed that Internet and portable video is popping up everywhere. The video sharing site YouTube has seen massive growth in web visitors and visit duration, drawing some 724 million web site views in June. Major networks are starting to offer full-length episodes of their programs […]
Going to scale without falling to pieces
There’s lots of focus in the entrepreneurship community about ”going to scale” or successfully growing a small business into a major player. Anyone who has experienced a rapidly growing organization has seen the tension — old methods and models fail to function at a certain volume of business, formerly tightknit organizational cultures fray at the […]
