KCRW’s The Business radio show (audio file available here, the story starts at about 21:30) has a charming story about graduate film students and their final project. Despite a tight budget and a killer schedule, they decided they needed a live elephant for the shoot. So, they got one. The story asks the question: Is […]
Beyond Richard Florida
Ann Daly has some great thoughts on the present and future of the arts ecosystem in the United States. While her comments spring from frustration at the ”creative class” rhetoric that seemed more heat than light (a grievance she’s aired before), the real power of the piece is in its recommendations for the future. Says […]
Churn, baby, churn
I’m thrilled to have a wise and thoughtful colleague blogging now on issues of arts and brand and strategy. Neill Archer Roan has shown up a few times in this weblog (like here and here). But now instead of quoting what I heard him say, I can point to his words directly…and subscribe to them, […]
“Word of mouth” on steroids
The “Tell a Friend” feature is a common occurrence these days on any thoughtful website that wants to encourage and facilitate referrals. The scripts and the technology are essentially free, and well within the reach of even nonprofit arts organizations. But, of course, the big-league web players are already a dozen steps ahead of this […]
I’m off this week
Various reports and projects are consuming the bulk of my brain space this week. I’ll be back in the blogging business next week. See you then.
Stuff I wish I’d said
The Plexus Institute, which focuses on issues in health care, has some wonderful language that also fits the nonprofit cultural industry. See if this sounds familiar to your organization, or the struggle to professionalize arts organizations in a way that detaches them from their passion: Our model for organizations emanated from the industrial era, in […]
Rethinking the business card
Some very cool ideas from the folks at the IDEO design firm: They’ve posted a series of conceptual prototypes that rethink the future of the business card as part of their ”Identity Card Concept Project.” Like good designers, they break the object and the values it conveys into elemental functions, and project how those functions […]
Is an audience a crowd of individuals, or a gathering of groups?
A great piece by Malcolm Gladwell on the astoundingly successful Saddleback Church suggests that connection and commitment are not products of individual affiliation to a large organization, but of interaction with a small group. Says Gladwell: Membership in a small group is a better predictor of whether people volunteer or give money than how often […]
Mergers and inquisitions
There were some rich and juicy comments to my post of last week on ”Ecological mission vs. insular alliance.” Thanks to all who contributed (and can still contribute) to the conversation. From the comments, and from other e-mail I received, it seemed that many interpreted my suggestion for ”softer boundaries” between arts organizations within a […]
Behind the scenes
I just posted a reprint (with permission, of course) of a Q & A on my weblog work written by a current student at the Drexel University arts administration program. I figured some would be interested in the ‘behind the scenes’ view of how this weblog started and why I do it. If you’re not […]
