{"id":1036,"date":"2007-04-18T08:58:04","date_gmt":"2007-04-18T15:58:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp\/2007\/04\/time_to_rethink_the_profession\/"},"modified":"2007-04-18T08:58:04","modified_gmt":"2007-04-18T15:58:04","slug":"time_to_rethink_the_profession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/main\/time_to_rethink_the_profession.php","title":{"rendered":"Time to rethink the professional arts conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Philanthropy 2173 weblog offers a short list of innovative conferences<\/a> now providing free video access to their content on-line (and a curator that’s pulling them together<\/a>). The blog links back to a New York Times<\/i> story on the TED conference<\/a>, and its extraordinary success in giving away its keynotes on the web.<\/p>\n

According to the conference’s media director, June Cohen, the give-aways aren’t a ”gee-whiz” feature or an afterthought, but rather a core strategy in advancing both mission and money:<\/p>\n


\n“Conventional business logic would tell you that in a community like TED you have to keep your commodity scarce and expensive to retain brand value,” she said. “But the same year we started releasing most of our content for free we raised our conference price by nearly 50 percent and still sold out in 12 days.”
\n<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Times<\/i> article flags the content-sharing strategy as an emerging trend:<\/p>\n


\nOf the 11,000 or so trade shows and corporate events each year in the United States, about 10 percent in the last year have begun to use videos from their shows to generate more revenue, according to Darlene Gudea, publisher of Trade Show Executive Magazine, an industry publication. “Show organizers are realizing that only part of the industry comes to a trade show, leaving a lot of educational opportunities, and revenues, on the table,” Ms. Gudea said.
\n<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Within this trend, consider the strategy, structure, and mind-set of the traditional professional arts convening — Arts Presenters, OPERA America, Americans for the Arts, Theater Communications Group, American Association of Museums, and so on. Workshops and keynotes are behind the gate, and rarely shared in a strategic and open way (admittedly, cost and technological expertise are barriers). When audio, video, or digital versions are available, they’re off to the side and rarely indexed for access by the wider world. Overall, a flawed concept of the conference commodity — that people pay their registration fee for the content<\/i> of the event, rather than the context<\/i> of smart people together in space and time — seems to drive event design.<\/p>\n

What if we perceived professional arts conferences as entirely<\/i> permeable — where the insights and ideas of major presenters flowed around the world like water? Wouldn’t that advance the profession more profoundly? And wouldn’t smart people pay even more<\/i> to attend the live event?<\/p>\n

Clearly, we couldn’t achieve the sheen and polish of TED<\/a>. But a few thousand dollars in equipment, and some dedicated volunteers, could move the issue forward. Perhaps, dare I say it, the major service organizations could share<\/i> the capacity to share their content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Philanthropy 2173 weblog offers a short list of innovative conferences now providing free video access to their content on-line (and a curator that’s pulling them together). The blog links back to a New York Times story on the TED conference, and its extraordinary success in giving away its keynotes on the web. According to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1036","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}