Beth's Blog: Nonprofits and Social Media

Four Models for Active User Engagement, by Nina Simon

Source: Share Your Ideas

Note from Beth:  I first encountered Nina Simon through her awesome blog back four or five years ago.  I got a chance to meet her face-to-face for the first time at the Nonprofit Technology Conference in 2007.  I'm a huge fan of work and the way she thinks - especially after she road the Scare House ride on the Santa Cruz boardwalk with me and did a brilliant reflection on its design.

Nina has written a fantastic book engagement called The Participatory Museum. I've purchase a two copies, one for me and one to give away. If you want a chance of winning a copy, leave a comment saying how you might apply some of the science of participation to your social media strategy.

Imagine sitting around a conference table planning an upcoming project that involves user-generated content. One colleague suggests that users should be able to contribute original work. Another thinks that users should not only contribute content but also have a hand in determining how it is used. A third argues that the project won’t be truly participatory unless users get to define what content is sought in the first place. How can you describe user participation in a shared language that helps your team make the right decision for your project?

Science has an answer. Last year, Rick Bonney and a team of educators and science researchers at the Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE) tackled this question in a project designed to define the structures and benefits of public participation in science research (download the full report as a PDF here.) As far back as the 1880s, scientists have led “citizen science” projects in which amateurs are invited to participate in formal scientific research by volunteering to count birds, measure soil quality, or document non-native plant species.

Despite its long history, few researchers studied the use and impact of citizen science until the 1980s. Over the course of several projects at the Lab, Rick Bonney and others noted that different kinds of participation led to different outcomes for participants. When participants collected data, they learned a great deal about data collection processes but not so much about the overall scientific method. When, on the other hand, amateurs had the opportunity to help design scientific questions or disseminate research results, they often felt more ownership of the project and greater interest in using scientific methods to address their own community needs. Rick wanted a better way to describe what kinds of projects led to different community outcomes.

After a broad survey, Rick’s team defined three broad categories of public participation in scientific research: contribution, collaboration, and co-creation. These categories align roughly with the extent to which the public are involved in different stages of scientific research. In contributory projects, participants collect data in a scientist-controlled process. Scientists design the test questions, steer the data collection, and analyze the results. In collaborative projects, citizens collect data, but they also analyze results and draw conclusions in partnership with the scientists. In co-creative projects, the public develops the test questions, and scientists co-produce scientific regimens to address the community interest. While co-creative projects have the most lasting impact on participants, they tend to involve very small groups of participants and require a lot more work (and flexibility) on the part of the scientists who run them.

What does this have to do with nonprofits and social media? Like science labs, nonprofit organizations produce public-facing content under the guidance of authoritative experts. Like citizen science project leaders, many social media practitioners are seeking meaningful, sensible ways to invite users, customers, and citizens to participate in the development of high-quality work. I’ve been using these participatory categories to talk about how we’d like users to participate in different projects. Most of my work involves museums, but these categories can be useful in any project that involves user participation.

I’ve added one more category to the mix called hosted. Hosted projects are ones in which an organization turns over a portion of its facilities and/or resources to present programs developed and implemented entirely by users. This category is in some ways the most radical, because the organization is only minimally involved in the use of its content—but it is also potentially the most powerful for users, who can appropriate the content for whatever suits them.

What do these categories look like outside of the science environment? Here’s a brief definition and cultural example of each:

•    In contributory projects, users are solicited to provide limited and specified objects, actions, or ideas to an institutionally controlled process. Blog commenters are contributors, as are people who engage in contests. The Victoria & Albert Museum’s World Beach Project is a wonderful contributory project in which people around the world make artworks on beaches per institutional specifications and submit images of their work to a central website. Participants feel like part of something bigger than themselves, but they don’t connect to each other personally as community members.

•    In collaborative projects, users are invited to serve as active partners in the creation of institutional projects that are originated and ultimately controlled by the organization. Wiki users are often collaborators. They have some influence over the direction of the project but don’t steer it themselves.  In the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Children of the Lodz Ghetto research project, participants work together with staff to do database research into the lives of thousands of Polish children during the Holocaust. Users report incredible connection to each other and to the project, but quality control is much more complex than in a simplified contributory project.

•    In co-creative projects, community members work together with institutional staff members from the beginning to define the project’s goals and process based on community interests. Online, this may be a campaign that is started by a member and then supported and fueled with institutional help. In the physical world, at the Wing Luke Asian Museum in Seattle, staff members partner with visitors to co-produce exhibits based on community members’ interests and the institution’s collections. The resultant exhibitions are beautiful and well-received, and the institution accepts that the community process takes more time, effort, and humility than a standard exhibit design process.

•    In hosted projects, users appropriate institutional content or resources for their own uses. Online, this may mean participants creating their own mashups or using organizational data to construct visualizations. When the Toronto Science Centre hosted the 888 YouTube Meetup, museum staff effectively invited YouTubers from all over the world to use the facility as a videographer’s playground. This generated many energetic videos set in the Science Centre, but many featured content that was not in-line with the institutional mission.

Contribution, collaboration, co-creation, hosted. No one model is better than the others. Nor should they even be seen as progressive steps towards a model of “maximal participation.” They each imply different levels of institutional control and participant involvement, but transformational experiences are possible in every type. Consider the difference between a book project in which an institution sources stories from users (contributory) and one in which the institution works with a small group of users to design the publication (collaborative). If the first project results in a book composed entirely of users’ voices and the second results in a volume that looks more like a “typical” institutional publication, which project is more participatory?

This question is impossible to answer, and for good reason. Participatory projects are most successful when you can find the right model for your staff culture, your users, and your goals. Here’s a chart that may help you figure out what type is best for your next project. While there are outlier innovative projects that defy categorization, this chart displays the fundamental characteristics of each model.

 

How will you invite participants to engage with your next project?

Nina Simon is an independent museum exhibit designer and publisher of the Museum 2.0 blog. She is the author of the new book The Participatory Museum, a practical guide to visitor participation in cultural institutions.

Determined to Trend - Guest Post by James Leventhal

The “superfriends” on stage at OMCA’s California Futures at the Massive Reopening Celebration
Source Local Oakland Tweeter @trafficologist Standing Beside Her Profile Pic in the Twitterstream.

Note from Beth: It is strange sometimes how social networks can have your past, present, and future collide.  I met James Leventhal via Twitter and we ended up working together on a project.  Through Facebook, I've been able to connect with friends from elementary school, high school, and college.  Sometimes connections cross the boundaries of time.

Recently, James wrote about some interesting ways museums are using Twitter for offline/online engagement.   And, one of the Twitter users who participated was a friend from high school!

The San Francisco Bay Area has seen some extraordinary museum openings over the past several years.  When the New de Young opened it did a 32-hour party and community celebration, starting a trend that was then picked up by the Contemporary Jewish Museum with Dawn in 2008 and now the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA).

“The newly transformed Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) opens Saturday, May 1, with  31 hours of continuous, round-the-clock free programs and events until we close at 6 p.m. Sunday.”  Wow.

For a lot of folks, the Oakland Museum of California is something of a standard bearer of community engagement and the building itself is a harbinger of today’s museums.

When it opened in 1969, OMCA’s design by Pritzker prize–winning architect Kevin Roche was acclaimed for its bold and innovative premise: a museum that also serves as a vibrant urban park and public space.

Amongst the long list of activities that took place, one of the more interesting is that a dedicated local team of social networking museum professionals from the Oakland Museum of California (@oaklandmuseumca), the Contemporary Jewish Museum (@jewseum), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (@sfmoma), the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (@ybca), the Exploratorium (@exploratorium), the California Academy of Sciences (@calacademy), and the Asian Art Museum (@asianartmuseum) are going to try and make the “topic” #CALIFORNIA trend on twitter.  California is part of the OMCA’s mission.

If you follow museums on twitter, a lot of what you find is that the “institutions” are communicating with each other in ways that are novel, educational, engaging, droll or banal — reflecting the overall tone of “dialogue” in the twitterverse.

And what’s also interesting about this is how it reveals that there are typically individuals who are responsible for these “tweets.”  This provides a new level of transparency for the museum worker, and a higher degree of exposure.  Ironically, the “tweeters” often mask their true identities.  In fact, this group of professionals in the SF Bay Area all know each other and refer to themselves as the “superfriends,” referring perhaps more to their masked identities than their kinship.

It is also interesting because museums have come to play a cherished role in our civic constructs as the development of new museums and major renovations in the SF Bay Area reveal.  But they still suffer for issues of relevance.  With Twitter and other so called social networking tools, the question of relevance is now in the hands of individuals, the audience even.  And it is smart for museums like the OMCA to leverage their ability to make something trend, to reveal their networks.  Trending topics show up on CNN.

The Oakland Museum of California has been “in the trenches,” so to speak and crowdsourcing community engagement for decades.  It’s a good thing that its marketing team can tap into a technology that’s just now catching up.  

James Leventhal is Deputy Director for the Contemporary Jewish Museum,  and an expert in using social media in a museum setting. 

Theatre Flashmobs on YouTube and Swarms of Theater Goers on FourSquare

I've been preparing for a Leadership Conference with TCG (Theatre Communications Group, the service organizations for theatre companies) on strategic social media. So, I've been looking at a lot of different examples of how theatres are using social media. 

As part of the preparation, we surveyed participants for their burning questions and that's how I created the content. The questions were a mix of strategic and tactical. One question I got was:

What Theatre companies are using Four Square in an interesting and engaging way?

Photo by Neatonjr

Foursquare is a location-based social network.  Users check in to a location and their friends know where they are.    Think of it as a social network where your status up is not what you're doing, but where you are.   Think about dogs how dogs update their location!  Eugene Kim uses the metaphor of ant trails.

I started writing about FourSquare and the potential for fundraisers back in November.  I've written about  how nonprofits can use it, including arts organizations like the Brooklyn Museum as chronicled on Shelley Bernstein's blog.

Back in December, the Brooklyn Museum started to experiment with FourSquare running a promotion
to get people to check in and get a free membership.  Shelley notes in her post the reason why they decided to explore FourSquare:

As simply as I can put this, Foursquare is about place and identifying yourself through that.  It is a celebration of the visitor—the people who crossed the river, who made it in the door and decided to identify themselves with us…right here at 40.67124,-73.963834.

In this first experiment, the Museum took advantage of the "tips" feature where users can leave tips about a location.   They had their staff, local experts in the location, add tips about what was interesting for visitors in the neighborhood.  As Shelley says, "as people explore our area, the Brooklyn Museum staff help them along in their journey pointing out the joys of pancakes at Tom’s Restaurant or the killer wine selection at Abigail’s."      Other ideas include a special Museum badge. In addition, the Museum has taken those tips and created a mashup with the YELP api.

After some more research, I did uncover an experiment from the Kansas Repertory Theatre with FourSquare and the coveted Swarm badge. They're running it in connection with a show promotion. Here's how it works:

Here's a Foursquare Flashmob deal (you don't have to be a Foursquare user to participate in the group discount, but if you are, it adds to the fun!):

Sign up here for a chance to get $25 Venice Tickets for the May 8th, 10:00 PM performance and earn a FourSquare Swarm badge!

The more tickets purchased, the deeper the discount, so tell your friends & family to buy too! Also, if we are successful in getting 50 or more Foursquare users to check-in at the Copaken Stage, all will earn the coveted Swarm badge!

It will be interesting to see what they learn from this experiment and how they leverage the success or failure of it.   As KD Paine, Social Media Measurement Goddess says in a recent article about ROI, most social media efforts fail because they fail to measure success (or failure).  "If you goal is to dip your toes into the waters of social media, then your measure is the dampness of your toes."

I like the idea of leveraging a networked effect of the swarm badge.   And it seems like the concept of flash mobs for the arts is not limited to FourSquare. I stumbled upon this engaging YouTube video that Steppenwolf created to mark their 2009-2010 Season of Belief.  The mob dances occur all over the city, including Water Tower Place, the Art Institute’s Modern Wing, Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Crown Fountain in Millennium Park.

Frank Barry has some good first baby steps for nonprofits that want to explore FourSquare.

1. Take advantage of the game built into Foursquare by creating a custom badge that’s branded for your organization
   
   
2. Give points/badges to people for specific types of check-in’s (e.g. If I were an organization like the American Heart Association I could come up with a way to give points to people for checking into locations that were “heart healthy”)
   
   
3. Integrate with Foursquare by pulling their data into your primary database of record – building an even more holistic view of your constituents by adding the location and preference data from Foursquare
   
   
4. Build an application using the Foursquare API (e.g. A Google maps, Twitter and Foursquare mashup that show’s where your event participants are checking in on a map and what they’re  talking about)
   
   
5. Create a custom “leader board” to display on site at an event you are holding (e.g. A 3 day walk)
   
   
6. Partner with local venues (restaurants, sports bars, coffee shops, athletic stores, gym’s, yoga studios, etc…) and incentivizing your event participants to check-in to those establishments. Checking in XX times to a business that supports your cause could earn the supporter a discount or special office (Joe Waters has some great thoughts about using Foursquare for Cause Marketing)
   
   
7. Track volunteering efforts. A person could check in at a local foodbank and you could have that data pushed back to your CRM which could then be used to track volunteer engagement (e.g. Joe Smith checked into foodbank Y 27 times for a total of 27 hours served)
   
   
8. Create a custom mobile phone app for the iPhone, Droid, Blackberry, etc… using their API (Mobile is where the future is in case you’re trying to figure out what to invest in)

I'd add an 9th step and that is use FourSquare's coupon feature (which is free for now).  What it does is that allows you offer a coupon or discount that pops up when a user checks into a location nearby.   This seems like a no brainer for theatre companies or museums who want to dip their toes into FourSquare to test it.   You'd need to develop a way to track and capture and convert. (Which you want to add to any of the above 8 ideas as well)

Of course, before you can even move forward and develop a proof of concept, you have to understand how the technology works and potential value.   Personal experimentation is a good way to do that.   It helped me wrap my brain around the potential value of something like FourSquare.

Update:  Be sure to see this post on Mashable "Four Ways One Nonprofit Is Using Location To Increase Engagement"

Is your organization thinking about an experiment with FourSquare?  What is the design/strategy?  What is your measurement strategy?

ArtsLabSF: Reflections About Social Learning With Social Media

ArtsLab SF

View more presentations from Beth Kanter.

Almost a year ago, I got a phone call from James Leventhal who follows me on Twitter.  He is Deputy Director for the Contemporary Jewish Museum,  and an expert in using social media in a museum setting.  He welcomed me to the Bay Area and asked if I would be interested in doing some trainings for the local arts community.  I said yes.

James pulled together a group of funding partners and Clay Lord from Theatre Bay Area.  One thing led to another and I designed a social media lab for arts organizations.  The inspiration was part The Lab Theater a place where you try out contemporary or experimental works before you bring them to the main stage and part peer learning program.

We had space for 25 organizations out of the 100 that applied.   The social media lab for arts organizations is a combination of face-to-face workshops, phone calls, and online support via a wiki and Twitter over several months.  Participants design and launch a social media experiment that helps them improve their practice and share learning with one another.  The last face-to-face session, in fact, is participants sharing the results of their experiments.

The curriculum is based on the workshops I've been leading for the past five years and includes the Social Media Game, Strategy Principles, Experimentation, and the practical and tactical.  

We were lucky enough to have a fabulous space for the workshop in the Contemporary Jewish Museum.  The space was large enough so we could have small group tables, space for food, and space to do full group and small group moving around exercises.   There was also excellent AV support and acoustics.   The configuration of the physical space definitely enhances learning.

We were welcomed by directors of two partner organizations, Connie Wolf, Director and CEO for the Contemporary Jewish Museum and Brad Erikson, Executive Director, Theatre Bay Area.  Both organizations have demonstrated leadership in embracing social media.   Claire Rice, from Theatre Bay Area, was live blogging the whole day and captured their opening remarks.

Here are some reflections on the instructional design:

1.   Put Your Learners on the Stage and Hand Them the Mic!

My teaching style has been influenced by constructivism in short - less "sage on the stage" and "more guide on the side" and that learners should be actively involved in their learning process.   I don't believe in the expert as one person, but more as a network.  I think this style is a better match for social media as well as social media training.

When I deliver content, I will use visual slides (to honor visual learners), but my preference is to also have a wireless mic and remote clicker and involve people in the conversation.    I think it makes the experience richer, although some people may feel uncomfortable because they are more used to sitting back and listening to experts speak and not engaging.

You may be wondering why some of the participants are wearing neon gangster hats.  For the social media game, I use the pre survey to do a bit of social engineering for the small group work so that each table includes someone with lots of social media expertise as well as someone with marketing expertise.   I ask certain questions to help identify these individuals. 

Most importantly, I need a good facilitator for each table.  So, I ask for volunteers who love leading meetings and making brief presentations.  It is always interesting to feel the a little bit of nervousness in the room, but then the leaders raise their hands!   These leaders are then given the meeting agenda (game instructions), keep the group on track, and volunteer to report out.

Photo by James Leventhal

In workshops, it is important to have a full group discussion about people's concerns about social media and a discussion about organizational readiness.  I have been using human spectra gram, a technique I learned from colleague Allen Gunn from Aspiration.  Colleague Kaliya Hamlin has this description.    I do agree/disagree to statements like "Social media is a waste of time" or I do a spectra gram based on personal comfort level and whether or not they feel social media is valuable for their organization.   I select what I questions I do based on answers in an online pre-survey.

When they are lined up by comfort level,  I have been doing a quick poll to see where generations appear along the line.  What has been interesting, is that social media comfort does not always play out along generational lines and it was true for the arts organizations in the room.

2.  Social Learning: Face-to-Face

Somewhat skeptical about the value of social media.

After hearing a story from a peer.

I do a lot of small group and share pair exercises.  It is important to vary your instructional delivery because the human brain -on average - can only concentrate for 12 minutes.   Varying the delivery improves retention.  With small groups, you, as the instructor, have to give away some control and see what happens.

I tend to bumble-bee around and listen in on selected conversations, but it is important for people to hear from their peers.  That has more influence sometimes than an "expert."   James Leventhal was sharing a table with two participants from SFGMC who were skeptical about Twitter.  James was able to search Twitter and show them a conversation happening online with other choruses about fundraising.  (We arranged for wifi in the room and asked participants to bring their laptops).  Later I asked them if they were still skeptical and they said not as much and posed for the above shots.

3.  The Power of Social Learning:  Online and Offline 

In every training that I am doing, I incorporate social media in ways that enhance learning and connection between participants in the room as well as those who are not in the room.   In other words, how can you make the learning more social before, during, and after the instruction?

Some may think that tweeting during a workshop may take away from learning or paying attention. But for some people, it can actually enhance their learning. If one is comfortable with using Twitter, it forces you to listen for key points and consolidate your insights into a couple of short (140 character) messages.

For this workshop, we had a hashtag - #Artslabsf and the wiki.  This helped us bring in people with knowledge who are not in the room.  TheatreBayArea did a fantastic job in engaging its members in the learning through social media.  They took live notes on their blog and invited others to participate, live tweeting the event, and engaging members on Facebook.

A week before our session, I posted a request to my broader Twitter network for arts and social media examples and asked people to add them to the wiki. That's where I learned about a Twitter hashtag called #2amt - a channel for theatre artistic professionals to discuss their craft and trade and support one another. They were able to join the discussion in our Twitter channel.

I do believe that social media as part of your training can enhance learning, help facilitate social learning. I'm interested in learning how to do this better, take it deeper, and perhaps begin to measure it. I would welcome your thoughts on how to do that.

Somethings to improve ...

There is plenty that I need to improve.  Here's a few thoughts.

(1)  Social Media Game:  I have used the the social media game at over 50 trainings during the past four years and many others have re-purposed and remixed it too.  Every 4-6 six months, I blow up the game and start from scratch.  This month I piloted a brand new version of it.   

• Give the new version of the people cards a joyful funeral if doing the game as part of the social media lab and there isn't enough time to cover the content.   I created a nonprofit version of Charelene Li's Social Graphics Framework.  Because of limited time, I did not cover these ideas as a full group, although the basic information was on the printed materials and the cards.   It is an advanced concept and it was difficult for this group to learn from discussing the information on the cards and print handouts. 

• Composite simulations work best, but there is value to the full report out.  I've experimented with using the game as a peer assist, fictional situations, and having groups make up a scenario.  What seems to work best are some composite scenarios based on the assessment form that groups fill out before the workshop.  The scenarios clearly outline the social media objective and audience definition.  In half-day workshop (4-5 hours),  I give more time for reports for each group.   With a larger group like this, it wasn't possible, although it may be possible to create a mechanism for each group to capture and document what they discussed so it can be shared. 

(2)  Capturing the Energy in the Room:   Part of the design is for each organization to implement a low-risk, thoughtful social media experiment that helps improve practice.  Based on the assessment of the group before the first workshop, I selected two different experiments (Twitter and Listening).  While it might be ideal to have participants select any experiment they want, that would have been a larger scope of work and I was concerned the learning would be lost.

I'm still trying to refine a method on how to best help participants make the leap from the strategy brainstorm and learning about the different options for tools to honing in a focused experiment to implement in between sessions.  The morning is high energy, but when we get to the afternoon and focusing in on the experiments there is a need for better connection.   The modules for the experiments include online tutorials, a worksheet that asks them to plan and implement their experiment, and the check-ins in between now and June. 

I think that it is impossible for everyone to leave the first session with an experiment fully planned without a lot front-end one-on-one consults or to break up the face-to-face workshops into two different half-day sessions (strategy/tactics) with time for people absorb in between. This would have increased the scope of the project, of course. 

Right now the goal is to have participants identify the experiment they want to do, think about it, and have questions ready for our first phone call.  The real learning is going to happen on the phone calls and stewarding the group.  And, of course, at the end, when participants share the results of their experiments.

I'm working on two social media labs right now, this one for arts organizations and another for Packard grantees.  I expect to learn a lot about to design effective peer learning that incorporates social media.

Guest Post by Perla Ni: How Social Media Can Help Nonprofit Arts Organizations Reconnect With Supporters

Source:  National Arts Index


It's at times like these -- in the midst of an extended recession and the wake of the tragedy in Haiti -- that the role of funding arts in society may be called into question.

After all, funding for the arts (theater, dance, music, museums etc.) had already been in a long-term decline, as documented recently by the National Arts Index from Americans for the Arts.
Many may be asking, therefore, “Why fund the arts?”

In order to answer to this critical question, nonprofit arts organizations have a special opportunity during the month of February to use social media as a way bring new visibility to their organizations' work by participating in the GreatNonprofits Arts Appreciation Campaign.

Launched February 1, the campaign is free to nonprofits, and encourages them to use social media in the form of email outreach, facebook and twitter as a way to recruit their volunteers, donors, board members, clients, and patrons to submit reviews of their work for the larger nonprofit world and the public to examine.

In case you are not yet familiar with GreatNonprofits (GNP), it operates like a Tripadvisor or Yelp for the nonprofit sector, whereby people who have had an experience with a nonprofit can share that experience with a larger community.

By publishing these reviews, GNP helps raise awareness about the importance of these groups, and showcases the many reasons to continue supporting their work. Nothing tells the story of the typical nonprofit better than the real stories of those involved in its work!

The way the campaign works is simple. Organizations with 10 or more positive reviews at the end of February will be recognized publicly both by GNP and by Guidestar, the premiere site for philanthropic research on the web.

Perhaps equally valuable, from the perspective of the nonprofits that participate, this campaign will allow nonprofits to take advantage of free, social media tools to collect tangible evidence of their organization’s value in a way that engages their community of supporters going forward.

Those of us active in the nonprofit arts community know that our organizations are a critical part of building the kind of society that can deal more effectively with intransigent problems like economic disparities, poverty and other social inequalities.

We know that promoting the arts in the long-term will strengthen society's ability to withstand business cycles and natural disasters in order to aspire to a better future for all.

Therefore, I urge you to participate in GNP's campaign, and help our valuable arts organizations regain the support they so badly need from their communities. Write a review of a nonprofit arts organization, or - if you’re a nonprofit – invite reviews from your supporters at GreatNonprofits.

Perli Ni is the CEO of GreatNonprofits.

Guest Post by Marc van Bree: Orchestras and Social Media Survey

Orchestras and Social Media Survey

View more documents from Marc van Bree.

Note from Beth: One question that I get asked at almost every workshop is about budget. How much are nonprofit organizations spending on social media?  What are the returns?  What are the valued metrics?  While there have been different surveys on nonprofit adoption, for example, these two recent studies I profiled last month,  I wish there was a benchmarking study.  I mentioned this on Twitter. Marc Van Bree responded that he had some answers from a survey he was doing with orchestras. I invited him to write a guest post summarizing the findings. 

I undertook this research to understand some questions about social media and orchestras.  What kind of resources do managers commit and how active are orchestras in social media?  Do orchestra managers share the opinion that fundraising and attracting volunteers are highly valuable metrics, or do they have different goals and objectives?

There has never been a comprehensive, industry-wide look at if and how orchestras are using social media. In order to get a clear and complete picture of what is happening with orchestras and social media around the country, I sent around a survey to 53 orchestra marketing, communications and web managers in October and November, 2009.

The survey was designed to collect details about the state of social media, ranging from budget size and time allotment to attitudes and goals. I received 15 responses.

In short, social media activities, familiarity and usage seem to be widespread among orchestras. Managers find social media important and organizations are generally enthusiastic. However, the efforts are far from organized and strategic. It seems many orchestras are dipping their feet in the social media pool, but do not have the policies, budgets, and metrics in place to effectively use the tools at their disposal, even if they do recognize the need for checks and balances.

The full report can already be downloaded here.  This week, I will kick off the Orchestras and Social Media Survey 2009 series on my blog. I am doing this to provide the opportunity for feedback and discussion. I believe, and I hope, the survey results will raise more questions than answers. I am interested in hearing your thoughts on what it all means and how we can use the results to inform a better, more strategic approach to social media.

Dutch native Marc van Bree is a public relations practitioner in Chicago with more than 5 years of experience communicating—on and offline—in the nonprofit environment.  Find him on Twitter @mcmvanbree

Can A Public Nonprofit Dashboard Be Your Organization's Best Friend or Worst Enemy?

Photo Source: Indianapolis Museum of Art Blog

Many of us have a love and hate relationship with nonprofit dashboards.  We know the power of numbers that tell us where we are headed or how well we are doing.   But we also know that numbers don't tell us the whole story - whether we headed in the right overall strategic direction, taking the right road, and how to get back on course if we get lost.  

But, for the most part, nonprofit dashboard reports, if they are measuring the right metrics, are useful tools. Dashboards go beyond just reporting financial results as this post from the Blue Avocado explains.  And, they can be incredibly useful for helping leaders to focus attention on critical mission matters.

Nonprofit dashboard reports, which communicate critical information in a concise, visual, and more compelling way, are mostly used by board or staff for discussion at internal or private meetings or used as part of reports back to funders for grants.  

That's the cultural norm in the nonprofit sector, with a couple of exceptions.  An organization's dashboard is an internal report and the data not shared publicly (although NTEN shared its Dashboard spreadsheet template recently). 

What if the default was to share your organization's dashboard openly with everyone?  Perhaps create a special web site and discuss the results on Twitter or your blog?

The Indianapolis Art Museum has been doing just that by sharing its institutional dashboard out for everyone to view.   I remember blogging about it when I first noticed it in November, 2007.   It was met by with both positive and negative reactions from nonprofit and museum professionals.  Jim Spadaccini from Ideum Blog noted that dashboards are not new, in fact, there's a book about Dashboard Design.  He went on to describe the Museums' bold move as an example of sharing information in an unconventional way.

In December, 2007, this post from the Chronicle of Philanthropy Blog, expanding on a post by Jeff Brooks, creative director at Merkle Direct, on his Donor Power Blog asked:

Do most nonprofit organizations do enough to share key information with the public? Is it risky to provide statistics about finances and results on a public Web site?

Two years later, we might have some answers.  In October, the Indianapolis Art Museum Dashboard celebrated its' second year.  The institution has continued to share its data and engage in conversations with the public on its blog about how to use the statistics to improve its programs.   

To celebrate, Rob Stein, the CIO, has started a series of blog posts on transparency.   Part 1 addresses the prevalent concern shared by their peers about adopting transparency, a fear of the unknown, or that sharing the gritty details with the public will be too overwhelming and therefore misconstrued.  Rob goes on to say that nothing terrible has happened.  I caught up with for a quick email interview:

Has your organization always been an "open" institution?

Prior to the IMA Dashboard and in particular the arrival of Maxwell Anderson as CEO in 2006, the IMA was more closed about sharing details about its performance.  Max's leadership from the top of the organization was important in that he advocated a culture in which it was better to be open and understand areas of poor performance, so that we can take steps to improve... rather than hide behind rationalizations for why certain things were broken. I think all organizations have these broken areas, it's been refreshing to work in a culture where honesty and transparency about them is encouraged as a step towards continuous improvement.

What motivated the dashboard project? 

To improve as an organization, we need to understand our baseline performance against things we care about.  The Dashboard is both a way to communicate to donors and the press the truth behind how we're running the museum, but also a crucial tool for staff members to track their own performance over time, knowing that the world is (potentially) watching.  The "openness" is a hair shirt that encourages us to stay on the straight-and-narrow, an external motivation to continue to do the right thing even when it has a negative appearance on the surface.

Were there any institutional concerns internally?

Certainly there were concerns initially, and there are limits to how open we can be. I made a suggestion in my blog post this morning that Transparency is the discipline of an organization to demonstrate its integrity.  Obviously sharing certain types of information can be illegal or potentially damaging to the museums mission in a number of ways. 

In general there were some concerns about the "unknown" factor of how it would be received, how it could be maintained, and what the long-term impact of doing so might be.  I think we've resolved many of these over time.  (The Dashboard turned 2 in October)  We've certainly used the tool for performance tracking and press relations during that time... 

  
What has been the response to "learning in public" when numbers don't go the right way?

We've certainly had our share of bad data to share in the last 12 months.  The total value of our endowment took a significant beating as demonstrated in the online statistic.  Couple that fact with our Contributed Support numbers which are displayed there, and its clear that this has not be the best financial period for the IMA.  We also went through a restructuring which resulted in the elimination of a number of staff positions which is also indicated online.  There were some gut-churning moments putting those numbers up, but they are really the proof-in-the-pudding and demonstrate that the dashboard isn't just a spin exercise for the museum's PR department. 

On a positive note, sharing the negative statistics accurately gives us a GREAT platform to talk to donors and funding agencies about the realities of the IMA's financial situation, it's very clear that we are caring for the museum well as indicated online, but continue to need support from our community.  It's great to let the facts make the case for you.

What does it feel like to be an open institution?

It's work, but overall feels really good.  We're constantly figuring out ways to adjust / add to / drop statistics and information that is of the most value for continuing to improve the IMA as an organization.  The Dashboard is a reflection of those areas we consider to be vital to the museum's mission.  Large numbers of staff from the museum are responsible for updating statistics related to their areas... so these important metrics are frequently brought back to mind as they continue to track and update them online.

One big issue that I've seen nonprofits grapple with when they want to be more open is deciding what to share.  Do you share everything?  If not,  how do you decide what to share?

As I mentioned above, integrity needs to be our guide in what information to put online.  Obviously anything that breaks a law is out :)  But we start from an assumption that all information is available to go online.  We can then look at things to disqualify based on what impact this data can have on the museum.  Admittedly, there are few hard and fast rules that govern this process, but it's important to start from a position of openness instead of approaching the problem from a protectionist view.  More importantly choices about what to share are driven by which metrics will be the most important in helping the museum grow or improve as an organization.  Which areas are the most critical to our mission.  These are the areas we want to track and keep an eye on so that we ensure that we continue to improve and maintain excellence there.

Is Indiana Art Museum just an outlier exception or will this type of transparency for nonprofits become the cultural norm for our sector in the next five years?   Are there other examples of nonprofit institutions opening the kimono to their dashboard and discussing results with stakeholders?

Update:   More thoughts on transparency from the nptech blogosphere and beyond

Social Actions/Christine Eggers gives a roundup
Lucy Bernholz writes about open organizations

Social Media and the Performing Arts: Engagement First, Ticket Sales Second

Arts and Social Media

View more presentations from kanter.

This morning I gave a presentation for a group of senior marketing people from performing arts centers around the country on social media.   I've done a number of presentations and workshops for arts organizations over the years and have even created a wiki "Social Media for Arts People" with stories, links, and other resources, but haven't spoken to arts organizations recently.  It was a good opportunity to see how things have changed.

Every time I present, I like to customize the content as much as possible by looking at participant's social media presence  (ant trails) or examples from the particular field.   Last week, I sent a tweet asking folks to add their best examples into the wiki which helped me create the presentation.

The questions I got:

• How do know that our social media strategy can help sell tickets?
• How do we track and monitor our social media strategy?
• How do explain to senior management that we need to do this?
• What can we effectively with limited time?
• What are the best strategies for engaging people on Twitter/Facebook?
• What makes a good influencer strategy?
• What is the best way to work with interns?
• What are the steps to incorporating a social content strategy into our web presence strategy?

My big takeaway:   A successful social media strategy with arts audiences is more like an audience development or education program, not a straight ticket sales strategy. 

Last night as I was preparing my presentation,  I did a couple of deep diving analyzing a couple of twitters to look at the nuances of good practice for engagement.  

I followed the ant trails of the San Francisco Symphony Twitter stream - they are doing a particularly good job of conversational, relationship building tweets - not "BUY TICKETS NOW!" I screen captured a few as illustrations. It was one of the first examples I've seen of customer service for an arts organization. customer service, 

I dm the Sf Symphony to ask if their tweeting sold tickets. 

If you go back look at the tweeting from "Tweet An Opera" project, you can learn a lot.   Also, it is a good illustration of how engagement might lead to butts in seats, the holy grail of performing arts centers marketing directors.

I also learned that Dance Theatre Workshop did a similar crowdsourcing experiment on Twitter. They had followers tweet dance movements which were performed and videotaped on YouTube.

One of the participants was from the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, and they shared the story of how their tweet ups have grown in popularity.  They did a lot of listening and searching for local Twitter users.  They found some influencers who they cultivated.  They hosted a meet up and gave people a back stage tour of the facility.

advice

A big topic of discussion was influencer strategies.  I presented a framework to think about this. It's not all about numbers. Social Influence is about reach (number of people an influencer can easily activate a channel to), but there's also another fundamental aspect: affinity.   Affinity represents the impact an influencer can make on the audience and it's defined by strong interpersonal ties.   I think you need both kinds of influencers.

We had a very productive conversation about the best and more effective ways to work with interns.  Much of Jeremiah Owyang's advice is spot on.   If you think you can just shovel social media over the fence onto the lap of intern with out some mutual guiding, than it won't be successful.

If you know of interesting examples of arts organizations using social media, please drop a note in the comments.

Guest Post by Jeff Gates: Confessions of a Long Tail Visionary

Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail

Note from Beth:   In 1993, I worked as the "network weaver" for an online network for individual artists called "Arts Wire"  where I facilitated online conversations, provided technology support and training.  Patterned after the Well and using text-based online discussion software, Arts Wire was the first introduction to the Internet for hundreds of individual artists and arts organizations.  It was an exciting time to be online because we were at the beginning of World Wide Web.   Jeff Gates was an influential member of this community and an early adopter.  So it came as no surprise when I ran into him via his blog and the social web.  

Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine, popularized the term The Long Tail to describe a strategy for businesses that sell large numbers of items, each at a relatively low volume. Despite fewer sales per item, according to Anderson, such businesses can make big profits if they reach many, many niche buyers.

In the last few years, the Smithsonian American Art Museum has been looking at our museum’s online information in the same way. Our Web statistics showed that the number of visitors to our top ten sections paled when compared with the total number of visitors for all other pages, even though only a few people viewed each page. The challenge: how could we make it easier for our online visitors to find things of interest even if that information is buried deep in our site?

Anderson recently spoke at the Smithsonian 2.0 conference. Organized by the Smithsonian’s new Secretary, G. Wayne Clough, the seminar brought digerati from across the country to discuss how the Institution could make its collections, educational resources, and staff more “accessible, engaging and useful” to our visitors with the help of technology. A few weeks ago, American Art’s director, Elizabeth Broun, continued the discussion by holding an unprecedented all-day staff retreat to discuss the use of social media within the museum.

• • •

Museums are changing. Like many other organizations, our hierarchical structure has historically disseminated information from our experts to our visitors. The envisioned twenty-first-century model, however, is more level. Instead of a one-way presentation, our online visitors are often interested in having a conversation with our curators and content providers. In response, many of us at American Art have been looking for ways to engage our public by designing applications that promote dialogue. By encouraging user-generated content and by distributing our assets beyond our own Web site and out across the Internet, we hope to make our content easier to find. In doing so, we are trying to fulfill our long tail strategy. In order to succeed we will need to approach our jobs differently.

While the traditional visionary makes connections between the big pictures, long tail visionaries look for connections between the small pictures. I am hedging my bets at the grassroots level. And at this level I, along with my coworkers, play a number of roles.

Explorer. Our job is to look for and make new connections between our museum, its art, and other online networks. It’s written in my performance plan! Of course we’ve got a Twitter feed, a YouTube channel for our videos, Facebook pages, and Flickr accounts (we’ve even got a set of images for our just opened exhibition 1934: A New Deal for Artists). But we’re also looking for new iPhone apps and other online venues for our work all the time. And with this new interest in social media, there is a lot of potential for connecting with the larger world.

Advocate. Making our artworks accessible and connecting them with Americans’ lives has been our director’s long-term goal, and we’ve noted the cultural shift from a broadcast mode of communication (that one-way, top down dissemination of info) to a more conversational one. Five years ago when I first proposed doing Eye Level, American Art’s blog, I looked at the ways young people were consuming culture. A blog seemed like a good first step toward attracting youth to our offerings and hopefully engendering lifelong interest in our museum.

When the Lunder Conservation Center, American Art’s open conservation lab, told us they wanted to find a way to let visitors know when a conservator was working on an artwork, we showed them how to use Twitter to inform our museum’s information desks that something cool going on way up on the third floor. Showing our staff a valuable solution to one of their real world problems is one of the best ways to advocate for social media within the museum.

Collaborator. It took a group of us to make our blog a success. While our goal was similar, we all saw the process in slightly different ways. Nevertheless, together we made change possible. Growing pains are emerging, though. As we develop new ways of communicating with our visitors and members, our jobs and responsibilities will morph. Bringing order doesn’t require the centralized management of a “Social Media Czar.” But it does require a strategic plan. Who’s responsible for what? How will multiple departments contribute, say, to a Twitter feed without it degenerating into confusion? Organizations used to one honed public voice may find this difficult to fathom. As we try to reach many different audiences, many of us will be entrusted to convey a consistent message. And this can work only if we know how to work together.

The Luce Center’s Fill the Gap! has been one of the most interesting online interactions we’ve had with our public.

Community Organizer. At the root of all of this techno stuff is people: individuals who share a common interest. We’re finding new ways to bring people together and nurture their relationship with the museum. We do this both within American Art and between our museum and public. We’re always looking for museum staff to write for Eye Level. Their stories are the museum. As we develop social media outreach, we’re also soliciting outside people to contribute their photographs, insights, and stories.

Recently, the Luce Center for American Art, our open storage facility, requested help to Fill the Gap! in one of its cases. If an artwork in open storage is moved elsewhere and will be gone more than a year, the Luce staff is asked to replace the piece with another. This time, we asked our Flickr audience for suggestions to fill the empty space. The ensuing dialogue with citizen curators’ suggestions was exactly the type of engagement we want to encourage with our public.

Realist. It’s not easy developing a new organizational paradigm. I also realize not everyone sees the future in the same way. After our museum’s social media retreat, I discussed the day’s topics with my colleagues. Some had valid concerns and reservations. How would this new goal add to their already busy jobs? With resources at a premium, would the quality they strive for be sacrificed? And with so much “junk” on the Internet, would our efforts just be adding to the cacophony? Good content is still our best cultural currency and we have a lot of it here. Plus, as I see it, face-to-face dialogues would always trump anything online. It isn’t the technology I am excited about, but rather how technology can connect us and even lead to new understandings about our content.

As long tail visionaries we don’t just embrace new technology —we question it. After the unbridled exuberance for the 1990s’ next best thing, separating reality from hyperbole has become one of our most valued skill sets. Our efforts must support our museum’s goals but we can test these waters, even failing now and then, and still move forward and evolve. Developing new paradigms require more process-oriented, rather than results-oriented thinking. We have to be cognizant of the new structures and relationships we’re building in order to evaluate our successes and failures. This is the grassroots where long tail visionaries work best.

• • •

Is it hubris to call us visionaries? Not really. We are part soothsayer and part prognosticator. And these have become entry-level requirements for cultural workers at any organization. At the very least we need to make informed decisions and a lot of educated guesses about the changes technology is bringing to museums. Is it provocative? Change, by its very nature, is provocative. Traditional museum content providers are no longer the only people in a position to decide what is worthy of our attention and limited resources. Museums and other cultural institutions are in the midst of a fundamental shift and long tail visionaries are working together with curators, public affairs officers, and other staff to make some important decisions. This transition, though, will not always be easy.

Sometimes I need to be a realistic and pragmatic long tail visionary. But, I’ll confess, every now and then I can also get really, really excited by the possibilities. Visionaries can get that way sometimes.

Related material:
Download this article as a PDF.
A thirteen year old bit of prognostication: New Roles for Artists in the Information Age
Case Study: New World Blogging within a Traditional Museum Setting

Jeff Gates is Lead Producer, New Media Initiatives, at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and managing editor of its blog: Eye Level.  This post originally appeared on Jeff's personal blog, Outtacontext.

Guest Post by Rebecca Krause: How Can Artists Inspire Service in Community?

Photo by Wally G

Note from Beth:  If you've been a long-time reader of this blog, you know that I was trained as a classical musician (flute), then later worked in nonprofit arts organizations in marketing, fundraising, and eventually was an executive director of a small chamber orchestra before working as a consultant with many organizations and agencies, including the National Endowment for the Arts.  I worked for the New York Foundation for the Arts for 12 years on a range of arts and technology programs, including a network for artists called Arts Wire. I was on the phone with staff at NYFA when the planes struck the towers, not too far from their building.  There were artists who had studio spaces in the buildings - lives were lost as well as complete life's work.

Last week I had the pleasure of sitting in on a conference call with folks from the National Endowment for the Arts (Yosi Sergant) , The White House Office of Public Engagement (Buffy Wicks)  and the United We Serve team (Nel Abernathy) among many others.  The call was hosted by Michael Skolnik, Political Director to Russell Simmons and Editor for the politics section of GlobalGrind.

I just saw a super post here about the call from JD Lasica who writes frequently for socialbrite.

The topic was the role that artists can play in shaping communities with particular focus on plans for 9/11, a new National Day of Service and Remembrance. The idea is to find ways that artists can help spread the message of service and also highlight the service work that artists already perform in communities nationwide.

United We Serve

The United We Serve (UWS) project began June 22 and runs through September 11.  The hope is to encourage people to volunteer in their local communities, not just for a day, but in a sustained, collaborative and focused effort to promote service as a way of life for all Americans. The challenge is to translate participation in electoral politics into engagement with governing.  UWS sees service as a way to do this. The United We Serve project is a way to see what’s going on in our local community and connect with  local non-profits, local city officials, women’s groups, unions, you name it.  The key is sustained relationships to deal with issues. Nel Abernathy talked about using many of the same tools that were used in the presidential campaign, noting that when asked and you give people tools, they will participate. Now UWS is asking people to do what they are doing, but more effectively, and at the same time to recognize that what they are doing is not isolated but part of a larger community. The focus of the project was narrowed down to four main issues people are facing:

1. Healthcare
2. Energy and Environment
3. Education
4. Community renewal

Artists Role

Because artists are often thought leaders and help direct people to “what’s cool and what’s not”, they have a unique opportunity to help support this project. One of the goals of the group is to create a stronger community among artists, continuing to do things we are passionate about, and encourage people to participate at the local level.

The arts community is so powerful in telling stories. Art grabs people who don’t necessarily read the local paper. Do what we do.

In the same way that the Obama political campaign was successful by providing tools and letting people do their own thing, The UWS campaign is asking people to do the same thing. “We do our local thing, but in a national context”.

Three Things Artists Can Do

1. Look at serve.gov
   1. Look for projects to do
   2. Post your projects
   3. Tell stories
2. Document
   1. Take photos
   2. Take videos
   3. Post blogs
   4. “This is a community that knows how to make a stink”
   5. Encourage others to get engaged
3. Pick something from one of the 4 key areas and bring your artistic creativity and utilities to the table.

Some Ideas

Thomas Bates from Rock the Vote, talked about an example project with Cody Hudson in Chicago focusing on the environment.  They are engaging young people to collect ‘garbage’, and create something of a community monument of public art out of the found materials.

I think it would be great for the Mighty United Artists to find a way to showcase the art that everyone is doing that relates to this.  A new section on the serve.gov site???

Want more information?

Follow on Twitter:      http://twitter.com/themightyunited
Facebook Group (Request to Join)       http://bit.ly/dJMuq

Rebecca Krause-Hardie is a trainer, consultant, project manager, and partner in AudienceWorks, helping organizations use new media effectively. This post was originally posted on her blog.

Debra Askanase, Guest Post: Using Flickr Creatively

Courtesy of Debra Askanase, publisher of Community Organizer 2.0

There is so much more to photosharing than uploading images from the latest event!

Yes, everyone likes to see themselves online, but Flickr is so much more than uploading images from the latest event. Flickr combines the power of visual storytelling with the very nature of a social network - engagement and conversation. Three arts organizations (Houston Ballet, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and Luce Foundation Center for American Art) are innovating ways to use  Flickr creatively, and in the process offering backstage passes to the organization, amplifying programming, and engaging stakeholders in real decision-making.

1. The Houston Ballet: Giving Fans a “Backstage Pass”

The Houston Ballet uses Flickr to offer a “backstage pass“  to all of its fans.  In particular, the ballet company offers its enthusiasts (and all Flickr browsers) visual insights into the organization’s activities and administration.

One of the more fanciful and wonderful Flickr photostreams comes from the Houston Ballet’s “Tour of Houston Ballet’s Warehouse.” What person doesn’t want to walk through the warehouse of the a famous production company?  Here is one of the photos:

This boat hangs from the ceiling of the Houston Ballet's warehouse

As described on the  Houston Ballet’s Flickr Photostream, “this is a photo tour of our warehouse in Houston’s 5th ward. We hope you enjoy this behind-the-scenes look at our productions’ ‘home away from home’ when they’re not in use at Wortham Theater Center.”

The Ballet also has another great “behind the scenes” photo shoot - making head casts for a scene in one of their ballet. Here is a screen shot of the  Flickr photostream for the “Marie” head casts:

What does this do? It offers Houston Ballet fans added value for subscribing to the Ballet’s photostream. It makes them feel special, too. How often does one get to look into the closet of a major ballet theater, or learn how they put their sets together? The Ballet has made their photostream an unique web destination for exclusive “backstage” information.

2. MassMOCA: Adding Dimensions to Current Programming

The Mass Museum of Contemporary Art (MassMOCA) uses Flickr to  crowdsource a set of images for the Flickr Finds section of its  blog. MassMOCA asks readers to upload photos of a specific topical nature to the MassMOCA Flickr site. They post a roundup of the best photos on their monthly Flickr Finds blog post. The photos usually relate to one of the concurrent exhibits. It’s a great way to create excitement around a current exhibit or an organization.

Here is a screenshot of a Flickr MassMOCA group message:

The blog post Flickr Finds: Tree Logic features selected photos from uploaded Flickr images of the “upside down trees” outdoor sculpture exhibit. Here is an excerpt from the blog post:

What does this do? It adds another dimension to exhibitions and creates enthusiasm on the Flickr and blogging platforms. It also extends the life of exhibitions and creatively engages fans. Lastly, it offers added publicity for MassMOCA: every photo uploaded to the MassMOCA Flickr group also appears on the photographer’s photostream and is indexed and tagged on Flickr as MassMOCA!

3. The Luce Foundation Center for American Art: Using Flickr for Crowdsourcing Decisions

The Luce Foundation Center for American Art is “an open study/storage facility displaying about thirty-three hundred objects from the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Here, our visitors can see works that would otherwise not be on view due to space restraints in our main galleries.” The Luce Foundation Center occupies 20,400 square feet of the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum’s collection.  According to the Smithsonian’s blog Eye Level, the Smithsonian American Art Museum lends work out, often for 12 months to other institutions, leaving gaps in the display units. They write:  “for this reason, we decided to open up this process and ask our online communities for help. Using Flickr, we can share a photo of a case (in the Luce Foundation Center) that needs a replacement artwork, provide information about all of the other works in the case, and challenge people to search our collections in order to find an appropriate substitution.

What a wonderful way to engage stakeholders in the decision-making process and offer them a “backstage pass” to the  art collection!

Here is an example of one of their photos from the Fickr  photostream for Fill the Gap campaign:

Case 34B from Fill the Gap photostream

This is a screen shot of a part of the the comment stream related to this particular case (Case 34B):

In the end, a piece was selected by the Foundation from among the ideas submitted for Case 34B:

Case 34B - Gap Filled!

What does this do? It creates an interaction between static works of art and the fans who love the art. It makes everyone a “citizen curator,” and a stakeholder in the outcome of the Fill the Gap replacement selection. It creates enthusiasm and publicity for the collection of art. Most importantly, it utilizes the crowdsourcing aspect of social media to engage fans, create deeper connections between them and the organization, and…select art for exhibition.

Think about using Flickr to offer “backstage passes,” crowdsource ideas, extend the life of your programming, or engage stakeholders in real organizational decisions. What are you waiting for?

 

Debra Askanase is a former community organizer and executive director, and the founder and lead consultant at Community Organizer 2.0, a social media strategy firm for non-profit organizations and businesses.

This post was originally published on Community Organizer 2.0

Marc van Bree, Guest Post: Social media, money and the mission statement

Submitted by Marc van Bree, editor of Dutch Perspective

During last week’s League of American Orchestras conference, I was following the session on social networking on Twitter. Mark Pemberton, who tweets @aborchestras, asked where the “business” is in social media. In a blog post on the League’s conference blog, he wrote:

I found today’s Social Networking session interesting up to a point. But Russell Jones was spot on in his cry of “what about the dollars?” The speakers kept talking about the “new business model.” But Facebook and Twitter have no business model! They have no means of generating income.

Here is an excerpt of what I commented on his post:

Social networking is not “a business model.” Social networking is a tactic or tool in your strategy. Most managers will want to see dollars coming in from social networking in the short term. But that is exactly the wrong approach. Social media is not a short term solution. To think so is short-sighted.

Going into social media with the objective to sell tickets is, in my opinion, wrong as well.

There is a lot of pressure in marketing and public relations departments of orchestras to sell tickets. Fewer subscriptions bought and more single tickets to sell means more and harder selling. It’s not surprising that a lot of managers look at social media as an addition to their marketing and sales efforts.

In these departments, it might almost seem that selling tickets is the organization’s mission statement. I was glad to see another post on the League’s conference blog. Alan Jordan posted the following:

A constituency session comment re-iterated a line shared with me a long time ago from a concert hall manager in Concord, NH who passed away from cancer a few years back: the official moniker for 501(c)3s is not “non-profit,” but “not for profit.” For profit firms are obligated to their shareholders to produce results. We are obligated to the public to produce results, and those results are not necessarily—and most beneficially—financial ones.

In my comment to Mark Pemberton, I continued:

Although nonprofits need to make money to operate, they are not here for profits. Social networking/media can help you in your core mission: bringing art and music to people. It can extend the life of a performance and engage and build communities. And that’s a goal or objective too.

Beth Kanter writes about return on investment on the NTEN blog and hits the nail on its head:

If you approach ROI as a financial analysis only, you’re missing the point. An ROI process focuses on identifying and unpacking the benefits of efficiency and effectiveness and how these support your organization’s mission.

Well, what is your organization’s mission exactly? Let’s look at some of the mission statements from orchestras around the country:

New York
To maintain and foster an interest in the enjoyment of music and musical affairs, and to inculcate in its members in the community of New York city and the nation at large, an interest in symphony music and in order to foster such interest and the appreciation of music, among other things to cause the performance of symphonic and other musical performances in the concert and other halls, over the radio, television, by phonographic recordings, and in any other manner now known or hereafter to be.

Chicago
The central mission of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association is to present classical music through the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to Chicago, national and international audiences.

London
The LSO’s mission is to give the finest performances of music and make them available to the greatest number of people.

These statements speak of bringing art to communities and audiences the world over. While ticket sales and revenue are important for the financial stability of the organization, the statements do not mention financials.

Clearly, the New York Philharmonic’s statement was written decades ago—yet still pertinent—and I particularly like “in any other manner now known or hereafter to be.” Let’s add the Internet to the list.

Alexandra Samuel has an interesting article at the Harvard Business blog on why nonprofits are so good at social media. Although the article should have been more appropriately named why nonprofits are uniquely primed to be good at social media—because not many are so good—she does bring up a couple of excellent points. Alexandra writes that “in the nonprofit sector, relationships have always been the key currency.” How can social media build upon those relationships? She outlines five points, three of which I thought particularly noteworthy:

Engage your audience by speaking to their core concerns: What do your customers care about most, and how can you speak to those concerns?

Offer a mix of tangible and social benefits: What tangible benefits can you offer that will encourage their participation?

Innovate within the bounds of your core mission: What value or services do you offer that could be delivered through a social network or online community?

In the SWOT analysis found in my Orchestras and New Media e-book, I look at some of the market opportunities best suited to company strengths and capabilities: maintain strong relationships with patrons; extend the life of a performance; and open the door to other geographic and demographic markets. (Read the e-book for particular examples.)

Sure, it is okay to think about monetizing these market opportunities to strengthen your financial base, but more importantly, you should start thinking about how they can help your organization’s core mission of providing classical music to audiences in your community and around the world.

That’s your first order of business. Heck, that’s why you’re in business.

Above photo credit: amandabhslater by CC Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

This article was originally posted on Dutch Perspective at http://mcmvanbree.com/dutchperspective/archives/200906_id361.htm by Marc van Bree:

Dutch native Marc van Bree is a public relations practitioner in Chicago with more than 5 years of experience communicating—on and offline—in the nonprofit environment.  Find him on Twitter @mcmvanbree

How Do You Get To Carnegie Hall? Upload Upload Upload

 

That's an old joke from my music school days. A guy gets into a cab in New York City and asks the cab driver, "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?" and the cab driver replies, "practice, practice, practice."

And if you graduated with a classical performance degree, that's what you had to do 8 hours a day - and then audition. You had to audition in person - sometimes behind a screen. You'd be one of hundred(s) or thousands to play for the jury making the decision - and if you were lucky you'd get call back for the finals.

The YouTube Symphony Orchestra released the first performance, a premiere of the Tan Dun composition "Internet Symphony, Eroica"  The performers were selected from thousands of video auditions from around the globe.   The finalists winnowed down by a jury of professional musicians, not unlike a traditional audition, but the winners were crowdsourced by YouTube users via online voting.  The resulting "mashed up" symphony orchestra, had more than 90 players representing over 30 countries.

They performed live at Carnegie Hall last under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas, San Francisco Sympony, who has used technology innovately throughout his career.

Was this just a clever publicity stunt or could this be the auditioning process of the future?  Does represent a possible new business model in the light of crumbling arts nonprofits?  And wondering why Michael Tilson Thomas doesn't have his own Twitter account?

See Marc van Bree's Orchestras and New Media E-Book and Presentation

Update:  CoolCat Teacher Blog, Vicky Davis, wrote about the YouTube Symphony quoted the title of this blog post.  What's funny is that Conductor Tilson Thomas says it in this video - that I didn't see.  Alan Levine suggested on Twitter 

that she give linktribution. As a music student - everyone knew that joke (and whole bunch other stupid music school jokes) - and so it was the first thing I thought of when I heard about this story. Little did I know that the PR people used it in the press release!

Here's the origin of that joke

Here's more remixes of the joke

Okay, here's a sample of some of those other stupid classical music jokes:

"What happens when a piano falls down a mine shaft on a miner?   A flat minor"

Fighting Arts Cuts in Bad Economy With Social Media

Over the years, I remember some very devastating and painful US government arts funding cuts - from the National Endowment for the Arts to Massachusetts State Arts Council. Arts advocates have always fought back.

Here's a social media infused campaign to fight 100% arts budget cut in Ottawa, Canada. You can learn more here.

Arts Summit 2008: The Alliance of New York State Arts Organizations - Reflections

I just got back from doing a plenary session at the Arts Summit organized by the Alliance of New York State Arts Organizations.  It's gathering of arts leader from throughout New York State.   I spoke about social media and future leadership in the arts - and also did a workshop.   I had the pleasure of sharing the podium with Susan Chun who spoke about the Steve project.  (Since we shared my laptop, she kindly gave me permission to upload her slides)

I have a long history with the arts community in New York.  For 12 years, I worked on arts and technology projects with the New York Foundation for the Arts, beginning with its Arts Wire program in 1992.   I've worked with Judith Weiner at the Alliance in many different capacities since 1994 - I built their first web site. I was a circuit rider for their Rurals Program where I drove all over New York state working with Rural Arts administrators - teaching them anything and everything from how to set up an excel spreadsheet to using email to powerpoint - to plugging in modems.  (I don't crawl under desks anymore, I'm too old).   As Phil Morris noted in his blog, it feels like home to be with this crowd.)

It was great to see many familiar faces - many folks who I haven't seen in at least five years, including Hoong Yee Lee Krakauer, an artist and the director of the Arts Council in Queens,  Andrew Salgado who runs Reader's Theatre Workshop, Phil Morris (the visionary behind Proctor's Theatre where the conference took place), Martha Strodel, Rural Arts Director, Robert Zuckerman from NYSCA, Elaine Giguere,  Anne Ackerson, Caroline Thompson, Kay Stamer, Judith Levine, and many others.  Some of my creative work in technology training was done during my decade plus two years working with the New York Arts community.  Many, many memories ..

The plenary and workshop took place in the black box theatre with a huge projection screen.  See the photos here.   I took a few minutes to check out the gorgeous mainstage theatre, a historic theater renovated to perfect. 

 

 

There was some excellent questions during the plenary from this very smart crowd.   One that stuck with me was: "I'm an older babyboomer.  I'm comfortable with computers and the Internet.  But, I just haven't paid much attention to the Web 2.0 stuff.   I realize that I should get my hands on it to understand it better - so I can manage my staff better. My head is spinning (in a good way) but where and how should I get started. "

I have to caution people that when I share the results of my experiments and learnings - that it is a culmination of 6 plus years of daily exploration of Web 2.0.    That's not where I began my learning journey.  I tell folks that my recent experiences are like playing a Paganini Violin piece.  But, I started with Twinkle, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star Suziki lessons 5-6 years ago. 

When my son, Harry, was three years old.  He used to watch the Mark Morris and Yo Yo Ma Failing Down Stairs dance video. He really wanted to play the cello.  So, we rented a 1/10 size cello and started on some lessons.  He sawed, sawed away at all.  But after a week, he said, "I don't want to play the cello anymore!"  I asked him why. "Because it doesn't sound like Yo Yo Ma!"  I had to explain to him that Yo Yo Ma didn't sound that way after he had played for week either - and that it takes practice.

So back to the question ... I offered some places to start and told her to live in that one thing for a couple of months.  Once you master it, take on the next thing.  I suggested a sequence of steps.

I had planned to do the social media game workshop, but after using a spectragraph to see if we had newcomers to social media and hear their burning questions, I decided to do some q/a and show them some basic getting started steps.  (Similar to what I've done here - except adding a live Twitter demo)

One of the most important things you need to do as a trainer - is to listen and adjust on the spot.  You have to be willing to toss out the lesson plan too -- ramp up or ramp down - and watch out if you're speaking in jargon.   I've been keeping an inner ear for that and when I spew jargon - I mock myself in front of the group and translate.  It gets a good laugh.

You can find the slides and resources at my Arts and Social Media wiki. 

A Crash Course in Social Media for Arts People in Philadelphia

Yesterday, I presented a workshop called "A Crash Course in Social Media for Arts People" hosted by the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance.  The workshop was part of a professional development series organized by the very capable Kendra Lawton, with help from Melissa Cooper.  I also got a chance to spend some time with Thomas Taylor, the Alliance's nonprofit technology in-house guru and social media whiz who turned me to twitpic.

Crash Course: Social Media for Arts People

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: arts)

This workshop was advertised as a crash course and I think packed enough content in there for 3 full days. Immersion for a day is a good thing, although people will naturally feel a little overwhelmed by the end of the day.  That's why I incorporated a number of reflection techniques throughout the day - to help with the digestion and application.  I also tested out a couple of instructional techniques for the first time and learned something myself.  I have also fully integrated the use of a wiki as "electronic flip chart," and leave behind resource as well as use of networked learning (Skype and twitter open to shoot out questions to people I could get richer answers to)

The morning agenda was the full group - presentation and demonstration with lots of opportunity for discussion.   The first half hour was spent in introduction and teasing out burning questions.  Right away, I introduce them to Twitter as a resource - the collaborative brain.  Then I tell the essence of using twitter is to learn the art of being succinct.  Next, I asked them to work in pairs to come up with their burning questions in 140 characters or less.  You have to emphasize to people not to get hung up on the 140 character limit, but to more to boil  down their learning question.   

Then, I asked people to report out the burning questions and add them to the wiki page set up for this.  This gives the you -as the trainer an idea of how well the content matches people's questions and to let people know.  With using a wiki, you can add resources or answers to the questions throughout the day - so people feel like they got their question answered without taking up too much time in the whole room discussion or getting to far off track in the agenda.

The topics covered included:

• Should Your Organization Embrace Social Media or Not?
• Why It is Important
• Cute Dog Theory: Thinking Strategically about Social Media

I do the interactive lecture technique - and invite other voices into the mix as much as possible and encourage questions.  Also, don't answer all the questions and ask for others to answer it. 

In between sections, I asked people to do a standing poll.  First you ask people to stand up.  Then ask people to sit down if they got an answer to their burning question.  Next, ask them to sit down if they learned something new that will be useful.   Then you ask them to write it down.   I also encouraged people to tell me during the break if the pace was too fast or too slow - or level was too advanced or basic.  (I would have addressed this with some differentiated instruction in the small groups in the afternoon.)

I did a full-room reflection exercise before the break in the morning called "Let's Walk the Line."  I used a ribbon asked for a volunteer to hold it at one end of the room who felt their organization was ready for social media - no question about it.  Then asked for another volunteer felt their organization was not ready for social media - and also told that if they know that it was a good thing - not a bad thing.   Each volunteer held the ribbon at opposites end of the room.  Then I asked people to line up according to how ready they felt their organization was to implement a social media project.  Then I asked people to share why -- first from the extremes and then from the middle.

After a break, we had a full-room session looking at the tools in the context of strategy and amount of time.  This is time slot before when the energy starts to drop, but you have get through some content. There were about 40 cultural organizations from Philadelphia that participated, from large established institutions to smaller groups and all with different levels of experience using social media.   So, I made the audience a part of the curriculum.  Here's how.

I spent quite a bit of preparation time visiting each organization's web presence and searching for any social media presence.  Here's the research I did.  Next,  I added screen captures of their social media presence or tactic in the slide show.   I told them before I started that I done this and hope that if the person was in the room they would share a little bit about their work.    When I got to an example where the person was in the room or if I asked how many of you use google alerts,  I let them share.  I also asked them questions to get at experiential learning.   

While it required a significant amount of preparation work, I think it worked out.  The workshop participants with experience shared a lot of valuable wisdom. 

The afternoon was spent playing the social media game. I need to scaffold the process better and have it connect to different groups of cards. I tried to incorporate the concept of POST - but need to use the same labels on the cards.  I also need written instructions for the steps.  I got some ideas while observing the groups at work and try to implement for next time I use the cards.   During the report out, I showed some additional resources or techniques and asked for advice in the room.

At the end of the day, I had participants quietly fill out a reflection form:

• One thing I learned
• One thing I will put into practice
• Questions I still have
• What still isn't clear

I also handed out 3x5 cards and asked people to give email address and one thing they make a habit in the next month.  I also asked for ideas for future blog posts.

I have some tweaking to do - and of course this helps inform the WeAreMedia face workshop syllabus.

Arts 2.0: Brooklyn Museum Click Exhibit Results: It's not a contest, it's a study in curation of the crowds ...

In April, I taught a social media workshop for artists and arts nonprofits and did some research on how different arts organizations using social media effectively.  The Brooklyn Museum kept coming up as a stellar example, particularly its Click Exhibition, an experiment in crowd-sourced exhibits.   

This compelling experiment in the wisdom of the crowds started off with an open call for works through the museum's various Web 2.0 networks.  The next phase was crowd-sourced rating process - where anyone could be a curator evaluating the aesthetic quality and relevance to the exhibition theme.   And finally, the top 20% of the 389 images are now in a physical exhibition space at the museum and on display until August.  (If you click through the exhibition, you'll notice that images are different sizes - the larger the image the higher the rating it got).  Here's a summary of the impressive participation stats for each phase.

As Shelly Bernstein, staff member at the museum, writes on the project blog, Click is not a contest, it's a study of crowds.  You can click through and see how the 389 images were evaluated by 3,344 evaluators who submitted 410,089 evaluations. (View the Evaluation Statistics.)It will be interesting to read the resulting paper and lessons learned from this experiment.  I'm curious about how the final results may have differed or not from what a curator might have selected?  I'm curious about how or if Click was gamed.

I'm also interested about how the museum approach the issue of moderating or not.   For example, the screen capture represents the top most discussed submissions to the Brooklyn Museum's Click Exhibition.   
One of the photos in the top 10 most discussed is         Tubby  Lambergini. Full Moon Over the East River.   Read the artist statement and then read the discussion.  Quite an interesting thread on gentrification, race, and class.  The photo isn't in the final exhibition - perhaps because it a wide range of evaluations or divergence of opinion. 

One of my favorite photos is Etienne Frossard. 9:15pm, 2005 also making a statement about the changing face in Brooklyn neighborhoods -which is in the exhibition.   It's in the top 10%

Nina Simon wrote an analysis of the project when it launched here.  I also had a chance to interview Shelly Bernstein, the Museum's staff person responsible for the project.  For more about the exhibit, check out this screencast.

 

My Day at the Powerhouse Museum

 

During my time in Sydney,  I spent a day with meeting with the staff at the Powerhouse Museum and Seb Chan who writes the Museum's blog, Fresh + New(er) and who I have had many virtual conversations with via our blogs but have not met face-to-face.   I got to meet the entire web team who I interviewed using QIK (see above), got a whirlwind tour of the museum (the Lost in Space Robot is in their collection!) and have an informal workshop with members of the marketing staff and curators.  Seb Chan has a good write up here.

The Powerhouse has done ground breaking in integrating social media into their communications and web strategies (most recently they've joined the Flickr Commons) but are also in the process of embracing the groundswell concept and making social media part of their organizational culture.   The afternoon workshop was another opportunity for education and discussion about social media and the museum's mission as well as a great example of how you create social change behind the firewall. 

I also met and interviewed Dr. Lynda Kelly, Head of Research, Australian Museum who shared some of her recent research on museum participation and online social activities.  She took excellent notes about our session and blogged it here.

My flickr photos are here

 

Social Media Strategy Is Everywhere in the Organization and More Cute Dog Theory Evidence from the Indianapolis Museum of Art

As Cute As I Get by Hermanosmccoy (used with permission)
Photograph of  "Calder," from Richard McCoy IMA Blogger

The Indianapolis Museum of Art has done an amazing job of integrating a social media strategy into its communications strategy.   What makes them a success?  Whether it is managing their Facebook presence or encouraging conversation on their blog with art lovers, their social media strategy is a team effort.   While they have put someone in charge, their social media strategy is everywhere - from the conservation department to the curators. 

Parceling the workload - whether it is blogging or managing a Facebook profile has lots of benefits.   It doesn't make it an overwhelming task for one staff person to participate on different sites.   Furthermore, it is a great strategy for engaging people in the organization to discuss and own the organization's social media strategy.  This is what leds to success.  Having everyone participate leads to understanding.

I'm NOT suggesting that everyone on staff stop doing their work and spend hours and hours blogging or making friends on Facebook.  And, there may be one or two staffers who have more hands-on, tactical implementation responsibilities.  I'm talking about not putting the social media strategy in a little box that is separate from the organization - that "thing over there."   To be successful, it needs to be a part of the organizational culture and people need to experience to some degree.

Sharing the workload has other advantages as well. Keeping the organization's social media strategy implementation tightly compartmentalized or siloed within just one person's or department's domain personalizes it too much.  The strategy succeeds everyone is brilliant and if there are mistakes or learning, then it was just one person's "bad idea" - and the experimentation and reiteration that is necessary for success is just not done. 

I wasn't surprised to discover that two of the IMA bloggers, Richard and Robert were dog lovers.  (Richard has a golden lab named Tana).  Richard has an appropriately named bull dog - Calder. Here's the photo shoot he did recently with Calder.

What are the secrets to success as they relate to staffing and your social media strategy?  Sharing the workload is one.   What are some  of the others?

What is a Museum without YouTube?

What is a Museum without YouTube? sounds like a riddle.  I couldn't think of a punch line can, you?   This was a response from a Twitter follower, Hans de Kraker who pointed me to this blog post (in Dutch). Looks like reviewed the YouTube channels for museums. I like Moma's Channel. The videos include short promotions, almost like movie trailers promoting an exhibit.  The one above is Richard Serra's Torqued Ellipse IV (1998) and Intersection II (1992) being installed in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden at The Museum of Modern Art in preparation for Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years (June 3 - September 10, 2007).   

The videos that give a peek behind the scenes at the museum have the most views, like this one of another sculpture installation.  Interesting commentary by viewers too.   The IMA has a YouTube Channel too that uses a slightly different approach.

Update:  From MCN List and J Trant

Beyond launch: Museum videos on YouTube
http://www.archimuse.com/mw2008/papers/hart/hart.html

David Hart, The Museum of Modern Art, USA
Allegra Burnette, The Museum of Modern Art, USA
Chris Alexander, San Jose Museum of Art, USA
Dan Dark, Indianapolis Museum of Art, USA
Jennifer Rossi, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, USA
Nicole Minor, Exploratorium, USA

I wonder how effective placing videos like these on YouTube is as a strategy to get people to visit the museum?  I wonder what the crossover is between YouTube viewers and museum attendance?    Have you come across a museum channel that you think is really good. Why? 

Arts 2.0: Examples of Arts Organizations Social Media Strategies

| View | Upload your own

The above slide show was created based on all the information I gathered from my network below.

 

I'm prepping for a workshop on Social Media and wanted do a round up of recent compelling examples of arts organizations using social media strategies and tools.   I've covered arts organizations and social media here and there over the past three years and last winter co-wrote a cover story article with Rebecca Krause-Hardie for ArtsReach.   So, thought I'd take an opportunity to query my network via Twitter and Facebook and see what's new.   

I was particularly interested in examples using blogs, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, and Facebook.

Everyone is a Curator

One of the best projects that illustrates the basic idea of Web2.0 - listening and conversation and stakeholders creating their own experience with your organization - comes from the Brooklyn Museum of Art. They're now running a compelling experiment in crowd-sourced exhibition creation and curation via the photography exhibition Click.

Here's how Nina Simon described it on her insightful post analyzing the tactics used.

1. The Museum solicited photographs from artists via an open call on their website, Facebook group, Flickr groups, and outreach to Brooklyn-based arts organizations.

2. On the web, anyone can evaluate the photographs in terms of aesthetic quality and relevance to the exhibition theme. All evaluations are private; all artists are unnamed. It's very easy to sign up and judge... and you can do so now by registering here.

3. The photographs will be installed in a physical exhibition running for six weeks this summer. The art will be displayed in order of the average juried scores. Visitors will be able to see how different subgroups (including art experts) ranked and responded to the art. The exhibition will coincide with programs about art theory, online communities, and crowd theory, providing a forum for public evaluation and discussion about the process.

Nina observes that the following makes this project really special:

• It is 100% community-based
• The internal team is led by a non-curator.
• They kept the interface simple
• They make it easy to evangelize
• They are sensitive to the artists who are being judged.
• They ask judges to self-define their art knowledge.

But as Nina notes, they are doing research from this experiment about the role of independence and influence in a participatory experience.  Note that this is a research/learning approach that is key to success of Web2.0 projects.

More at TechCrunch and Technology in the Arts Blog.

Another theme of web2.o is Transparency - and the best example of that is what the Indianapolis Art Museum has done with its pubic metrics on its web site.

Blogs

Elizabeth Perry, an artist in Pittsburgh and pioneer of "sketch blogging" reported that local arts organizations have been good at integrating social media without having to create or maintain anything new.  "They have begun inviting local bloggers as press to openings and events - usually they get in touch with Mike Woycheck or Cynthia Closkey, two of the co-founders of Pittsburgh Bloggers, who then re-blog the invitation and spread it via Facebook or their own Twitter streams. Lindsay Patross runs the blog, and people get hold of her, too.

Similar strategy to what the San Francisco Symphony did with its blogger outreach event.   ASOL gives a write up and some pointers for holding your own blogger outreach event.

What Should Artists and Arts Organization’s Blog about?  An excellent question posed by Beth Dunn of Small Dots.

Most people are fascinated by the interior life of artists. Many people are turned on by the chance to peek backstage at a theater. Almost everyone I know thinks they can curate an art exhibit. Are they right?

Artists: Write about your favorite kind of paintbrushes. Write about where you go shopping for paintbrushes. Write about how hard it is to find decent studio space. Write about why you ditched that banker job to see if you could make it selling art. Write about your crippling self-doubt and fears of failure. Write the truth. Not the press release.

Arts Organizations: Write about your insides — what goes on inside a theater, a museum, a historical home? Not the tedious soap opera that will get you fired if you share - the cool stuff we’re all dying to know! Where do your staff come from? What brought them here? How much fun did you have striking the set over the weekend? Can I help next time?

Artist Blogs

For individual artists, a blog can also help sell or promote their work.  Here's some artists personal blogs that support their gallery sites where they sell their work -- A Planet Named Janet,  Self VS Self, PaMdora's Box and Jen Lemen

Arts Organizations

Let's look at individual blogs.  Here was have the professional development or career blog like Museum2.0, and Im in Ur Museum Blogz that is written by an individual, not as part of the organization.  The content is focused on the professional area of expertise.   Blog helps deepened expertise.   Many early adopters in nonprofits got started this way - outside of the firewall.

Fresh + new(er) is an institutional blog from the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney Australia written by staff member Seb Chan.   Interesting that this blog has evolved into one that serves the sector of museum professionals.  (see for example the post about blogging policy).

The Academy of Vocal Arts has a blog written by Daniel Pantano.  According to Maryanne Devine, the staff member to go to for all the AVA gossip. "The writing is in his own voice, personal and authentic, and he's giving the patrons exactly what they crave: who won which competition, who just got engaged, where alums are singing, backstage snapshots. He doesn't get much in the way of comments, but when he misses a few days, he gets lots of complaints.   

Musematic is a group blog of museum technology professionals.  The description: "Rants and raves on the latest trends in the world of museum informatics and technology. An intrepid cast of experts from the Museum Computer Network and AAM's Media & Technology Committee share their insights, observations and tricks of the trade."

The Walker Blog was one of the first arts institution blogs.  The idea was to give an inside view of the inner workings of the Walker.  Different departments or individuals came on gradually.  (I wrote about this blog back in 2005)

The Brooklyn Museum's blog is another one that takes a group approach, also focuses a peak behind the scenes. As does Indianapolis Museum of Art blog.

Tate's Mobile Blog is collecting audience input on the new building design at the Tate - via mobile phones to blog - or mob blogging.   

Over the next six months we’ll be inviting all kinds of people, including designers, artists, young people, families, students and Tate staff, to share their ideas. Why not send us your own photos and join the discussion here at The Great Tate Mod Blog?

Finally, Rebecca Krause Hardie has some notes from a blogging workshop given at the Museums and the Web Conference earlier this month

Flickr

The Academy of Vocal Arts uses a flickr account to document organizational events/galas/benefits - good way to get started. Arts Northfield has well organized collections and sets of all organizational activities.

Brooklyn Museum of Art has a very active and successful group  - notice the  lively discussion board.  MOMA has a group for its graffiti project.

This example of using Flickr for exhibitions - both in Flickr and on the web site. The American Image: The Photographs of John Collier Jr. online exhibit developed by the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico and Ideum.

Here's the description of how they used flickr for the exhibition.

In designing and developing The American Image: The Photographs of John Collier Jr. website with The Maxwell Museum of Anthropology we’ve found ourselves spending a lot of time in Flickr. The Collection of photographs found on the site are pulled in from Flickr using a Flash-base mashup. The Shooting ScriptColonizing Social Spaces, looked more broadly at the benefits and drawbacks of museums utilzing social networking sites. In this post, I’m going to look exclusively at Flickr and our experience with the American Image site. activity works in similar way: pulling out John Collier Jr’s images as well as those of other Flickr members. An earlier post, Colonizing Social Spaces, looked more broadly at the benefits and drawbacks of museums utilzing social networking sites. In this post, I’m going to look exclusively at Flickr and our experience with the American Image site.

I interviewed Jim Spadaccini and he told me that initially more people had viewed the photos in flickr versus the exhibition web site.   He also mentioned that the commenting on the photos was fascinating and that they even got an email from someone who knew the Gagnon's family that the name was not correct! Read more of Jim Spadaccini's reflections

Finally the Library of Congress community tagging pilot project on flickr. (Launched in Jan. (follow up here)

A pilot project the Library of Congress is undertaking with Flickr, the enormously popular photo-sharing site that has been a Web 2.0 innovator. If all goes according to plan, the project will help address at least two major challenges: how to ensure better and better access to our collections, and how to ensure that we have the best possible information about those collections for the benefit of researchers and posterity. In many senses, we are looking to enhance our metadata (one of those Web 2.0 buzzwords that 90 percent of our readers could probably explain better than me).

The project is beginning somewhat modestly, but we hope to learn a lot from it. Out of some 14 million prints, photographs and other visual materials at the Library of Congress, more than 3,000 photos from two of our most popular collections are being made available on our new Flickr page, to include only images for which no copyright restrictions are known to exist.

 

Nina Simon has a good piece on why museums should use flickr.

Facebook

Individual profiles, groups, fan pages and applications.  There are many museum professionals active on Facebook - step one is to create an individual profile and then go find your colleagues. The group Museum Professionals Unite Across Facebook has about 2,000 members and 89 discussion threads, so there's definitely lots of places to talk shop on Facebook with peer professionals.    There are a number of museums with official group and fan pages, like this one from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

As Nina Simon points out, Brooklyn Museum of Art is the gold standard of Art Museums using social media and its projects on Facebook are no exception. (Be sure to check out Nina's Museum2.0 Blog for lots of great posts.

Brooklyn Museum of Art developed a Facebook application called Art Share.  It lets Facebook users share works art from Museums around the world on their profile.  Artists can upload and share their own work using this application.  Participating institutions include the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Brooklyn Museum, Canada Agriculture Museum, Corning Museum of Glass, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Powerhouse Museum, Royal Ontario Museum, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, V&A, Walker Art Center, Walters Art Museum.

The application launched in November according to this progress report the usage stats as of February were:

• 1000 people using ArtShare on Facebook.
• 174 artists are using ArtShare to share their own works.
• Institutions have uploaded 438 works from their collections and artists have uploaded 754.

Some more on the metrics from the progress report:

On Facebook,  the highest traffic comes from browsing profiles, so exposure to the images may be significantly higher. For instance, if each ArtShare user has 20 friends, a lot more people could be seeing the images from ArtShare being shuffled on that profile. In a nut shell, 1000 people may have installed it, but a lot more may be seeing it and while this is not the kind of traffic we can measure, it is interesting to think about.

I wanted to take a quick look at what the performing arts scene was like on Facebook. 

Doing a quick search on the word "symphony" on Facebook turned up more than 500 individuals.  A few of these are Symphony orchestras using their individual profiles (incorrectly and a violation of the TOS) for an organizational presence.   (There are quite a few individuals with the last or first name symphony.)

There were about 70 Fan Pages that turned up including a number of youth and college symphonies.   A couple of major symphony orchestras, like the Chicago Symphony with 1336 fans and the Boston Symphony. The fan pages are like mini-web pages with the ability to add applications.   The features on their Fan Pages include music player (filled with symphony selections), albums, photos, events, and videos.  There is also a discussion board and the ability to post notes.  The Boston Symphony has been doing ticket giveaway promotions.

While I focused on Facebook for social networking examples, there are examples on MySpace.  Even found an artist social network that is called Dripbook.

Twitter

Twittours has a list of museums using Twitter.  Looks like most are just learning how to use twitter and mostly tweeting about content on their sites.  Using it like a newswire similar to New York Times Arts Section

Brooklyn Museum of Art is using twitter - mostly to point to blog content or web site content.   Tate is also twitter, but hasn't really engaged yet  - probably in the Twitter is the dumbest thing I've ever seen stage?    But as the Field Museum notes on its MySpace page status - still trying to figure it out. 

Heard on Twitter a mobile poetry project on Twitter is in the works.  (Poets.Org is already mobile)

Still more arts organizations on twitter found at TwitTours - this post about  Alliance for Historic Hillsborough - tweeting about bites of information about its programs.

Beth Dunn has a great post on artists and twitter.  It points over the Cycling Artist's post about the benefit and value of Twitter for artists.

YouTube

Anaheim Ballet has a YouTube Channel with over 130,000 channel views.   Perhaps due to their MySpace presence? Another good example is Youth Speaks.

Thanks everyone for the leads .. any other comments or suggestions - leave them in the comments.  Now, off to finish the workshop curriculum ...

Better Blog Museum Metrics

Seb Chan

I just discovered that one of my blog colleagues in Australia, Seb Chan,  is writing about a topic of mutual interest - social media metrics (my blog ramblings here and my wiki/presentations here).  I am also prepping a panel on the topic for NTC (more about that later)  Seb Chan is focusing specifically on blog metrics for museums.

He is suggesting two metrics for museums (which are also recommended by the others talking about this topic in other disciplines):

In our paper Jim and I avoided site traffic and instead proposed that two better measures of success for museum blogs were citations/linkbacks and user comments. These captured the ‘interactivity’, the multidirectional communication, that most museums set up blogs to encourage and explore.

He thinks that Avanish Kaushik's model is particularly well-suited for museum blogs.  I am wondering about the "ripple index" as described by Kaushik:

Ok so you are talking, people are listening, and lo and behold they are talking to you on your blog as well. Hurray!!

But in a world of networks and connections what is your impact beyond your immediate blog?

A key validating factor for a blog, any blog, is that other people talk about what you are writing about. They reference back to you (with nice words or scathing critiques!). They link to you.

I call these Citations. People talk about you, discuss you point, throw up on you, praise you. Citations.

To measure Citations I use Technorati rank.

It Technorati the best measurement tool for measuring ripples or "influence"?  KD Paine notes why measuring blog influence isn't so easy with a pointer to Brendon Cooper titled "Which Metric is the Most Important" that discusses looks at different method to measure influence in the blogosphere.  (He is the originator of the PR Power Index) Take it all with a grain of salt.

Another explanation of influence can be seen in this illustration of ripples,  I came across this visual a few months back from David Armano.   

Ripples of Influence

Seb, I have a few questions .. Where is the paper you refer to located?  Is it here? It's on my reading list.

For your metrics/measurement for the new blog, what will that look like?  Do you have plan or logic model to share?

What is your impression of the flickr stats feature?

In your institution, what are some of the attitudes about evaluation metrics that you need to change or challenge when thinking about a social media measurement plan?  What easily connects to your existing practice of metrics/measurement for the Museum Web and what does not?

Indianapolis Museum of Art: Transparency

This came the "dashboard" for the Indianapolis Museum of Art , an ongoing effort to measure various aspects of the Museum's performance.  According to the web site, the goal is to seek to quantify and report out on areas of activity of general interest to museum studies specialists, colleagues, and patrons.

The Web section offers a sampling of numbers only data.    What is interesting is how the web metrics include a mix of traditional web analytics and social media metrics, in this case number of friends on myspace (454) and views (see above) on its youtube channel.  What it doesn't show me is any trends over time or analysis based on gathering data from several types of resources.  I would like to see some context.

The dashboard is one feature in he Indianapolis Museum of Art's new Website which launched in September with lots of social media features.  According to a blog post at the site, at least one staff person thinks the dashboard is cool:

For more than 5 years, I didn't think another dashboard could rival my Passat's for coolness. And while it may not be exactly the same thing, I think the IMA's new dashboard might just do it. So what's so cool about our dashboard? We're really the first museum in the world to use technology like this. The public now has access to statistics about attendance, the art collection and even our budget. For instance, folks can check to see how much we have spent so far this year and how it relates to what we projected in our 2007 budget. Visitors can also check to see how many people have visited Roman Art from the Louvre or shopped in the IMA Shop. For better or for worse, the IMA's dashboard let's you see the IMA from the inside.

Jim Spadaccini from Ideum Blog notes that dashboards are not new, in fact, there's a book about Dashboard Design. However, "This a great example of a museum presenting basic information about the institution in a dynamic and unconventional way."

There is some question as to who would be interested in this type of information - a somewhat out of context random set of numbers.  More commentary here.  What do you think?

UPDATE:   The Giving Blog writes about the Dashboard here

Greetings from Chicago and the Museum Computer Network Conference

I'm here in Chicago for a very brief trip on a panel about metrics and measurement for museums called "New Spaces, New Measures."   My slides and resources are here.

I came across two more excellent resources on this evolving topic of social media metrics and wanted to quickly summarize before I add to the link list in the wiki.

The New Metrics of Scholarly Authority by Michael Jensen published in the Chronicle in June, 2007 describes how scholarly authority is being influenced by Web 2.0.   He points out, "While those trends are enabled by digital technology, I'm not concerned with technology per se — I learned years ago that technology doesn't drive change as much as our cultural response to technology does."   He talks about the cultural shift from information scarcity to abundance.  He suggests this list of metrics:

• Prestige of the publisher (if any).
• Prestige of peer prereviewers (if any).
• Prestige of commenters and other participants.
• Percentage of a document quoted in other documents.
• Raw links to the document.
• Valued links, in which the values of the linker and all his or her other links are also considered.
• Obvious attention: discussions in blogspace, comments in posts, reclarification, and continued discussion.
• Nature of the language in comments: positive, negative, interconnective, expanded, clarified, reinterpreted.
• Quality of the context: What else is on the site that holds the document, and what's its authority status?
• Percentage of phrases that are valued by a disciplinary community.
• Quality of author's institutional affiliation(s).
• Significance of author's other work.
• Amount of author's participation in other valued projects, as commenter, editor, etc.
• Reference network: the significance rating of all the texts the author has touched, viewed, read.
• Length of time a document has existed.
• Inclusion of a document in lists of "best of," in syllabi, indexes, and other human-selected distillations.
• Types of tags assigned to it, the terms used, the authority of the taggers, the authority of the tagging system.

He also notes that change will be slow:

Many of the values of scholarship are not well served yet by the Web: contemplation, abstract synthesis, construction of argument. Traditional models of authority will probably hold sway in the scholarly arena for 10 to 15 years, while we work out the ways in which scholarly engagement and significance can be measured in new kinds of participatory spaces.

Via RSA Networks blog

Kami Hulse, who gave a small taste of her presentation on relational objectives has shared her presentation notes and slides on a post with the title "Let's Talk About The Bottom Line and Dreaded ROI"  I used a similar title in the presentation I gave at Podcamp last week called "Let's Talk About Social Media Metrics, Measurement, and ROI."  Geoff Livingston has started a conversation meme here.
Be sure to check out Kami's links on measurement.

 

 

A slidedeck from the recent Technology in the Arts Conference

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I was sad to miss the Technology in the Arts Conference this past week, but Maryann Devine whose blog I read was there.  She was kind enough to forward me a copy of her slides - and looks like I had a little bit of presence there!


Maryann can you tell me the story behind the Ann Landers image and the story of the dog with the bad name and RSS?