Laser-etched Victory Stele
My brother, Dennis, was about to turn thirty. My partner, Victoria, and I, wanted to give him something monumental… like a monument. So we decided to list all his accomplishments on a victory stele. I love this thing so much. Now, this is an old-fashioned thing to do. Very old-fashioned. Bronze Age Near East kind...
The Brat Whisperer
Much like The Responsibility Scallop, The Brat Whisperer* is another neologism of mine for organizational theory. One of the first things I learned building ensembles at conservatory was this: the first thing you do, fire the brat. If you can’t turn up on time, communicate clearly and quickly, be sensitive to your collaborators, and perform...
Why yes, I think I will read Adam Huttler on House of Cards
And shockingly, I basically agree with him. I know. Unprecented. Definitely read his post. I’ll wait. Basically, he walks you through the data-driven story of creating the House of Cards remake for Netflix. Users loved the original series, and those users also loved Kevin Spacey and David Fincher. So Netflix bet $100 million on a...
The Met in HD, MOOCs, and the Distributors of the Future
There’s a fascinating discussion going on right now. It’s about what the arts sector will look like for the next couple of generations. The most recent chapter was started by Michael Kaiser, picked up by Diane Ragsdale, and then continued by Adam Huttler. Basically, Michael is arguing for increased efficiency in our organizations (better marketing...
NAMPC post-game
The National Arts Marketing Project conference was a blast. There were lots of smart people, the conference was very well organized, and I was upside down (photo credit: @lynnekingsley). It rocked. I spoke with Sara Eileen Hames and Casey Middaugh about how arts organizations can use Kickstarter to rapidly prototype programming ideas while engaging communities....
Chefs and Musicians Again
Last time I blogged about my two favorite professions, I recommended that musicians look at how restaurants deal with lots of quantitative and qualitative in-depth feedback from their customers (how many of what sold, what the waiters say the customers said, etc.). As I’m on vacation, I thought I’d return to the subject. There’s something...
Amanda Palmer paying with love
Late Update: Amanda Palmer is now paying all her musicians. Good for her. I’m very glad she’s doing it, but I also think the level of outrage was way out of proportion with the situation. The controversy over this has basically been dealt with. The Kickstarter million is in fact gone, the amount needed to...
Arts, meet Capital. Then meet crowdfunding.
I’m thinking a lot about how artists and small organizations are similarly structurally cash-poor (we try hard to make art, not save or earn money), and about the boundary in the arts between the structurally cash-poor actors and the structurally cash-rich ones: foundations, governments, Big Content(tm), corporate donors, and individual wealthy people. I got started...
Social Capital and Regular Capital
So….. Facebook’s stock is dropping a bit. Ignoring the major explanations: a bank that didn’t underprice the stock to take piles of money off of a tech company, a big honking tech bubble, etc., there’s something else going on. We all have this basic feeling that Facebook is actually hugely important and hugely valuable. We...
Connection Wealth for Artists
So, social connection and money both solve similar coordination problems. And for a couple centuries doing economics meant you could basically ignore the social connection category of wealth, because it was a pain in the ass to analyze and it wasn’t that powerful, really. But now there are a ton more social connections and those...
Artists Should Invest in Love
Apple has a ton of money. As their business grew, they kept a lot of it as a long term investment. They didn’t invest it in hedge funds or anything like that. They held onto it partly because Steve Jobs was kinda weird, but partly because all that money gave them safety and flexibility. They...
Learn Kickstarter from AFP’s new campaign
Because really, there’s only so long you can go on a blog about the future of the arts and the internet without blogging about Amanda Palmer. That’s her new Kickstarter video down there. Back it. Buy it. Love it. But more to the point: THAT’S HOW YOU DO THAT. I spend a lot of time...
