Tech, Philanthropy, Composing
Usually, I like to write out my talks completely in advance. It forces me to clear up my thinking, and lets me publish everything at the same time I give the talk. I'm a big fan of sharing thinking as widely as possible. But at the New Music Gathering, I couldn't do that. The New …
Continue reading "New Music Gathering talk on Baumol’s Cost Disease"
So this thing that I work on, the platform for New Music USA's grantmaking, is once again in high gear. Yesterday we awarded 62 more projects with almost $300,000. But the best part is that you can follow any of the projects you like. The project pages let you hear everything we awarded, and you …
really good critique from Dennis Loo Based on some good feedback, I'd like to revise and extend my previous bit of ontology. First, and most importantly, I need to walk back some of the universal claims. Dennis Loo (who was my RA at summer camp in 1997), made a very good point on Facebook. I …
I don't know if I find this idea convincing. I certainly find it attractive. If you know of someone who's tried to argue this way before, or if you have holes to poke in the idea, please have at it. Art Is Like Money Art is an awful lot like money, but fundamentally incommensurate with …
So I have a weird problem with a few artists. Some are authors, some are pop musicians, some are random I-don't-know-but-sometimes-they-have-a-kickstarter people. I want literally everything they make. I don't care what it is. Anne Leckie's sequel to Ancillary Justice is coming out? I want it. The pre-order date is 6 months away? I have …
Sydney Skybetter is hosting something really fun at the Dance/NYC symposium on February 22nd of next year. Instead of a panel discussion where 3-5 people get rambly for an hour, Sydney is getting bunch of his 'culture warriors' together (including me) and grilling us one by one. I think he'll get better stuff out of …
The inaugural New Music Gathering just announced its line-up, and it's really fun. I'm pretty excited to be speaking on some issues related to careers in the arts, and also to be doing what they're billing as "therapy", which is mostly "career therapy". Given how much stress there is associated with being an artist, and …
My job involves a lot of talking to people about ideas, from high level mission, vision, and strategy, to nitty gritty things like how teams communicate, how projects fit together, and how people think about the process of doing their job. Clear thinking is incredibly important to my work, both for me and for the …
A lot of non-profits have problems that sound like this: We're paying almost a whole salary, if not more, for this third party technology that supports an essential part of our organization, but we're really unhappy with it. It doesn't really do what we need it to do, and our staff spends a lot of …
Continue reading "Dump Your Vendor: DIY Tech for Non-Profits"
There's been a lot of great discussion of arts entrepreneurship on NewMusicBox recently. There's a lot of good stuff there, and also plenty I disagree with. The emphasis on arts entrepreneurship in education in particular has come under some fire. Teaching young artists this stuff is about helping them to survive in an unfair world. …
Continue reading "Arts Entrepreneurship is a Resistance Movement"
There's a lot non-profits can learn from the tech industry. Of course, when I say that, sometimes people think I mean that non-profits should emulate startups and their culture, complete with the venture capital, the ping pong, and the gender equity issues. Unsurprisingly, that's not what I mean. For more on the tech sector's issues …
Continue reading "How Non-Profits Can Learn From Tech Startups"
I don't really like cabbage, but the CSA is basically like a slow motion episode of Chopped but only with vegetables. So now I know that I like cucumber salads, and I have this recipe for cabbage soup. Start by chopping and washing the entire giant head of cabbage that you can only sort of …
