New Music USA project grants awarded

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 …

More on Art and Money

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 …

Art is really a lot like money

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 …

Takemymoney.com

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 …

Speaking at the Dance/NYC Symposium

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 …

Speaking at the New Music Gathering

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 …

Extraneous Concept Patrol

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 …

Dump Your Vendor: DIY Tech for Non-Profits

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 …

Arts Entrepreneurship is a Resistance Movement

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. …

How Non-Profits Can Learn From Tech Startups

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 …

Data Adjacent Decision Making

I’ve been talking a fair amount recently about the dangers of “data adjacent decision making.” This happens when you have a lot of numbers, and probably a graph, and you put them next to a decision, and then believe that your decision is based on solid scientific reasoning. I’ve seen this danger crop up in …