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 …
Category Archives: Essays
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 …
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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 …
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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 …
Kickstarter Revenue & RUCKUS NYC
In a lot of ways, Kickstarter is supposed to free you from revenue projections. Kickstarter CEO Perry Chen tells the story of wanting to see if there was enough interest in an event before committing the money and effort to hosting it – that experience was part of what inspired him to create Kickstarter. The …
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 …
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I Love Public Online Collaboration
It makes composition so much less lonely. Yes, I’m still sitting alone in my house making things up, but other people can chime in and help me think through neat dramatic issues or musical ideas if they want to. And the best part is that they can participate while I’m still technically alone, which means …
Musicians and Restaurants
I just saw this video linked in a blog post by James Buckhouse, the man behind #TeamClassical. Peter Gregson has a great message about what classical music can learn from restaurants. It’s worth listening to the whole talk and hearing him flesh out the ideas, but basically he’s saying that restaurants understand that they need …
Why Don’t I Have a Non-Profit?
I’m an entrepreneurial young person in the arts in New York City. I produce events large and small, have experience and expertise in the management of a non-profit, particularly in grantwriting, and all the other skills necessary to create and lead that kind of an organization. I have a core group of collaborators that could …