Perpetually Curious

"Rather, what is valuable is that one's life be actively engaged in projects that give rise to this feeling [a high quality pleasure], when the projects in question can be seen to have a certain kind of objective worth." I stumbled upon this book by complete accident. I don't normally go browsing through the moral philosophy* section in my major university research library, but this author happens to be a patron of ours, and I happened across it in the course of doing some other research, so I thought I'd pick it up. I was pleasantly surprised to hear so many of the arguments we arts folk make about why the arts are "meaningful" to a person. Wolf begins by positing that "meaning" exists somewhere between "morality" and "happiness", the normal two reasons for explaining why we humans do the things we do. Those two options still represent the reasons we do many things (pay taxes, have sex), but Wolf argues that the reaso...

From the blurb: "Why do some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos, and others do not?" Sounds an awful lot like the np arts orgs world, doesn't it? Why is it some theaters succeed, balancing budgets, retaining audiences, basking in critical acclaim? While others stumble along, maybe having a hit or two, always wondering if people can be paid, eventually shuttering rather than enduring more stress? Collins doesn't set out to write about our world (unfortunately. Mr. Collins, if you ever do, please call me to be on your research team.) but his key findings--in all of his books--apply not only to the publicly traded for-profit corporations he studies but to the myriad sized and structured art centered, community building, nonprofit arts organizations we love. The companies he looks at in GbC all have the same traits: their leaders have Level 5 ambition; they have empirical creativity AND fanatic discipline AND productive paranoia; they stick with a SMaC (Specif...

Me and Scott. The awesome level in this room was off the charts. This past week I've been able to meet two of my new favorite authors/speakers locally: Richard Evans, of EmcArts , and Scott Stratten, of Unmarketing . I have been reading their information for around a year now and was ecstatic at the opportunity to meet them both on my home turf. While they would likely find they have a lot in common if they sat down and talked it out, at first glance it doesn't appear that way: one is a researcher in the arts field, the other a marketer. However, both of them share key insights that apply to the new work of engaging customers. 1. Active Participation Richard talked about how marketing for innovative arts organizations is about engaging active participants with both the process and product of art. Scott makes the point that businesses don't define their brands, customers do. In both instances, it's about the value the customer places on our organizations that ma...

I've been invited to participate in the National Arts Marketing Project Blog Salon about marketing the arts, in advance of this year's conference in November. As I'll be leading a roundtable discussion there on Customer Service in the Small Shop Arts Organization, I thought I'd write about how to keep audiences coming back for more. This post is just some thoughts and ideas about the topic, things to remember, or spark questions. -power of a name. How often are you greeting patrons by name, before they tell you what it is? -good service makes the whole event. Crappy service can mar good art. -building relationships takes time. -ask questions, then write down the answers so you can follow up next time. -share information with staff, up and down. -how are you hugging your customers? Once marketing gets them in the door, what actions are you taking to make them raving fans? -do you have a customer service mission? Not a list of rules, but a mindset about how custom...

Confession time: my first love was writing. I was assigned "make a newsletter" in high school and absolutely fell head-over-heels in love with designing, writing, drawing, and printing the single-fold sci-fi 'zine (this in the days before 'zines were a thing). My friends wrote for it, too, and there was a book review and a hand-drawn title and everything important I could think to include. There are times I miss that format of communication. Short magazines can be not only incredibly gratifying to make but also extremely helpful to a particular audience. Like, say, tourists who are in town for one weekend and want to know what the cultural heartbeat is. My family and I recently visited the metro-Asheville area and picked up an abundance of monthly/bi-monthly/yearly printed magazines. Actual hard-copy, some glossy, some newsprint arts-and-culture magazines.* I pored through them, cover-to-cover, to find calendar listings, articles about restaurants, ads that looked c...

What a phenomenal weekend at the Americans for the Arts annual conference, held in beautiful San Antonio, TX. I have so many anecdotes, stories, lessons, and meetings I want to process and share. It's been over 15 years since I've flown anywhere, 16 since I've worked a conference, and--unless you count a layover in Dallas when I was 8--I've never been to Texas. This had felt very magical, at times surreal, and I've had to think of it as my debutante ball in the arts administration world. The weekend had made me question what my path is and what the next steps are I need to take. I will share many of the stories and insights soon, after I've had a chance to reflect and, well, unpack (miracle of modern technology: writing this on my phone in an airport). For now, I just want to thank the folks who were instrumental in making this weekend happen: *Megan Cornett, director of Marketing, Admissions, and Communications for the graduate programs at Goucher, *Katja H...

Todd Hawkins leading panel discussion for the Emerging Leaders.