Musings on the LSO Digital Symposium

I’ve just got back from the LSO “All Change?” Digital Symposium. Both Anwen and I were in attendance and I think our feelings about the day are about the same – lovely to network and join in the debate as always but we really need to move on this conversation now and talk about the impacts, actions and responses of digital development. One thought from the day stood out for me in particular:

Government should have led the way in testing and researching digital content and social media, much as they tested new school learning frameworks in laboratory conditions in the 50s and 60s, we should expect them to finance and develop models for the public to engage with online media, test them, refine them and release this information to publicly funded organisations.
Although I think it might have been an interesting approach, my argument with this is that approaches to interactive social media (by which I mean not videos or podcasts, but a platform that genuinely allows the audience to participate) should be unique to each organisation due to online content’s very nature of transparency and openness.

Hmm, I could have phrased that better, but it’s been a long week!

You can view comments from the day at twitter.com/AllChange_LSO. Were you there? What did you make of the day? And can you refine my response above?!

Free recession-busting podcasts from industry leaders

KnowHow NonProfit have uploaded to their website a series of free podcasts collected from leaders in the Third Sector at the 2009 ACEVO (Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations) CEO Summit, which this year was entitled Leading change: steering your organisations through the recession and beyond.

Subjects under discussion include:

Three secret weapons for getting through the recession

Being accountable: ‘The Obligation of Leadership’

The financial impact of the recession on the third sector

The recession as an opportunity to grow

Leading the future: driving and leading innovation

• Three secret weapons for getting through the recession
• Being accountable: ‘The Obligation of Leadership’
• The financial impact of the recession on the third sector
• The recession as an opportunity to grow
• Leading the future: driving and leading innovation

Visit the KnowHow NonProfit webiste here to listen to the podcasts.

AMA – collaboration, collaboration, collaboration (aka digital)

As my colleagues have given you a marketing perspective, a research perspective and an organisational perspective, I’ve gone for the digital perspective. In the spirit of web 2.0 and Charles Leadbeater’s The Art of With (next event 25 November at Cornerhouse) for me this is all about the opportunities to collaborate and connect with each other, with audiences and with artists.

So, first of all on the ‘with each other’ – yes, I was one of those annoying twitterers (purely a personal experiment of course – my theory being if you’ve not experienced it how do you know what impact it might have). Armed with my trusty iphone I was multi-tasking – listening, tweeting and reading.  My findings – I was not so interested in where people are as what they thought.  My conclusions – I made some connections with interesting people at the conference who I would not have necessarily met in person and useful references were sourced by active tweeters, but I was hoping for a bit more comment. Anyway – have a look at one of the various tags #ama2009, #amaconf2009 or #amaconference09 or see what I had to say at #audienceslondon. I think there are big implications for the future of conferencing too, which we at AL will have to take note of – we live in a world of immediacy… look out for the new ‘digitally interactive dialogue space’. And is anyone using the AMA wiki set up by #MarcusRomer (follow his Twitter too)? One request by twitter was to share social media case-studies… so should we do this using social media?

Tackling digital from an organisational point of view seems to present a number of challenges, some of which is discussed in the Silos to Shrek Ears research report which inspired Dave Moutrey to take Cornerhouse on the journey he described in the keynote. We are charged as marketers and organisations to manage complexity, as discussed in Graham Leicester’s inspiring work at the International Futures Forum. So, how do we live comfortably with all the new opportunities – maybe it’s something about using evidence and information. Who has used the YouTube Metrics as Ed of YouTube suggested? Or entered into the discussions on the impacts of social media as suggested by Marcus Romer (everyone’s new guru… or is he a geek?). For Cornerhouse this is working out how to work an ‘Adhocracy’ style organisation.  However, the top tip is: if you can change the way you work internally effectively,  your audiences will probably go with you… wherever you want to take them.

Now to the audiences bit – as you may know, my continual quest is for some more concrete information about which audiences engage digitally and if they do, how (or does ) it enhances their artistic experience…  As Diane Ragsdale said it is not enough to facebook them, it’s all the other stuff and how relevant you are to someone that influences them to engage. Andy Ryans reiterated this, in terms of encouraging us to remember the other tools, such as just talking to people face to face. We perhaps need to be clearer for ourselves about how we use the wonderful Web 2.0, and remember according to the 90-9-1 principle of social networking maybe only a small proportion of audiences are up for full online dialogue. So, how can we best serve the 90%? Maybe we can take some lessons from the Slow Food Campaign – combine enjoyment and responsibility on all sides. Hans de Kretser’s guide to social media should be good reading (wait for the conference report) – number 1 is ‘have a strategy’. You can already find Marcus Romer’s session about using digital media here? In terms of generating content to engage audiences – do we take Dan from Innocent’s advice of ‘keeping it mildly interesting’ – perhaps we’re putting too much pressure on ourselves to come up with super-duper content, when people actually want to know how many costume changes are involved or by what route a painting arrived from New York…

There were obviously some bits about artistic content online, with the much lauded YouTube orchestra (in collaboration with LSO) and many examples from Watershed of what they’ve let artists do.  But the heart of the matter seems to be about giving up control and allowing amateur/user generated content to work alongside the professional artists’ work. Most people do know how to edit and filter to find the good stuff. And on the other hand our brands are usually strong enough as arts organisations to survive re-shaping by our users or audiences. Finally, we should not fear failure, allow ourselves to experiment and as Ed of YouTube said just ‘read up, team up and mix up’.

And as Martin Reynolds of Festivals Edinburgh said “collaboration breeds collaboration”.

An AmbITion Manifesto

 I’ve been mulling over the thoughts and questions I took away from the AmbITion roadshow and Art of Digital London Symposium… lots of issues that were discussed at Sadlers Wells also came up in Leicester at the AMA conference. Having just written up my post-AMA conference manifesto, I felt inspired to write a post-AmbITION manifesto too, about things we need to be doing differently or better…

ambITion recommends that arts organisations…

1. Create remarkable content (it’s not about creating quality so much as interest)

2. Crowdsource and co-create (collaborate with other artists and audiences)

3. Explore virtual spaces and be playful

4. Provide platforms for discussion and co-creation, don’t just provide content (e.g. host bloggers nights)

5. Open up the creative process

6. De-institutionalise and personalise instead

7. Share the power of the curatorial/creative process – empower your audience to participate

AmbITion Roadshow/Art of Digital: things to read

So, we went to the AmbITion Roadshow and Art of Digital Symposium and learnt some things… here’s the first installment – things to read! About digital, about the arts and how it could work for you…

To keep up to date join the ‘ning’ network for Art of Digital London and also to find out about the follow-up workshops and surgeries organised by IT4Arts and Mute – which Audiences London will also be contributing to.  Also see previous post in this blog to answer our burning question… how do our audiences engage with digital?

Some of the presentations:

• Ludus Dance – an AmbITion Funded Project
• Rohan Gunatillake – ex of Missions Models Money

Books and things:

• The Art of With by Charles Leadbeater… not to, but with…
• Digital Britain Report – essential reading if you need a steer on government ambitions.
• “Free” by Chris Anderson – as the name suggests he is a big fan of  the idea of ‘information wanting to be free’ and true to his word, the book is available free online.
• Arts Council Digital Research – recently published results from phase one – including some qualitiative research with arts audiences and digital users and an audit of all RFO’s online presences.

Sites to visit

• Henry Jenkins - digital geeks guru! Said things like “convergence culture – when old and new media collide”… and more…
• Christian Payne – or as his known in Twitter – @Documentally – if you want to know what’s what in social media and networking – he’s the man!
• Hide and Seek – champions of  ‘pervasive gaming’ – where you put the individual at the centre of a game or project, responding to our participatory culture resulting in the ultimate engagement.  All sorts of cool projects, and were inspired by the work of Punch Drunk.
• You Tube Symphony Orchestra - a global collaboration involving LSO and other orchestras to solicit auditions from musicians around the world, culminating in a performance at Cargegie Hall that was livestreamed on Youtube and reached 8million views.
• Britten Sinfonia – using digital technologies well to engage with their audiences
• Slideshare – an online storage place for all your Powerpoint presentations
• Social Innovation Camp - why not create one for the arts?! It’s a weekend where you get lots of technology geeks together with social activists and come up with new solutions to old problem using digital tools
• A Million Penguins - Publisher Penguin’s wiki novel

And there’s lots of good stuff at Missions Models Money about our changing society and how organisations should adapt and evolve.

Musings on the AmbITion Roadshow/Art of Digital Symposium

A full two days incarcerated within the lovely Sadler’s Wells, and all I’ve got to show for it is a rather annoying new addiction to Twitter! But only annoying to those around me – I’m loving it… and yes I know I’m a bit late to this party.

On a more serious note, it was all very interesting although I had hoped there would be a bit more about audiences, which is only to be expected working for Audiences London. I’d like the input from the experts to move on from ‘there’s all this stuff you can use to communicate in different ways, and it’s all free, so use it’ (albeit with a bit of a caviat that they’re only tools – mode, not medium) to… ‘who is it we’re engaging with, and what kind of engagement does that result in, through using digital media’. It is clear at one end that it’s working for participative activities and at the other end results have been recorded in terms of global profile. However, there’s a whole world of ‘engagement’ between those two.

Some random quotes and thoughts were… ‘websites should be based around pull and shared content’ (Hannah Rudman). Hide and Seek’s Alex Fleetwood was living example of how you have to trade relinquishing control for greater visibility.  A strong theme emerging was that if you collaborate, consult or even just open the door to others it can help to develop and improve what you do. Rohan of Missions Models Money mentioned that you’re just helping people do what they already do – which begs the question, are we really reaching new or different audiences, or just deepening the engagement of existing audiences through all this digital activity.

Ekow Eshun of the ICA kicked off the Art of Digital Symposium with words of wisdom along the lines of…  the arts have a responsibility to respond to the world around us, so you can’t claim to be a  contemporary space and remain relevant if this does not include engagement with digital opportunities. He also made a very valid defence of his motivations for integrating ‘digital’ responsibilities across the organisation, rather than having a hived off separate department. Although he didn’t get a chance to answer a question about whether he’d consulted his audiences about the ICA and its digital engagement.

And Ed Baxter of Resonance FM – who I I think I want to adopt said… ‘If you learn something share it, if you make a mistake point it out’. Which seems to me very wise and should be at the heart of any thriving community.

My remaining questions are … who is the twitterer ’sealtree’, and would I really want to go to a ‘geek camp’… And please tell us what you’d like to know about how your audiences engage with digital media, or share examples of what’s worked, and what’s not…

Christian Payne… the guru of social media…

A highlight for me, as part of the AmbITion Roadshow event… and offered a brilliant one-stop-shop for  the inside track on all that social networking stuff… essentially follow his Twitter feed @Documentally or visit his site Our Man Inside to see how you can really use all the available wizardry… But mostly, he makes it sound easy, even if he does carry around a rucksack that looks like he’s equipping himself for some sort of assault on the BBC.

His online toolbox includes the following: twitter, wordpress, flickr, tokbox.com (for video), twitvid.com, 12seconds.tv, audioBoo, qik.com (livestreaming), YouTube, vimeo (for HD video), Phreadz (multi-media platform for conversation) etc. hopefully all of which are self explanatory. And the essential piece of equipment is the Kodak zi6 (but wait for the new version) as your recording equipment! He also recommends good ways of managing all this ie. by using tubemogul to manage distribution and tweetdeck to filter.

Identifying ‘amplifiers’ (or ‘initiators’ in our marketing terms) is where the power is ie. people who re-tweet or pass on information.

Although we still don’t really know which of our audiences are using which tool, so if you’ve got the expertise, time and will all of this is possible and will reach someone. However, I guess the challenge is that you need to be clear what it is you’re trying to do and why, who you’re aiming to engage, and ideally are able to assess the level of response somehow…  but maybe that’s all just a bit too futuristic! But these are the areas I’m interested in.

Digital bums on seats?

One of my favourite reads recently, a quote from Hannah Nicklin’s blog, a fellow delegate at Shift Happens this week:

A theatre company operating now, with no involvement in social media, is like a painter having no involvement with the colour blue. ‘But how does this translate to bums on seats’

In fact this is taken a little out of context with the rest of the post, so forgive me. The eloquent painter sentence is Hannah’s own view, where as the ‘bums on seats’ comment is the phrase she’s arguing should be abolished when it comes to discussing social media. An excellent blog post, do have a read.

Oh, and I posted a (rather long) comment in reply which you can read here, defending the people who want to know the ROI of social media at the moment. Although I’m one who doesn’t need the numbers, I’m sold, I understand why some do, and I think it’s ok to ask.

Boost your individual giving!

It’s going to be some time before the economic situation is stable once more, and as reported by the Arts and Business Market Trends 2009 report, 43% have seen levels of individual giving drop.

So how can you increase individual giving without throwing expensive galas and member events?

•  Explore new online platforms. Matthew Little writes for the Third Sector website this month that Ebay’s charity partner MissionFish reports that online giving has tripled over the past year. A new feature on eBay that allows buyers to make a donation to charity when they pay for an item has raised an additional £700,000 since it was launched in November.
• Optimise your landing pages on your website to make donating quick and easy. This Landing On Gold report at http://www.donordigital.com/ gives some tips on this (the link will request some contact details to download the report, but it’s free).
• Utilise Social Media platforms. Facebook Causes allows you to set up details of your charitable case for example, but please remember that facebook users are individuals and when they come together to support a cause it’s because they have a reason to invest. It is a 2 way conversation, not a sales pitch! This article has some good points but I think it misses the community aspect of social media, tread carefully! http://blog.schipul.com/how-to-make-money-with-social-media/

And for more ideas, here’s a free presentation I found which collates fundraising trends for 2008 from some expert types. Have you taken advantage of them all in the last 18 months? http://www.slideshare.net/PaoloFerrara/internet-fundraising-trends-2008

Good practice for social media advertising

Are you think of or already advertising through social media channels? The Interactive Advertising Bureau have just released their FREE downloadable guide to Social Advertising Best Practices.

 They say that there are three key values in advertising through these channels:

• Reach: Social media has overtaken email as the most popular consumer activity. Consumer growth is coming from an older demographic than social media’s historical base.
• Relationships: Social media’s strength is in the personal connections it enables, the peer-to-peer contact, providing reasons for consumers to visit regularly and for extended periods of time.
• Relevance: Consumers are extremely engaged with the content and connections that their friends are creating because of its personal relevance.

I agree in principle, but as I’ve said lots before (just look through my other blog posts…) if you’re going to advocate your product or organisation through social media you have to listen to the conversation first before you can join in.