Out of Town Clients Doing Cool Stuff

Not all my clients, or their projects take place in the downtown core.

I met Maya and David at the Toronto Fringe, and I had so much fun working with Steady State Theatre on Eighteen Twitching Cheerleaders, the piece they’ve brought to the Edmonton Fringe. The circle of Fringe continues!

Delighted this interview happened (and it meant I got to see the postcards)!

Happy Fringing, Steady State!

 

Connected a few weeks ago with Vanessa Baylen who was looking for a bit of PR help on her Spies of Barrie project happening Sept. 14 & 21 in downtown Barrie.

 Your mission, if you choose to accept it: solve as many of the 30 puzzles hidden around downtown Barrie as you can within 60 minutes. You and your fellow spies will meet at the start venue (a secret location provided only to ticket holders) where you must complete your first task: locate the spy kit! Spy kits include a map with the puzzle locations, instructions of what to do once you arrive at them, as well as the location of the final meeting place.
Similar to The Amazing Race or MIT’s Puzzle Hunt, Spies of Barrie is an interactive puzzle game designed to challenge the minds of its players and celebrate local businesses and artists!
Good luck, Vanessa!

 

 

 

What KInd of Reader are You? and a website flip

In the next week or so the uber-talented Linn Farley will be helping me muck about with my website so we can do more stuff with it. Expect changes – maybe not big, but still – change is afoot, just in time for the new school year!

Love this graphic – thanks Laura E. Kelly (@LectriceUSA)!

Visit Laura-e-Kelly.com for more about books, reading, and authors.

Excitement, Inc – Mission Paradox

From a great blog post from MP

“Why is this live?

That’s the question that Jordan Roth asked during the first TedxBroadway and I swear the question has haunted me ever since.
For those of us that work in the live entertainment/art world that is the cornerstone question.  Why is this particular experience worthy of the cost, time, energy and just plain hassle that comes with making it happen live? read more

Tonight I was at a Summerworks show, was at one last night too. Why do we do this, go to places with lots of stairs and folding chairs, with plastic drink cups and isn’t “temperature controlled for our comfort”?

Because it is here and it is now and maybe you go with friends or go alone and find friends.  But we are all there, and all there for a reason – and it’s happening in front of us and those on the stage and in the wings are there too and it’s happening for them too and we’re all in it together.

And that’s why – it’s a communal experience. It will never be the same again. Sure there are X more performances, and you might go again, or a friend of yours might see it next week – but it will never be the same again.  This was your live experience.

Go or you’ll miss it.

Sunday Roundup – August 11

And with that, it’s a month and a day til my birthday. Just sayin’.

About last week…

What to do with the Art?

Who are Your People?

Couple Facebooky articles for Clients and Colleagues

WORKSHOPS and TEACHING UPDATES!

Reminder I am giving a full day workshop September 21, in association with Humber College. Finding Your Audience: Social Media for Artists  Diving into social media can be intimidating. Expert Sue Edworthy will demystify the process and get you going on your own social media strategy in this one-day intensive workshop developed specifically for artists of all disciplines.   Both theoretical and practical, in this workshop you will learn about social media strategy and then get “hands-on” on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc.  Case studies from Canada and around the world will be presented to illustrate some winning approaches. Details to come soon.

And Tell Me About It with DTRC/Artists’ Health went so well, we’re figuring out a three class intensive to follow up to that, broken into beginners, strategy, and a master class. Fall 2013, details to come soon.

And back at the Chang School at Ryerson this fall for another round of CDAM 101 Communication and Promotion for the Arts. Seven weeks on Monday evenings, details to follow.

 

Couple Facebooky articles for Clients and Colleagues

Quick note – Summerworks is open! Go see something. So far I’m booked into Eating Pomegranates Naked, Murderers Confess at Christmastime and Paradises Lost.

I’ll book more as I go and let you know.

Summer seems to be the time to analyze, tidy up, re-jig all things admin, and now social media has been added to the mix. This post is for friends and folks and clients and colleagues who are doing just that these days, and may have to report stuff to EDs, CEOs and Boards. And if you aren’t already following Mashable somehow – you should be.

Facebook: Here’s How Your News Feed Works – Your Facebook News Feed is a hodgepodge of information: some of it you love, some of it you hate, and some of it may just make you scratch your head. The average user’s News Feed has around 1,500 possible stories filtered through per day, according to Lars Backstrom, engineering manager for Facebook’s News Feed ranking. But only 20% of them actually make your feed.
So how does Facebook determine which 20% you see? read more

and

5 Social Media Tactics to Increase ROI – Social can be one of the most challenging platforms for brands to measure return on investment. Companies that grew up on traditional advertising and metrics often have trouble making sense of the value of the online ecosystem. But with 52% of U.S. consumers using the web as their primary purchase tool, it’s an area brands can’t afford to ignore. read more

I cannot emphasize #5 enough. The people I work and play with  – we live in a sea of actual creativity. We create for a living. Thusly – we do #5 automatically, without even having to think about it. Now apply it to this.

Who are Your People?

“From eight to eighty-eight!”

“Everyone should see this show. Its themes are universal.”

“Everyone will find something to love about this work.”

“Fun for the whole family!”

“This work is so important.  Community X has to come, it speaks to them.”

“Everyone” is not a target market. “Everyone” is not a demographic. Fun for the whole family rarely is. When I worked at TO TIX I once told a family of four that Mom, Dad and the younger sibling should go ahead to Medieval Times, and leave the 15-year-old in the hotel room to watch movies. It was a satisfactory compromise to all.

Cultural background does not translate to enjoyment of art, and  does not automatically lead to engagement with your company. (If it did I would live on a steady theatre diet of Tremblay and Shakespeare, with some Group of Seven thrown in for good measure.)

Who loves you for who you are and what you do? Who will come because of what you do, how you do it and that you’ve consistently done this for and with them X number of times?

Who do you work with who become your people, and therefore their people become yours as well?

Who believes in the work? Who believes in you? And where do those two beliefs cross over?

What to do with the Art?

Couple of interesting articles in the New Yorker a couple of weeks ago – the first a declaration of what to do:

Should Detroit Sell Its Art?
The fiscal apocalypse that is Detroit has spun off a collateral storm in the art world with a suggestion that salvific funds—an estimate of two billion dollars is much bandied—could be raised by selling treasures of the Detroit Institute of Arts, one of America’s best encyclopedic museums. Having been asked my opinion as an art-lover—and, incidentally, a citizen, though not of Detroit—I have two answers. Here’s the short one: sell. The long one, which follows, ends in the same place, only garlanded with regrets. read more

And a follow-up piece in which the author retracts: I take back my endorsement, in an earlier post, of the idea that the city of Detroit should ease its financial crisis by selling art works from the collection of the Detroit Institute of the Arts. I also apologize to the many whom my words pained. read more

It’s an interesting thing to think about – of course I say interesting because I only have to think about it, not do anything about it. Not a position I ever hope we’d be in. It feels to me like the idea of having a garage sale to pay off your student loan: afterwards you still have a massive debt that you’ve barely touched, and nothing left of value.

Across the world, a company near and dear to me has triumphed again – such love and congratulations to Opera Atelier. If you know the opera world – this is HUGE.

Marshall Pynkoski and Jeannette Zingg invited to La Scala after Salzburg triumph

And this video has been making the rounds – if you ever need a reminder about balance and focus, watch this. Incredible.

Sunday Roundup – August 4

Unbelievably, it’s August.

Last week was a week of sharing bookmarks I’ve collected over the last little while, mostly items about social media engagement.

What did we talk about?

Summer Can Be Quiet(er) – Marketing Myths

Summer Can Be Quiet(er) #2 – Twitter Etiquette

Summer Can Be Quiet(er) #3 – Facebook Engagement

Summer Can Be Quiet(er) #4 – All Caps and Hashtag History

Summer Can Be Quiet(er) #4 – All Caps and Hashtag History

No, all caps isn’t about the (mis)use of ALL CAPS – it’s an amazing festival and they need volunteers.

Calling all Friends of Artscape Gibraltar Point!
The ALL CAPS Music and Art Festival on August 9^th, 10^th and 11th has been made possible over the last 5 years by the support of many volunteers. This Artscape and Wavelength collaborative event requires about 70 volunteers to make  happen and that’s just during the festival!  Planning started almost immediately after the last festival and has evolved into a well-known and well attended event over 5 years. Have a look at the 2013 trailer and get excited!

Jessica Vallentin and Vanessa Rieger have been working with Whippersnapper Gallery to coordinate works by six artists, whose work speaks directly to its unique location on Toronto Island. The curators will be documenting the residency as it unfolds! There will also be open studios from 2pm to 5pm and the folks over at Wavelength have programmed a fantastic line up of bands…

We hope to create another excellent team of volunteers for the upcoming and Final ALL CAPS this 9^th, 10^th and 11^th. The AGP team is asking for support from our Artscape Gibraltar Point community in bartending (keep the tips, must have smart serve), ticket sales and clean set up/clean up/tear down.
If you volunteer for one 4 hour shift, you receive a free day pass; If you volunteer for two 4 hour shifts over the 4 scheduled days, you receive a free weekend; If you volunteer for a late night shift or early morning shift, you get a free camping pass

Click to see the  ALL CAPS Schedule. Please let them know your preferred duty and time by confirming by email, lisa(at)torontoartscape.on.ca.

And because it’s Friday, it’s time for an infograph and the end of the week of bookmarks. Plus I like knowing how things began.

Summer Can Be Quiet(er) #3 – Facebook Engagement

 

Continuing on with bookmarks I find helpful, and therefore want to share with you.

10 Mistakes That Could Hurt Your Facebook Engagement

Number 1 definitely – Writing posts that are too long – Facebook’s news feed is very crowded. Keep your status updates short and sweet to quickly grab a fan’s attention. This can be tough, but try to limit your posts to about 100 characters and if you must write more, don’t exceed 250 characters.
Agreed, to an extent. If your entire message can’t show up without a read more, then it needs to be tightened up. You can liken read more to running out of space on a voicemail, if you’ve run out of space you’ve said too much. That being said, if your post does need to be longer for whatever reason, your important information needs to be front and centre – think of it as a newspaper article, and put the lead where it belongs – up top. Also helpful to crate a post that breaks unnaturally, say, in the middle of the list of show times, compelling people to read more to get the info.

#3 – Absolutely – Posting during high-volume hours on Facebook – The best time to post on Facebook varies for each individual business page, but it’s important to keep news feed competition in mind. You already know how difficult it is to keep someone’s attention and stand out in a crowded news feed. When you post during the busiest hours of the day, you’re making your task even more challenging. During prime TV-watching hours, your posts are directly competing with your fans’ attention as they are engrossed in a favorite TV show, their friends, or the brands they follow and love. Increase your engagement by posting during non-busy hours.
You need to follow the example your own followers and like-minded posts to see when your best time of engagement is. When are your people on-line – not just “everyone”. You don’t necessarily want “everyone” – you want people who will engage with you.

Number 8 – You’re too focused on selling – Individuals use Facebook to connect and interact with other people. That’s why your Facebook Page should feel like a friend. Use a conversational tone, tell stories, listen, and respond to the folks that engage with your page. Also, remember the 80/20 rule. 80 percent of the content you post should be helpful or entertaining and 20 percent can be used for self-promotional or focused selling content.
I don’t need to elaborate – you know how I feel about “that guy”.

Into the day – it’s Thursday! Thursday is the new Friday!