Just had a one hour long staff meeting about Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Delicious.... I was a little overwhelmed and felt like I need to talk to my fellow arts admins. Somewhere inside my brain, a BIG voice keeps rejecting the whole idea of these social networks. Do I have to follow all these? I feel very lost. It’s funny I’ve always avoided marketing and all crazy social networks you’ll never be able to keep up with (oh I believe some people can, I know Eric always can) and it seems to me that I really don’t have a choice any more.
Started in this season, we have three to four interns and part-time pages (everyone excluding me) working on all these sites, since we don’t really have a marketing person. Oh man, being able to working “officially” on Facebook at work is just out of control. I can’t handle it any more, it makes me upset when dishes from greenroom are still lying on the floor, box office reports are still in the envelopes, or the event transcript from three weeks ago is still not done. On our staff meetings, this is all we talk about. No body remembers the auction disaster we had last week, or progress on getting new members, or even the current ticket sale is still very low. I’m not working on any of the sites so I feel left out. But at the same time I think that the marketing isn’t everything (I’m not saying it’s not important, it’s VERY important), I do prefer to do all those detail, nasty, but necessary operational works; I do prefer programming, and even development (funny for me to say this). I’m worried about how are all these sites going to be managed when all these interns and part-time pages left. I’m worrying about loosing our existing audience. I don’t know, there are too many things to think about, and we need a system or a plan to function better, instead of “oh let’s go ahead and do it; it’s fun and everyone’s doing it.” I mean, if an organization doesn’t even have a mission statement and a strategic plan yet, where are all these great marketing ideas going?
Sorry, I’m just complaining. I understand marketing is fun, but I’m just not the person to do it. I understand how important it is to keep up with the technology but CAN WE ever really catch up? do we really need to catch up just because everyone’s doing it and it’s “hip”? (maybe I should put all these in my internship reports) Great, my task for today is to find out how much it is to buy one of those flip cameras Meg brought to one of our marketing class last spring… well I told them in the meeting how much it's going to cost but they were listening. Hey, seriously, I've done the research on this LAST spring!
Oh I miss you all.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Friday, April 24, 2009
Cool Way to Recognize Donors
Greetings from sunny Sarasota for the final time this semester!
All is well here at Mote. Recently, we opened a new turtle tank for our blind green sea turtle, Hang Tough (see Facebook for pics of the ribbon-cutting). The donor recognition gift was SO COOL, that I needed to share the artist's name and information with you. E. Moises Diaz creates amazing and truly PERSONAL donor recognition. The one he did for our donor shows a stylized Hang Tough swimming in his new home with a group of children watching. Go to www.artforrecognition.com to see more of his unique recognition pieces. Very affordable and SO much better than the standard brass plaque!
All is well here at Mote. Recently, we opened a new turtle tank for our blind green sea turtle, Hang Tough (see Facebook for pics of the ribbon-cutting). The donor recognition gift was SO COOL, that I needed to share the artist's name and information with you. E. Moises Diaz creates amazing and truly PERSONAL donor recognition. The one he did for our donor shows a stylized Hang Tough swimming in his new home with a group of children watching. Go to www.artforrecognition.com to see more of his unique recognition pieces. Very affordable and SO much better than the standard brass plaque!
Monday, April 20, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Friday night at the Library
I spent my last Friday night at the library. Happily, unlike the grad school connotation, this was purely for entertainment. The Marion County Public Library recently built a new state of the art facility in downtown Indianapolis with every bell and whistle you could imagine a library could have. Technically I've only been to the children's section, but I imagine the rest of the library is just as awesome. If you've been to the new Indianapolis airport, think something like that, with books.
Anyway, Friday night was a student art show a teacher friend of mine was participating in with her class. They did light painting, which is a type of photographic "trick" where you open the shutter for several seconds and using small hand-held lights in a dark room you can "paint" lines and shapes that will show up in the photo although our eyes can not see them. This was accompanied by a sound project, students at another school created using various computer programs. All of it was so cool to experience and the new architecture surrounding the artwork only enhanced the wow-factor.
To the point of my blog entry- the Friday night at the library was complete when a twenty piece geek-punk, motley crew of a marching band came bursting through the front doors of the library. They stopped playing long enough to tell everyone SHHH!! we're in the library!! before they started marching again, playing right through the crowd of people, and to the delight of many squealing children. And when I say marching, I am describing more of a circus-esque, everyone for himself, playing the trombone from the top of the staircase, kind of marching formation. This was, amazingly, a perfectly choreographed chaos. Even with kids running around like mad, and drum players flailing about wildly, and the two cheerleaders jumping about uncontrollably, not for a second was there any worry about something going wrong or someone getting hurt. They played in the atrium for a while and then moved into the brand new Clowes library auditorium, (which was heaven itself. You know that feeling of a new performance space, where there aren't already someone's smudge marks on the arm rest and the one seat with the unsightly spot on the fabric to avoid. It was so beautiful.), for a real performance on stage. They played onstage for about an hour, playing both original and borrowed tunes from the traditional marching band repetoire, of course with a little twist.
Without further ado, I will post a video (make sure to watch at least 2 min.) so you can get an idea. The mismatched marching bad, Mucca Pazza:
This entertained me, delighted the kids, and made every middle-aged parent in the audience who had once played an instrument hopeful that, like these band rejects, they too might some day be destined for the bright lights of the local library auditorium stage.
I wanted to post this, not to just wax poetic on a great show I wasn't expecting to see, but to throw the idea out there for anyone who might be planning a family night. This isn't the first crazy marching band I've seen, there are more out there, maybe closer to your city. Mucca Pazza is from Chicago. With 20 people and all those instruments, I can only imagine their travel expenses are astronomical. But I know I have seen other crazy renegade marching bands, including hip-hop marching bands and other genres.
It was magical for the kids, great live music, and just enough irreverence to put classical style music in its place. two thumbs up!
Anyway, Friday night was a student art show a teacher friend of mine was participating in with her class. They did light painting, which is a type of photographic "trick" where you open the shutter for several seconds and using small hand-held lights in a dark room you can "paint" lines and shapes that will show up in the photo although our eyes can not see them. This was accompanied by a sound project, students at another school created using various computer programs. All of it was so cool to experience and the new architecture surrounding the artwork only enhanced the wow-factor.
To the point of my blog entry- the Friday night at the library was complete when a twenty piece geek-punk, motley crew of a marching band came bursting through the front doors of the library. They stopped playing long enough to tell everyone SHHH!! we're in the library!! before they started marching again, playing right through the crowd of people, and to the delight of many squealing children. And when I say marching, I am describing more of a circus-esque, everyone for himself, playing the trombone from the top of the staircase, kind of marching formation. This was, amazingly, a perfectly choreographed chaos. Even with kids running around like mad, and drum players flailing about wildly, and the two cheerleaders jumping about uncontrollably, not for a second was there any worry about something going wrong or someone getting hurt. They played in the atrium for a while and then moved into the brand new Clowes library auditorium, (which was heaven itself. You know that feeling of a new performance space, where there aren't already someone's smudge marks on the arm rest and the one seat with the unsightly spot on the fabric to avoid. It was so beautiful.), for a real performance on stage. They played onstage for about an hour, playing both original and borrowed tunes from the traditional marching band repetoire, of course with a little twist.
Without further ado, I will post a video (make sure to watch at least 2 min.) so you can get an idea. The mismatched marching bad, Mucca Pazza:
This entertained me, delighted the kids, and made every middle-aged parent in the audience who had once played an instrument hopeful that, like these band rejects, they too might some day be destined for the bright lights of the local library auditorium stage.
I wanted to post this, not to just wax poetic on a great show I wasn't expecting to see, but to throw the idea out there for anyone who might be planning a family night. This isn't the first crazy marching band I've seen, there are more out there, maybe closer to your city. Mucca Pazza is from Chicago. With 20 people and all those instruments, I can only imagine their travel expenses are astronomical. But I know I have seen other crazy renegade marching bands, including hip-hop marching bands and other genres.
It was magical for the kids, great live music, and just enough irreverence to put classical style music in its place. two thumbs up!
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