technology in translation™

an introduction to social media: TCG Fall Forum slides and references

Thanks for a great panel and conversation this afternoon at Theatre Communications Group's Fall Forum.  Here are the slides from my presentation.

Links to relevant articles and sites are on my del.icio.us account, here.  If you have other links that might be useful for people, you can add them  to your own  delicious  bookmarks and use the tag "fall_forum" (learn more and set up an account here if you don't have one).  Then, if anyone searches for fall_forum on the del.icio.us site, any links with this tag, from anyone's account, will turn up in the search results.

Two of the best places to start exploring more about what this new web is about are Michael Wesch's video definition of Web2.0 and Common Craft's  "...in Plain English" shows.

For a skeptic's look at possibilities for a not so distant future, EPIC 2015 is a riveting video.

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Learn more about SlideShare, the service I've used to upload this presentation and embed it in this blog post.

technology in the arts conference next week

On October 13th I'll be co-presenting a workshop with Brad Carlin about putting social media into practice at Carnegie Mellon University's Technology in the Arts Conference in Pittsburgh. 

We're going to discuss some of the things we've been learning through the online community we're developing for SITI company and we'll also take a look at tools that can help centralize all the things you read, save and share on the web using a custom start page, such as netvibes, and creating personal media channels enabled by tools such as Splashcast.

We'll contextualize them for arts organizations and discuss how these services offer useful ways organize media, presentations and resources related to exhibits, performances, education programming.  It's a hands-on session in a computer lab, so participants will be able to try the tools and we'll walk through the set up together.

I'll leave you with a somewhat related quote I'm thinking about today - from one of the very few biz books I think is an important read:

...innovation is less about inventing and building physical things and more about orchestrating or coordinating good ideas.

Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams - Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything.

stage craft, alchemy and the attention economy

I ran a breakout session at the Theater Communications Group Conference on Saturday, with SITI Company's Brad Carlin, about social media and the network we're developing: SITI Extended Ensemble (SEE).  The notes and slides are in my previous post.

The discussion, which included people who are running and working at small, large and mid-sized non-profit theatre organizations throughout the U.S., raised questions about the nature of live and virtual experience, media literacy and multi-generational participation.

We didn't have enough time for everyone to participate, so I'm hoping we can continue the conversation through comments on this post.  I'm going use this as an opportunity to put up an extended post which is a draft of an essay I'm writing, and welcome discussion that informs its development.

Because my background is in theatre, I'm mindful of the storytelling, facilitation and audience engagement skills theatre professionals can bring to social media practice.  I've been attempting to seed an awareness of the confluence of theatre and social media through conversations with theatre colleagues.  The best theatre work contextualizes ideas, humanizes political issues, stimulates imagination and creates intimate public space where people can share an experience.

The skill set required to develop these events and engage audiences has enormous potential to improve the quality of online content and interaction and to fuel a participation loop that, in an ideal community, moves from face-to-face to online conversation and back again, creating broader, richer experiences.

The challenge, of course, is how to get people's attention - whether they're inclined to choose online participation over attending events, or the other way around.  Consciously or not, the attention economy is at the center of the daily work of theater producers and practitioners, from both artistic and management perspectives, as they program seasons, rehearse and market productions and raise the funds to make it happen.

Michael Goldhaber: ...the real new economy revolves around seeking, paying and sometimes receiving what is truly scarce now — the attention of other people. Money, corporations and material goods are all quite secondary.

John Hagel: Attention economics will reshape business economics.  It is not just a question of re-thinking marketing, but re-conceiving business.  Yet, with a few notable exceptions, we are only at the very early stages of mapping out what attention economics means, much less what its implications are for business.

I am reminded of Seth Goldstein's piece on Media Futures: Alchemy, Brecht 2.0, which looks to theatre directors Bertolt Brecht and Jerzy Grotowski to contextualize what's happening in social media:

social media: online and in person (notes from the tcg workshop)

Here are the notes from the presentation I did with Brad Carlin, of SITI Company, at the TCG conference on Saturday.

In addition to posting my presentation slides here, I've set up tcg_workshop_links tag on my del.icio.us account with relevant links.

You read the notes that accompany the slides by reading the extended post, or download them by clicking here.

 

please consider voting for SITI's social web project by April 14th

I'm working with SITI Company on a project that uses social media to build, connect and strengthen SITI’s international community of students and audiences through the creation of SEE (SITI’s Extended Ensemble).

Rooted in SITI's commitment to international collaboration and the fostering of young artists, SEE uses social media to connect a community of artists and audiences, using an ensemble theater context to bridge virtual and “real” worlds by developing an online tool that fosters collaboration.

Just today, Andrew Taylor writes about Charles Leadbetter's new book We-Think, which suggests that our traditional view of how innovations enter the market -- special people in special places creating things that are pushed down the pipeline to passive and waiting consumers -- is no longer true, if it ever was. Rather, the traditional, corporate approach to creativity and innovation is decreasingly able to develop radical innovation, and spends much of its time stifling the innovation of talented and networked amateurs [and professionals, I'd add]. 

One of the things that's most interesting about the SITI project is its potential to become a model for the performing arts field, encouraging  peer-to-peer collaboration and invention.

SITI has submitted the proposal for support from the NetSquared community, which was developed to spur responsible adoption of social web tools by social benefit organizations. 20 projects will be chosen for support through a membership voting process, and anyone with an interest in this work can join NetSquared.  (Apart from the opportunity to vote, you can participate in a great conversation and draw on a growing resource base.)

We'd love for you to vote for SEE and you can find the project description here.

The link to vote is here. (you'll have to register on the site)

For an offline snapshot of all the projects you can download N2Y2_Voter_Booklet.pdf.

[post update]
Martin Denton at nytheater i asked me to clarify the phrase "bridging virtual and real worlds".  A more straightforward explanation:

Exploring ways to turn online connections into face-to-face connections - a networking meeting, getting out the vote, getting audiences into theaters. And to turn face-to-face connections into online communities. Deepening the impact of a performance or a workshop by creating a space for dialogue, shared tips, questions and, ultimately, repeat attendance. This is the potential of these tools - a seamless loop of participation.

The Howard Dean campaign and MoveOn are early examples. MySpace is tremendously effective for promoting music and spoken word concerts (and, increasingly, other events). Last year’s Los Angeles immigration protests by young people were organized online.

Thanks, Martin, for reminding me to translate the geek speak!

robert lepage on technology

looking at a program from Quebecois film and theatre maker Robert Lepage's the far side of the moon:

I am accused of imprisoning myself in technology, but technology is a tool that allows me to explore things.  We're dealing with an audience today that has a very sophisticated narrative vocabulary.  I'm not saying that we have to become more cinematic or more televisual, but we have to find a way to invite that audience into the theatre.  Film was supposed to have killed theatre, but it liberated it.  Every time there is a technological revolution, it gives an artist reason to hope. (1997)

technology in the arts presentation notes

Thanks to everyone who participated in my session at TitA - and to the Center for Arts Management and Technology for organizing such a useful (and fun) conference. 

Let's hope the tech savvy folks working in the arts can not only get the field up to speed in terms of technology - but that the conversations we're having can inspire real exploration of how these tools might help us expand our reach and move beyond the broken non-profit business model.

Here's a quicktime movie of my presentation slides for download (click on each slide to advance to the next one): artstechpresentation.mov

are they speaking our language?

what the next generation of internet technologies means for theatre artists and producers

resources from the session I did at the Theatre Communications Group conference in Atlanta last weekend:

• I've set up a del.icio.us (social bookmarks) tag with the links and references from the session:  tcg_workshop_links

• download the presentation slides:  tcgbreakout.pdf