Another year, another OzCo Summit

I'm not in attendance this year at the Australia Council Marketing Summit, but participating from afar is almost as good. A few conference activities I have enjoyed include:

• Catching up on the You Tube stream from the conference at #msummit2010
• Reading the links referenced in various speaker's presentation. A particular post of interest has been the talk by Claire Eva - Head of Marketing and Audiences, at the Tate UK and links to the Tate Online Strategy 2010–12 and the idea of 'Your Tate Track'.
• Reading other's wrap up of the events....check out this great blog wrap up of several presentations.
• And of course, you can check out the OzCo site for all the presentations files, video and audio.

Happy reading! (from afar!)

More than bums on seats - who would of thought!

So another month but finally shaking off the haze of summer. How do I know, well? The Australia Council launched a new research report today, nicely called...'More than bums on seats: Australian participation in the Arts' and a few favourite commentators have picked up on it....today I'm going with Ben Eltham who points out some of the study's limitations.

As an arts marketer working in an organisation heavily funded by Ozco can I say the dream is 'more than' bums on seats. Idealistically we toil everyday for those snippets of success when it is more than the transactional relationship. For those moments when an audiences' heart and mind is touched by something. A half forgotten memory just recalled, sheer pleasure and amazement, a chill down the spine, a moment out of the mind when an attendee just connects far beyond the exchange of cash for the 'service' of entertainment.

So what insights do Ozco have for us?

Young people are highly engaged with the arts.

Ok....er...

Oh, now this is getting interesting...Groups who were less engaged with the arts:

Those born overseas in a non-English speaking country have significantly lower levels of both creative and receptive participation compared to the total Australian population

Those for whom the main language spoken at home is not English are less likely to attend arts events.

People with a serious illness or disability experience significant difficulties accessing the various services offered by the arts and consequently had much lower levels of arts participation.

Regional areas have significantly lower levels of attendance at music events than inner metropolitan areas.

Rural residents are more likely than inner and outer metropolitan residents to have had a below average year of receptive participation in the arts compared to the year before.

Ok, there's a market or two and some cool segmentation names: The Lovers (heavy participation), The Flirters (influenced by friends to attend), the Unattached (can't see the relevance) and The Outsiders (keep me away from the pretentious art snobs). Kudos on the segmentation names to whom ever came up with those...they gave me a laugh.

And to top if off it's full of buzz words like 'building engagement', one of my favourites! I'm off to read the report in depth but again I have the feeling it will be more of the same, great stats and thoughts...but somehow, lacking the oomph and the final answer to assist us searching for that holy grail of 'more than bums on seats'.

Geek in Residence

Are you an arts organisation looking for a digital helper? OzCo under the Arts Digital Era program is running a 'Geek in Residence' scheme during 2010.

Geek in Residence | artsdigitalera

The Geek in Residence pilot program connects ‘geeks’ (by which we mean technically confident artists and creatively confident technicians) with arts organisations through a temporary subsidised secondment scheme.

The purpose of this fund is for the Australia Council to enable digital artists and technicians to share their skills and experiences with arts workers. Geeks will be able to share their passion for solving unknown technological problems in creative situations, and arts workers will feel better equipped to work in digital spaces.

Are you a Geek? Are you working at an arts organisation in need of a digital innovation (ohhh look at all the hands!) Yes? Well sign up...NOW! The deadline is now 18th December...tick tock.

Why the Australia Council doesn’t get digital culture...

Just had to share...following on from Marcus Westbury's article in The Age...here's an even better one Marcus pointed the way to. Ben Eltham...you are my new hero.

Was the Australia Concil’s abolition of the New Media Arts Board the single worst decision by an Australian cultural agency of the last decade? It’s certainly beginning to look that way.

Revealing the Arts - Day 2

Well the sessions appeared to sizzle today, we at least from the outside. There were a few flames that caught my fancy along the way.

Bag out the major institutions...

There were a few taunts from the twitter stream about 'us' well funded major performing arts companies and 'our' emergence from the dark ages...speaking the truth?

socialinterior I find this event very focused on the major performing arts and the issues they are having catching up on where everyone else is at #rtarts

A wonderful profound comment from one user about the resistance to open up to new media had me hoping to use a new favourite phrase...

artsdigitalera RT @The_Art_Life: New media world collides with old world art politics of entitlement.#RTArts

Ahhhh the 'politics of entitlement' that would make a wonderful PhD chapter I'm sure.

Whose Right is it anyway?

It seems rights management was a huge issue...I won't pull out some of the quotable quotes but again, here is us (them?) squabbling about who owns and who profits when all audiences want to do is engage? Surely everyone can see that?

Lessons Learned?

But the big fun of the day was some of the er, comments that heated up the Twitterverse when the Aussie Cosi presentation began. A summary of the presentation can be found here.

Snarky comments...there were a few...

socialinterior The Australian Opera discovers social networks#rtarts

commuter_dirge @aussiecosi has 88 following, 54 followers, and 91 tweets. Hardly a roaring success...#RTArts

commuter_dirge twitalyzer score for @aussiecosi:http://tr.im/Db2n: "0.3 influence" "0.0% generosity" "0.7% clout" (now I'm just being mean) #RTArts

unsungsongs . @commuter_dirge and 66 facebook firends. That's a #fail surely?#RTArts

commuter_dirge @fireinthesouth well, that's you're brand, just as@AussieCosi is a branded account. It's really not a great case study. #RTArts

unsungsongs I am extremely curious about whether those involved in Aussie Cosi see it as a success and how they judge that?#rtarts

mattriviera @aussiecosi What did you learn thru social media feedback you couldn't have gotten thru a survey? Best use of social media? #RTArts

mattriviera @aussiecosi Wouldn't a good way for fan community to engage with the work be for them to appropriate it? To re-interpret it? #RTArts

shoes_off @elliottbledsoe @commuter_dirge true, but showcasing a more active community than cosi would have displayed the scalability of SM #rtarts

commuter_dirge @bimyou_bimyou I'm not talking monetising twitter in and of itself. but you need to show some proof of it working & a correllation #RTArts

dziga @aussiecosi doesn't seem to have a lot of followers #rtarts

revealingarts Katrina Sedgwick: "Messing", "playing", "getting in there", these are the kind of mind frame to approach digital, not "sell tickets" #RTArts

Snarky yes... but justifiably snarky...I leave that to you dear readers. What struck me about the response to the session and the overall experience of watching this conference unfold online was a clear realisation that you can't wait and then be forced into a situation where you have to play catch up. There is nothing wrong with experimentation...and sometimes, that in itself is the way forward until strategy catches up..."Messing", "playing", "getting in there"... I can't wait.

Revealing the Arts

As I sit down today to get back into the swing of essay work about the impacts of digital and new media on museums, across town (well down the street, really) our National Broadcaster and the overseer of our cultural institutions are likewise engaged in conversation about just that.

Are you wondering what’s happening to arts and culture in the new digital world? Where will the money come from? How will we manage rights? Where do we find creative partners? What works and what doesn’t? And what are we leaving the next generation? The Australia Council for the Arts and the ABC invite you to be part of a selected group of strategic thinkers, artists, practitioners and directors who will uncover the opportunities for the arts that the digital era presents.

Today and tomorrow, the ABC and the Australia Council are hosting 'Revealing the Arts: creative conversations and solutions for the digital era'. The program of discussion appears to be covering the current and future role of digital across areas such as a education and opening up access to arts, while tackling 'issues' such as copyright, rights management and commercial opportunities in the digital era.

One thing that has struck me is the inclusion of OA's Chief Executive among the speakers list in a presentation with David Ford on Aussie Cosi entitled 'SHOW ME HOW - Revealing the Creative Opportunities'. As a small initiative that may or may not have reached it's strategic aim (bums on seats? access? sorry was there a strategic aim?) it will indeed be interesting to hear what is said about this project.

The ABC is providing live streaming of the event on both days, so there's no excuse not to watch. You can also follow the blog or the twitter stream (see cultural caretakers can interact with digital media! my bad).

Of perhaps most interest to me is the last session entitled 'Where to from here'. Hopefully by the end of tomorrow we might all know (we can dream can't we?).

And if you need anymore proof it's one to watch, here's another great article in The Age this morning from Marcus Westbury. Marcus takes a slightly different tack and for me, one who has watched a large cultural institution grapple with the impact of the digital...I would say....right on!

there are vital basic assumptions that are rarely questioned: that the culture, the cultural organisations that deliver it, the cultural needs and infrastructure of Australia will remain more or less fixed. Technology is merely about the marketing, the branding, the language, the revenue and the education programs. The idea that the culture itself is changing and evolving is rarely considered. Technology merely changes the hype and the pitch to keep the kids interested.

The ABC has long moved beyond that. The broadcaster has realised that in order to justify its continued existence, it needs to keep questioning and evolving its roles.

I would love to (but I won't) comment on how just the opposite to the ABC approach where a lack of innovation (fostered by a lack of strategic thinking and not helped by having no budget for experimentation) seems to be one of the many blockages at the arts organisation I know intimately.

Well lets just hope that some of those attendees from the large cultural institutions are paying attention over the next few days.

Image source: http://revealingthearts.com/blog/

Ozco Marketing Summit 2009 videos

I was lucky enough to be substituted into this event on the closing day. Again I found this an inspiring summit to be part of, in particular my writing hand was very busy during the digital media presentations. In case you missed this, the videos are now available. I'm definitely going back to see those I missed such as 'Communicating with the 50+ audience' and the update from the 'ADVICE' program, and I might even relive Donna Williams' inspiring key notespeech from Day Two, there's an audience development hero for you!

Find all the videos here: http://vimeo.com/user1014372