There was a minor storm in the classical music blogosphere in the last two weeks or so. What started it was Heather Mac Donald’s article Classical Music’s New Golden Age and Greg Sandow’s massive, blunt, multiple post response, which was then again countered by Mac Donald. Mac Donald claims classical music has entered a...
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I just returned from San Francisco, where I presented in a seminar on social media at the annual conference of the Association of California Symphony Orchestras. I was invited by seminar moderator Oliver Theil, public relations director at the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. My co-presenter was–and I still get goose bumps saying this–the venerable...
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Last Wednesday, I had my whirlwind trip to Los Angeles to speak at the Opera America 2010 Conference. I arrived in L.A. Tuesday night—and was amazed at the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra mural during my cab ride to downtown—but I had to leave again shortly after noon on Wednesday. That meant unfortunately missing two...
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The League of American Orchestras’ annual conference is just around the corner and this year, to my very pleasant surprise, they have set up a blog platform for (pre) conference discussion called “Orchestra R/Evolution.” I’m even more pleasantly surprised to see they have opened up posting to a broad host of people and inviting...
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A while ago, I posted a link to Baltimore Symphony Orchestra/Washington National Opera’s flash mob video on the Dutch Perspective Facebook page. Little did I know that opened somewhat of a floodgate of flash mob videos, and other videos, appearing on my radar screen. Maryann Devine, over at smarts & Culture, blogged about the...
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In the last nine steps, I have walked through Are We There Yet? A Communications Evaluation Guide by the Communications Network. It started with figuring out what to evaluate and establishing an overarching goal. The central question was: how are your communications efforts creating a change; more specifically, a change in behavior. The central...
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This is not an estimation of you complete communications plan budget. That said, you should budget for evaluation within your communications plan. The authors advise that a good rule of thumb is that “the evaluation budget should be at least five to seven percent of the total budget of your communication program.” You should...
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The authors list several evaluation tools, including interviews, focus groups, surveys, observation, quantitative data collection and analysis, and content analysis. Interviews, focus groups are pretty straightforward qualitative techniques. Surveys can be used to track qualitative, and in a lesser degree quantitative, changes over time. Observation can perhaps best be translated into the listening skill...
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You should now be clear on what your communications efforts are expected to achieve. You know your goal, objectives, audience, baseline and evaluation questions; the next step is to develop specific metrics to answer your evaluation questions. The authors introduce milestones at this point of the evaluation. If objectives are intermediate markers toward your...
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The first question before posing your evaluation questions is: what stage is your communications effort in? The authors make a distinction between early, mid and advanced stages. Early Stage The early stage means the development or early implementation of a communications plan, where there is a degree of trial and error. The evaluation at...
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