Speaking at the stART.09 Conference

As I mentioned in my last blog post, good things are brewing. The first one I can tell you about is my speaking engagement at the stART.09 Conference in Duisburg, Germany on September 25.

A while ago, I got in touch with Christian Henner-Fehr of the Kultur Management blog, as I detailed in a blog post here. This later turned into an invitation to speak at the conference. I would have loved to be able to be there in person and listen in on some of the presentations as well, but fortunately technology at least allows me to do my presentation remotely in Chicago.

I will be covering much of what I wrote in my e-book on orchestras and new media, attempting to explain the following concepts in the 45 minutes allotted to me:

• The role of the changing media environment in your communication strategy;
• How social media strategically fits in your communication efforts and why it is important to fit it in (and how to convince your boss);
• Why social media is not a business model, but rather a channel to aid your organization in its core mission, and why arts organizations are uniquely primed to be great in social media; and
• How to measure the results of engaging your audience through social media and how to craft your social media strategic plan.

Those are lofty goals and I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I can at least get the thinking going. (And by the way, those were also the key bullets in my chapter proposal for the 20under40 challenge.)

Unfortunately, you won’t be able to tune in to my presentation unless you happen to be near Duisburg, Germany (then go buy your tickets). I will be using Adobe ConnectNow. And rest assured, I will upload my presentation to SlideShare shortly after September 25.

Lastly, while I am on the topic of orchestras and new media, I was recently blessed with two great reviews of my e-book. L. Corwin Christie reviewed it for the Technology In The Arts blogs of The Center for Arts Management and Technology at Carnegie Mellon. Find the post here. Zack Hayhurst reviewed the e-book in two parts on his blog Artistic Discourse. Find the posts here and here.

It gives me much satisfaction that people use and benefit from the energy I put in the project. I am currently hard at work on another closely related project, but that will take a fresh new batch of energy, writing and hard work.