News is out officially yesterday about a next chapter in my academic and professional career. After 17 years of service to the Bolz Center for Arts Administration in the Wisconsin School of Business, ten as its director, I have accepted a faculty position at American University to begin in the fall.

Mashable shares the news of a whimsical little app experiment called Happstr (developed on the “Startup Bus,” winding its way to SXSW in Austin). Happstr is a website designed for your mobile device, with geotagging, that lets you press a large pink button when you’re feeling happy, to mark the place (and the reason) for […]

Bloomberg offers an interesting article on a rising fear of commitment by consumers, in many aspects of their lives. Social and economic indicators point to rising lease vs. buy rates for cars, rising rent vs. purchase rates for homes, declining birth rates, and declines in long-term contracts (such as on mobile phone service).

Since Diane Ragsdale left her work at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and wandered to the Netherlands to pursue a PhD, she’s been increasingly feisty about how the arts world works — particularly in the United States, as that’s her area of focus and experience. And I rather adore the emerging Diane (I was already […]

For over a decade now, John Brockman has been posting a single question to brilliant people, and gathering their responses. Past questions have included “What will change everything?” in 2009, or “What do you believe is true, even though you cannot prove it?” in 2005. This year’s question is particularly important and compelling, as it […]

‘Nuff said.

There’s extraordinary power in a thoughtfully conceived and artfully crafted infographic. When a complex dataset, process, or ecology is expressed as an image, we can see the whole and explore the parts. We can choose our own path to discovery, unlike most linear written narrative.

Foundations and other funders seeking to promote innovation in cultural organizations tend to wrestle with two main problems. One, of course, is to find and foster innovative practice in an industry that’s often just barely treading water. The other is to share those innovations beyond the inner circle of the project participants.