NPR’s Planet Money describes a recent Ipsos/Reuters poll that suggests consumer confidence worldwide is nudging upwards after an 18-month decline (see the Ipsos/Reuters release here). The poll surveyed 23,000 people in 23 countries. Among the interesting statistics were the categories of cutbacks made, on average, by consumers during these tough economic times. As you might […]

The challenge of managing (or corralling) multiple voices into a consistent organizational voice or brand has always been a challenge for arts organizations, especially when those voices in the organization are expressive individuals. With the growth of on-line media, such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and the like, the challenge has grown more public and more […]

One of the best ways to redirect a wandering conversation about ‘new business models’ in the arts is to ask the basic question: What is your current business model, and how does it work? It’s surprising how even really smart cultural managers can’t answer the question. Admittedly, we don’t talk much as a field about […]

London’s Sunday Times reports on an initiative to place 30 pianos in public locations throughout London, to encourage impromptu sing-alongs among strangers (want to find one? look here). Each piano will be decorated by an artist to relate to its surroundings — much like other public art initiatives featuring cows or pigs or furniture. A […]

Cory Doctorow makes a compelling point in The Guardian that today’s search engines provide essential functions, but also represent concentrations of opaque editorial power worthy of some pushback. Says he: The question of what we can and can’t see when we go hunting for answers demands a transparent, participatory solution. There’s no dictator benevolent enough […]

Since I seem to be distracted today by thoughts of how I might be less distracted, I thought I’d share Mr. Merlin Mann’s thoughts on the subject. A favorite quote, despite its bad grammar: People give you money because you know how to solve problems. Not because you move email around and respond to things […]

Google’s preview of its upcoming communications megatool — Google Wave — is yet another indicator of an emerging metaphor for life and work online. I’ve already touched on lifestreams — aggregations of all of your social networking communications in one flowing stream. Anyone using Twitter and its brethren can share the ever-flowing river metaphors that […]

Research and statistic wonks have reason to celebrate as more source data and visualization/analysis tools make their way onto the web. And if dabbling in databases isn’t your particular cup of tea, it might be time to take little sip anyway. Fans of government data sets (you know who you are) can celebrate the Obama […]

We tend to think of corporations and organizations as having a fixed and defined boundary around them — people inside are staff, people outside are constituents, objects inside are property or assets, objects outside are resources or potential inputs. Yet this metaphor has always been more of a convenience than a fact. Consider the nonprofit […]

Author, educator, and consultant Eric Booth has grown weary of the disconnects and bickering within the many fields of art — by discipline, by professional level, by community, by distribution channel, by artistic intent. So, in this compelling essay, he suggests a renewed emphasis on the common core of artistic endeavor — the ‘grand unifying […]