I was fortunate to take part in a planning session in New York last week, hosted by Fractured Atlas, to begin sketching out an open-source solution to a vexing but central part of engaging audiences with art: ticketing. Fractured Atlas is the project leader on ATHENA Tix, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, which promises to be the first stage of a multifunction software system for the arts.
The meeting gathered arts professionals and ticketing specialists from around the country, most from New York, to begin the community design and development process. Our main goal as a group was to discuss the first process flows and feature needs that would inform version 1 of the software. The first version seeks to solve basic problems first — ticketing for a general admission venue of under 100 seats with a single price for every seat. Then it will expand to a more nuanced and featured initiative in versions to come.
It was a great group (list of participants and summary of discussion is available here), but a question kept nagging me throughout the conversation: What, exactly, should a ticketing system be designed to do?
The obvious metaphor we’ve used for performing arts ticketing is sales. We have a product. In the case of performing arts, the product is an access right to a seat in the house for a specific performance. That product is perishable, since its value expires sometime after the performance begins (some discussion as to when). And that product is scarce, because there are only so many seats we have to sell. As a result, our concepts of ticketing systems involve a marketplace, a set of potential customers, a set of actual customers, a churning set of seats for sale, and a price.
But what if we thought of the process in a different way? What if our goal was to gather expressive individuals and prepared individuals in a common space? What if our product didn’t actually exist until both artist and audience were in that space? And what if the product was actually the meaningful co-production between the two (or three or five or 99)?
Under that interpretation, the facilitating software system wouldn’t be about sales, but rather about human resource management — getting the right people in the right space at the right time to produce the meaningful moment (essentially hiring not only performers but receivers, as well). Or, alternately, the system would be about outsourcing — identifying audiences or artists with a need to experience or express, and creating a marketplace where they could find each other to complete the production.
As ever, I’m lingering on semantics and metaphor. And yes, there’s a transaction in there somewhere, either way. But it struck me that when we design a system from scratch, or we redesign anything, we have a unique opportunity to rethink its purpose and its process. The trick, of course, is not confusing or abstracting the design process and its need to address immediate, observable problems for those who hope to use it.
Still and all, I’ll be wandering around to learn more about human resource and outsourcing software systems on the web, just as I explore best practices in ticketing. And as the development community stumbles onto better, different, or potentially useful metaphors for what they’re developing, I’ll be following those, as well.
Coming from a top music conservatory where over 800 concerts are given each year, I’ve frequently wondered about performances as a market item. We offered diversity in product, but frankly, we didn’t have a scarce supply in order to drive a traditional marketplace. Even when concerts were free, seats were left empty, begging the questions, “Why do people come?” and “Do audiences stay home because they know they can catch a concert anytime next week?”
I believe people come for the experience of the dynamic created between audience and performers. This can’t be sold like a product, but we regulate access to a “product.” The trend to engage audiences through pre-concert talks or program notes sheds light on the artist-audience conversation, yet leaves it one-sided. Damaging phrases such as “make the performance accessible to the audience” and “play to the crowd so they’ll come back” run rampant and, though good advice, target the symptom of lower attendance – not the problem.
In Greg Sandow’s class, we talked about the culture surrounding performances – the dress, etiquette, and perceived pretentiousness. Inviting the audience to enter the dialogue – and validating their responses – with a human artist who walks, talks, and eats like them goes farther than tickets to hear music or see a play. What if, instead of a ticket, audiences perceived it as an appointment to keep, a dinner date to attend, or a meeting to observe?
Erin McPeck
AmeriCorps*VISTA
Zootown Arts Community Center
Missoula, MT
Thanks for the shout out!
You’ve got some fascinating ideas here, and it’s possible I’m either too dumb or too close to the page to grasp your point, but I question whether they fall within the scope of “ticketing software”.
To use the conventional software terminology, what you’re talking about sounds more like a really smart CRM system to me. There’s also the human resources bit, which you mention, and which would be its own component. You could also think of this stuff in social media terms. These are all different ways of deciding who should attend an event and trying to get them there.
Regardless, at some point you need to manage the very mundane tasks of organizing an event listing and tracking who will attend. *That* is the domain of ticketing software and that’s what we’re trying to accomplish with ATHENA Tix (in as smart and flexible a way as possible).
As far as I can tell, that functionality is universal and indispensable, whether the “tickets” are free or paid, self-selected or assigned, physical or virtual…
Let the Project Audience people worry about the hard stuff! 😉
This is interesting. I started writing BuyPlayTix.com for my theater company several years ago, and it’s become a full fledged site since. Very quickly I realized that ticket sales are really just a starting point for theater management (which is why it’s not just “ticket sales”, I’m really interested in the problem of theater management).
So I really started playing with ideas like being able to tag contacts and then build mailing lists based on specific tags. Being able to build mailing lists based on what show a user sees (do they always come to the first show? the last one? Can we incent the procrastinators to go to an earlier show to keep the last row from turning people away?)
We started taking actual ticket sales and creating graphs. Which lets us easily see exactly how many tickets we should expect to sell. Which makes us plan our budgets easily.
Many people do ticket sales, very few are really into looking into the business and how we can actually use this data.
I don’t have enough customers yet, but I can’t wait to be able to build city aggregate data and graph things like – every $x dollars of set budget correlates with $y dollars in ticket sales. This is sort of the opposite side of your blog post, but I would contend that most arts organizations don’t actually know what sells, and so they’re conservative on the false assumption that it sells.
I’ve thought about open-sourcing BuyPlayTix and continuing to offer hosting. I just don’t know how to find the people who would be interested.
Thanks Adam…a polite rebuff! Appreciate the nudge.
I would agree that the transaction system at the touchpoint in the middle is essentially the same, regardless of the metaphor we’re working on. An individual has picked an experience, the provider has an available seat, price and terms are offered and accepted (initiated by one party or the other), and the deal is done.
But around that common kernel, you’ll have to make a bundle of assumptions even to construct a basic ticketing system (even without a full-on consumer relationship management system). Who’s the producer? Who’s the consumer? Which end of the system is the ‘back end’ for administrative activities? Tradition and common sense suggest easy answers here, but I guess I’m nudging common sense.
Don’t know if there’s a point in here. Hope it will come in time. But thanks for gathering the energy and the community to dive into this system!
“Tradition and common sense suggest easy answers here, but I guess I’m nudging common sense.”
We experimented recently with having an automatically updated “Tickets Remaining” image. For some reason in theater we tend to guard the remaining tickets like Fort Knox, unless they’re truly scarce (like 2 left scarce). Of course, maybe audiences are on to us and assume there are tickets left because of it.
When we put the tickets remaining on our Facebook page we sold out the show and sold out much farther away from the actual show date. Audiences don’t know that 20 tickets left could be 30% of all tickets. They see a concrete number that is dwindling and commit.
Also don’t tell anyone, but we have a contact tag for “laugher”. We give them comps to our comedies.
Building on what Erin has said I’m also wondering “why do people come” and about exploring doing things a little differently.
The problem I’ve seen with shows is that there is no scarcity. Drumming up sales beyond regulars and families and friends is discouraging. No system I’ve seen recognizes that audiences have a kazillion different options rather than going out to a cultural experience – reading, video games, cinema, etc.
We all know this innately but it doesn’t factor into our sales/experience marketplaces.
I’m wondering about an attention auction that sells that sells the outcomes of performances – the live experience, intimacy, relationship facilitation, moving works, etc to meet audience member’s expressed needs.
I hear so many pitches for performances for artists that are like entries out of the phone book. The validation process then becomes how well known they are and who has given them what level of accreditation – “as heard on NPR”. It’s all very much looking at it from the artist and orgs perspective only.
I’d rather put up my need for a respite from a tough week with a need for laughter and connection with others and see who responds. Turn the market around in other words. A “request for proposals” for audience members if you will. The tagging that Tim mentioned in the first comment is close to this but is still all about push from one of many sources. I’d love to see the mechanisms turn around and serve the individual audience member first and the scores of attention bidders second.
This is all very out there and the opposite of the way orgs do things now but in my discouragement I’m open to anything.
I love the concept of an open source ticketing option. When we were looking for a system for our theatre, we tested more systems than I can remember. The affordable ones offered very little service beyond selling a ticket and the ones that actually provided useful services were far too expensive for our small theatre. In the end we went with Ovationtix. They are good but there are still some features I’d like to see added. Surveys, social media integration, iPhone compatibility, etc. We connect with people in so many ways and our ultimate goal is to get them to come see a play (and return with friends). It’s frustrating when it is so difficult to integrate that all so important step of ticket purchasing with all of the communication we do. Sure providing a hyperlink to our ticket page works, but it feels so removed. I’ll be following ATHENA Tix with great interest and I’m looking forward to paying Fractured Atlas a visit the next time I’m in New York.
Two thoughts, both contrarian:
1) Do we need to go to an HR metaphor in order to acknowledge (and blow up) the prevailing, narrow transactional approach? Ticketing systems manage access to experiences–which may (but need not) correspond tightly to events. For instance, imagine an arts org selling a “connoisseur’s pass” that provides a reserved seat to one performance and then space-available seating to as many additional performances of the same work as the person cares to attend–the idea being that development of a personal aesthetic benefits from frequent exposure to subtle nuances across nominally “identical” performances. The experience here is more than the sum of the performances attended, and there is some legitimate co-production involved. Then consider tele-immersive dance experiences in which members of the audience can join “performers” by means of something like their Wii consoles, in a “production” that could stretch continuously for days or even years as individuals enter or leave. That’s certainly co-production, but it’s not obvious what added-value the HR metaphor buys us for either one, over just making access available and marketing it effectively.
2) Aren’t we already employing the HR metaphor, in a particularly dysfunctional way (i.e., screening performing arts audience “applicants” for characteristics such as age, race, education, and wealth)? Erin’s italics strike me as particularly interesting here, because they assume that audiences don’t already see performances as co-produced appointments to keep, dinners to attend, etc. I suspect that’s exactly wrong–else why would the audience demographics of most organizations be so homogeneous and predictable across productions? I would argue that the HR model already p0wns us–so much so that we have a hard time seeing it.
A ticket system without a management information system is merely a cash register — the recording of a transaction — to throw in another metaphor.
The moment that you use a third party selling your tickets, you unfortunately have lost first direct contact with your customer during the confirmation of the sale. By the time that a ticket is sold, that transaction is already a confirmation that the marketing message was successful. After all, the patron has already been persuaded to take time out of his/her busy schedule, not only to spend time at your presentation, but physically add the transaction to his to-do list. To gain as much information in reasoning behind this successful message delivery in extrapolating trends and patterns would be more advantageous than the mere recording of the transaction itself. To loose an opportunity to obtain management information at your point of sale, is like flying blind. The daily interpretation of your sales trends is an early warning system to the management of your marketing campaign. To ignore it is to your peril.
It was always amazing experience to interact with one of the most influential developers of computer event ticketing system in South Africa, Mr Percy Tucker. It does not matter what time you might phone him or where you would bump into him, he was always ready to comment on your ticket sales and add real value on the interpretation of the latest trend. He taught me the necessity to look beyond the transaction.
On comps: One of my other mentors, the late Mr Michal Grobbelaar, previously CEO of the Johannesburg Civic Theatre, insisted in calling complimentary tickets, guest tickets. He believed that it changes the dynamics of the relationship between the guest (not patron in this case) and the host. It also places a courteous obligation on the guest to show up and not to have an empty seat, and usually opens doors in further meaningful communication.