Posting results, pondering impact

The National Performing Arts Convention has started to post the results of its final Town Hall meeting over on their convention weblog. These are the categories and strategies presented during the massive final meeting of the convention, and voted on by some 1300 conventioners. The three-day process leading up to this final event included large caucuses of convention conversations — tables of 8 to 10 participants from different disciplines, clustered in rooms throughout the venue. Each of these caucuses explored a specific question, and all of those answers bubbled up to a ”theme team” that selected the most mentioned responses to feed into the next day’s conversation.

The goal was to collaboratively develop three primary categories of action to improve the state and status of the performing arts in the United States, and then to generate and select two or three primary strategies within each of those categories at the national, local/regional, and organizational level.

While these goals and strategies may seem broad and vague, they generated some wonderfully specific conversation at the table I was observing during the Town Hall. I hope the weblog posting, and opportunity to comment, captures a portion of this nuance and texture.

Meanwhile, blogger Doug Fox has posted a critique of the convention’s use (or limited use) of communications technologies and blogger networks in spreading the conversation beyond the physical space in Denver. Good points about the convening, as well as the on-line capacity of our industry.