The Philanthropy 2173 weblog offers a short list of innovative conferences now providing free video access to their content on-line (and a curator that’s pulling them together). The blog links back to a New York Times story on the TED conference, and its extraordinary success in giving away its keynotes on the web.
According to the conference’s media director, June Cohen, the give-aways aren’t a ”gee-whiz” feature or an afterthought, but rather a core strategy in advancing both mission and money:
“Conventional business logic would tell you that in a community like TED you have to keep your commodity scarce and expensive to retain brand value,” she said. “But the same year we started releasing most of our content for free we raised our conference price by nearly 50 percent and still sold out in 12 days.”
The Times article flags the content-sharing strategy as an emerging trend:
Of the 11,000 or so trade shows and corporate events each year in the United States, about 10 percent in the last year have begun to use videos from their shows to generate more revenue, according to Darlene Gudea, publisher of Trade Show Executive Magazine, an industry publication. “Show organizers are realizing that only part of the industry comes to a trade show, leaving a lot of educational opportunities, and revenues, on the table,” Ms. Gudea said.
Within this trend, consider the strategy, structure, and mind-set of the traditional professional arts convening — Arts Presenters, OPERA America, Americans for the Arts, Theater Communications Group, American Association of Museums, and so on. Workshops and keynotes are behind the gate, and rarely shared in a strategic and open way (admittedly, cost and technological expertise are barriers). When audio, video, or digital versions are available, they’re off to the side and rarely indexed for access by the wider world. Overall, a flawed concept of the conference commodity — that people pay their registration fee for the content of the event, rather than the context of smart people together in space and time — seems to drive event design.
What if we perceived professional arts conferences as entirely permeable — where the insights and ideas of major presenters flowed around the world like water? Wouldn’t that advance the profession more profoundly? And wouldn’t smart people pay even more to attend the live event?
Clearly, we couldn’t achieve the sheen and polish of TED. But a few thousand dollars in equipment, and some dedicated volunteers, could move the issue forward. Perhaps, dare I say it, the major service organizations could share the capacity to share their content.
Always thinking aren’t you, Dr. Taylor? You’ll be delighted to hear that Americans for the Arts will offer more than a few digital enhancements to the national conversation about the arts in our communities. Our blog launches in early May and will transform into Online NOW, the report from the convention as it happens. June 1-3, Vegas baby. http://www.Americansforthearts.org/convention Join us!
Can’t? Then yes, we’ll podcast the highlights, video snippets on the blog… good old fashioned stills too! It’s true, sometimes the technology is challenging. But so is designated funding for the arts in every community, and that’s never stopped us! Risk and Reward, right?
You’re right on the money, again. Sharing the intellectual capital is crucial as we try to move our fields forward.
We might also think about the quality of the presentations at these conferences and put more resources into engaging the best speakers.
The proceedings for the upcoming conference (May 18 & 19) for the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts will be podcast as well. It’s one of our ways of linking and sharing information across all of the UC campuses.
bampfa.berkeley.edu or http://www.ucira.ucsb.edu
I just read the last comment in your weekly email about the connections between the characteristics of biological complexity and other environments. I wondered if you realized how fabulously this insight relates to the comments about holding open arts conferences.
“All of a sudden, most of the clusters become cross-connected into one giant structure. The sea of disconnected buttons transforms into a tightly connected system, where you can’t lift one button without moving a thousand. It’s a fabulous metaphor for the slow and seemingly random connections we make as artists, arts managers, and arts organizations. If we keep to the business of making those connections, we can eventually (and rather suddenly) change the shape and nature of the world.”
I have read from various sources about connections between the way biological complexities create strong, healthy, smart, varied (and beautiful to us!) communities, living communities yet with evident “borders” which are not manufactured walls but which emerge from chaos through the distinctiveness of what has been chosen and acted upon. Isn’t this another reason to increase the openness of conventions? There is so much outside of what is familiar to one set of people in one culture which can increase a kind of chaotic excitement and generate the very conditions in which all creativity thrives-the “intercourse” of opposites!