Refreshing Brew: A Creative Review of NAMAC 2009

Donald Harrison captures a moment at Sushi + Tequila with Lori Felker from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago

One of my main goals in attending CommonWealth was to challenge my thinking about the future of media arts, especially in the context of film festivals and engaging audiences with moving image arts.  With this same spirit I intend to offer here a creative and highly drinkable brew (with more than a few analogies on tap!). By expanding our thinking, even in seemingly inebriated directions, I believe we can get closer to the next great ideas for better serving our missions.

The NAMAC Big Three: Aggregate. Activate. Amplify.
At each workshop or panel I was “casting” on Twitter (along with listening) to catch key language and ideas. And these three words were like bobbers, floating on the surface of the conference near my fishing boat.

The media ocean is over-fished and becoming polluted. It’s also massive. Aggregation is more than finding and connecting with constituents/audiences (having good “bait”); it’s having a smart system for capturing this information and utilizing it effectively. These tools and systems usually don’t just drift up on shore. They require investments of time, thought and money. With quality tools and practice using them, organizations are poised for effective aggregation (catches), whether the net is cast wide or on a single line.

Most media organizations, however, aren’t catching and eating their constituents (figuratively or otherwise). We want to catch and release and have return encounters. Thus an engaging relationship is formed – activation.  Say we have 5,000 people receiving our eNews and we know nothing about them. We might as well be casting our lines in the sea at random in hopes of a few bites. By learning more about our audiences and constituents (through meaningful interactions and smart aggregation tools), we can cast our efforts in the places most likely to create engagement and deep impacts. Activation is creating a real, ongoing two-way relationship with constituents and audiences.

Here is where the massive size of the media ocean can come into play in a multiplier way. The more your organization is connecting with its audiences/constituents and building meaningful relationships, the more you can amplify your mission to increase your impacts. This is a participatory, artists-as-interdependent approach that requires the willingness to trust in community and get more open source style as an organization. To finish off this fishy analogy, imagine learning the hot spots for your intended schools of fish. You then build a relationship so these fish not only approach your boat each time you appear, but also broadcast the signal to related kinds of fish to join them. Amplification provides the ability to multiply your impacts based on the strength of your organization’s relationships.

D & D: Not a Game
Prior to my NAMAC experience I would have proudly told anyone that we’re effectively using most online social media tools. We’re active with the usual culprits: Facebook and Twitter; our YouTube nonprofit channel has ranked in the top 100 and has rich content; we’re on Flickr and have a LinkedIn group; we use our Google AdWords grant widely; and our eNews Projections reaches over 15,000 subscribers.

After the good fortune of sitting down with Dave Dombrosky, a NAMAC board member and presenter on social online media at the conference, my view of our approach has changed. To say we didn’t have a clue would be harsh, but it’s how I felt after every well-placed “why” question from Dave. We didn’t have an integrated strategy for using all of these tools.  And considering the increasing dependence on these networks for connecting with the public, why rely on interns or guesswork when your organization’s reputation and message are at stake?

The bigger questions behind how you’re using these tools to capture friends, fans and followers (nod to Scott Kirsner for his worthwhile presentation) involve “why” and “how efficiently?”  Updates and posts and analytics are time consuming, which explains why so many stretched-thin non-profits rely on interns or have inconsistent approaches. If you can find someone to consult, like Dave, who understands beyond the tools and into organizational strategy, I highly recommend the investment. Best case scenario you could be funneling people who care about your mission into an activated relationship with your organization. Worst case scenario you could actually be damaging your identity and public messaging.

Later in the conference I met a PR consultant at a party and told her my revelation about our lack of online social networking strategy. Her response “you don’t need a strategy, that’s the point.”  Fortunately Dave and I (the D & D) had already “role played” enough with my organization’s online cast of characters and revealed major areas of wasted effort, missed opportunities and the potential for miscommunication.  The next time I speak proudly about our online social networking it will be because we’re using all of these tools smartly to strengthen our organization and its impacts, not simply just hoping it’s worth all the time to build and maintain.

The Xanaxing of Audiences
Another fortunate connection from my film festival perspective was sitting down with Patty Zimmerman, a professor at Ithaca College and co-director of the FLEFF (Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival). During an open space discussion, she said something that stuck with me. That starting in the 1990s she noticed a “Xanaxing of audiences” with a more passive relationship to the media they were absorbing. Their film festival, which hosted by Ithaca University has a different DNA than most, looks closely at who’s in the room arguing during their events. They focus on the experience and bringing together people for discussion, debate and healthy conflict that goes beyond the numbed out (and sugared up) mode that the majority of audiences are presented with at mainstream movie theaters.

My organization, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the longest running independent film festival on the continent (shameless plug section), is already well known for providing an engaging, memorable experience for both filmmakers and audiences. We have filmmaker Q&As, art installations, free coffee/tea, parties, panels, surprise performances and plenty of rare, challenging, imaginative films in world-class venues.  And yet are we fully reaching people in a Xanaxed culture and activating our audience?

After the same open space discussion with Patty, I met Will Wilkins, Executive Director of Real Art Ways in Hartford, CT. He told how his organization used to be quite disconnected from its community as an avant-garde arts group. After 19 years of hard work, outreach and a changed mindset, they are highly engaged with different segments of their region and often bringing people together that would not otherwise connect.

Though my organization is committed to showcasing avant-garde, international moving image art and independent film, we must continue our efforts to build “the deep local experience” (nod on that phrase to our super-charged coffee sponsor, John Roos).  In the past couple of years we’ve brought non-profits in to co-present programs at our festival. We’ve started collaborations with more than half a dozen related arts organizations. And we’re hosting or co-presenting more events throughout the year. Partially due to this effort, our attendance has increased 80% in the last 3 years. More importantly, we are deepening our relationships with our community. I believe that consistently and creatively expanding these efforts is critical to break beyond a passive viewing, Xanaxed culture.

The ESPN of Arts
I was raised in a world of sports. It was my dad’s main interest and hobby. As I grew older I became interested in music, art, film and politics, though my appreciation for sports still remains. During moments of major sporting obsession (e.g., a UM football game in Ann Arbor with 115,000 fans in the stadium) I imagine what our country would look like if we could divert even just 5% of all this time, energy and money spent in the U.S. into our arts culture.

Can we, media arts leaders, learn from sports? ESPN does an incredible job of cultivating cross-platform fandome: all sports are interwoven throughout a half hour SportsCenter broadcast. So even if you normally don’t care about hockey, you are consistently informed about hockey and therefore more likely to become engaged. I’m a film guy but I appreciate all art forms. Yet there aren’t channels that effectively engage me with all forms of art: dance, music, theater, poetry, sculpture and beyond. I can easily name 100 contemporary independent filmmakers, but would struggle to name more than five contemporary poets. As a result, we remain related as arts organizations but too often isolated. We are not cross-pollinating our audiences enough to cultivate an arts obsessed culture in the U.S.

Now I’m not necessarily advocating for an ESPN-like channel for art, nor regionally-based professional arts leagues that compete for national championships. But the fact that we only spend $1.37 per person/year in tax dollars for public media (according to Craig Aaron from Free Press, during the opening plenary), reveals our lack of priority for arts and culture in the United States. I believe we need to look beyond our own arts world when considering models, and stretch our thinking creatively.

The Sushi + Tequila Experience
It’s my last night at the NAMAC conference and a group of friends/colleagues leave the party to find food. The first restaurant we come across offers “The Sushi + Tequila Experience” at Sushi-Teq. Curious, perhaps cautiously, we enter. Color shifting walls, a stacked tequila menu and full sushi bar, it’s a bizarre combination but we’re open minded and hungry. Though the sushi and the tequila are both fine quality, I don’t think the combination is highly successful (especially if judged by how I felt the next day). But we stay for over two hours and have a great, memorable experience. I’m writing about it now and pondering unexpected combinations, contrarian thinking and engaging experiences.

Time to Get Up
If people in the audience don’t ever get up and leave during our film festival, we’re probably not doing something right; we’re committed to showing challenging, art-driven work, which won’t always be universally understood or appreciated. And if, while reading this, you didn’t ever scratch your head or have an “!” moment, then I didn’t push my/your thinking enough. Fundamentally I believe that innovation and creative thinking are required to help media arts organizations activate and amplify their audiences, supporters, and those they serve.

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