Conference Report: Technology in the Arts
I have a love/hate relationship with technology. As the executive director of Wide Angle Youth Media, I love what technology can do for our young people and the community at large, and I hate how long it can take to implement, the complications of integrating new tools into an existing framework, and the difficulty of making the right choices for my organization, given our limited budget and manpower. After a weekend at the Technology in the Arts Conference—presented by the Center for Arts Management and Technolgy in Pittsburg, PA, October 9-12, 2008—where I learned about innovations in technology that can impact both organizational management and media arts creation, my enthusiasm has been renewed.
Often at Wide Angle, technology choices are focused on immediate programming needs, based on specific funding—for example, purchasing video equipment, individual software titles, and server space. But each of these components are part of the bigger picture—our organization’s overall technology strategy. In the presentation Smart Information Technology Choices for Your Nonprofit, Alan Levine, chief information officer of the Kennedy Center, discussed all the variables an organization must understand to make wise technology decisions. These range from understanding a technology’s total cost for an organization (think in terms of years, not months, of upgrades, implementations, training, and repairs), to being realistic about a staff’s capacity to incorporate changes. Levine offered an anecdote about a staff member who was reluctant to work on the department’s new IT project, because for him it meant a new office, and he might lose his beloved office chair. I laughed at the thought, and then remembered my own reluctance to retire my beat-up, barely functioning Mac and use a brand-new PC, fearing I would be trading in my artist-credentials in the process.
Maintaining our digital communications can also be a challenge, as staff hours are focused on direct service, and Wide Angle is too small to afford our own marketing staff. Looking beyond an organization’s current capacity, and taking advantage of the resources in one’s community (both local and virtual), was a key point of Jono Smith’s presentation, How to Build Relationships and Achieve Fundraising Success in a Web 2.0 World. Smith, the marketing director for Network for Good, said that Web 2.0 is really about people using technology themselves, decentralizing information (think Wikipedia and Indymedia), making connections (Facebook, Twitter), and sharing opinions and content (Del.icio.us, YouTube). Members of this teeming community of engaged web users have the potential to be clients, students, donors, and audiences. Web 2.0 users have skills and knowledge that nonprofits need, and nonprofits have programs, missions, and objectives that users value. Working together, we can exponentially expand our reach, as students spread the word about our next screening on Facebook, or donors use widgets to encourage their friends to donate to our travel fund.
Pairing presentation tools with evaluation data has historically been limited to pie charts and bar graphs. But with the advent of GIS (Geographic Information Systems)—a system of creating geographic maps of data—we can begin not just to gather data about our community but to communicate and share this information. Avencia founder Robert Cheetham shared examples of how theaters, arts districts, and city agencies have used GIS to identify audience members by location, reveal density of constituents in relation to city council districts, and place historic images in contemporary maps. The ability to get a macro perspective on our work, seeing details we might be unable to observe any other way, has enormous implications for organizational development, from marketing to strategic planning.
Another approach is to regard the technologies used by our own students and audience members as a springboard for our own implementations. The ubiquity of text messaging suggests it might be worth investing in mobile marketing, which Marty Higginbotham, founder and president of the Stage Channel, discussed in his presentation, Mobile Marketing: Interacting with Your Audience Via Cell and Smart Phones. From sending information about show times and ticket discounts, to reminding audience members that they have an event to attend that night, mobile marketing can be a powerful tool.
As a self-proclaimed tech-savvy person who has somehow managed to miss the text-messaging revolution, I found this both illuminating and a little bit overwhelming. Trying to anticipate the inevitable next wave of digital media formats and interfaces, keeping in mind Moore’s Law and the fact that every year my students are moving a little faster than me, can make it difficult to know which technologies are worth the investment of time and money.
Global Youth Media in Practice, presented by Sharese Bullock and Nettrice Gaskins, reinforced the perspective that our technology is best used when it serves people well. Watching a web video produced by a young boy in Armenia, I thought how just a few years ago I would have had to wait up to a month to be mailed a VHS tape to watch it, if I was lucky enough to even know about the project. Similarly, Shelley Bernstein’s closing plenary discussed the public-led curating of the Brooklyn Museum’s Click! show, which exposed thousands of viewers to photography and artists they may never have seen otherwise. Web 2.0 (and beyond)’s opportunities to build community, encourage discourse about the arts, and increase audience investment are worth the effort.
That is why it is so critical to shift focus from the technologies to the people these technologies will impact. At the end of the day, the only reason to implement any technology is to fulfill our missions better—to serve our communities of young people, artists, policy makers, and more. And that was the final lesson I learned at the conference: Technology can be expensive, but the people we serve are the true investment.
GIN FERRARA is the executive director of Wide Angle Youth Media, a Baltimore nonprofit dedicated to helping young people develop leadership skills, using media as the catalyst for self-exploration, personal growth, and community engagement. She is an educator, writer, technophile, and knitter.
© 2008 National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture. All rights reserved.
