Blogging for Community Building One of the key tools that people use for online community building is blogging. We have this idea that if we build a blog that people will come flocking to our doors to buy tickets and attend performances. If only it were that simple.
Being an Interested Blogger I was reading a post today from Problogger about how to be an interesting blogger. The key take away for me in that post was about being interested in what you writing about and what your readers are interested in. Being interested in your readers. Are we writing because we love it, or because we are really intrigued with something?
Chris Brogan talks about this in his post today, with the really good point that we need to be clear about who our audience is and stay focused on writing about what they want to hear about.
Who is My Audience? Well that really got me thinking. Who am I writing for? I'm really interested in knowing about how people in the arts are using social media tools. What works, what doesn't. What can we learn from others using social media? I've mostly been interviewing people in this process. But I think I need to branch out and try other things as well. I think my audience is people interested in the same things.
I'm at MW2008 conference in Montreal, and I’ve just been sitting in a workshop on blogging run by Brian Kelly & Mike Ellis.
Its exciting to see the diversity of people in the session – coming from North America, Europe and New Zealand, and yet the similarity of needs and goals...
Session highlights:
Challenges to blogs: How do we...
overcome institutional inertia
build traffic
build enthusiam
take on one more thing
make it sustainable
overcome restrictions on the official institutional voice
Why Blog? For museums, specific reasons to use blogs suggested in the room include:
giving curator’s personal voice
measurable outcomes
replace or complement existing websites
increase visibility
get feedback from audience
easy and cheap
build community & relationships
build traffic
exhibition and event promotion
blending: generating dialogue both before and after audience walks in the door
What Makes a Good Blog?:
Being Passionate
Having a personality – a defined tone of voice
Finding a niche
Two way engagement
Intelligent posts
Finding new angles not regurgitating
Link a lot, and read links you ‘lunk’ to (that's Mike's word)
Differences between Blogs and Official Websites:
official website is well official, formal, marketing driven and branded, impersonal
blog: unofficial, informal, personal, don’t need IT dept. to update and change
A few other really good points that came up..
Use the right technology - the technology should be invisible... so that you can really focus on the message
Editorial policy - respond to every comment on your blog
Some Great Comments I heard:
“Blogging, in this context, is about discussion and engagement. It’s not about publishing and workflow." Brian
"Much easier to seek forgiveness then permission" Mike
"You can’t mediate every message anymore. To be in this environment need to play like the other players”
"You’ve got to be opinionated"
“I’m of the opinion that we don’t need to think about why to do a blog, but we jump in and have a go at it.. – that’s the spirit of web 2.0” in response to question about overcoming the need for approval from higher ups..." Gail
What else did you hear? What would you add to these concepts?
I had the great pleasure of talking with Allegra Burnette, Creative Director of Digital Media at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Allegra and her department oversee all the ‘public facing’ media at the Museum which includes the design and production for the Museum's Web site, MoMA.org, as well as interpretive kiosks and displays. Their focus has been on developing the experience for the online visit, as well as the visit to the museum.
Audio Tours and iTunes U Using iTunes U to extend network and reach - 20,000 downloads a month
As a result of a Bloomberg Grant, MoMA has been able to make its audio programs available for free, including online for download without being in conflict with any revenue stream. Most museums have to create new content for the web because they have to charge a fee for their audio tours.
Says Burnette,
“The grant from Bloomberg not only enabled us to offer the audio program for free within the Museum, but it provided the opportunity to repurpose our audio tours for use online. What this means in part is that you can download the programs to your ipod and bring it with you during your visit or listen at home. We recently extended this initiative by working with Apple and becoming part of their educational program, iTunesU, which was recently expanded when it became part of the iTunes application.
Initially iTunes U was a way for colleges and universities to make lectures and material available through the iTunes interface. In October Apple extended the format to include cultural institutions, and MoMA was in the first group of non-universities to be featured. What that allows us to do is to create an ongoing archive of different content, from our past and present audio programs, to featured lectures and other public programs, and includes both video and audio. It also allows us to link back to additional resources available on MoMA.org.”
FINDING iTUNES U
You can find iTunes U, by opening up the iTunes application and opening iTunes Store if it’s not already open. iTunes U is at the bottom of the iTunes Store menu. MoMA can be found in the “Beyond Campus” Category on the lower right portion of the screen. Sometimes it’s also featured in the graphics in the center section.
“Its been great”, continues Allegra, “We’ve had a lot of people get the audio from MoMA.org, but it also really expands the audience for that material and gets it to an audience we are really trying to reach – educators and students.
The audio tours as well as other material is in the iTunes U. You can listen online or download it.
That’s been one of our big focuses - making sure we are reaching beyond our website and reaching our audience where they happen to be. In the case of students, and educators and scholars, they’re starting to use iTunes U for courses and as a research tool.
What’s nice about this is that we can specify the links here, so for example the guides for teachers or things that we’ve added can link back to materials we have. There’s other supporting links. So its a way to broaden where the content goes but also to say, ‘Hey, if you want more information its available here on MoMA.org.’”
Update 3-13-08
Since they launched in October 2007, they've had about 20,000 downloads a month, which includes anything from full video to short audio clips.
Red Studio & Student Created Podcasts
Participatory Culture - Engaging Students
Red Studio is a project where groups of teens are working with educators at the museum and creating their own podcasts. So far there have been 3 groups of teens working specifically on creating audio podcasts- groups of high school students that work for a 6-8 week period on a project. The first group was experimental to see how the project could work. Students come in and work with educators and someone from Acoustiguide, the audio company MoMA works with. They teach the students about creating audio programs, and the kinds of things they need to think about. Students pick works they are interested in, research them, do the audio, learn how to edit it, and do all the nuts and bolts of the process. Burnette is enthusiastic about the project:
“It’s great. They bring their own take to it, but they have also been engaged and learn about how a professional process works. The result is a looser feeling project then what we get with some of the other audio programs but it still has a basis in teaching at the museum.”
There is a whole Red Studio site for teens, with other activities. So some of the students have been working on the podcasts and some are doing other projects like interviews with artists that are turned into videos.
You Tube Channel
From Video Contest to Time Lapse Photography
MoMA also recently started a YouTube Channel. For a recent popular video for their Richard Serra exhibition, they used time-lapse photography to capture the entire installation process.
Currently there are about 37 videos up now, as well as some film trailers promoting MoMA’s film program.
“It started with an online contest with the ‘Residents’. They had a song that we (MoMA and the Residents) both posted, and then people could make their own video to go with the song. The judges were the ‘Residents’ Band and the curator for the film retrospective at the Museum. The finalists were posted on YouTube and screened as part of the retrospective of the ‘Residents’ Films at MoMA. That was our first exploration into using YouTube, which has since grown to our own channel with close to 40 videos currently.”
'Home Delivery' - and MoMA’s version of BLOGGING
A fun project coming up is ‘Home Delivery’ – about prefab architecture. Five prefab houses are going to be installed in the empty lot next to the museum as part of its exhibition.
Architects are working on their projects at their various factories and then will bring them in to be installed. Each architect will capture the whole process in blog ‘journals’. The postings will include images, video or text.
Says Allegra, “We’re not doing blogs in the tradition sense of an ongoing conversation from a single point of view, but using it in a different way to show the multiple streams of production on the project happening simultaneously. It’s going to be a big experiment as there are many unknowns in the whole process of setting up this exhibition.”
The Right Tool For The Right Project - Second Life - Build or Visit?
Allegra talks about the approach to web interactions....
“A lot of it is thinking about where people are going and how we meet them in that space, not for the sake of technology but which format makes the right sense. YouTube made sense for the ‘Residents” and a type of blog format is what’s going to work for ‘Home Delivery’. But it’s important to us to match the content, the goals, and the technology in a way that they all are able to play off of and support each other.”
Paola Antonelli, curator in the Architecture and Design Dept, hosted an event in 2nd Life not long ago. But rather then try to reproduce the Museum in 2nd life, MoMA felt that hosting an event made more sense. As Burnette notes,
“Somebody like the San Francisco Exploratorium is doing a lot in Second Life. For them it makes so much sense to have a space there, because so much of what they are doing is very hands on and fits, like their 3D activities or flying around planets. For now, event-based initiatives is what we have been focusing on in this space, but who knows where this could lead?”
‘Design and the Elastic Mind’ and Twittervision:
I initially contacted Allegra because of an email blast I’d gotten from Biz Stone. I almost never read them, but for some reason I opened this one last week...
Twitter at the MoMA
Twittervision, a popular Twitter API project, is included in a show at the New York Museum of Modern Art titled "Design and the Elastic Mind." The show explores the relationship between science and design and is open from February 24 to May 12, 2008.
Twittervision, created by Dave Troy is this cool little app that’s a mashup between google maps and Twitter, where you can see twitter posts in real time mashed up onto where in the world they are coming from.
Troy has also created another version called Flickrvision that mashes google maps with photos that have been uploaded to the Flickr photo-sharing site.
These are part of the ‘Design and The Elastic Mind’ exhibit also curated by Paola Antonelli, It is a fascinating look at the intersection of design, technology and science, how they come together and how they play off of each other. The exhibit contains an online piece that captures images and videos from some of the exhibits at the MoMA.
The exhibit includes all sorts of intriguing items, from the video project called ‘Lightweeds’ - of plants that grow and respond based on the weather outside, to the ‘Shadow Monsters’ – which takes your image and then adds ‘monsters’ to it.
Allegra says... “So many of these objects – some of them may not be so eye catching initially, but each as a story about why they are there...” and they look way cool.
Okay, so I should know what I'm doing but I don't. I haven't really gotten clear on how to do the whole community and dialogue thing. I think I've been thinking web 1.0.
What am I talking about? I have this great conversation with Beth Dunn, Communications Director of the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod a couple of weeks ago. Its about our mutual interests in Social Media.
The Arts Foundation is a private organization that supports local arts groups by providing training and support to local individual artists, and doing collaborative marketing. Local corporations sponsor an annual Pops by the Sea event featuring the Boston Pops Esplanade orchestra, which generates about 80% of the funds for the foundation.
Beth does training on social media for local artists as part of her job, but hasn't been able to implement some of those great tools for her own organization. I found it interesting that she hasn't been able to implement a lot of the social media strategies she's so good at, in her job because it seems there is not yet the level of understanding and appreciation yet of these tools. I think that it's hard in small communities that haven't a broad perspective.
Beth mentioned how difficult it is when someone opens up the local paper and reads about the Internet and Blogs and so on and all they see is stories about children being at risk, and slanderous behavior etc. They end up completely jaded and not very open to exploring these great tools.
Vince Ford at the New York Philharmonic suggests spending some time with people on an individual basis getting them online, showing them how to use tools, and doing a little show an tell to move it from an intellectual exercise to something within their experience.
What else works?
_______________________________ But why is this a Tribute to Beth Dunn? _______________________________
Beth is really good at building community and interaction between people.
I just realized that I was 2 weeks delinquent in seeing that I was Tagged by Beth, and that she had written about our conversation and I had sat on my hands, or so it felt.
So this is what I have learned today from Beth. (Now I knew this intellectually, but somehow it wasn't turning into reality!)
Track conversations that include me. Beth Kanter refers to this as "Ego Search".
I just did this with Google search and found 3 beginnings of conversations to me that I had completely missed somehow. I still haven't gotten this to show up well in my reader for some reason.
Respond immediately and thoughtfully to these conversations. That could be in either comments, or posts, and with email.
Use the Blog Reader! As one of my tai chi teachers said to me "You Know It! Why you no do it?"
Last week I was speaking with Beth Dunn, Communications Director of the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod about social media. We were very excited about the idea of working together to explore and share our learnings about how cultural groups are using social media effectively.
It occurred to us that there were a number of people interested in this topic and we could create a central place for discussion and sharing.
So the idea of a group blog emerged. Beth Kanter suggested looking at tools like Tumblr that easily consolidates RSS feeds (or other content) into a single platform.
So I’d love to get a sense of how much this idea appeals to others and who might be interested in sharing their blog posts and thoughts.
Do you have another idea about how we might approach this idea?
I recently read a post in a blog by Chris Brogan about helping other people to learn about social media. In his blog, he included a number of links to some resources about understanding social media. This is a great little video about blogs and how they work.
Chris Brogan, as does the video, points out that working together is critical to learning and developing real skills in social media. Its not about having a blog, but about what people like us do with them that matters. If you're reading this, then there's a good chance that you, like me are interested in how cultural groups can use these tools better.
How can we work together?
Here's 5 ideas..
1) Post blogs about how your arts group is using web 2.0 and social media
2) Tell others about it. Post comments on their blogs and my blog
3) Give feedback to others about what you read, or how it relates to your organization's experience, or questions it raises that we should try to answer, or how we might do it better
4) Invite me to interview you about your organization
Like most performing arts groups, budgets are tight at the Pittsburgh Symphony, so projects that can be done by volunteers, or as part of someone’s day to day job, or require limited funds, have been the primary focus. This is not to say the senior staff is not interested in social networking tools. Larry Tamburri, the PSO President, is strongly in favor of exploring activities like blogging. A number of basic projects have been undertaken including podcasts, blogs, MySpace Page, video posts to YouTube, as well as some more unique projects like web talk shows, and blog fests.
A strong team atmosphere as well as some key volunteers has been
crucial. Says Jeff Tsai, Director of Corporate Support & Special
Projects, “A wonderful resource in the orchestra is horn player Bob
Lauer. He’s accustomed to bringing a camcorder into places we go or when interesting things are going on.
"For instance we recently played Messiaen's Turangalîla featuring the weird and wonderful instrument, the Ondes Martenot. Bob filmed this whole behind-the-scenes video for YouTube, with a good portion of the brass section and the Ondes Martenot player talking about what it is, and how it works.
WEB TALK SHOWS
“Bob’s also been involved with our web talk shows. We use a technology called ‘Talkshoe’, developed by a former Pittsburgh Symphony Board member, which allows people to host web-based talk shows. After a recent concert, the horn section remained on stage and hosted the show. People could call in, email or use a ‘chat’ function to pose their questions. At the end of the show, an MP3 of the event provided a ready-made podcast. The Talkshoe model also includes a revenue sharing feature that generates ad income for the host, based on traffic to the site.”
BLOGS and VIDEO INTERVIEWS
“We also have four blog hosts for our site. When we originally started our work, we wanted it to be a little different - not just having voices from within the orchestra, but invite outside opinion. The original purpose was to drive more web traffic, and therefore more foot traffic to the symphony. We had this naive idea that the involvement of volunteer writers would somehow duplicate the role of newspapers - magically at 1:00 am after a concert, blogs would appear about the concert, people would flood the site to read and comment, and ticket sales would soar. In reality, blog posts are often a week or more after an event, too late to drive traffic. If one takes away the ‘volunteer’ aspect it derails the purpose of having the blog. In the abstract we hope that the audience wants to read everything, but ultimately it’s the author’s individual voices that are interesting, not the organization.
Other projects have included hosting “blog fests” where members of the local blogging community are invited to come to concerts and then write about them on their blogs. IT Manager, Kevin DeLuca created short videos of upcoming events featuring musicians in the orchestra. For example, Principal Bassoonist, Nancy Goeres talks about the special role the bassoon plays in the Rite of Spring, both the genuine excitement, and real fear, around the unusual solos.
BUILDING LOYALTY
While there is not “risk capital” available for more extensive social networking activities at this time, there do seem to be some openings falling into place within the framework of their overall institutional goals. One of these goals is to build loyalty and create value through life long relationships (from the point of first contact, to their bequest). Key elements include: combining all the institutional relationships with a given household into one unit, building commitment, and creating easy and intuitive ways to connect with the symphony.
Social networking activities could be a perfect fit.
A strong team atmosphere as well as some key volunteers has been
crucial. Says Jeff Tsai, Director of Corporate Support & Special
Projects, “A wonderful resource in the orchestra is horn player Bob
Lauer. He’s accustomed to bringing a camcorder into places we go or when interesting things are going on. 
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