Rebecca Krause-Hardie

Bob Lauver: Horn Player and Digital Storyteller

When I visited Pittsburgh this fall I had the great opportunity to spend a little time with Bob Lauver, hornist in the Pittsburgh Symphony. 

I asked Bob how he got involved with the Symphony’s blog and video projects.

Bob:  A couple of the staff approached me and asked if I would be interested in participating.  They were looking for musician perspectives to include in the written blogs.  I began to think that a video version could be fun and effective.

R: How do you decide what subject and how to approach it?

Bob:  If there’s a vibe of something to talk about or make a video about, I do it.  Just seeing YouTube made me realize there were a lot of interesting things being done through video that were creative and fun. 

One of the first video blogs I did was Master Peter’s Puppet Show - a behind the scenes perspective seemed like a natural.  Supporting the narrative with video scenes was easy:

Master Peter’s Puppet Show

Stuffed Justice

What I’m doing is really a result of the YouTube culture.  Exploring that world can really treat you to some hidden creativity.  My daughter’s friends did a couple little videos and put them on YouTube.  These little kids are so creative.  They take the tiniest germ of an idea and turn it into something fun and entertaining.   One of their videos was “Stuffed Justice.”

I want a project that is crying out to be done, not just a video representation of something we do.  More like something that you might not see or hear us do……then I look for a way to present it.  I’m getting better as I go along……learning to be a better storyteller.  I’m exploring visual and sonic clues that help convey the story.

One project I did was an interview with Jean Laurendeau who was the Ondes Martenot soloist for Messaien’s Turangalila Symphony.  Jim Rogers, a bassoonist in the orchestra was the other camera operator in my 1st two-camera video.  We posted it on the PSO blog site and YouTube and it’s had over 19,000 views (that’s a lot for a video that doesn’t get “featured” by YouTube, or have some overt hook into everyday culture).  A lot of those views are coming from the electronic music world.

We’ve also done a blog on the contrabass trombone in the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra.  The videos I do are generally coupled with the concerts they go with and we use audio clips from that music.  In the case of the Bartok, there was an interesting story about the actual instrument used and its history.  This made an interesting hook to explore…  “A Rare Beast”

R: Are you a ‘digital native’?

Bob: No, I have just enough knowledge to do it, but not enough to make it easily ‘pop.’  I don’t have that kind of fluency, but I wish I did.  My first computer was an Atari - I played Galaga and Frogger and PacMan.

My brother in law worked at Pinnacle and sent me their Studio 8.0 software for editing.  The administration gave me the nod of approval by providing a camera for my use.

R: Why do you do this?

Bob:  I like to!   It’s another expressive outlet.  It’s good for the orchestra. The time demands are easy to manage because I can do most of the work of editing and putting the project together late at night when my kids have gone to bed and I like that.

I also like to do this kind of stuff because I think that it’s good for the people who come to see us to get a glimpse of the things that make us alike.  I think that the video blog is another opportunity for us to connect with our public and relate on another level.

This allows the audience to know parts of another world.  They come in and see everyone dressed in black behind the proscenium arch and that’s their perspective of the people in the orchestra.  Sometimes they don’t realize that the PSO might go home and watch the Letterman show, catch the end of the Steelers game, or throw together some mac & cheese for the kids.  With the blog, they get a chance to know a side of the members of the PSO that they don’t normally see.  Hopefully I come up with a little humor or insight that makes the visit to the blog site worthwhile. 

R: Visit Bob at the PSO blog to hear more of his stories and great perspective.

The Sharing Foundation and America's Giving Challenge

The America's Giving Challenge is a competition sponsored by Parade Magazine and the Case Foundation, challenging non-profits to raise money from as many donors as possible.  The minimum gift is just $10.  The top winners will receive $50,000 from the America's Giving Challenge.

My dear friend and colleague Beth Kanter with great leadership support from Michele Martin are trying to win this challenge for The Sharing Foundation.  I know they can do it, because Beth helped the Sharing Foundation win a similar challenge last year with Yahoo. 

PLEASE DONATE
I've donated to this campaign and ask you to do so too!  Just click on the America's Giving Widget on the left and donate today.  You can also help by clicking on the "Share This" button and sharing it with your friends.

ABOUT THE SHARING FOUNDATION
The Sharing Foundation is this amazing organization that helps lift Cambodian children out of poverty through programs like its Khmer literacy school. It helps farm children learn their native alphabet and numbers well enough to attend elementary school. The Sharing Foundation's English Language Program offers village students, ages 8-18, the opportunity to learn English, allowing them to obtain jobs in tourism and word processing. These students are so dedicated that some meet on their own to study on weekends. The literacy school runs three sessions a day for 130 children of Roteang village’s poorest families. Ten bilingual Cambodian college graduates teach English to 500 students in 19 sections offered daily after school hours at the village school.

Photo from Beth Kanter (flickr)

For more about the Sharing Foundation click here

Brooklyn Museum Builds Community

Shelly Bernstein, Manager of Information Systems at the Brooklyn Museum shared some of her insights and approaches to the social network world with me recently.  (Thank you to Elena Park at the Met for pointing me here!!)   

Some of the key ideas that surfaced are:

• Web communities are about communities  (not necessarily marketing opportunities)
• Be creative and flexible and …
• Find the right activity for the right community
• Street ‘credibility’ -  walking the talk
• Work and develop your social web presence organically
• Finish what you start –   (or don’t start)
• Align your activities with your mission   

Here’s how they’ve been doing this.   

Web Communities are Communities
In 2006 the museum began to look around the web trying to understand what ‘community’ meant in that medium.  Because the Museum’s institutional mission is centered around ‘the visitor experience and community,’ this was a key issue. They found that these communities on the web were ‘real’ communities like MySpace , Friendster, and Flickr. Says Bernstein,

“We thought that just like how we extend ourselves in our own backyard, we should do that online as well.  We started to participate in the communities and the first thing that became clear is that these are real communities, and not necessarily marketing opportunities. For example, when we’re on Flickr, we answer questions, make sure comments get to the right people, and try to upload interesting content that people care about and really want to see.”

Be creative and flexible and …  Just Do It
Since there was a freeze on the current site spending at the time, they looked at what could be done elsewhere that would be dynamic and interesting. They looked at each community and tried to understand what that community was about and what would be the right thing to do for that community.

FLICKR - Find the right activity for the right community

In summer of 2006 the Brooklyn Museum did a show on Graffiti.

“We had a canvas show of graffiti canvasses from our collection.” Continues Bernstein, “When it was installed, a blank wall was put up in the middle of the gallery where people could tag the wall. The changing nature of it was the very nature of graffiti - it would get covered over and covered over because there was so much traffic. Weekly we took pictures of this ever-changing wall and posted it to Flickr. 

At the same time, we did an ‘interactive’ where people could take photos of graffiti in Brooklyn and post them on our Flickr profile. People were seeing the real theme that was happening in the street, and at the same time seeing the theme that was happening in the gallery, in addition to the works of art that were in the show.”

 

Another neat tool was an online drawing application to make virtual graffiti.

 

That is such a great example of what web 2.0 really means: participatory culture!

Later when they did a Ron Mueck exhibit this last fall, they took behind the scenes photos of Mueck loading in the art. It was hughly popular on Flickr.  It goes back to the concept of posting content that people find interesting and engaging, rather then strict marketing.

“Similarly when we started our blog,” says Shelley, “the initial blogs were just a way to put up our postcards. When we really started to blog we turned around and said that wasn’t really interesting. We began to open up the internal process of the museum and provide content that people care about.”

Electronic Comment Book in the Gallery - Street ‘credibility’ -  walking the talk

The idea of community has its roots in their gallery. For a long time they have had “Community Voice Labels.”  They would get quotes from visitors from the community, and these would be put on the wall, next to the official label. It has a physical presence. Now they have an electronic comment book both in the gallery and online at the same time. 

“‘Street cred’ … it’s not marketing, it’s community. It’s making that commitment, and if you make that commitment your audience, I hope will see it.  And then you get credibility and they care.  We see it in our testimonials.”

Statistics for sites like Flikr and YouTube show that fewer then 1% actually participates in adding content. The rest are just looking. The participation is building.  Bernstein says that, “We’re half way into the show and already have 300 comments.  We’re building an audience.  If you look at some of our older shows, we had fewer comments. This looks good to us.”

Finish what you start –   (or don’t start)

“It’s a sizable commitment.  If people are going to do this it’s a real commitment, and once you’ve jumped in, you have to keep on going.  You have to have the time and commitment to do this right, otherwise, don’t do it at all.”

Bernstein notes, “Someone contacts us and says ‘We want to do a Myspace page just for this show.’  I ask them ‘Why? You spend this effort to build an audience and then just leave them.’  It makes no sense.”

It’s a community effort within the museum to build and maintain their social and web activities.  Much of the Flickr content is provided by the education department, interns, and other staff, though all is updated by the IT department.  The blog is different because there are many authors and its a direct publish -  it doesn’t go through the Editorial, or Public Information Departments, but trust that the authors will follow the policies that have been set up.  For projects that are directly related to exhibitions, the curators, the interpretive materials manager, and education are all involved.

ArtShare on FaceBook -Work and develop your social web presence organically

The Brooklyn Museum just developed a new application for FaceBook called ArtShare.  This seemed like the right thing to do to engage with their community on this social site.  ArtShare allows people to take the art they like and put it on their profile. The application is open and other Museums are using it to add art from their collections.  In fact artists are encouraged to upload their own work too.

“The ideas often come up organically, we look at the exhibition schedule and talk about what might be appropriate. We have a conversation (internally), and then maybe come back to it a week or two later. The FaceBook idea came up really quickly, and we decided to do it. Almost all these things happen pretty fast and pretty organically. And I hope that that also comes across because it’s something that we try to do really hard here.”

VIDEO COMPETITON on YouTube - Align your activities with your mission
                    “…Dedicated to the primacy of the visitor experience…”

As with the other social networking sites, the team asked “What was the right kind of thing for YouTube?” “You have to define what the community is interested in and do that as opposed to constantly pushing your own stuff,” says Shelley. While they do have their own content there, they feel it’s really also about what other people produce. “Its funny,” says Shelley,  “when you look at the videos that were part of the competition, they have way more hits than anything we put on YouTube.”

Bernstein is doing a great job on the transparency side too.  Here are some pointers on the lessons learned from their video competition.

And let me know if you are doing something interesting and I'll write about it here!

Pittsburgh Symphony - Build on Institutional Strengths

    

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.