Rebecca Krause-Hardie

Thank you Beth! & Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday Beth Kanter!  

Beth is an inspiration to me.  Her passion and dedication to learning, and sharing is profound.

When I've needed help, Beth has been there.  When I was looking for resources, insights, how-tos, Beth has been there sharing all the way. 

So this is my little way of saying Thank You Beth!

Now, I'm heading over to Facebook to donate to the Sharing Foundation -  Beth's birthday wish...

You Can too!

Who has the most Facebook Fans? A few stats.

I saw a tweet yesterday from @kanter (Beth Kanter) retweeting a question from @farra (Farra Trompeter) asking how to find out how many facebook fans a NPO has...

I was curious myself, and so did a little google search and found that this link would list the NPO's  in order of number of fans (mostly in order). Then I wondered about which arts groups have the most fans. Maybe there is an easier way, but I found myself clicking 'next' for page after page, sort of like putting nickels into a slot machine.... who was going to win.  It was addictive. 

I think the first arts group showed up on page 76 of the search in the Non-Profit category.  It occurred to me that some fan pages got started before the 'non-profit' option was set up, and others might simply have chosen other ways to describe themselves. 

So I did further searches, on 'orchestra', 'symphony', 'museums' and finally 'places'

....and the Unofficial results are in!  

Fans as of 11:30 PM Nov 20, 2009  (I know I should have been sleeping not clicking)

Museum Types

Museum of Modern Art             190,421     (WOW!)
Metropolitan Museum Art          89,896
Le Louvre                                 58,071
Design Museum                         49,405
Guggenheim                             38,335
Monterey Bay Aquarium            36,880
Smithsonian                              34,890
Art Institute Chicago                 23,650 
City Museum of St. Louis           22,948
Tennessee Aquarium                  21,370
Getty                                       18,850
Salvidor Dali Museum                17,134
Victoria & Albert                      16,867
Tate                                         15,743
SFMoma                                    14,543
DIA                                           14,001
Whitney                                    13,470                                             
MFA, Boston                              12,140
Amer Museum Natural History    11,941
Louisiana Museum Modern Art    11,720
Brooklyn Museum                        9,485
Children's Museum                       9,010

Performing Arts Types

Metropolitan Opera                   26,142
Berlin Philharmonic                   23,835
Sydney Opera House                  20,010
Royal Opera House                    18,115
Chicago Symphony                    14,107
New York Philharmonic              12,292
New York City Ballet                  10,301
London Symphony                       9,298
Stratford Shakespeare                 8,892
Oregon Shakespeare                    8,462
Vienna Philharmonic                    5,078
Boston Symphony                        4,870
San Francisco Symphony              4,073

There is a good possibility I may have missed someone, as I was getting a bit click happy, but interesting results never-the-less.

BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

I can see that I have my next interviews lining up - lots of questions to ask.

• Does more fans mean anything?
• Does more fans translate into greater attendance, dollars raised, participation?
• Can little organizations have lots of fans?
• What's better - more fans, or deeper connections with fewer fans?

What other questions should I ask when I interview all these amazing people in these orgs?

For example,

• Le Louvre has ZERO updates from them listed on their page. Build it and they will come?
• Do places like the Sydney Opera House have so many fans just because its a cool building or because they are doing something special to engage with their audience?

PS -  Great post from Geoff Livingston about "What 100K followers [fans] gets you".

In the meanwhile we have one little baseline stat for the arts. Where do you fit in?

Social Media 2020 Visions

What’s the future of Social Media?

Today, I think of social media as a conversation I have; I begin by scanning, sorting through, listening to the buzz, and reflecting -before joining in - at least that’s current etiquette.

For example, I discovered that Beth Kanter just did a great post on the future of social media. (She’s prepping for a keynote presentation)  Her post inspired me to pull together some of the elements that have been bubbling up for me as “core mission critical” in our consulting practice.  

Creating the Future (both content and value by acting with Intention)
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about acting intentionality (individually and institutionally).  How much of what we do is intentional vs. reacting to what’s right in front of us.  We have to do both, but I find I’m leaning a bit more toward intentionality.

When I’m simply reacting to what’s in front, is there room for deeper thinking?  If I focus only on what’s in front of me, because I am hesitant and caught up in a loop of reacting, not thinking through,  I am forced to react to a poorly thought through decision.

There is a tension here  – It reminds me of the BHAG’s (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) that Jim Collins speaks of in Good to Great: Don’t walk timidly into the future, go forth with big passion. Think really big, think it through - and go for it.   

• So, why don’t we do that (both as individuals and institutions)? 
• What are the obstacles? 
• Are we unable to connect to our passion?
• Is it that we don’t know what to do next?
• Are we too bogged down looking at the gravel at our feet, rather than raising our eyes and looking at the mountain we are climbing?  
• What are we afraid of?   

Dealing With Fear (How we Decide)
I was listening to How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer - fantastic stuff!  When we are afraid, there is actually  a powerful chemical reaction in our brain that warns us – that takes over, that is 10 times as strong as a positive feeling, When we buy-into fear, we may be using the wrong part of our brain to do good problem solving.  Who is in charge here? Good question – is it my emotional self or my rational self. If I’m in charge, I can choose what’s appropriate. When fear is the driver, creating our individual and institutional future is a bit like jumping into the abyss. So, we need to take on the future in clear focused bite sized pieces.  What is the one small thing I can do today where I can confront my fear and just sit with it a bit? And take the next step – eyes up!

Question:  What other ways do you get beyond?

Getting lost in the Waves (who controls the ocean?)  

“There is already too much content on the web now, I can’t handle it or navigate it.”  And it’s only going to grow worse, exponentially. How do I find stuff?

(Apparently there isn’t enough content out there for the ego’s that need to be heard - that are driving it. like me)

• So how much content does each of us need? (Who are us?)
• How much content does each us of need to create both individually and institutionally? How do we find the stuff we need, and discard the rest?
• How do we ensure that folks find that content that I/we create, that they need?
• How do we continue to have these ever expanding global multi-media high bandwidth conversations and transactions?  
• Where do we put it all?
• Who owns it?

Do we assume that the internet, like the planet Earth will continue to have unlimited food to feed all of all of us on dwindling farms, expanding populations and mega cities. How about everybody else – the millions here in the US and the billions and billions who don’t have electricity, water, health, education, jobs, nutrition – let alone technology?  How do we bridge the digital divide – the great technology abyss - and more importantly the digital informational content abyss across the globe?
 
Who controls and manages all this content that is washing over us like huge waves in the ocean?  Is that Google? Big money?  Government(s)? How do we deal with hundreds of countries, cultures, native languages, translations, storage, high speed open, throttled or censored access - or no access at all – for me and for our institutions?  These are going to be the driving questions - that will determine our relevancy.  

Here’s two little baby thoughts about the sorting part...

Tags and Keywords
The Steve project describes how tags can be used to describe objects in museums.  (See my post here and here) Arts groups would invite tagging of all content elements and with two different kinds of tags.  One uses physical descriptors such as tiger, blue, Japanese, neo-classical, etc. The other involves emotional or feeling tags, - how does this make me feel, or what does it feel like, i.e. something that helps us to bring a deeper level of meaning to it, at the feeling level.  Then, couple that with ratings, comments, ratings of raters, etc.  This becomes a really interesting cognitive mapping conversation.

Personal Referrals
Reichhold talks about this in his thoughtful studies of Net Promoters.  The person most passionate about something referring others is super powerful.  Alan Brown was probably the first person to explore this deeply in his seminal Initiators and Responders research done in 2004.    The point in all this research is that to be relevant and successful in the social media web porous silo-free new age, we have to connect with and support these net promoters/initiators through dialogue and relationships.

Cultivating this social media referral network helps to bring visibility to those gems that might otherwise remain hidden under the tides.


We Start Where We End (a circle has no beginning)

Who is in charge, individually, institutionally, nationally, globally? How do we have individual, institutional, regional, national, and global collaborative conversations about these issues – where the currency won't be money but information? How likely are these conversations to be more successful than global diplomacy? We have to be really thoughtful.

What are our respective stakeholders intentions? What parts of the brain are each of us going to listen to and act on individually, institutionally ….and across the globe?

Hmmm... lots of questions.

Question:  What are your thoughts?

photo attribution:  Clark Little

NYSARTS SUMMIT

I had great pleasure to give a couple of presentations at the NYS Arts Summit Last Week.   

As promised.  Here are links to the presentations

Got Facebook? Now What? - Strategy

Social Media: Whats The Buzz?

View more presentations from Rebecca Krause-Hardie.

Special thanks to folks whose great insights I've referenced in the presentations:

Beth Kanter
Chris Brogan
Brian Solis
Nina Simon
Chris Heuer

FLickr attributions in notes

Call Fire Dept and social media communities

It’s about showing up

It’s 9:25 am.  I’m sitting at my desk at my home office, reading a note from Beth Kanter's facebook page about creating movements.  

Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep  - my pager shrieks.  I grab the pager, head for the fire station.  It’s just the chief and me – a novice, heading off in the truck for smoke in a house. A couple of 50 some-things, to do whatever needs to be done.    

Our town covers 45 square miles, and it takes us a good 15 minutes on the windy bumpy back roads just to get there.  We size up the scene, head into the house.  Fortunately it’s a minor affair.  

In little towns like ours, we depend on ‘mutual aid’ – other towns' FD departments to help out if we need them.  That’s easily another 20-30 minutes before additional help can arrive.

Bring whatever you have to the table

I’m new at this.  I joined because there was a need for people to respond to Fire and Rescue calls, especially during the day.  We don’t have any industry in our town, so most people work elsewhere.  I work from home.  Usually there are a half dozen people who might respond, but not today.

While I’m still learning the basics, I do have an able body, and smart mind.  I just need a little guidance, training and leadership.  

There’s no need for me to go it alone.  The system works because we learn, we share what we learn, and even though we think we don’t know much, we can bring something to the table.  Talking through things together, the Chief and I figure out what we need to do.  I feel like I’ve contributed in my own small way. 

Social Media

There is so much to learn.  So much to try.  I learn so much from people like Beth Kanter and Jeremiah Owyang.   So when they post a question on Twitter, or questions on their fan page, I take the time to give back to them if I can.  

Community, virtual or actual, is about bringing something of yourself to share, even if it’s just showing up.

What do you do to support all  your communities?