Monday, 26 January 2015
mARTsketing: Disruptive Thinkers
mARTsketing: Disruptive Thinkers: We all know them, those types who just, can't, hold, it, in! You know, the people that go to meetings and to hell with the agenda, the...
Disruptive Thinkers
We all know them, those types who just, can't, hold, it, in!
You know, the people that go to meetings and to hell with the agenda, they've got something to say and they'll hijack the entire meeting to get their point across.
We have all worked with these people from time to time, heck I've BEEN that person from time to time! And as much as everyone groans when they see that So-and-so the loud mouth has been invited to a meeting, I'm here to tell you that these people can actually be incredibly useful, if you approach them in the right way.
I call them Disruptive Thinkers, they are usually very passionate about what they do, often quite knowledgeable, and best of all, are prepared to share their thoughts on what's not working and how it can be fixed. Their brains operate differently to other people's and the way they think about issues can be viewed as disruptive. For them challenging the status quo IS the status quo.
BUT you need to work with them in order to get the best out of the relationship.
Firstly you need a strong Chairperson, in any meeting with a Disruptive Thinker you can anticipate when they might want to take the floor, and thus prepared you can allocate time for this to happen and politely shut it down when it's gone on too long.
"Thanks for that, I appreciate your input, now if we could just hear from some others at the table", is one way to keep things in a box.
I often promise to take that discussion thread offline and meet up with the DT later on and then make sure I do.
Another tactic is to invite the DT to form a sub-committee so they and some others can work on his particular hobby horse.
One thing I have found from the DT's of this world is that when asked to contribute, the good ones will do so readily, almost always reading and providing feedback on documentation in a prompt fashion, be willing to brainstorm solutions and the like.
They also like being leveled with, you can say "This project is a bit of a shermozzle but the CEO is pushing it through before the end of Fin Year", they'll usually appreciate your candor and will modify their input accordingly and swing into "Lets get this thing sorted quick" mode. Because paradoxically DT's are actually good team players.
The worst thing you can do with a DT is to sideline them because they are too much like hard work, that will only make them fester and spread their dissatisfaction more widely. It's much better to grit your teeth and engages them so they can walk around the office saying "This thing is terrible but Ricky and I are working on a solution." than have them say "This thing is terrible and no body listens to me, so it's only going to get worse.".
Anyway if you have any disruptive thinkers in your midst, I encourage you to seek them out, engages them, you'll find the rewards will be much greater than the effort.
You know, the people that go to meetings and to hell with the agenda, they've got something to say and they'll hijack the entire meeting to get their point across.
We have all worked with these people from time to time, heck I've BEEN that person from time to time! And as much as everyone groans when they see that So-and-so the loud mouth has been invited to a meeting, I'm here to tell you that these people can actually be incredibly useful, if you approach them in the right way.
I call them Disruptive Thinkers, they are usually very passionate about what they do, often quite knowledgeable, and best of all, are prepared to share their thoughts on what's not working and how it can be fixed. Their brains operate differently to other people's and the way they think about issues can be viewed as disruptive. For them challenging the status quo IS the status quo.
BUT you need to work with them in order to get the best out of the relationship.
Firstly you need a strong Chairperson, in any meeting with a Disruptive Thinker you can anticipate when they might want to take the floor, and thus prepared you can allocate time for this to happen and politely shut it down when it's gone on too long.
"Thanks for that, I appreciate your input, now if we could just hear from some others at the table", is one way to keep things in a box.
I often promise to take that discussion thread offline and meet up with the DT later on and then make sure I do.
Another tactic is to invite the DT to form a sub-committee so they and some others can work on his particular hobby horse.
One thing I have found from the DT's of this world is that when asked to contribute, the good ones will do so readily, almost always reading and providing feedback on documentation in a prompt fashion, be willing to brainstorm solutions and the like.
They also like being leveled with, you can say "This project is a bit of a shermozzle but the CEO is pushing it through before the end of Fin Year", they'll usually appreciate your candor and will modify their input accordingly and swing into "Lets get this thing sorted quick" mode. Because paradoxically DT's are actually good team players.
The worst thing you can do with a DT is to sideline them because they are too much like hard work, that will only make them fester and spread their dissatisfaction more widely. It's much better to grit your teeth and engages them so they can walk around the office saying "This thing is terrible but Ricky and I are working on a solution." than have them say "This thing is terrible and no body listens to me, so it's only going to get worse.".
Anyway if you have any disruptive thinkers in your midst, I encourage you to seek them out, engages them, you'll find the rewards will be much greater than the effort.
Tuesday, 20 January 2015
Why the capital funding model can lead websites to mediocrity
I should point out that I am talking here about most large corporate, institutional and government websites, and I consider this to be a universal issue, I am not speaking about any specific workplace or project that I've been involved in, more bits and pieces of various web projects I have seen and witnessed, both successful and less successful ones over the years. I will however cite a successful project (if obliquely) that I worked on which was the opposite of the dominant paradigm and it's success is really the key factor in me forming this view.
And for sure, there are good examples out there that work within the dominant paradigm, but for many websites this process which I'll explain shortly really does limit what can be achieved.
So. Say you need a new website, somebody takes up the challenge and eventually convinces the powers that be, that this is the case and it becomes a 'capital works' project. Because it is considered that a website is an asset and that the cost of building a new one should sit outside of the normal operational accounts it sits in the capital works side of the ledger.
So why doesn't this process work? By definition capital projects have a start and completion date. Thinking about a website through this prism is fundamentally flawed.
A website is never finished, a website is outdated the minute it gets launched.
A website is intangible.
The environment they sit in is intangible. It is constantly being updated and improved.
By capitalizing a website, you create an environment whereby once every three to five years a major site gets built for a large sum of money and then as a reaction, the ongoing maintenance spend is usually kept to a minimum.
Any request for say, for instance, to change the site significantly mid-way between cycles to say a mobile optimized site would usually be met with a "What? We've just spent $XXX on a site and now you want to change it already?".
Under a capitalized project model what can you say to this? Not much except to explain that online is a fast placed world etc, etc. while all the while suspecting that your Boss now thinks you are stupid for not foreseeing this 18 months ago. When really what needs to be said is "because we fund this thing likes it's bricks and mortar and it isn't".
So there's currency and lack of post-implementation development, there's also the extra layers of management, governance, project process and the like that go into a major capital works tender and project, this tends to force an element of project by committee. Again if you have committed a large one-off sum of money, people are going to want checks and balances in place, CEO's and other senior stakeholders will have opinions, blowing out the number of involved persons substantially. The ability to extract a clear and concise brief becomes challenging.
So what to do?
Firstly I would advise cutting all initial website capital development budgets by a third and then flow the other two thirds over the course of the next two years and not prescribe what those two thirds should be spent on because you don't know yet. I would hope that a case could be made to still keep this as a capital expense, in the sense it's not a one off 'build of a shed' but the building of a new shed every year. This may be difficult and if it can't be capitalized then so be it.
This is entirely possible because of open source. The days of websites being designed on proprietary software, in my opinion are well past. They are costly, they force changes and updates to wait for new version update from the developer and they tie you down to a supplier.
Secondly I would implement and empower a very small project team with very shallow lines of approval to deliver what they determine is best based on research, best practice and a clear focus on core audience and for them to do this ongoingly.
I was involved in a small skunkworks style web build once, we had three people involved at the client end, two at the project end and it was the best website I have ever delivered and what's more, by working with open source and doing so on a small budget we laid a platform down for a continuous improvement model.
And this is really it, spread the money across years rather than concentrate it into one defined project and empower a small team to deliver a continuous improvement model.
But here's the rub, why doesn't it happen this way? I mean I get why the web dev companies are compliant in this, they like winning big contracts and are happy to build what the client wants, of course from their point of view they'd want the big cheque AND the large ongoing maint budget. But when the end result is that almost no one ends up being completely satisfied with the outcomes and the ROI why does no one actively push another way? That rhetorical. Don't answer that unless you work with a web dev company, I suspect its that this model is so entrenched, that shifting the paradigm will require a long term culture change.
I'd be really interested to hear your tales of web builds and whether you agree with me that we need to find a new way to fund websites or if it's just implementation that is poor and not the over arching structure.
Thursday, 27 June 2013
Access presentation from the 2013 Ticketing Professionals Conference
Hi All
In my last post before leaving the industry I thought I'd share the Access presentation from the 2013 Ticketing Professionals Conference.
It should be fairly self explanatory but happy to answer any questions left on comments.
Enjoy.
http://www.slideshare.net/rdbryan1/tix-prof-access
PS: I will still post to the blog but expect lots of Tertiary Industry vs Arts Industry comparisons!
In my last post before leaving the industry I thought I'd share the Access presentation from the 2013 Ticketing Professionals Conference.
It should be fairly self explanatory but happy to answer any questions left on comments.
Enjoy.
http://www.slideshare.net/rdbryan1/tix-prof-access
PS: I will still post to the blog but expect lots of Tertiary Industry vs Arts Industry comparisons!
Wednesday, 12 June 2013
mARTsketing: The Skywhale and social media
mARTsketing: The Skywhale and social media: Recently we Canberrans witnessed that most rarest of beasts, an artistic undertaking with genuine cut-through into the mainstream and massiv...
Tuesday, 11 June 2013
The Skywhale and social media
Recently we Canberrans witnessed that most rarest of beasts, an artistic undertaking with genuine cut-through into the mainstream and massive social media buzz.
I speak of course of the Skywhale. (Video here )
The major artistic commission for the Centenary of Canberra, this incredibly bold and successful artwork was revealed over the last few weeks to an unsuspecting Canberra public and boy did it get people talking! And not just locally, nationally and internationally as well.
I've posted a list of the coverage below but from the UK, to Europe, Lebanon, Brazil, China and beyond the reach of this work across social media, MSM and more was truly staggering.
But my interest was less about do I like it (yes), do I think its successful public art (yes) and do I think its value for money (yes) but more about whether the work was commissioned in part because of the social and MSM stir it was likely to cause, (and whether any artistic director would ever openly admit this possibility!) or was it purely the result of brave artistic decision making and the coverage followed.
I am also interested in exploring if factoring in "conversation-start-ability" from the outset is good (us marketing types are always pleading for more consideration of audience at the early stages of artistic creation) or unwise (in that it may led to compromised artistic decisions or doing things for the wrong reasons).
I posed the question of being motivated by the possibility of a 'buzz' from the start to Robyn Archer, Artistic Director of the Centenary, amazingly she responded to my within 24 hours with a very considered response. I publish her full response here:
So there you have it in the most eloquent and verbose of terms - No Archer does not pre-suppose reactions to a work when curating artistic output. And I for one firmly believe her.
But this work is a visual art piece and most of my readers (yes there ARE some I'm told!) come from the performing arts realm. Interested in a theatre programmer's response to the Skywhale and the central premise of considering conversation-start-ability from the outset I asked Simon Hinton CEO and AD of Merrigong Theatre Company, one of the best thinkers in business and a good mate for his thoughts.
So there you have it make brave artistic choices that connect with people and the world will beat a path to your door and in the age of social media they will beat that path faster than ever.
SKYWHALE COVERAGE INCLUDES (not a complete list!):
I speak of course of the Skywhale. (Video here )
The major artistic commission for the Centenary of Canberra, this incredibly bold and successful artwork was revealed over the last few weeks to an unsuspecting Canberra public and boy did it get people talking! And not just locally, nationally and internationally as well.
I've posted a list of the coverage below but from the UK, to Europe, Lebanon, Brazil, China and beyond the reach of this work across social media, MSM and more was truly staggering.
But my interest was less about do I like it (yes), do I think its successful public art (yes) and do I think its value for money (yes) but more about whether the work was commissioned in part because of the social and MSM stir it was likely to cause, (and whether any artistic director would ever openly admit this possibility!) or was it purely the result of brave artistic decision making and the coverage followed.
I am also interested in exploring if factoring in "conversation-start-ability" from the outset is good (us marketing types are always pleading for more consideration of audience at the early stages of artistic creation) or unwise (in that it may led to compromised artistic decisions or doing things for the wrong reasons).
I posed the question of being motivated by the possibility of a 'buzz' from the start to Robyn Archer, Artistic Director of the Centenary, amazingly she responded to my within 24 hours with a very considered response. I publish her full response here:
“I am wholly familiar with media attention of this order. I commissioned Rafael Lozano Hemmer for a major work at Federation Square for The Light in Winter. Entitled Solar Equation, it had worldwide coverage in old and new media. We were delighted in the role that social media played in extending the conversation about that work beyond just Fed Square , Melbourne and Australia. We quantified it at around A$4.2 million. So I’m aware that this kind of interest can happen. At no time do I aim for this. Others may feel the need to consider either markets or reactions, but I don’t.
When I have the privilege of commissioning new works from internationally recognised artists, the only aim is to invite them to use their immense skills and creative powers to bring a new work into the world. For the Centenary, composer Andrew Schultz researched and was inspired by the Canberra story for Symphony No 3: Century, visual artist Jyll Bradley was inspired by Canberra’s history and love of trees for City of Trees , choreographer Garry Stewart has researched and been inspired by Aldo Giurgola’s democratic Griffin-inspired approach to New Parliament House for the new ballet, Monument, which will premiere end May, and Patricia Piccinnini has launched her next major sculpture, The Skywhale, which is not only a continuation of the themes of evolution which permeate all her works, but was inspired by Patricia’s years growing up in Canberra where she perceived an ‘artificial city’ set in a natural landscape: she has created an ‘artifical’ , yet in evolutionary terms quite imaginable, creature to fly ( this is a very great feat) in a natural landscape. It evokes so many thoughts, if people are just able to open their minds, lift their curiosity, and use The Skywhale to stimulate their imaginations. If lifeforms, like whales, had not turned back to the sea to evolve and adapt, they might have gone into the air, and something like The Skywhale might have emerged - it is no ‘uglier’ than a camel or a rhinocerous might appear if you’d never seen one before.
Also I love to consider Canberra as the ‘artificial city’ now having grown into a real city: The Skywhale first appeared as an artificial creature, but amongst her millions of followers ( the coverage has now reached more than thirty countries, hundreds of media outlets, and many thousands of social media responses) she is already ‘real’. I’m also delighted that Canberra is now known by so many more people throughout the world, and known again for its courage in boldness and innovation ( as it was in 1912 for choosing an unlikely winner for its design in Walter Burley Griffin) ; and that the name of the Canberra raised and educated artist Patricia Piccinnini has spread throughout the nation, and the world, through this commission.”
So there you have it in the most eloquent and verbose of terms - No Archer does not pre-suppose reactions to a work when curating artistic output. And I for one firmly believe her.
But this work is a visual art piece and most of my readers (yes there ARE some I'm told!) come from the performing arts realm. Interested in a theatre programmer's response to the Skywhale and the central premise of considering conversation-start-ability from the outset I asked Simon Hinton CEO and AD of Merrigong Theatre Company, one of the best thinkers in business and a good mate for his thoughts.
"I honestly can't say I've ever really thought about a work "that's sure to get some twitter / facebook chatter". I do think the natural focus is on securing the best artists to make and show the most exciting work they can, and hope the response and it's echoes take care of themselves. I do think though that the worst thing for a programmer is a lack of audience response. I don't mean a lack of bums on seats (though that's also obviously a problem), I mean that sometimes we don't get a good box office response but the audience that does come has a big response to the work - whether positive or negative - and I guess then we know we have connected with them.
Social media is really just an extension of word of mouth, which has always been our most important marketing tool. Silence is, I guess, the worst possible response - we need people to react one way or the other, to have a way of gauging success. We are starting to have more internal conversations about identifying works that we think are great but almost impossible to communicate to an audience - you know, "those that come will love it, but how do we make them understand that they will love it?". These are the shows that really need the social media response.
I would see Sky Whale as a huge success - it got a big response, and given the conceptual nature of the work, debate about what it means, what is its worth as a piece of art etc. is the desired response. I would see that as "mission accomplished". The "what a waste of money" crowd won't ever understand that their response is kind of the point - in debating the merits of the work, they've contributed to helping define who we are, what we value as a society etc. The irony, I guess, is that in trying to attack the work, they unwittingly make it successful, not only in being part of the desired debate, but of course in bringing attention to it in social media, which is now always echoed in MSM."
So there you have it make brave artistic choices that connect with people and the world will beat a path to your door and in the age of social media they will beat that path faster than ever.
SKYWHALE COVERAGE INCLUDES (not a complete list!):
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Skywhale
Gulf News: http://gulfnews.com/news/world/other-world/gigantic-skywhale-splits-opinion-in-australia-1.1182066
Huffington Post France: http://www.huffingtonpost.fr/2013/05/10/montgolfiere-skywhale-patricia-piccinini_n_3251825.html?utm_hp_ref=france
Lavenir.net (France): http://www.lavenir.net/article/detail.aspx?articleid=DMF20130510_00308495
Liberation (France): http://www.liberation.fr/culture/2013/05/12/une-baleine-flotte-sur-canberra_902343
Daily Star Lebanon: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Culture/Art/2013/May-11/216685-aussie-opinion-split-over-the-skywhale.ashx#axzz2T7xGch9V
Australiatimes.com.uk: http://www.australiantimes.co.uk/news/in-australia/canberra-skywhale-birthday-balloon-floats-into-critical-storm.htm
Telegraph UK: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/10048688/Canberras-Skywhale-splits-opinion.html
Bigpond news: http://bigpondnews.com/articles/OddSpot/2013/05/11/Canberrans_flock_to_see_Skywhale_fly_871301.html
Metafilter: www.metafilter.com/127918/Meet-the-Skywhale
Designyoutrust.com: http://designyoutrust.com/2013/05/the-skywhale/
Stromfront.com (white pride world wide): http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t965993/
Heart Radio Bristol: http://www.heart.co.uk/bristol/news/local/skywhale-inflates-west/
Getty images: http://www.google.com/hostednews/getty/article/ALeqM5jOXajVgMMFdHimG39eUJnOlTQraA?docId=168532563
iPress.hr (Croatia): http://www.ipress.hr/magazin/kontroverzni-skywhale-poletio-iznad-canberre-27435.html
New Tang Dynasty Television: http://ntdtv.org/en/news/world/asia/2013-05-11/giant-flying-whale-seen-over-canberra-on-100th-anniversary.html
News Talk ZB (New Zealand): http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/auckland/news/nbint/1072443119-big--busty-whale-takes-to-canberra-s-skies
Metro UK (best news pics from around the world): http://metro.co.uk/2013/05/10/gallery-window-on-the-world-10th-may-2013-3754501/
Wow Keren (Indonesia): http://www.wowkeren.com/berita/tampil/00035039.html
Die Welt (Germany): http://www.welt.de/print/die_welt/debatte/article116075457/Australisches-Flugobjekt.html
International Business Times (Japan): http://jp.ibtimes.com/articles/44047/20130511/305064.htm
Thanh Niem (Vietnam) http://www.thanhnien.com.vn/pages/20130512/khinh-khi-cau-ca-voi.aspx
De Redeactie.be (Belgium): http://www.deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws/videozone/ookdatnog/MV_130511_R_skywhale%2B%2B
Hoboktn (Russia): http://www.novosti.rs/vesti/naslovna/reportaze/aktuelno.293.html:433165-Dzinovska-kornjaca-za-100-godisnjicu-Kanbere
Novinky(Czech Republic): http://www.novinky.cz/koktejl/301597-nemravny-balon-s-poprsim-preletel-australii-provokoval-lidi.html
Schwabische(Germany): http://www.schwaebische.de/journal/vermischtes/aus-aller-welt_artikel,-Kunstwerk-als-Wal-mit-zehn-Bruesten-verunglimpft-_arid,5435857.html
World Journal (China): http://www.worldjournal.com/view/full_news/22546742/article-%E6%BE%B3%E9%A6%96%E9%83%BD%E7%99%BE%E6%AD%B2-%E9%80%81%E5%A4%A9%E9%AF%A8%E5%8D%87%E7%A9%BA?instance=news_pics
National
Daily Telegraph: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/why-whale-over-an-ugly-turtle-full-of-hot-air/story-fni0cwl5-1226640612585
Fairfax regional: http://www.thecourier.com.au/story/1494424/skywhale-over-canberra/?cs=70
Australia glory: http://www.australiaglory.com/news/act-doesnt-own-skywhale
Urban dictionary: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Skywhale&defid=7049053
UnexplainedMysteries.com: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Skywhale&defid=7049053
Local
Blogs:
Blondeinc: http://blondeink.net/?p=2921
In The Taratory: http://inthetaratory.wordpress.com/2013/05/11/skywhale-launch/
Saturday, 8 June 2013
mARTsketing: Aust Perf Arts Centres: How we failed and don't ev...
mARTsketing: Aust Perf Arts Centres: How we failed and don't ev...: Canberra recently hosted three performing arts conferences, the APACA Forum, The Australia Council's Marketing Summit and the Australian...
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