Consult Rudman

Hannah Rudman Gets IT for 21st C culture

National Theatre Wales launches programme with Big Bang!

NTWlaunchMy Envirodigital client, the new National Theatre Wales, are launching their opening programme on 5th November 2009. It’ll be a big bang for a number of reasons: its Bonfire Night or Guy Fawkes’ Night in the UK, so there will be fireworks. There will also be a new destination website to visit where you can find out what’s on and buy tickets (the huge online community that we’ve grown organically over the past year will be just a click away, and is still growing in numbers, depth and activity daily).

The final big bang will be the style of the launch: rather than hiring an expensive venue to which the press and VIPs have to travel, NTW are instead webcasting the programme launch, hoping that journalists will NOT make the journey to Cardiff, but will watch the news unfold online and so help NTW achieve its environmentally sustainable aspirations. Don’t expect a fancy brochure either: the only paper NTW will print is a (very beautiful!) newspaper. And that will be available digitally too, so if you can’t pick it up in person, don’t expect to receive one in the post [eco choices, not post strike reasons :-) )].

Read John McGrath’s blog about the launch for all the details, and HUGE congratulations to John and all the NTW team from us at Envirodigital – we’re so proud that you stuck to all your original aspirations, and thrilled that we could help you make them realities! For more details on the digital choices that I helped NTW make to ensure their digital set-up was environmentally sustainable, read the Envirodigital blog posts about the community development and the organisational development.

Re-rite: get yourself into the Rite of Spring!


If you’re not sure about orchestral music, or about going to a classical concert, the the Philharmonia Orchestra’s Digital Residency is FOR YOU :-) Opening at the Bargehouse on London’s Southbank on 03.11.2009, the Re-rite project will:
“reveal every section of the orchestra performing The Rite of Spring simultaneously “as Live” thoughout a four-storey warehouse building. The public will be able to sit amongst the horn players, perform in the percussion section and take up the baton and control sections of the Orchestra as they play”.

Says the Philharmonia’s Principal Consuctor Esa-Pekka Salonen, who developed the concept with AmbITion champion Richard Slaney – also the Philharmonia Orchestra’s Digital Department boss:
“Being inside an orchestra, experiencing the sensation of 101 players taking on this iconic music is one of the biggest adrenalin rushes and one that I want to share with the world. Now we’re doing just that.”
Re-Rite will be open 3-15 November from 10am – 6pm (8pm Thurs & Fri).
You’ll also be able to experience it online from 3rd November onwards!!

National Theatre Wales online social network reaches 1000 sign-ups

NTW1000members
So what? You might think – loads of organisations have 1000 members in their online social networks. But National Theatre Wales is an organisation that hasn’t yet announced its programme (5th Nov ‘09) and doesn’t begin showing work to audiences until next year. The community has grown organically, and we haven’t marketed it at any point, either. Every member has been personally welcomed by a member of the NTW team. It’ll be thrilling to see what happens once audiences start to engage with the network, as currently the make up of members could probably be defined as “fans and professionals”. The network has its own feel and personality right now: a place for colleagues to debate and develop work. We’re about to launch some research that will enable us to gather even more feedback from the network’s current members about how they feel and what they would like to experience more of.

The network however is likely to change! The destination website will launch publicly on 5th November: this site particularly to let people know what’s on and how to buy tickets, as well as pulling in content from the network. We will also be signposting people (audiences) back out to the community, and once they’re there, I think we’ll see a slight change in tone: audiences will be wanting to rate/rant/rave about the brilliant theatre they will have seen, and introduce us to their own creativity. What I hope is that the initial network listens and welcomes – what could be a more attractive proposition to a newbie!

Collaborative working no longer linear with Google Wave

For a really simple overview of the capabilities of Google Wave, the new online collaboration tool, check out this video.

What is really exciting about it for me is the facility to make real time comments and additions, and the ability to be able to play back the conversation: like you can view the timeline in an Instant Message chat. With all the participative software out there on the web, participative technologies have made people participative! This means that our broadcast mentalities and communications no longer are fit for purpose. I suggest that the cultural sector gets into Wave early – its a great cheap way of porous communication – as a team or with your audience. Try and convince Google to give you a trial version here, and watch their long video about it.

Social Media – aggregating and syndicating user generated content

Wave4Wave 4 is the latest in a series of reports from Universal McCann (ummm… the fourth one… see what they did there?) about how people are using social networks, especially in relation to aggregating digital content together that they’ve created – like vids and pics, newsfeeds and chats, etc. This reflects my experience – all my specialist online storage facilities (flickr, blip.tv) send feeds of my stuff to my Facebook profile, which in turn updates my Friendfeed, which in turn updates my blog. As far as Twitter and my delicious bookmarks go, those feeds update everything!! Sometimes I read my Tweets on Facebook before I’ve even tweeted them! [Joke].
Anyway – the report indicates:

  • nearly two-thirds of internet users around the globe have managed their personal profiles.
    71.1% have visited a friend’s social network page. In the U.S.
    60% have managed their profiles in the last six months, up nearly 50% from 43.2% the previous year.
    76% of social network members upload photos, up from 45% the previous year.
    33% of social network members upload videos, up from 16.9% the previous year.
    In the Philippines, more than 98% of active internet users* have watched video online; in Korea, Spain, and the U.S., the figure is more than 8 out of 10.
    The number of people reading blogs has started to stagnate, with 71% of active internet users reading blogs, up from only 70% the previous year.
    17% of active internet users access online content through mobile devices as well as home, work, or school computers.
    83% of active internet users view video online.
  • So that leaves cultural organisations with some decent evidence that investing in social media is worthwhile, particularly if you can be up-to-the-minute with your news and offers, and porous in your attitude to sharing content with users who are increasingly acting like new media tarts. If they’re free and easy about letting it all hang out, you should too. It all started here, remember :-)

    iPhone apps from UK arts organisations

    LPOiphoneappThe Brooklyn Museum did it (see my earlier blog), and now London Philharmonic Orchestra has launched an iPhone app. With over 1.5bn downloads of applications from Apple iTunes store, and the smart mobile fast becoming the ubiquitous device, launching an iPhone is a great strategy, particularly if you can work out what a premium pricing model might be (see my earlier blog on freemium here). The app is currently free, and facilitates the purchase of tickets, shares news and events and music releases, and lets users listen to music. It’s quick to download this application from the itunes app store directly to your device. From your iPhone or iPod touch, visit the App store and search for ‘London Philharmonic’.

    EdFestguideSimilarly, Edinburgh Festivals have released “Edinburgh Festivals Guide” – the only official iPhone application for the largest arts event in the world. The Guide comes complete with full listings for all 7 August festivals, and uses GPS to locate the nearest shows and venues, showing results on a map with simple directions straight to the venue door from exactly where you are. It sort results by location, start time or popularity rating. Additionally, users can read reviews of shows and write their own; call box office direct from the listings to book tickets; view photos of events and venues (and upload their own in the next version); and find out which tickets are on sale at The Fringe Half Price Hut. The iPhone app costs £1.79 – more than the 7 festivals’ free brochures, but less weighty and impactful on the environment. The iPhone app development is a successful innovation initiated by Festivals Edinburgh and the Fringe, delivered in partnership with HedOut. The risk and the reward have been shared by the partnership.

    iFringeFreeiFringe Free is the final iPhone app launched: this app presents the reviews of fringe shows from “independent critics” – not the people on the street nor the official reviews from the Scotsman or Guardian, but from the reviewers of the independent magazines and websites of the Fringe. The titling and the page for the app suggests a “full” version around the corner: expect further functionality and expect to pay for iFringeFull!

    AmbITion: Hannah Rudman’s Introduction from the Roadshow

    If you’ve been wondering what AmbITion is about and why we’re running the programme and its events, then watch my introduction!

    AmbITion Scotland launches!

    AmbITionScotlandlogoIt’s with a big “WHOOOT!” from me that Scottish Arts Council is announcing the launch of AmbITion Scotland today. This is a great chance for Scottish cultural organisations nationally to get involved with a programme that will encourage and support digital development!
    AmbITion Scotland will be similar to AmbITion in England, and its with thanks to Arts Council England that we’ve been able to share so many of the resources, assets and IP with colleagues north of the border :-)

    Arts content in the cloud – but where’s the freemium model?

    WoundIphoneappArts magazine Wound has launched an iPhone optimised mag form—and claims to be the first publisher to put out print, digital and iPhone versions. But none of it is free: the quarterly print title is subscription-only at £7; the digital edition is £5 while the iPhone version will set you back £3 from iTunes.

    This doesn’t quite follow the (Chris Anderson – Wired) Freemium model – there’s no free offering, which may be a mistake. I think, like Gerd Leonhard that on the internet, content needs to be free (gratis) to ensure that its free (libre). If its free (libre), you can drive up audience numbers as there’s no barrier to entry with engagement of your content. If 10% would pay for a premium offering, then 10% of loads of people who already experience your free (gratis) content is better than a few people who already know your product and are prepared to pay! I’m sure that we’ll see this freemium model rolled out from the Brooklyn Museum soon. They’ve launched their free iPhone app (I blogged about that here) . They surely have enough online fans to begin the freemium experiment: its worked with a premium Twitter streams that their 1st fans members effectively pay for. Would you pay without being given a taster first?

    Arts Council England’s mapping of online presences reveals continued need for sector support

    MTMsnapshotArts Council England have published new research mapping the online presences of all of the English regularly funded organisations (RFOs). As part of ACE’s new corporate priority strand, “digital opportunity“, the research interestingly looks at what kind of marketing organisations are doing online, and to what level they provide public service content online. The research is available for download via ACE’s website, or if you’d prefer not to download it, can be read online at AmbITion’s website.

    I’m pleased that the research has looked at activity on social networking sites, such as Myspace and Facebook, as well as just RFO’s websites, and it introduces the definition of a “multi-platform cultural institution” as being one that offers cultural participation online as well as in venue. Measuring an organisations’ website stats, and measuring what can be done on a destination website is no longer a good enough measure of an arts organisations’ online capability, capacity and most importantly – impact. It certainly isn’t a measure of how effective online participation is with the organisation, or a measure of how participative, open and effective that organisation is online.

    For example, Festivals Edinburgh are pulling together a whole load of user generated content through social media feeds into their new website, but obviously their webpresence this summer will be far greater, with new iPhone apps being created, and participation happening and content being available via social networks as well as online TV channels like edfest.tv.
    iFringeContent, participation opportunities and interaction opportunities that Festivals Edinburgh is offering is via their own channels and via channels they have developed in collaboration and partnership. Having content smashed up and out there in many different places is a far better strategy than trying to persuade audience to come to you – that’s a push strategy, and we live in a pull world.

    Similarly the new National Theatre Wales, whose digital strategy I developed through my other company envirodigital, has a webpresence strategy, rather than a website strategy. This encompasses the online social network (developed first); a destination website (currently in development, with limited functions as we want the engaging to happen through the social tools); and a wider webpresence (NTW going to wherever their fans might be – facebook, twitter, flickr, blip.tv, other online fora, etc.). Their crowd and content is in the cloud (on the internet), and it would be ludicrous to suggest to them that they should only have interaction with NTW where NTW says they should. That would be like saying: the only way to interact with theatre is to attend a theatre. And that would be a tricky line for a virtual organisation :-) . NTW have set up an online ecosytem, not an egosystem.

    The Arts Council England’s research provides a solid baseline, hitherto not available, for the sector to measure itself against.

    I think the research shows that the sector still needs help, support and guidance around digital development, as they try to develop operationally and innovate new online business models; at the same time as trying to build understanding and expertise around IP, and contracts with artists and venues that would enable them to be able to actually create digital work legally and so make it available as public service content. These are the issues that the AmbITion project has been piloting approaches to overcome, and our roadshows and regional online networks have proved that the sector desires this support (eg. is Yorkshire region’s online network – see getambition.com for links to the network in your region).

    The AmbITion project has been a pilot, but a successful pilot. As a project, our funding in England comes to an end in October 2009. I think that this research shows that the timing of that is wrong. Arts organisations obviously have a hunger as well as a need to develop digitally, but lack the skills to do so, and so still need support of a project like AmbITion. (AmbITion wasn’t built to need to last forever, and should be an intervention at a certain point in time. However, I think that time is still now, and will probably be for a few more years. We only have a small number of digitally expert organisations currently, some of the AmbITion organisations will add to this list over the next year or so having spent the last two years rapidly developing.)

    I call for those digitally expert organisations, many of whom are London-based, to really help the less so by making available case studies and framework contracts, and sharing resources and learning: currently this can be done through AmbITion’s regional networks (London’s here), and via the website.

    I would also call for the definition of “online presence” to be reviewed annually as the digital landscape changes rapidly. Already, it should be broadened to content arts organisations make available through new and additional online channels, such as ning, and through new collaborations such as 4iP funded projects, where the arts organisations involved may not be the lead branding, but their content may be an important element of the public service offering.

    I finally call for more support – for capital and for supporting learning and sharing. RFOs are in the middle of a journey of digital development, but are also still in the middle of getting digital, and getting more digital. Arts Council England summarises:

    that there may be opportunities for regularly funded organisations to do more to:
    – exploit online’s potential for participation and collaboration
    – explore the relationship between online and offline
    – increase the quality, reach and impact of the public service content currently being provided
    But more work is required to understand the resources and support needed to make this happen.

    What do you think? What types of support do you think would be useful?

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