Consult Rudman
Hannah Rudman Gets IT for 21st C culture
Motherapp have just launched a tool that enables anyone to turn their blog and twitter stream into an iPhone app. This enables you to aggregate content together in one place for audiences to read offline – not bad for $99.
In June 2009, national brand strategist Maureen Craig conducted 12 focus groups with urban and suburban residents of multiple ages and ethnicities in Greater Philadelphia. These findings were included in the Cultural Alliance’s recent publication Research Into Action – Pathways to New Opportunities. View Maureen’s presentation here – to find out what ordinary Philadelphians really think about arts & culture, and what would get them to participate more often. Giving people participative activities in venues so that they get to interact with others is still a key desire from perspective audience.
Envirodigital eventcasts for AmbITion
My other company, Envirodigital, for AmbITion, produced an eventcast of the keynotes at the Arts Marketing Association Digital Marketing Day on 30.11.09!
Envirodigital produced an interactive eventcasting live from Sadlers Wells! 70 people tuned in online to hear and watch keynotes Jim Richardson of Sumo Design and John McGrath of National Theatre Wales.
Check out the days buzz on Google AMAdigitalday search results and
Here’s the days Twitter stream of the #amadigitalday tag from Twitter Search.
You can watch the eventcasts still, available on demand here.
NTW: First year’s programme launch webcast
Envirodigital client National Theatre Wales launched their programme last week via webcast!
They have also been increasingly busy establishing their wider webpresence – today they have 1058 Facebook fans, over 100 Twitter followers @NTWtweets, a YouTube Channel and of course the ever-growing membership of the online social network.
The depth of the participation and interaction and the quality digital assets are excellent: a real best practice exemplar
Digital Theatre: launched, and available on your hard drive!
Digital Theatre has launched! Using up to 13 cameras to capture the performance, English Touring Theatre, RSC, Almeida, Royal Court and Young Vic content can for £8.99 be yours in HD. The papers have talked about the idea replacing the thrill of a live show, and of causing a threat to the live, and this is of course usually the nervous counter-argument against digital recording of theatre companies less comfortable with the idea of their audiences seeing their work online.
I find this argument tiresome and insulting to audiences who of course know that the live performance will be the one that makes the hairs on the back of their stand on end as they feel the collective body heat of the audience rise during a tense scene: but in the absence of the cash to pay for the ticket and the trip to London, and in order to avoid the guilt of an expanding carbon footprint due to art, I’d rather see the work from theatre companies than miss it. Audiences still understand live experiences, and the emerging experience economy that we’re seeing as a current cultural behaviour (living in the now, instead of in the future, a desires to collect as many experiences and stories as soon as possible, is addictive) is growing, not shrinking. All things live will continue to rise in value as the digital world encourages copying and sharing. The live experience is the thing that can’t be copied, the thing that has uniqueness and a one-off factor. What do you think?
National Theatre Wales launches programme with Big Bang!
My 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
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
Wave 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:
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
The 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’.
Similarly, 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.
iFringe 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!
Hannah Rudman is Managing Director of Rudman Consulting Ltd., and blogs here at consultrudman.com She is also Founding Director of 
