Joe Patti Gets Ready For ArtsHacker

ADAPTISTRATION-GUY-156ArtsHacker won’t likely be up and running until November/December but that isn’t stopping Joe Patti who posted a wonderfully informative overview of written agreements by demonstrating that not everything presented in written form is set in stone. Patti’s article is an excellent example of the sort of nuts and bolts content you can expect at ArtsHacker and I can wholeheartedly endorse his recommendation for springing for a full version of Adobe Acrobat although pushing to work in MS Word or Google Doc formats makes life much easier for editing toward a final agreement.

Having said that, sending along a PDF file with editing conveniently disabled is an old trick to passively coerce the other party into thinking that proposed terms are firm. But as Patti points out, there’s a good bit of gray inside an otherwise black and white document and the trick is learning to realize where that ink begins to bleed.

About Drew McManus

"I hear that every time you show up to work with an orchestra, people get fired." Those were the first words out of an executive's mouth after her board chair introduced us. That executive is now a dear colleague and friend but the day that consulting contract began with her orchestra, she was convinced I was a hatchet-man brought in by the board to clean house.

I understand where the trepidation comes from as a great deal of my consulting and technology provider work for arts organizations involves due diligence, separating fact from fiction, interpreting spin, as well as performance review and oversight. So yes, sometimes that work results in one or two individuals "aggressively embracing career change" but far more often than not, it reinforces and clarifies exactly what works and why.

In short, it doesn't matter if you know where all the bodies are buried if you can't keep your own clients out of the ground, and I'm fortunate enough to say that for more than 15 years, I've done exactly that for groups of all budget size from Qatar to Kathmandu.

For fun, I write a daily blog about the orchestra business, provide a platform for arts insiders to speak their mind, keep track of what people in this business get paid, help write a satirical cartoon about orchestra life, hack the arts, and love a good coffee drink.

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