Tonight is the second of two Take a Friend to the Orchestra (TAFTO) concerts at Chicago’s Grant Park Music Festival. Today’s event features a pre-concert CoffeeTalk discussion starting at 6:15PM CT (concert begins at 7:30PM) and located at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion Choral Hall on the east side of the Pavilion. The pre-concert event (not to mention the concert) is free and open to all so join Artistic and General Director James Palermo (2007 TAFTO contributor), music director Carlos Kalamar (2008 TAFTO contributor), and me for free coffee and interesting conversation in an inclusive, friendly environment.
Year: 2008
NPAC 2008: The Good, The Not-So-Good, And Everything In-Between
Following yesterday’s post which focused on blogging related issues at the 2008 National Performing Arts Convention (NPAC), I wanted to take a moment to put together some of my thoughts and observations on the rest of the conference…
Grant Park Event Wrap-Up
Last night’s Take a Friend to the Orchestra event by the Grant Park Orchestra was a great deal of fun. Even amidst very non-June weather, the orchestra played wonderfully to a crowd of approximately 12,000. The post-concert Talk Back event attracted around 120 patrons (with thousands more lounging in the lawn seats as daylight lazily slipped away) and it was an honor to be included alongside the ensemble’s conductor and two …
Can’t Bloggers Get A Little Love?
Doug Fox over at GreatDance.com posted an intriguing piece on 6/17/08 about some frustrating events he recently encountered with the National Performing Arts Convention. In particular, Doug wrote about why he thought the convention "failed to embrace one of the most important elements of online communications: the transmission, evolution and sharing of ideas"…
Institutional Blogging
The more I look back at the National Performing Arts Convention (NPAC) session on blogging, the more gratifying the experience becomes. The mix of panelists was ideal and if there was any one point attendees could take away from the event it is this: blogging is not only good for performing arts organizations, but increasingly necessary. The good news is compared to traditional outreach methods, maintaining a first-class blog costs pennies on the dollar. At the same time, it is entirely unrealistic to expect maximum results by merely signing up for a free blogging account and publishing a few scattered posts. Unfortunately, that’s precisely what too many organizations do and watching one group after another fall victim to this bear trap has served as the inspiration behind creating a new service to help performing arts organizations, chamber ensembles, and soloists effectively join the new media revolution. Success is as straightforward as having a helping hand…