Putting A New Face Forward

A bit of new media oriented discussion today. Smashing Magazine published an intriguing article last week about what it defines as best practices for effective “about” pages. The article starts off with a simple but powerful statement: The “about me”-page is one of the most overlooked pages in development and one of the highest ranked pages on many websites. They’re correct, next to the home page, Adaptistration’s “About” pages are the most popular but for years now, they haven’t been meeting their potential…

new about pageAs a result, I took some time to update both pages so they project an image that sums up what the blog is all about. When revising the blog’s about copy, I was struck by how little that needed to be changed. When Adaptistration was launched in 2003, the business was amidst one of the toughest economic climates experienced in decades.

At that time, orchestras were making short-sighted decisions and labor relations were turning sour. More than five years later and things haven’t seemed to change much as a new economic downturn threw philosophical gasoline on the remaining embers of panic driven decision making process from the post 9/11 state of mind.

If nothing else, one significant change made to the blog’s manifesto was to the change mantra, which used to read:

“Change is difficult, change is turbulent, and change is painful. But change is necessary for survival.”

Although all of that is just as true now as it was then, the particularly gloom ridden outlook of today’s orchestra environment warrants the following updated version:

“Change can be difficult. Change can be turbulent. Change can be painful.
Change brings success. Change brings order. Change brings comfort.
Most importantly, change is necessary for survival.”

In addition to Adaptistration’s new “About” page, you can find a heavily revised “About-Me” page.

About Adaptistration

About Drew McManus

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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