Sick Day

I’m taking a sick day so just a quick post linking over to something from culture writer Brian Wise back in July, 2017: Five Things Every Orchestra Website Should Get Right.

Of particular interest is the recommendation about date formats:

International users: Your date format should be clear and understandable outside the U.S. (as much of the world doesn’t follow a month/day/year format and wall-style calendars often start on Mondays).

About two years ago, I started recommending to my Venture Platform users that they favor date formats using textual (spelled out) versions of days and months to help avoid confusion on this very issue.

Case in point, we made sure to integrate the ability to manually set date format on a per event list basis in order to provide as much flexibility as possible. For example, using “Sep” is better suited than “September” for something like a sidebar or footer widget.

This is a great example of a tiny, but important, element of overall user experience and accessibility that is often overlooked.

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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