Thankful thoughts For 2008

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I hope everyone has the opportunity to enjoy Thanksgiving with family and friends. Although the 2008/09 season is shaping up to be a trying time for many organizations, one positive aspect is that difficult times help us recognize that which deserves thanks.

Don’t Do What Donny Don’t Does

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Over the past few weeks I’ve been inundated with promotional email messages from specialty PR firms pushing a micro-site designed by one of the big budget orchestras in conjunction with the tenure of a key artistic leader. On one hand, I’m very happy to see groups designing and promoting micro-sites but the topic I wanted to write about today is the process orchestras use to promote a new media platform like this to other new media outlets…

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Things That Make you Go “Buh?” Conductors

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Does anyone else notice that conductors seem to be a bit more, shall we say, “artistically tempered” than usual? A few weeks ago, Ricardo Muti made headlines when he walked away from a gig for the Queen of England because he reportedly took issue with her programming suggestions and now the Boston Globe reports that conductor Gennady Rozhdestvensky ditched a concert series with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) because he didn’t get equal billing with soloist, Lynn Harrell. Come on people; get a tighter grip on reality…

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Website Update

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I spent a portion of the weekend updating my converting my consulting website from a hand coded html platform over to the same blogging platform I use for blogging. Although I required some detailed coding the long-term benefits are many, including simplified updating expanded offerings via the WordPress platform. In addition to the new platform is an updated graphic design and even though I still have some material to update, I do have information about my Area-51 project from this summer available so if you’ve been anxious to learn more about where I was and what I was doing, you’re in luck…

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“Culture Palaces For Air-Kiss Orgies Among The Superrich”

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Adaptistration People 085

Or so goes the vivid imagery from Matt Smith’s 11/18/2008 article in the San Francisco Weekly about what he categorizes as excessive compensation for individuals like Michael Tilson Thomas who he describes as the “baton-waving tycoon at the head of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.” Smith doesn’t hold back as he rails against what he sees as organizations that receive public funds but “consistently failed in their mission”… Barbed rhetoric aside, …

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