I'm referring, of course, to the maddening lack of appropriate CRM for small and mid-size arts organizations. Not everyone can afford a Tessitura license. MS Access? Do Not Want.

I've been looking at Act(!) for awhile now, with trepidation.. but check out the latest Technology in the Arts podcast from Carnegie Mellon, where they discuss novel use of the web-based database Salesforce and special add-ons being developed by the nonprofit community.. the salient conversation starts about 15 mins. in..

Many thanks to the folks at Discover Jersey Arts and the South Jersey Cultural Alliance for their support and hospitality.. here are the complete notes and audio from last week's presentation of "Podcasting for Arts and Cultural Organizations" at the annual Media Roundtable in Haddon Township. As always, if you get stuck just drop me an email!

Click here for the powerpoint slides, the notes (pdf), and visit the badbirdie podcast page on iTunes.

For non-iTunes users, you can subscribe to the badbirdie podcast here.

the new rutgers-camden center for the arts website is in soft-launch.. check it out at www.rutgerscamdenarts.org.

it's all in movable type, which I've found to be quite flexible with a little planning.. very small footprint, and incredibly inexpensive to manage. we completed this update in about 48 hrs, including content, CSS and graphic design. more bells and whistles coming soon, including some flash banners, podcasting and so forth. Season announcement goes out Sept 5.

Just quick note .. I'll be presenting two hour-long workshops on e-marketing - specifically podcasting - at the South Jersey Cultural Alliance Media Roundtable on Sept 18 in Haddon Township, NJ.

This will be a real nuts-and-bolts conversation on how to launch, manage and develop podcast and related viral marketing campaigns for performing arts organizations.. likely to veer off into more updated social-networking tools, time permitting!

Also highly likely we'll be podcasting the podcast workshop. meta.

“People have a tendency to overestimate the short-term consequences of the new social media technologies, and underestimate the long-term consequences.” – New Media Summit 2007

HBR IdeaCast interviewed Duncan Watts recently about some of his latest research into viral marketing .. it's a quick sketch that's worth a listen (if you can ignore the terrible sonic backdrop) and a read, as well as Walter Carl’s critique..

In brief, Watts is pointing out some of the limitations of marketers borrowing too heavily from the world of epidemiology when describing viral marketing campaigns, particularly the “reproduction rate” – that is, the rate of propagation of a virus from one carrier to another, described as a number between zero and one.. where 1 is the so-called “epidemic threshold” (aka malcolm gladwell’s “tipping point” in social terms). Any virus (or marketing message) propagating at a rate of 1 or greater is self-sustaining, anything below 1 is going to fizzle out eventually.

As we know, viral marketing is unpredictable and hard to do right – but Watts observes that taking a “Big Seed” approach – infecting a larger number initial of hosts with your marketing message – still produces desirable results even where propagation is considerably below 1..

The takeaways here for cultural marketers are:

:: a more precise language for describing viral marketing’s limits and opportunities to anxious ED’s and Boards,
:: a framework for planning and budgeting for viral marketing campaigns, and
:: new web applications for adding viral components to existing campaigns - and for measuring success.

More soon on how I’m working these frameworks into my own campaigns..

http://twitter.com/badbirdie

Quick Note: If you need another jazz fix, be sure to visit Jason's outstanding video chronicle of the Philly jazz scene at blip.tv .. http://phillyjazz.blip.tv .. aka "Phillyphife" on YouTube ..

Joe Schiavo of the Rutgers-Camden Fine Arts Department hosted last night's pre-concert talk with Philip Glass, a low-key discussion ranging from topics of scoring for film and theater to studying composition under Nadia Boulanger in Paris.. audio is available in the podcast feed..

Interview with Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid is up in the podcast feed .. This is split into 2 parts with music interspersed from his Rebirth of a Nation soundtrack, including performances from the Kronos Quartet.

Straight from her Carnegie Hall debut with David Byrne (Talking Heads), singer-poet Haale visited the Gordon Theater on Thursday for a special concert fusing the mystical poetic traditions of the Middle East with a Western-influenced musical tapestry.

'HAALE...underscores the evolution and transformation of centuries-old art forms as they adapt to the new realities of a multiethnic city...' - The New York Times

She's performing at World Cafe Live this weekend, and we were fortunate enough to bring her to Rutgers for an afternoon workshop on Sufi poetry [slash] acoustic performance. See the podcast feed for the full audio..