Julianna Yau’s blog

Last week, I attended the first Ignite Waterloo event, and was completely blown away. It was my first time attending any Ignite event, and I’m amazed by how well the format works — 5 minutes and 20 slides per presentation, and no notes! The most invigorating part of it was the sheer variety of presentations. Although I wasn’t interested in all of the presentations (maybe 2 or 3?), I was exposed to much more than I would have at any other event.

It was extremely refreshing to be in a wholly different group than the usual suspects. Because of the variety of topics, it wasn’t just people from the local geek community. I met Angela Pause, a freelance writer, and her friend (whose name escapes me, but I believe starts with an M), who used to be a scenic painter. I met Saravana Rajan, who works in the health industry and is doing some really cool consulting work to improve long-term care & monitoring of chronic diseases.

But, more importantly, I was overwhelmingly proved wrong in my earlier feeling that Waterloo lacks the coolness that I had formerly found in Toronto. It seems the vibe and richness has always been here, but took Ignite Waterloo to really bring to the surface and hit me over the head. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to an event anywhere with the electricity and excitement I felt at Ignite Waterloo. I can hardly wait for the next one!

My friend at Open Studio sent me the article What can we learn from the “netbook” from The Artful Manager. The article was a good reminder for me that not everyone in the cultural community is as immersed in technology as I and many of my new friends from Twitter. Based on the interest in the Technology in the Arts conferences, I would agree with Andrew Taylor that integrating the use of netbooks into a cultural manager’s daily routines could take some work. But there is certainly no shortage of people already using them.

Photographer Sean Puckett picked up an HP tablet a while ago (which I, naturally, ogled) for use as a super digital-photoframe. If I didn’t already have my EeePC, I probably would have gotten one too. Not merely is it a fully functional computer (albeit too lightweight for gaming or for intense audio-visual work), but it’s an absolutely charming option for a portable portfolio. Less clunky than hauling around photos; more practical than having everything on a flash drive and hoping to have access to a computer; more instant than giving someone a card with your website on it.

Amrita, owner of Tinku Gallery, recently acquired an iPhone so she could easily show her artists’ work to others when she’s away from the gallery. Because of the size of the screen, the iPhone was a much better option for her than a BlackBerry. A netbook, on the other hand, was more than she needed, as she already had a full-sized computer.

I’m almost always equipped with a travelling office, with either my EeePC or full-sized laptop, my BlackBerry, occassionally a digital camera (if I know I’ll need it) and more flash drives and SD cards than I can fill. Unlike Sean and Amrita, my gadetry is mainly for administrative work. Although I have photos of all of my work on all of my devices, my BlackBerry keeps me in contact with people from the arts admin work I do, and my EeePC is used to its intended purpose—a connection to the internet (and a glorified note-taking system). For someone who is currently loving connection, being able to access all of my contacts (and not just their contact information) and any information available online makes my life a lot easier.

The question, still, is how to keep up with it all.

A few days ago, a friend pointed me to Social Innovation Generation (SiG) and its first event, Studio|Earth. I, of course, signed up for the event and somewhat precariously selected the Social Technology/#waterskool workshop. I was a bit concerned it would be tedious for someone who is already engaged in social media, but Joseph Dee, Sam Ladner, Lisa Torjman, Billie Mintz and Susanna Kislenko did a fantastic job with making the workshop closer to a Barcamp and having the participants actually work on a problem.

They talked about needing to think about an actionable step following the use of social technology, not just a click-to-join or click-to-donate model. I was very happy to hear that I was not the only person struggling to bridge click-activism with “real”/offline activism. This is something which has bothered me since the explosion of consumer advocates using e-petitions during the release of the last copyright bills.

What’s difficult is actually working on the issue, rather than preachers of the anti—social-technology and pro—social-technology groups yelling at each other.

In telling people about #hohoto, many were blown away by how the organizers were able to raise $25,000 for Food Banks Toronto in two weeks. A few (and one in particular) lashed out at me about how exclusive and un-social the event was because only people on Twitter knew about it. I’ve learnt that, in these situations, I should just let these people rant because they are mostly angry and not interested in an open dialogue.

This opinion of social technology being exclusive and un-social was again mentioned at the Social Technology/#waterskool session at Studio|Earth (and kudos to Lisa handling the criticism so well!). Here, coupled with the #hohoto complaint, it felt like people are angry and feeling left out and left behind because they choose not to participate in social technology. Its frustrating to me that they are simply disengaging, rather than changing how social technology relates to those who don’t have access to it or choose not to access it.

The (in)accessibility of social technology isn’t something noticed only by people who don’t use it. Amrita Chandra reflected on this on Twitter exactly a week ago today, which triggered an interesting conversation between her and Duarte Da Silva

The presenters at the Social Technology/#waterskool workshop recast this as a goal to use awareness to change behaviour, and to use social technology to enrichen, not replace, current methods of advocacy and action. Through the work of the breakout sessions, we found that some of the things we need to work on now are:

• connecting the different people who are involved with the same issue (e.g. the water crisis)
• reducing the noise and focusing the activity; avoiding multiple, simultaneous, converging stresses
• getting the attention of the natural leaders, online and offline

From managing Artifice and generally taking on way too much, I have a good idea of some of the major arts/tech/culture events coming up in the first half of 2009. Here are my choice picks (I am, of course, involved in most of these somehow):

Third Thursdays at Globe Studios
This is a new initiative of Globe Studios, where the building and many studios will be open to the public for demonstrations and other interactive activities. We will be bringing in some guests to fill the space too. Please take a look at the website if you want to participate.

Cinematheque Waterloo’s screening of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Jan 18 and 20
One of the best films I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen a ton of films). I still have two free tickets to give away.

KW CultureCamp, Feb 7
Culture + BarCamps for Kitchener-Waterloo

Technology In The Arts Conference + Canada 3.0 Conference, May 10-12
This is in Stratford, and will be a wonderful mix of art and technology.

spOtlight 2009, June 5-7
The spOtlight festival will be returning to the Waterloo Region in 2009. Here is some information about how to participate.

One of my contacts pointed me to Getting To First Base, which is an introductory book to online marketing via social networking. It has a less evangelical feel than The Cluetrain Manifesto where rethinking business is concerned, and provides a good overview of the social sphere and guidelines for how to start wading in that pool. It’s also an extremely easy read—I was able to get through it in less than an hour, despite Acrobat Reader’s refusal to scroll through the pages smoothly.

Just before hitting the half-way mark in the book, I started to really wonder how many companies are well-managed enough to know how to properly use the advice given. With all sizes of companies and not-for-profits, there seems to me that the separation between those who know how to engage and those who don’t is vast. It doesn’t feel like the basic concepts of brand management and public relations has really changed. What has changed isn’t even who is talking about you, but how much more the “public” and “consumers” are able to be heard by each other.

Perhaps most people haven’t realized it, or maybe they just don’t want to talk about it, but the strength of the consumers’ voice means that PR can no longer be a simple whitewashing of a company. Although mistakes happen and the public can be forgiving, a company now really needs to be well-managed, self-aware, honest and transparent to not become a company people love to hate.

The problem? The perception is that many companies were not built on principles of good management, self-awareness, honesty and transparency. In most cases, that’s true. And changing the culture of a company is extremely difficult, and increasingly so with the age of the company. Smaller companies fall victim to being managed by people who may not necessarily have an innate skillset for things in and around the world of marketing.

More than ever, it really does matter whether you’re providing quality products and quality customer service. People feel empowered by being able to speak honestly about a product or service, and they like it. If your printer sucks, word will get around. Boasting about its great features won’t do much, because people know your job is to make your printer look good. But offering to fix the problem, or engaging the consumer on possible improvements, works. The problem again is that most companies don’t have an organizational structure or mandate which allows this to happen.

The section Should You Build Your Own Social Network? cover what I think is the biggest symptom of a company’s disconnect with what to do with social networking. In an attempt to maintain some sort of control and not wanting to play with others, some companies try to start their own social network. And waste a ton of time and money.

Overall, the book provides good advice to its target audience, but I’m still skeptical about whether it can be used by its target audience.

And I’m glad they follow their own advice. The Friends reference had me sold.

Some exciting (for me, anyway) not-directly-related-to-art-but-still-kind-of-related opportunities arrived in my email today:

Social Technologies Summit: Call For Submissions — Deadline 5pm, 13 October 2008
13-16 May 2009
Manchester UK

Futuresonic’s acclaimed international conference, the Social Technologies Summit brings 500 opinion formers, futurologists, artists, researchers, technologists and scientists from the digital culture, technology and art communities together around shared issues to do with social media, society, art and the city.

Digital culture burns bright with social connectivity

Inviting proposals for talks, presentations, workshops and session themes. Submissions of innovative formats for social interaction and experimentation are encouraged.

Call For Submissions — Deadline 5pm, 13 October 2008

Download an application form / guidelines here:
downloads.futuresonic.com/social2009.zip

For further information contact
Lisa Roberts
Social Technologies Summit Programme Manager
FutureEverything
+44 161 237 9000
social09@futuresonic.com

See also — A GBP 5000 commission plus many other opportunities are available in the Futuresonic 2008 Art & EVNTS calls for submissions.
www.futuresonic.com/getinvolved

Stanford Law School Announces Center for Internet and Society and Stanford Constitutional Law Center Joint Fellowship

The Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society (CIS) and The Stanford Constitutional Law Center (CLC) announce a new joint fellowship for the study of the intersection of copyright and constitutional law. We are looking for an inaugural fellow to work with faculty and staff from both Centers on range of research and litigation projects addressing the relationship between the Constitution’s Copyright Clause, the First Amendment and the Fair Use
Doctrine.

The primary responsibility for the fellow will be to work on current CIS Fair Use Project litigation. In addition, the Fellow will also be an active part of the CIS and CLC communities, attending lectures and symposia, assisting with Center activities and working with students on related projects. The Fellowship will provide significant opportunity for the pursuit of individual research and scholarship in preparation to enter the academic teaching market. The fellowship position is offered for one year with the opportunity for renewal.

Applicant Requirements:

2-5 years of post-law school civil litigation experience with substantial experience in constitutional law (preferred) and
intellectual property (required) matters;
Excellent writing and analytic skills;
Demonstrated ability to direct litigation of impact cases; and
Demonstrated ability to work in a self-directed and entrepreneurial environment.

The position is for 12 months, with the possibility of renewal for a second twelve months. The start date is September 2008, although this may be flexible depending on the right candidates availability. Salary will be approximately $40,000 per year, with benefits.

Preferred submission deadline is September 8, 2008, however applications will be accepted until the position is filled.

Applicants MUST apply online via the Stanford Jobs website at
http://jobs.stanford.edu/find_a_job.html
Search “Job number 31382″

Applications may also be submitted by email to the following address:
Gelman@stanford.edu.

For more information about the CIS and the FUP, please visit
http://www.cyberlaw.stanford.edu.

For more information about the Stanford Constitutional Law Center, please visit our website at
http://www.law.stanford.edu/program/centers/conlaw/

In response to the recent arts funding cuts, a Facebook group and event is being organized to stage a one-day online protest on September 15 (the first day of Parliament). This has been initiated by Keith Barker in association with Native Earth Performing Arts.

From the Facebook group:

This is a roll call to all people who believe that Arts and Culture is a part of their lives and is important outside of the political spectrum. This is for artists, families, parents, friends, co-workers, relatives, enemies, neighbors, acquaintances, to all people who enjoy the arts and culture of this country and feel that it must be nurtured and cultivated. We need to send out a message to our politicians to let them know that there are more of us than they think and congruently that we are not going to vote for any person or party that plans to cut funding to arts and culture in the impending election. This is for all of us; people from all sides of the political landscape. This is not about what party you belong to, but how you feel about arts and culture in this country.

So on Monday September 15th (the first day of Parliament) we want you to do one thing. It’s very simple. It will only take a small amount of your time. About the same amount of time it will take to cast your vote for the candidate you feel best represents what you want.

This is it: We would like you to leave your profile picture blank for the day. Use your faceless profile picture as a symbol of the loss of identity Canadians will experience if funding to the arts is cut.

Be a catalyst for change and put your best face forward on election day, but on Monday September 15th leave it blank and send a message so that we can count how many people have joined the fight.

I encourage netizens to not only leave their Facebook profile blank, but any other social networking site. It’s only one day, and you can exercise your creativity afterwards with a new profile picture!

This afternoon, there was a workshop presented by Rowley Mossop: When Virtual Worlds Collide – Challenges for the Arts in the Hypermedia Age. It was a much more focused presentation and discussion on some of the things discussed by Eli and John this morning, but with a much stronger marketing slant (comments with ~ are mine):

-songza.com

-new media –> impact on:
–concept of rarity
–production, distribution, etc
–behaviour & expectation

-the experience –> the emotional investment
-price/value of distribution & experience is shifting

-incumbent media are innovating to protect the value of their existing experience & products
-entrant media are innovating to build new businesses from new experiences & products
-innovations will impact how audiences expect to experience culture

-how can we use emerging technology to create something of value to attract and retain users/buyers?
-what is valuable to users? buyers? advertisers? funders?

-concept of RARITY
-emerging technology combinations are replacing rarity with ubiquity
–songza
–youtube
–the real news (broadcast out of Bathurst St in Toronto; technology has made it possible to reach a wide audience with a small budget)
-being able to find things
–rarity used to be a value because things were hard to find; ubiquity now more prevalent and effective
~~> but, again, what about Barney?

-”we all know now that intellectual property doesn’t mean much”
~~> what?!?!

-asking why people would go to concerts which were formerly sold on rarity if everything is available online
-need another strategy if your work is based on rarity (again, what about Barney’s success at forcing rarity?)

-market definitions based on geography
–no longer apply
–used to NEED to have geographic footprint & monopoly due to technological restraints
–because of reach, loss of local ads & personalities as value
–also loss of value for scheduled programming to reach specific audience

-users don’t pay content creators for access
~~> no, they pay the companies who provide access to the content, which is causing a whole host of problems between creators and those companies

-cost of content creation & distribution dropping
-boundaries of IP are dissolving
-offline, the cost of production is often higher than the price people are willing to pay for it

-new tarrifs, new ways to pay, new products
-ad-supported content

~it’s easy for people to make money by creating content in new formats and media, but what about people who are offering traditional things? how do we bridge the two? esp with physical objects?

-it’s all about “the experience”
-how to make live experience valuable rather than simply a replacement
-people find there is a higher engagement level online
-incorporate audience into the art!
-sampling ~~> not just for beauty products and food!

-metropera.com/metroperafamily.org
–haven’t changed the core of what they do or offer
–created impression of rarity
~~~>how does that fit with all the talk about rarity disappearing? I think there are two models here…
–redefined their market
–made themselves THE opera house of the world
–multiple formats of broadcasts; many ad-supported

Eli Singer had a great presentation on How is the web transforming the arts?

Here are my notes (Flickr images here):

-memes
-diy culture, share culture
-democracy
-blogs – self publishing
-web breaking down hierarchies
-screen real estate equal for all publishers
-graffiti research lab
-public art and the web
-how to take graffiti to the digital life?
-companies taking grassroots graffiti art and using it for ads
-library of congress
–no histories behind images; put them all on Flickr, and through crowdsourcing, piece together history of the photos
–taking images out of libraries and putting them on the web for everyone
–tags an images
-how to weave yourself into a community or conversation on the web?
–not the same for corporations and arts institutions
–reputation within community
–bringing legitimacy to others by inviting participation
-The Power of the 2×2 Matrix
-casecamp.org –>!!!!!
-focus on the social, not the tool
-how can people connect with each other?
-”the network is the hub”; network can be anything
-strategic use of tools to create experiences for individuals, communities, and brands
-Broadcast model – source: cymfony
-peer to peer model – source: cymfony
-platform ==> community ==> content
-integrate into existing community vs building your own
-when integrating in an existing community, plugging into existing numbers
-who do you want to reach out to and who do
–”head” –> everyone; broadcast
–”tail” –> very specific number of people
–”shoulder” (Eli’s target) –> the mid-ground; not just about broadcast, but dealing with “meaty issues”
-which community are they in?
-word of mouth happening more online (blogs, social networking)
-whippersnapper
-curotatoral podcasting
-whippersnapper also on FB (group)
–art is for dead people show
–whippersnapper also has videos to explain how to participate (feels like Drupal instructional vids)
–uploading photos and tag with gallery name!
-SickKids hospital –> radiothon –> social media
–web is built for storytelling
–radiothon videodiary –> daily video; shot on-site; co-branded; rleased online; drive donations
–content –> how to maximize use of small size of screen and closeness to screen
–syndication!
–SickKids hospital widget; share button, donate button; allows websites to customize look of widget and add their own logo
-MoMA –> everyone else taking photos an videos and posting online… where was MoMA? they joined in when question was posed to them

Questions from audience

-permissions forms for people who were interviewed (esp when children involved)
–with SickKids, they already had an existing process and agreement form; added internet to form; contained location for filming

-what about getting off the internet? (dying communities) how to shut down a FB page?
–data owned by FB/YouTube/etc, not you
–control issues with own vs other community
–recognized of an issue; islands and walled communities are issues; OpenSocial
–whippersnapper –> difference between their own website and their presence on others
–own website is official voice; limited community
–most of the community lives on FB

-how to build a list of bloggers?
–technorati?
–local blog indexes
–flickr –> look for photoblogers in city
–follow linkbacks/trackbacks
–build human relationship first

-street teams for independent music community —> are there incentive-driven activities for online community? offering fans incentive to help? is it happening?
–can happen, but more for companies sending free stuff for reviews
–backstage access for blogging
–TIFF –> blogger for them; site listed on TIFF; on both TIFF website and own
—incentive was the affiliation
—real-time feedback
—connection with related ppl
—community, not volunteers
-incentive without alienation

-performance art; unions; limit of how much can be shared–how to address?
–Andy Warhol show –> no photos allowed; had Cronenberg talk about Warhol
–Shakespeare Theatre, Washington –> backstage access; interiews; gave bloggers access to their own images rather than bloggers’ images
–Stratord’s blog

-authenticity — how to achieve?
–err on the side of community
–flat hierarchy
–don’t just start broadcasting
–PARTICIPATE
–connect with leaders of community

-online prescence overshadowing brick-and-mortar gallery? (whippersnapper)
–their events are always packed
–made it about participation in the real space too

-engagement process, not just advertising
-people helping each other and having conversations with each other
-supporting social networking with staff –> resource intensive –> start small
-change in cultural experience

-some people don’t want to be involved because they don’t want to give away their story; ho to create more content?
–culture of secrecy
–Apple
–mystique
–Steve Job’s product launches!

I attended three sessions today, and am back home temporarily (instead of attending the keynote speech) because I need some down time to collect my thoughts. Tons of information coming at us, and it wasn’t long before I got the hang of sending updates to Twitter and Flickr. I’ll be posting the mostly raw notes I took from the sessions, with some linkage (esp to the Flickr images after they’re tagged and captioned).

It’s been a draining day, and I honestly don’t know whether I’m returning for the networking reception and dinner. Unlike CopyCamp, the TIAC was spread across two buildings and several rooms. The university was not the easiest to navigate (especially for a directionally challenged person like myself), and the construction that was happening didn’t help. Lunch was a bit of a headache for me because I took [myself and some unsuspecting victims] the long way to the university plaza. Even without that, I think I would have felt rushed (despite what another person had mentioned to me)… maybe it’s just because I like to really take my time with meals. At least with CopyCamp, food was provided and lunch was more of a break than an interruption.

I also did notice a big difference with the networking. Part of the issue was the size of the group. It was somewhere between the number of attendees at the Visual Arts Summit and CopyCamp. I found that with the BarCamp model that CopyCamp followed, and the smaller group, I was able to not merely meet but have more real conversations with the other attendees. I suppose that’s why TIAC is having the networking reception I may not attend ;)