Tuesday, July 11, 2017
Looking back in the archives can be really rewarding when it comes to reminding yourself about things you long forgot. Back in October 2008 Seth Godin reproduced Sasha Dichter’s Mani…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 05:18PMMonday, July 10, 2017
I am off on vacation to the Canadian Rockies for a week or so. If you don’t hear from me again, it may be that the Banff Centre for the Arts is as awesome as I hear and I am hiding out…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 04:24PMThursday, July 6, 2017
I don’t remember where I came across this recently since the story is over a year old. Photographer Oliver Curtis embarked on an interesting project where he started taking pictures wi…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:54AMTuesday, July 4, 2017
Here is a cool tidbit for the 4th of July. A friend of mine owns a business that provides the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) pronunciations and translations for operas and Latin masse…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:36AMMonday, July 3, 2017
I don’t think I could have timed it any better… Last week, Anne Midgette wrote a piece in the Washington Post about the various and confusing roles boards of directors play in th…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 10:48PMNon-Profit Quarterly recently published a piece charting out the cyclic nature of boards of directors. If ever you have been frustrated with your board and wondered why it is acting the way …
SOURCE: artshacker.com at 03:00AMThursday, June 29, 2017
A little irreverence today after talking about philosophical questions like “what is art for?” In the past few years, I have done a lot of writing about the need to help people r…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:12AMTuesday, June 27, 2017
This week Diane Ragsdale wrote a piece addressing the difficultly people have with the idea of Art for Arts Sake. She says when she conducts workshops and asks arts administration types to…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:48PMMonday, June 26, 2017
I wanted to call attention to the recent return of the Hokule‘a, a double hulled voyaging canoe, to Hawaii after a three year voyage around the world that saw the canoe travel 42,000 miles…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 10:42PMThursday, June 22, 2017
The indemnification clause is a part of a contract that is often difficult to understand. Even after reading this post, you will still want to consult a lawyer, but you will be more aware …
SOURCE: artshacker.com at 06:45PMLast month Non Profit Quarterly suggested that organizations undergoing executive leadership transition consider the shared leadership model that many performing arts organizations employ. …
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 01:18AMWednesday, June 21, 2017
You wouldn’t think fishermen needed help telling a story, but according to Non-Profit Quarterly, the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance is looking for just that. They are getti…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:32AMMonday, June 19, 2017
I visited Fallingwater this weekend. Believe it or not, my impetus for being there wasn’t due to the 150th anniversary Frank Lloyd Wright’s birth, but rather because for the las…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:05PMThursday, June 15, 2017
Given all the controversy about the depiction of presidents as stand-ins for Julius Caesar, I thought I would offer a somewhat more light-hearted example of how what we think we know about a…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 01:24AMTuesday, June 13, 2017
Over the years I have written about studies which have found that the younger generation starting careers in non-profit organizations weren’t content to put in long hours and pay their…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:42PMMonday, June 12, 2017
Last week, Non-Profit Quarterly noted that the number of Giving Circles in the US were growing and wondered if this had implications for institutional giving. If you haven’t heard of t…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 10:06PMWednesday, June 7, 2017
Pacific Standard had an interesting piece about the misconceptions music teachers and students studying to be music teachers have about the neurological benefits of music and music education…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:12PMTuesday, June 6, 2017
I recently became aware of the Young Professionals’ Choral Collective out of Cincinnati and was impressed at how they structured themselves to facilitate involvement by a younger demog…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 09:33PMIf you have a large physical plant or campus of buildings and aging HVAC, lighting or water systems, you may want to consider an Energy Savings Performance Contract (ESPC). Under this arrang…
SOURCE: artshacker.com at 03:00AMMonday, June 5, 2017
Carter Gillies emailed me a question this morning relating arts with sports which set off a whole cascade of thoughts. First of all, we often talk about how arts organizations and creators n…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 08:48PMWednesday, May 31, 2017
Almost as soon as I published my post yesterday about building community around augmented reality, I started thinking about how that might work with live performance. One of my first thought…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:06PMTuesday, May 30, 2017
Two months ago I confessed I may have misread the impact and potential of the Pokemon Go game on attracting new customers and audiences. However, the Knight Foundation feels that the basic t…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 09:54PMThursday, May 25, 2017
The challenge of being creative in a non-profit environment is that you have big ideas, but few resources. So if you have a great idea for a new project or even an extension of an existing p…
SOURCE: artshacker.com at 03:00AMWednesday, May 24, 2017
Something I don’t really often see people write about are the benefits of sitting on a grant panel, especially for an organization that funds you. First of all, the organization will l…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:36PMTuesday, May 23, 2017
In the comment section of yesterday’s post, Carter Gillies warned about succumbing to the temptations of survivorship bias and only holding up a few successful cases as examples to emu…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 10:18PMMonday, May 22, 2017
A year ago on Quartz a list appeared by former Stanford dean, Julie Lythcott-Haims, outlining what every 18 year old should know. I briefly toyed with the idea of doing a post about how the …
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 09:48PMWednesday, May 17, 2017
The Washington Post had a story about an internet company in Korea which started a policy three years ago where all employees would be addressed by an English name rather than their Korean n…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:18PMThe idea that it takes 10,000 hours to master something has largely been debunked since Malcolm Gladwell first suggested it. Still, I think he did everyone a favor by suggesting this number …
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 04:33AMTuesday, May 16, 2017
Great ideas can be found and cultivated everywhere. That is the basic message of a blog post on the Center for Small Towns’ website. They note that reporting on rural towns often see…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 03:36AMThursday, May 11, 2017
I have a fairly regular standing appointment on a radio station to talk about upcoming events at our performing arts center. Often the host will ask me to talk about the process we go throug…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:33AMWednesday, May 10, 2017
Via Marginal Revolution blog, comes a story about a tourist spot in China that supposedly put in speed bumps to force people to slow down and appreciate the scenery. It made me think, is thi…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:06AM 
