2,261 stories by "Joe Patti"
Monday night I went to the library to return a couple books. I had finished the second book in a series and wanted to read the third, but I had checked and knew the library didn’t have…
Seth Godin recently made a post that provides a good summary of how value influences the way consumers view price. “It’s too expensive,” almost never means, “there is…
From the “We Should Steal This Idea…” file, The Guardian has been running a series that is essentially the newspaper version of a career day, called “How Do I Become&…
Really interesting story out of Australia via Non Profit Quarterly. The Arts Minister has asked the Australia Council to develop a policy penalizing arts organizations who refuse private fun…
There was a TED Radio segment that aired back in October that hit so many of the conversation points in the arts today: recognizing failure, serving communities and funder priorities. The to…
Playwright Mike Lew criticizes the logic behind blaming a lack of arts education for a decreasing attendance at arts events. Take the basic argument of "We need more theater in schools so mo…
Ken Davenport recently talked about how he enjoyed Broadway shows much more when he was younger. Part of the reason he has a harder time now is because he analyzes the show with the eye of a…
Last summer there were a number of stories about how the Seoul city government installed a giant ear sculpture into which citizens could make comments. The ear was served something of a dual…
Often we use some really general terms when referencing the people who support our organizations which tends to make us think of them as monolithic entity. Having written this blog for 10 ye…
I hadn’t really intended for this to be a “Government and the Arts” themed week on my blog when I wrote about the search for a director of the NEA yesterday, but it seems t…
Near the end of 2013 I started seeing quite a few blog posts and tweets criticizing the Obama administration for not appointing someone to replace Rocco Landesman as chair of the National En…
One of the more intriguing ideas I have come across in my 10 years of blogging is the Artist Pension Trust which has artists deposit their work into across the course of 20 years with the pr…
Last week, Americans for the Arts held a blog salon on Rural Arts.  There were a lot of familiar names and faces with posts by Wormfarm Institute and Springboard for the Arts’ ru…
So Drew McManus beat me to it, Butts in the Seats turned 10 on Sunday. It was February 23, 2004 when I made my first post. Now here I am nearly 1500 posts later, still going pretty strong. �…
I ended up with an interesting juxtaposition of articles today. After clicking on interesting looking links in my Twitter feed, I had an article asking whether children should be allowed in …
Today I saw a post on The Creativity Post that had me thinking back to my piece yesterday on Seth Godin’s vision of what constituted an elite.  In The Gorgeous Reality of Not Bei…
Seth Godin is talking about us. Well, actually I think that is a little narcissistic to think he is merely talking about people in the creative fields. I am pretty sure his comment encompass…
Yesterday I was at our local hospital attending some presentations on different aspects of the hospital’s operations. One of the people spoke about the processes the hospital follows t…
I never really thought of my venue and the shows it presents as a target for ticket resellers and secondary market brokers, but a recent incident provides a cautionary tale. I had a woman ma…
A reader from Oklahoma recently wrote me thanking me for providing information arts organizations in rural settings can use. With that in mind, I wanted to highlight a “if Minnesota ca…
Last month, the Cultural Data Project released a study they commissioned to investigate the use of data by arts organizations and what impediments to effectiveness exist. If you aren’t…
As promised, I am posting the video of the “Five Minutes To Shine” speech my former colleague and assistant theatre manager, Lehua Simon gave at the Association of Performing Art…
I was a little surprised by the news last week that the entire board of Minnesota Dance Theatre resigned. I thought at first that perhaps there had been a rift in the board and many of them …
Apparently Netflix Powerpoint presentation on human resources has been getting a lot of views this last month. I remember being able to read the accompanying article on Harvard Business Revi…
Yesterday, commenter Lee Saylor asked a question about foul weather and refunds on a post I did a couple weeks ago regarding that subject. He noted that like many performing arts organizatio…
