Info You Can Use: Gen Y and User Generated Input by Joe Patti

Last month, MarketingProfs presented the results of some research that showed Gen Y consumers won’t make purchasing decisions without consulting user generated content (UGC). Interesti…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:14am on February 9, 2012☆⚑

You Don't Tell Me What To Give, Don't Tell Me What To Say by Joe Patti

An interesting question was posed to Kelly Kleiman, the Nonprofiteer, about the practice of suggesting donors increase their giving from the previous year. The writer was offended at being t…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 1:16am on February 8, 2012☆⚑

Helping The Rising Tide Lift All Boats by Joe Patti

I have been following The Producer’s Perspective, the blog of Broadway producer Ken Davenport, for a number of years now. While I don’t have solid evidence, I suspect he is not l…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:10am on February 7, 2012☆⚑

A Heartbeat Left In The Old Girl Yet by Joe Patti

Though they haven’t played since October 2009 and the symphony filed for Chapter 7 liquidation in December 2010, the Honolulu Symphony musicians saw a new opportunity to perform togeth…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:26am on February 2, 2012☆⚑

Don't Forget Leadership and Teamwork by Joe Patti

I was helping out a local high school by conducting mock interviews with their students today. I enjoy doing this because the school does a great job preparing the students for the experienc…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 1:54am on February 1, 2012☆⚑

Who Is More Important? The Event Or Organization? by Joe Patti

I had a small disagreement about marketing with one of the people partnering on a show with us that raised the question about what is more important, the artist or the organization. The disa…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 4:19am on January 31, 2012☆⚑

Supernatural Artistic Inspiration And Music by Joe Patti

In the talent vs. practice debate regarding mastery we have Malcolm Gladwell’s suggestion that it takes somewhere around 10,000 hours to achieve mastery (as well as the counter argumen…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:35pm on January 25, 2012☆⚑

Stuff To Ponder: Active Interpretation of Culture by Joe Patti

Participating in the Lead or Follow discussion over at Artsjournal.com, Lynne Conner writes the following about audience participation/engagement in performances (my emphasis). Inviting audi…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 2:14am on January 25, 2012☆⚑

Stuff To Ponder: Curtain Speeches by Joe Patti

I was reading an entry on the Creativity Post by Thomas Mark about how important audience attentiveness is in live performance. It was interesting, but I wasn’t intending to post on it…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:20am on January 24, 2012☆⚑

Info You Can Use: Forget Dynamic Pricing, Use Placebo Pricing by Joe Patti

I got my sister a gift certificate at Restoration Hardware for Christmas. They sent along a catalog that weighed about as much as my 3 year old nephew so I chose not to carry it on the plane…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:49am on January 19, 2012☆⚑

Teachers Don't Know From Creative by Joe Patti

We all know that arts classes and opportunities have been disappearing from schools at varying rates for decades. It may or may not surprise you to learn that creativity is not encouraged in…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 2:02am on January 18, 2012☆⚑

Arts And The Four Year Career by Joe Patti

An article recently posted on the Fast Company website talks about how transitory people’s jobs, and increasingly, career paths, are. “According to recent statistics, the median …

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 5:40pm on January 16, 2012☆⚑

Desperately Seeking Arts Managers by Joe Patti

Artsjournal.com had a link to a story on ArtSeek about the difficulty arts organizations in the greater Dallas-Ft. Worth area were having finding arts managers. A good many positions are goi…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 4:07am on January 12, 2012☆⚑

Comes The Curator by Joe Patti

While at the Arts Presenters conference, I learned that Wesleyan University has a certificate program in Curatorial Practice in Performance. My first thought was to wonder if there was reall…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 2:03am on January 11, 2012☆⚑

Arts Presenters 2012 Edition by Joe Patti

I have been attending the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (APAP) conference this past weekend. I am sure I will have more to say on the subject in future entries, but I wanted to p…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:56pm on January 9, 2012☆⚑

Market Forces and Education by Joe Patti

Looking back at some old posts, I really started to think about the conflict of market forces and education. I was reading an old post that cited Tony Kushner’s proposal to eliminate t…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 7:16pm on January 4, 2012☆⚑

Stuff to Ponder: Quality Vs. Emotional Satisfaction by Joe Patti

Back in 2005, I wrote about a study by the Urban Institute dealing with attendance at cultural activities. Looking back at the study, The Diversity of Cultural Participation, I am still a li…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 5:50pm on January 3, 2012☆⚑

2012 New Year's Resolution by Joe Patti

My suggestion for a 2012 resolution to all my readers out there is a musical one. The words of They Might Be Giants, “Whistling in the Dark.” There's only one thing that I know h…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 5:27pm on January 2, 2012☆⚑

Diversity vs. the Brand by Joe Patti

Apropos to the recent aggregation of articles on You’ve Cott Mail about diversity in the arts, I wanted to point back to a post I did a few years ago about the pressures of protecting …

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 5:00pm on December 28, 2011☆⚑

Info You Can Use: Arts In Every Classroom by Joe Patti

I had nearly forgotten about this arts education resource. Back before I started using the “Info You Can Use” tag I came across Annenberg/CPB Arts In Every Classroom series on te…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 4:12pm on December 27, 2011☆⚑

Side Effects of Cultural Policy by Joe Patti

I hope everyone had a wonderful and restful Christmas yesterday. As I understand it, today is the seventh day of Hanukkah. And of course, we are just in the beginning of the 12 days of Chris…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 4:45pm on December 26, 2011☆⚑

Dickens, Illustrated by Joe Patti

By the time you read this, I should hopefully be at my sister’s house teasing my nephews. Fear not loyal readers, for I have scheduled a series of posts according to my usual publishin…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 2:55pm on December 21, 2011☆⚑

The Arts Org and The Pro-Am Can Be Friends by Joe Patti

Arts Orange County Executive Director, Richard Stein, recently linked to a study his organization commissioned about how art organizations were acknowledging the rise of Professional-Amateur…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 2:54pm on December 20, 2011☆⚑

Customer, Know Thyself by Joe Patti

I will admit that one problem of which I have often been aware is that it is difficult to make everyone at my theatre aware of the myriad forms of relationships different people have with us…

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 2:43pm on December 19, 2011☆⚑

Info You Can Use: Reward Disloyalty by Joe Patti

H/t Daniel Pink who linked to a story about a “Disloyalty Card” being used by independent coffee shops in Singapore. If you go to one of 8 coffee shops and pick up a card, go to …

SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 1:43am on December 15, 2011☆⚑