As blog submission number one gets posted let me say Providence is a gorgeous backdrop for the work that is being accomplished at this year’s NAMP conference. While sipping on a coke on the flight here I was reading in the in-flight magazine about the top ten locations for observing fall foliage; Vermont was listed, New York, Washington, among other states. Not listed was the state of Rhode Island. During the plane’s descent into Providence’s airport stretched out as far as my eye could see were puffs of green evergreen tree tops and puffy tops in every shade of crimson. These colors are not experienced in Minnesota. The charm of New England has not been lost on me.
The theme for the first day of the conference for me was ACTION!
David Court’s opening plenary was a great way to kick-off or raise the curtain on this year’s conference. David’s remarks reminded me that to be successful there is no one size fits most strategy for attracting audiences to participate in our activities. We must be innovative in our communication strategies and tailor our messaging for the new consumer. Our communication channels have to be on stand-by waiting for the patron to begin an interaction with us on the patron’s timeline and in the patron’s language.
Jerry Yoshitomi’s session on Catalytic Leadership continued the theme of ACTION. Jerry’s session reminded me that we can’t be scared to take action, to be the catalyst in our organizations which in turn generates an Anagenesis – a qualitative shift in evolutionary development. Jerry’s remarks and guidance further confirmed for me that we are time of dynamic transformation. Our patrons are demanding to be communicated with in a different way. This demand requires us as marketers to shift our method of interaction with our patrons from that of a curator to that of a moderator. The other paradigm shift is that patrons are connecting with us not so that we can obtain our objective but so that the patron can obtain their own objective.
In my personal opinion arts marketers are all super heroes. We are in Providence on Halloween weekend, away from friends, family, and loved ones because I suspect we care about the professionalism of our industry, about sharing and learning best practices, fostering an atmosphere that encourages innovation, and about leveraging our creative capital.
More posts to come. COLLABORACTION!
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