National Arts Marketing Project Conference

So, I've been:

• At the excellent National Arts Marketing Project Conference in Los Angeles.
• And sick with a bad cold.
• And on vacation at the same time.
• Then really jetlagged.
• With laptop troubles.

Which means I haven't posted for a while. But I want to thank Americans for the Arts for making it possible for me to attend the conference, which was wonderful both in terms of content and wall-to-wall smart people. Standout presentations were Neil Archer Roan of the Roan Group and Terri Trotter of Walton Arts Center on branding, Lise Bohn of Stages Repertory Theatre on packaging, Jerry Yoshitomi on selling your ideas to the boss, Donna Walker-Kuhn on audience diversity, and Arthur Cohen on Making Culture Count 3.0, the largest study in the world tracking cultural participation. Cohen also presented data on a group they identified as Young Cosmopolitans, or YoCos, who are not necessarily young nor city dwellers – more of a lifestyle or state of mind than a demographic. And way more into the arts than the general population -- these are hyper-cultural-consumers, and you'll want to get to know them.

There were more than 500 people attending, from nearly all 50 states, plus places like Nigeria and the Cayman Islands. Lots of people from my city, Philadelphia, thanks to the Cultural Alliance, and I met many more performing arts people than visual arts staff. (Also, oddly, lots of opera singers, though I think I may have been the only one there from an opera organization. I'm sure all the opera staffers were at the Opera America conference.)

As Neil Roan has noted, there were so many good things that made the conference work from a technical point of view, even from a low-tech perspective as in the rows of writing tables in the meeting rooms – no balancing a pad on your knee. There was also the distinct absence of those awful conference staples: the completely misnamed session (nothing to do with the purported topic) and the hijacked session (the one that turns into a private consultation for one pushy attendee).

As part of my scholarship, I am providing summaries to Americans for the Arts on the sessions I attended, and will likely post about them, too. So more to come.