It’s All About The Midwest Conference

The 2012 Midwest Clinic, an international band and orchestra conference, is in full swing here in Chicago. The convention regularly brings somewhere in the neighborhood of 15,000 conventioneers to town to pack Chicago’s cavernous McCormick Place West for a vast array of education related activity.

trumpetI’ll be at McCormick Place on Friday afternoon/evening catching up with old friends and colleagues plus squeezing in some business, so if you’re in town for the conference and would like to talk shop, talk business, or just say hello, please get in touch (reaching me by phone, text, or email is profoundly straightforward).

About Drew McManus

"I hear that every time you show up to work with an orchestra, people get fired." Those were the first words out of an executive's mouth after her board chair introduced us. That executive is now a dear colleague and friend but the day that consulting contract began with her orchestra, she was convinced I was a hatchet-man brought in by the board to clean house.

I understand where the trepidation comes from as a great deal of my consulting and technology provider work for arts organizations involves due diligence, separating fact from fiction, interpreting spin, as well as performance review and oversight. So yes, sometimes that work results in one or two individuals "aggressively embracing career change" but far more often than not, it reinforces and clarifies exactly what works and why.

In short, it doesn't matter if you know where all the bodies are buried if you can't keep your own clients out of the ground, and I'm fortunate enough to say that for more than 15 years, I've done exactly that for groups of all budget size from Qatar to Kathmandu.

For fun, I write a daily blog about the orchestra business, provide a platform for arts insiders to speak their mind, keep track of what people in this business get paid, help write a satirical cartoon about orchestra life, hack the arts, and love a good coffee drink.

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