As promised from earlier this week, I am posting the Venture Platform Overview video. This video will be available at the Venture Sales site along with several additional videos highlighting specific components such as Venture’s event manager, slider controls, market insight (analytics), email marketing capability, design features and functionality, content management tools, and solution academy (support and training site). What makes this video special is it offers the first look into Venture’s admin panel…

The other videos will provide substantially more detail and in-depth footage for their respective components so make sure you sign up for the official launch notice if you haven’t done so already and you can follow Venture doings at twitter via @VentureTweets.

As an intriguing side note, this video is the first time I’ve had an opportunity to experiment with YouTube’s closed captioning system. Accuracy is very good and all it took was uploading a copy of the voice over track in txt format.

Thanks to reader Jon Hardie for pointing out an article by David Abel in the 8/28/2010 edition of the Boston Globe I would have otherwise missed which reports on the Highland Street Foundation’s work at subsidizing ticket prices at several Boston area cultural institutions. Regular readers know how strongly I feel about the connection between subsidized ticket prices and the overall health of performing arts…

According to details in Abel’s article, the Highland Street Foundation seems to be focusing more on organizations such as museums and zoos but it is still a welcome indication that substantial subsidies to help reduce average ticket prices and offer completely free events is not an unobtainable goal.

Make sure you take some time to read Abel’s article and for those folks who were stopping by today to see some news on Venture’s release, I’ve decided to move it back a few days so the production team doesn’t have to push the promotional videos out before they are absolutely ready. All things being equal, everything else is done and I’ll see about posting Venture’s overview video either tomorrow or Friday. In the meantime, you can sign up for Venture’s official release notice here and read about the development process at Adaptistration’s topic archives.

That’s precisely what I told Jeff Karoub from the Associated Press yesterday when we were talking about the differences between for profit and nonprofit business strategies for dealing with a tough economy. One substantial difference is related to what I call the Fragile Powerhouse concept, which dictates that not only do performing arts organizations fail to benefit from laying off workers during down periods, but that course of action has a prolonged negative impact on overall artistic quality and institutional prowess…

If you were to rephrase this from the for profit perspective, it would go something like this: whereas the time between when a factory hires back skilled workers to when it reaches optimum production output is relatively short, a professional orchestra can take a decade or more to regain lost artistic excellence.

I coined the Fragile Powerhouse concept back in 2007 and in an ironic twist, when I went back through Adaptistration’s archives to review that post, I discovered that it was connected to a situation at none other than the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO). Here’s the original description:

Creating a destination orchestra takes decades to accomplish and is ultimately the result of several board and administration regimes successfully building on one series of accomplishments after another. Conversely, it only takes a season or two to tear much of that progress down and more often than not, you don’t notice the cycle has even started until it is too late.

As such, destination level orchestras are not unlike a Faberge Egg: it takes an enormous amount of time and dedication to craft but only a few seconds to cause irreparable damage – the Fragile Powerhouse.

You can read more about what Karoub and I discussed in his AP article that went out on 8/30/2010. There’s another good article in the 8/30/2010 edition of the Detroit News by Michael Hodges that includes some additional perspective from me as someone who spent a number of formative early childhood years growing up in Michigan. Hodges’ article also presents an as-of-yet unseen look at the labor strife from the perspective of Detroit area business service organizations. All in all, both articles present some fresh angles on events and are worth your time.

On a positive note, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra unveiled a new website yesterday and although I have yet to conduct the 2010 orchestra website reviews, the homepage alone tells me that this looks like a big improvement over their previous user interface. The DSO players’ (unfortunately clunky) website is located here. I’ll offer some free advice for the latter: having the homepage automatically play a music file fell out of design best practice long ago. As such, you may want to tweak the design a bit and think about using a better publishing platform. If you do, I highly recommend using a local install version of WordPress along with one of the hundreds of easy to use, designer premium themes (like the type available here, here, and here). Since it looks like things may not wrap up any time soon, there’s no better time than the present to implement the updates.

In short, “not much.” It seems that both sides have agreed to play and talk under the terms and conditions from the expired contract. However, the term play is used loosely in this sense as there are no concerts scheduled until October. I’m planning on posting something more about all of this later in the week once my work deadlines have loosened up but in the meantime…

…check out the 9/29/2010 Detroit Free Press article by Mark Stryker, which offers additional details along with a thoroughly thought provoking opinion piece from Brian Dickerson in the same day’s issue of the Detroit Free Press.

Now that primary development recently wrapped up, we’ve been hard at work getting Venture’s sales and support site ready for launch. To that end, I’m happy to say that all things being equal, that should take place sometime between Monday and Wednesday next week…

If you haven’t done so already, stop by Venture’s placeholder site and sign up for the official launch notice. Venture is now on Twitter under the name “VentureTweets” so you can follow news and notices there as well. In the meantime, here’s a pair of screencaps, the homepage and the top portion of the detailed plan comparison page, to show you what’s in store:

As the Detroit Symphony Orchestra enters into the final weekend of negotiations before their current contract expires, conductor Bill Eddins weighed in on the situation in a blog post at Sticks and Drones where he takes issue with a few things I’ve had to say on the topic. So head over and read what Eddins has to say and keep an eye on Detroit news over the weekend.

There’s nothing quite as cumbersome as an email list filled with non-responders and as it turns out, the email list here at Adaptistration has grown so large that my email list minions told me we needed to weed out some names. Fortunately, the email service I use, Vertical Response, has a handy feature that lets the minions automatically create a segmented list based on non-responder parameters that can be used to verify recipients…

But just to be safe, I want to post the memo here in case anyone out there is falling victim to an overzealous spam filter:

So far, the notice has worked out more or less the way the minions said it would but one unexpected outcome was the number of replies from readers verifying their subscription and taking a moment to include some very kind words about the value they place on Adaptistration. Unquestionably, that was a real out of the blue treat!

The 8/24/2010 edition of the Detroit Free Press published an article by Mark Stryker that digs into the details surrounding the ongoing, and increasingly entrenched, negotiations between the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) and their musicians. Stryker’s article focuses on the fundamental issue of musician compensation: its history, current standing, and potential future…

Not unlike other articles about the situation, Stryker includes perspectives from a number of usual suspects, including me. League of American Orchestras president and CEO Jesse Rosen once again espouses a beyond-our-control point of view and that the organization is merely dealing with the aftermath of the economic downturn as best as it can.

But the DSO musicians reject the external pressure argument and point to failings in leadership such as what Stryker summarizes as “unrealistic assumptions in financing the Max [the DSO's concert hall and music center], now a source of debilitating debt.” According to the article, the players “acknowledge the impact of the recession, but they say poor management has exacerbated the problems. They accuse Parsons’ administration of inadequate fund-raising, pointing to high staff turnover — four vice presidents in charge of fund-raising in four years — as a sign of disarray.”

One aspect Stryker referenced in his article that everyone should note is a recent report from the Ford Foundation which asserts “The facts suggest the only way the DSO can possibly become financially viable is by drastically reducing orchestral costs. Barring such a change, the DSO will probably be forced to close.”

From a professional perspective, the last thing the DSO needs to do at this point in time is make substantial strategic plans regarding the mission, scope, and structure of the institution. Clearly, Detroit is amidst a period of substantial change and although the city is undeniably in a period of decline, the transitional nature of these changes indicates that the outcome is far from known.

Consequently, a recommended course of action includes focusing on securing a mutually agreeable three year contract that manages debt, preserves artistic standards and peer standings, and allows everyone to monitor the economy. If, at the end of that contract, the economy has sufficiently stabilized, the DSO will be in a much better position to revisit restructuring efforts. Of course, that assumes restructuring is even needed.

In addition to Stryker’s article, the paper published an appendix piece titled How salary proposals compare with other top U.S. orchestras that draws on compensation data from Adaptistration Premium, International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians, and Stryker’s own research. You should definitely check it out.

I’ll be appearing today on WNYC’s Soundcheck with John Schaefer at 2:00 p.m. ET for a debate about simulcasts and what they hold for performing arts groups. Most folks are likely well aware of The Metropolitan Opera, which pioneered the efforts but this season sees the influx of big budget orchestras into the mix including the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic…

Per Soundcheck’s program description:

I believe John will be taking calls at one point and you can listen along at the station’s website. The number is 212-433-9692, or people can leave a comment on their website at wnyc.org/soundcheck.

Here’s the audio from today’s segment:

Update, 1:44pm CT: Post Smackdown Thoughts

IT was a fun debate and I’m really glad to see Soundcheck jumping in with this format, I hope other stations will follow suit. But one point I wasn’t able to get in due to time constraints is this: there’s no denying that simulcasts extend the reach of performing arts organizations but if the bigger budget leaders in the field who are jumping into the market sincerely have the field’s best interests at heart, they’ll include  PSA style messages pushing theater goers to attend local, live performances. Even better, they’ll include a list of local ensembles so patrons know where to look.

Without that, I have a hard time believing that this will benefit the field more than a few organizations.

Today marks the final week of the current collective bargaining agreement between the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) and its musicians. Over the past few days, a few articles of note have popped up that are worth your time. The first is from an unusual source in that it is a blog post from someone outside the field…

Published on 8/21/2010 at blogcritics.org, author Joanne Huspek offers commentary on the dispute and potential aftermath in an article titled Detroit Explores the Net Value of a Symphony Musician. Typically, this sort of commentary comes from individuals that actively work inside the business (such as these folks). But Huspek, a Royal Oak, MI resident and self described “aspiring novelist with a day job which makes writing an interesting clandestine tryst” is decidedly outside the usual suspects.

According to her article, she does have a vested interest in the form of “one child who went on to complete his education at a major music conservatory” so it isn’t a surprise that she anticipates a slow decline for the DSO if they implement any of management’s proposals currently on the table. But it is meaningful to see commentary such as this come from new sources. If anything, it is an encouraging sign that people do care about orchestras and classical music enough to get involved.

The second offering is from the 8/19/2010 edition of the Detroit News where Lawrence B. Johnson examines a number of perspectives and options in an article titled Stalled talks and money woes major threat to DSO. Johnson includes insight from me as well as from League of American Orchestras president Jesse Rosen and American Federation of Musicians president Ray Hair.

Rosen and Hair take unsurprising positions with the former adopting an it’s-not-our-fault tone by emphasizing the economic downturn and a decline in interest in the arts while the latter focuses on the musicians’ willingness to offer concessions but not to permanently subsidize “management’s failures.”

Although deadlines loom at the end of this week, that’s a comparatively long time in the realm of eleventh hour collective bargaining so don’t be surprised if it’s a bumpy ride.

Properdiscord.com recently posted a video entitled A conversation with an orchestra website preceded by the following description: “I was looking at orchestra websites today. They annoyed me. I started to wonder what they would say if they could talk.” True that. And the resulting video is laugh out loud hilarious. With the annual orchestra website reviews about a month away this video couldn’t appear at a better time so take a moment and watch the video…

I love the fact that the patron simply wants to know about that evening’s concert but can’t get the info from the website. Since the very first orchestra website review, the single most important review category is the ability for website users to find information about the upcoming concert and buy a ticket right from the home page. If that entire process takes more than five minutes, then your website user interface needs some redesigning.

It’s nice to see the validation and if Properdiscord’s video doesn’t help drive that point home then you might be beyond hope (or it might simply be an indication that you don’t have a sense of humor).

This is definitely becoming a design resource within the Venture Platform’s resource material!

Addendum: I neglected to thank Jacob Harrison for posting this on my Facebook wall to begin with. My apologies!