Introduction to Project Audience 2013

Collaborating with communities to connect individuals with creative experiences

We realized that cultural

communities have been working

in isolation, spending large sums

of money from small budgets in

order to come up with the exact

same solutions to engage

audiences. Since day one, Project

Audience put our faith in the

power of collaboration and the

economy of developing

technology for the common good.

Kelly Tweeddale, Chair

Project Audience Board of Directors

“

“Harps and Angels” at the Center Theatre Group/Mark Taper Forum (Los Angeles, CA)

Source: Arts and Cultural Alliance of Central Florida

SECTION I: BACKGROUND

Project Audience is a community of practice committed to

helping build lasting connections with audiences through

arts and culture.

Our core strategy involves developing collaborative,

affordable, sustainable technologies to help local, regional,

and national arts organizations support activities and

services that will encourage more people to be involved in

the arts.

BACKGROUND WHAT IS PROJECT AUDIENCE?

4

2009

Project launch, community-focused planning and discussion

2010

Research and development for a technology solution

2011

Development of a business plan and the concept for a pilot project

BACKGROUND HISTORY OF THE PROJECT

2012

Launch of a one-year pilot project in Southern California

5

2013-14

Implementation of Project Audience platform and research in communities across the U.S.

Project Audience is for:

Individual Arts And Cultural Organizations(Theaters, Orchestras, Museums, Etc.)

Arts Service Organizations

Convention And Visitors Bureaus

Ticketing Agencies

Researchers And Arts Advocacy Groups

Media And Journalists

Artists and Creative Professionals

Technologists

Cultural Philanthropists

BACKGROUND WHO WE SERVE

6

The work of Project Audience is guided by a national Board of

Directors, as well as by input and ideas contributed by

members of the national arts and culture community. Board

members represent communities of different sizes,

demographics, and locations, including Central Florida, Los

Angeles, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Seattle.

Subcommittees of the Board, including committees for

Communications, Development, Governance, and Technology,

in collaboration with the project’s Program Director, oversee

the daily work of the project. Membership on most

subcommittees is open to all members of the community.

BACKGROUND WHO WE ARE

7

ExperienceSoCal, was an 18-month project to develop a model

toolset for an online arts and culture resource. It was built on the

existing solution developed for the ExperienceLA portal, a project

of the City and County of Los Angeles.

BACKGROUND SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA PILOT 2012-13

8

Develop easy to use tools to allow arts and culture

organizations to contribute, manage, and publish

event information.

Test robustness of tools at the regional level and

assess their scalability at the national level.

Engage the national arts and culture community in

discussion about the tools and their value.

Survey participants and the national arts community

on their data.

Research implications for and potential of project

data for audience development and arts advocacy.

BACKGROUND PILOT PROJECT GOALS

9

Experience LA.com

LA Stage Alliance

Arts Orange County

Artsopolis

Balboa Park Online Collaborative, San Diego

Patron Manager (ticketing integration)

BACKGROUND SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA PILOT PARTNERS

10


SECTION II TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY

Developed during the Southern California pilot project, the

Project Audience-Civic Connect Platform provides arts

organizations with affordable, easy-to-use tools for

publishing event information and other content,

customizing individual websites, reaching mobile users, and

participating in large-scale data analysis and research.

TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY THE PROJECT AUDIENCE SOLUTION

12

TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY THE PROJECT AUDIENCE-CIVIC CONNECT

PLATFORM

Core Features

Microsites

Reporting

Mobile

Social Media/Marketing

Events calendar

Filtering

RSS

Interactive map

Local Transit

TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW

14


Core Features

Microsites

Reporting

Mobile


The microsite builder allows contributors to develop simple calendars for specialized audiences, festivals, and other events

15


Reporting tools include a customizable interactive dashboard that provides snapshot views of the cultural landscape of Southern California as well as traditional analytics for contributors

Core Features

Microsites

Reporting

Mobile


16


Core Features

Microsites

Reporting

Mobile


The site has been developed using responsive design techniques, resulting in a mobile-optimized site that should make the need to develop mobile apps redundant

17


Core Features

Microsites

Reporting

Mobile

Social Media/Marketin

g

The site provides full social media integration and can be customized to produce email newsletters, advertising, and content licensing

18

Administrative

Interface

TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY CONTRIBUTING & MANAGING INFORMATION

19

The robust distributed

publishing environment is

supported by an intuitive

administrative backend that

is designed to allow non-

technical contributors to

manage content and

administer multi-level user

roles and permissions with

ease.

Contributing Data


20

Data can be contributed in

several different ways: through

fully automated or semi-

automated processes, and via

traditional manual data entry.

The project’s goals was to

create an ingestion toolset that

can scale up with ease; the

toolset includes easy-to-use API

mapping tools for integrating

custom APIs.

Normalizing and

Deduplicating Data


21

A data management layer,

which includes behind-the-

scenes scripts for normalizing

and de-duping records,

optimizes efforts already

undertaken by organizations

on their own data streams and

facilitates the ingest of

records arriving from multiple

datastreams.

Filtering

TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY DISPLAYING INFORMATION

22

The system’s robust

filtering capabilities

provide patrons with a

highly personalized

experience. The filters

(for event type,

audience,

accessibility, and

budget) are easy to

map to and

administer in the

administrative

interface.

Transit and Maps

Integrated transit information that

shows public transit routes to events

can be presented. Neighborhood

maps highlight culturally-rich areas

for patrons planning a night out.

TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY DISPLAYING INFORMATION

23

SECTION III RESEARCH


RESEARCH LA CULTURAL BENCHMARKING

PROJECT


A research project developed in concert with our Los Angeles pilot

project explored the question, “What is the full extent of cultural

production in L.A.?” by attempting to create a comprehensive dataset

representing all of the cultural events in L.A. during a one-month

period.

The events we collected—spanning culture from high to low,

professional to amateur—constituted a much larger set than those

contributed to the ExperienceLA.com resource, and led us to believe

that, using a mixed-method collection process, it might be possible to

create a sustainable, comprehensive, real-time database of cultural

events that would have profound implications for urban planners,

cultural producers and policymakers, funders, and, of course, patrons of

the arts, including tourists, families, and students.

Read more about our research at: www.projectaudience.org/research

SECTION IV WHERE ARE WE GOING NEXT?


WHAT’S NEXT? REFINING OUR TOOLS AND

METHODS


A hosted version of the Project Audience-Civic

Connect platform will be released in 2014, making it

possible for communities of all sizes to adopt the

Project Audience toolset.

We are currently working to release the functional

specification and platform documentation, as

well as the software code.

New functionality will be added to the platform as

additional partners join the community of users.

WHAT’S NEXT? NEW PARTICIPANTS


In 2014, Project Audience expects to announce a new

membership model that encourages participation

in our discussions and activities, regardless of

whether you or your organization is using the Project

Audience-Civic Connect toolset.

We continue to look for interested members of the

arts community to participate in the work of our

subcommittees (communications, development,

technology and, coming soon, research and

standards).

We encourage researchers interested in working

with our events dataset and cultural organizations

interested in discussing our work on standards

for expression of event information to contact us.

WHAT’S NEXT? REGIONAL ROLLOUTS


We are actively seeking to partner with new

communities interested in adopting our tools or

joining our research efforts as we plan a series of

regional rollouts.

The ideal partner will be committed to working with

a local community of arts producers and patrons to

create a long-term plan to support data collection

and contribution, publication, and community

engagement.

We hope that the next communities to implement the

Project Audience-Civic Connect platform will bring

fresh ideas for modifying the existing

functionality and developing new tools and

services.

Together, the communities that adopt the Project

Audience tools and methods will form the nucleus of

an ongoing conversation about best practices for

audience engagement.

REGIONAL ROLLOUTS CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS

The ideal regional rollout partner should have some

or most of the following resources already in place:

Good, clean, rich data (Data, Data, Data!)

Strong connections with its local community,

including municipal partners and a well developed

local/regional network

Marketing, outreach, and training/support resources

On-the-ground capacity (staffing)

A strategy/plan that recognizes the ways in which

aggregating and presenting event data serve the

partner and its community

Budget, resources, and a plan for sustainability

www.projectaudience.org

[email protected]

@projectaudience

CONTACT US

31

We welcome your ideas and input! Visit our website or

contact us at the coordinates below for more information

about our work and how you can participate in it.

http://www.projectaudience.org/

mailto:[email protected]