2,272 stories by "Joe Patti"
Last week Kacy O’Brien discussed an alternative model for conferences on HowlRound. She describes the Open Space Technology conference model as the coffee break segment of a conference…
Last month Non-Profit Quarterly addressed a timely topic I found extremely interesting: In a time when so many non-profits are being formed, but haven’t grown to the point of having a …
Simone Joyaux recently posted her The Donor-Centric Pledge on Non-Profit Quarterly. There are about 23 statements against which you can measure your organization’s practices. A good ma…
There was an article on Salon this weekend which noted that while people in creative fields are facing increasingly difficult times, the amount of literature/media celebrating creativity con…
So this week I learned that it is really a good idea to create a good relationship with your local librarians. Google may provide you with a lot of information, but it still ain’t got …
In a post Seth Godin made today, he says: The easiest way to disagree with someone …is to assume that they are uninformed, and that once they know what you know, they will change their…
Last month on Americans for the Arts’ Arts Blog, Elizabeth Laskowski, wrote about how she welcomed standardized testing for the arts because it was making her school finally take her s…
I didn’t know what to write about today. I have a bunch of articles bookmarked, but I haven’t read enough of any of of them to do them justice. I have a bunch of stories I want t…
The Drucker Exchange quotes an article in Bloomberg Businessweek claiming "truly passionate U.S. employees" make up "a scant 11% of the workforce." My first reaction was to wonder if the art…
So tonight is the first event in the season at my new job, a concert by a group called Cordis which bills their music as chamber-rock. Now if you are asking, “what the heck is chamber-…
Would you volunteer for a non-profit if there was a better chance of becoming employed? Would you do it if you were forced to? If you were a non-profit, would you welcome either set of volun…
Apropos of my post yesterday about community engagement, the term has so recently been bandied about as something arts organizations should aspire to, it is easy to forget that it isn’…
I have been reading a fair bit lately accusing arts organizations of paying lip service to the concepts of connecting and building relationships with the community. The suggestion is this is…
You may have heard the phrase, “He who yells first, loses.” This is a rule that is often used in beginning acting classes because anger is an easy emotion to go to when faced by …
There are days like today when I simultaneously feel invigorated to be working in the arts and grossly inadequate for having been remiss in forging relationships and participating in other a…
I know the days of Danny Newman’s subscription parties has probably long past, but I was clearing out some old files a few weeks ago and came across what might be described as an artif…
I just wanted to share this cool video that truly embodies the term “creative placemaking” courtesy of WFPL. Artist Matthew Mazzotta used materials from a blighted house in York,…
Economist Alex Tabarrok has written about the fact that the primary activity of firefighters is no longer fighting fires. Fires are less frequent than in the past thanks to building codes an…
I recently got a little lesson in how easy it is to apply criteria to other people that you resist having applied to yourself. This weekend I was listening to a recent episode of This Americ…
Given that I am working on a university campus, there is always a conversation about how do you get more students to attend performances at the performing arts center. One of the easiest ans…
I was reading an article on The Atlantic about why employers often have a hard time finding workers even during periods of high unemployment. I saw the sentence, “And workers now reall…
So Minnesota Orchestra Association CEO Michael Henson declared that “blogs are senseless and must be ignored,” and he is right. At least in the same sense that people think Congr…
As the summer comes to a close, I wanted to share something that caught my eye back in May. I bookmarked it and looked back at it periodically throughout the summer because I liked the idea …
Hat tip to Jari-Pekka Raitamaa who tweeted an article about mistakes people make when considering founding a tech start up. It occurred to me that the same basic advice could be given to peo…
So here is a question which may seem obsolete in an age of internet and mobile apps: Who is more important, the customer at the window or the customer on the phone? Even though you may not f…
