Reports and presentations "New Technologies for New Audiences"

Day 1 – morning sessions: The Cloud – on technology as a remedy for cultural choice stress

1.1   Keynote: “The Cloud and the Crowd”
Gert Nulens (SMIT)

Gert Nulens analyses in what ways digitization of the cultural sector can both intensify and spread participation in culture. Therefore culture and cultural technologies will (have to) become digital, decentralized, driveable, standardized, sustainable and social. But we are still afraid of copyright issues, commercial use and competences. As soon these new technologies are available, we will use them instrumental, innovative and institutional.

The experience will be new for users, while they will take a role themselves in crowdsourcing. The ‘crowd’ will provide content transcription, contextualization, complementing, classification…

1.2   UiTid: Your personal guide to the leisure landscape
Luk Verhelst (CultuurNet Vlaanderen)

An explosive growth in leisure options combined with the proliferation of information resources could tip us over into choice paralysis and procrastination. Data segmentation and editorial selection (push) can help. The UiTid application shows how technology can help people interested in art and culture choose even more easier from all the available alternatives. This new tool analyses the user’s web behaviour to provide custom leisure recommendations. By applying a single profile to a network of different cultural sites, the program builds an increasingly content-rich database of user tastes and preferences as the foundation for a cultural recommendation engine.

Luk Verhelst: @LukV

1.3   Musical stepping stones in the library: Bib.fm
Johan Mijs (Bibnet) and Lotte De Bruyne (Ladda)

Bib.fm is a brand new music streaming service for the public libraries of Flanders, and is currently being tested in the library in Lanaken (see http://lanaken.bib.fm). The library’s catalogue provides access to its music collection as downloadable steams, and library members are allotted 10 listening hours of complete tracks and albums per month. The music is enhanced by extensive metadata from Aristo Music, a Flemish music company specializing in the creation of musical contexts. The metadata allows music-lovers to search for tracks by language, country, instrument, popularity, genre etc.

To evaluate the pilot project, Bib.fm commissioned Ladda, a centre of expertise in youth culture, to test the service on 10 young users in the age group 14 to 25. The studyyielded a good crop of opinions and was a working source of new visions for the project.

Day 1 – afternoon sessions: The Crowd – on technology as a means for developing lasting relations with the public

2.1   Riding the wave of social networking
Martijn Verver (Headline Interactive, NL)

The world has changed: consumers have the power, marketeers lost control. Old-school marketing tactics don’t suffice anymore. Everybody is a critic and there are countless opportunities to express your opinion on the web. Your audience is online for three reasons: collaboration, participation and reputation. That’s why you should direct and take part in this conversation on the web: start observing your audience, facilitate their conversation, interact and energize, embrace your audience. Examples of Porsche, Rotterdam theatre, Royal Opera House in London and Punkband Van Katoen illustrate this approach can really work.

Martijn Verver: @tyno

2.2   Experts and non-experts: what can they tell us?
Harry van Vliet (Cross-Media Lab, Utrecht)

The broad sector of heritage started to follow a strategy of making hidden cultural assets accessible to the general public. Current digital technologies like social tagging and digital storytelling can turn your passive public into collective knowledge and information repository. Almost everyone in the heritage sector is digitizing their collections. Recent research reveals the added value of tagging by the crowd: laymen do use the same kind of tags and in 50% of the cases with the same words as experts would do. On the other hand experts don’t add more tags than laymen and they use more unique tags neither. Tagging by laymen is very suitable for the retrievability of objects. In the end experts stay valuable because their tags are giving more info. And always remember: don’t jump for the tool, keep your goal in mind!

Harry van Vliet: @vanvliet (no active user of Twitter anymore)

Cross-Media Lab: @CrossmediaLab_

2.3   The public as sparring partner
Karen vander Plaetse (Vooruit)

The hosts, Vooruit, like to stay ahead of the trend especially when it comes to public interaction. One of the first new strategies employed by the art centre was to dynamize their relation with the Flemish public through the internet. They putted the audience in the driver seat. Programme makers began doubling as conversation managers, and opinion statements by members of the public were soon embedded into the centre’s communications.

Karen vander Plaetse revealed the lessons they learned: listen to your audience, appreciate the complaints and interaction and engage your audience. It would be easy since you will have to convince your organisation to use social media, you’ll have to face the 5 no’s and fight the resistance you will certainly come across.

Karen vander Plaetse: @karen18

2.4   The public as co-creator
Bart Becks (SonicAngel)

Bart Becks wanted to be an entrepreneur and create chances for youngsters. He started a music label with crowd funding. A lot of people were applying to ben in it. So they build a social media solution to measure the success of the applicants. The crowd is now part of their team at SonicAngel. Fans are putted up front, they determine the projects that get funding. They don’t market things and create fans, they have fans and detect what they want.

Already some lessons learned: they started to quickly. They had to stop because the success of one of the participants. It’s important that your organisation is ready to scale. Social media is goof for creating a buzz, but traditional media (like mail, print, tv…) are still needed since they give a higher conversion.

Bart Becks: @BartBecks

2.5 There’s an app for that!

In the short interludes between sessions, Bruno Koninckx (Memori) presented 5 software applications for portable devices.

Bruno Koninckx: @BrunoKon

Day 2 – morning sessions: All Aloud / All Allowed – on the potential of technology to reach new target groups, including those who are hard to reach

3.1   Technology for cultural profit
Eric Goubin (Memori)

When you introduce technology, you have to take some do’s and don’ts in account. As sender you need to know your audience, know your readiness for social media, open your data, develop a testing policy and structurally stimulate experiments and pilots. Regarding your audience you need to know that the while digital divide is narrowing, the information maturity divide is broading. Youngsters traditionally combine the newest (affordable) and the oldest medium (mouth to mouth), but also the elderly are using new technologies as well. It’s all about profiling: you need a diversity of communication per target group (including ethnic minorities) For deprived people proximity communication is key. Furthermore you need to have insight in the real coverage of your channels. PIP’s (personal internet page) can be an answer to information overload (carpet bombing). Bear in mind to select your channels with respect for your goals and where your audience is, without overinvesting in one medium or underinvesting in other media. Finally take your message into account: give the right amount of information with some storytelling while you mind your language and tone of voice. Look for the right balance between attractiveness of the channel and effectiveness of the message and make your audience knows about your communication.

Eric Goubin: @EricGoubin

3.2   Incluso Manual – Technology in relation to opportunities for cultural expression by socially vulnerable youth
Wouter Van Den Bosch (Lessius Mechelen/IBBT) and Jan Dekelver (Katholieke Hogeschool Kempen)

The European Project Incluso brought together four pilot project partners, from Austria, Belgium, Poland and Scotland respectively, to study how social media could be applied in the day-to-day work of these organizations.

Wouter Van Den Bosch and Jan Dekelver illustrate that there can be a match between social work, youngsters and ICT. Let the youngsters tell you what to do. Take into account that there will be hits and misses and you need creativity to preserve the privacy of the children while organisational embedding is a (necessary) time investment. Some tools are still needed: better social software tools, better measurement tools and a modernised legislation for privacy and ethical issues.

Wouter Van Den Bosch: @mindwraps

3.3   Smart cards for boosting cultural attendance
Frederik Bastiaensen (City of Antwerp) and Bart Temmerman (CultuurNet Vlaanderen)

Frederik Bastiaensen and Bart Temmerman explain the ins and outs of using a smart card for audience development. A card for everyone is the best guarantee to encourage people living in poverty too. Such general card holds benefits for the users (discounts and tips), venues (more visitors, visitor insights and more possibilities for development of hard to reach groups) and cultural policy makers (insights and increased participation of vulnerable social groups).

First experiences with the Antwerp card make the ingredients for successful actions clear: card infrastructure, attractive activities, advantages for using the card (= main reason to buy the card) and communication. Statistics show that successful actions have a direct effect on usage of the card (collecting and using points) and participation.

CultuurNet Vlaanderen is now deploying a pilot in the test region of Aalst. The project will be evaluated in 2013. At that point the Flemish authority will decide whether or not to deploy the UiTpas card system throughout the rest of Flanders. Already at this stage it is clear that such an operation is huge (infrastructure, communication, benefits, organisational change…) for every local partner or region again. So the UiTPAS project is a as ambitious as challenging.

Frederik Bastiaensen: @fbastiaensen

Bart Temmerman: @BartTemmerman

3.4   Opera at the Cinema: new satellite technology for the distribution of artistic products in a commercial context
Karen Van Riet (Kinepolis)

Opera at the Cinema was launched in 2007 and allows cinema audiences to enjoy live opera performances at the Metropolitan Opera in New York live in high definition. Season by season, Opera at the Cinema is growing in popularity and the Kinepolis Group is expanding the range it offers.

Opera at the Cinema is an exclusive concept with live transmission and subtitling in English and French. Vistors can choose from 3 formulas of subscription. Before the performance the audience gets a welcome drink, a free leaflet and introduction. During the break they can enjoy a live ‘Behind the scenes’ and can buy quality catering. It‟sallaboutofferingagreat&qualitativeexperience. The audience is reached via classic media like radio, print, online and partnerships but most of all word of mouth and PR are the best ways of promotion. Cross-over promotion with ballet and theatre is starting.

The audience generally is older than 55 years (59,5%), highly educated (67%) and 36% is retired. Many know the concept through friends and family (33%). Opera in the Cinema reaches a „die hard‟ opera audience (35 à 44% who already frequently went to a (live) opera) but the concept also attracts an important segment of „opera lovers‟ who are still developing their interest in opera. Ther’s also an audience of 12% who only goes to „Opera at the cinema‟ (and never to a classic opera). The same survey made clear that the cross-over to movies is negative: 50% doesn’t go to the movies frequently. Conclusion: Opera/Culture at the cinema is complementary to the real theatres and opera houses but audience isn’t necessarily interested in going to a normal movie screening.

Kinepolis: @Kinepolis