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February 11, 2010 - Grand Rapids, Michigan Unsocial Media The Arts Council of Greater Grand Rapids launched a nice new Web site on Monday that's apparently being viewed by some in the local media as a "win-win-lose" situation. The winners: arts groups and cultural arts goers. The losers: the media. OK, I guess if my business model was as played out as 'LAV's copy of Zeppelin IV, or if I relied on Google AdWords to make a living, well, I would be jumpy, too. But the passive-aggressive response from some of these outlets approaches Mel Gibson-goofy. Here's the deal: The new whatsyourartgr.com site is an old-school web portal for local arts organizations. Each of the 60 or so groups on the site has an individual page where they can visually highlight their offerings, feed their Twitter/Facebook content and link to their ticket provider. There's even a "last-minute deals" section where consumers can find cheap tickets to local shows and there's a handy calendar where you can search all the artsy goings-on in Grand Rapids. The public-facing reaction from the local media: "Meh." Let me translate that collective, badly faked yawn for you: "OMG, the Arts Council has a new online calendar and that's competition! We need to own the listings biz, and be the go-to calendar resource." Seriously? Events calendars are kind of like what chai was in the '90s. For a while, the places that had it were destinations, and they sold more biscotti as a result. Now, you can probably get a good chai at the post office or from that guy who hangs out at the fish ladder. Chai isn't a differentiator any more. Neither are event calendars... duh. Here's the thing. Most of us in the local media have calendars stuffed with listings of what's going on in town. Some of us have online versions. REVUE has one. The GR Press has one. GRNow is one, for all intents and purposes. What you'll find on each of these calendars is, plus or minus, the same information, but here's the rub: We each do our own. Or, to be more precise, thousands of hours of intern time are spent each month compiling calendar information for media companies in West Michigan. That's dumb. A redundant, low-value business practice as my consulting friends would call it. Another secret: All of these different people calling, faxing, e-mailing and re-entering the same information over and over results in mistakes. And then arts groups have to call and corrections get made and sometimes those are wrong and the whole thing is a big mess. The people who put them together would rather remove their pineal gland with a butter knife. Trust me. When my editor, Brian Edwards, interviewed Caroline Older of the Arts Council for the story REVUE did about the new whatsyourartgr.com website, he told her: "It would be great if you could syndicate all the arts listing information and send it digitally to all the media in town. West Michigan interns would be in your debt." She reportedly agreed and said they would look into it. And a great "Hosanna" was heard from interns across the land. And why wouldn't the Arts Council share their information? The reason they put the whatsyourartgr.com site together in the first place is to help market local arts organizations in a tough economy. The Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs recently announced it was slashing its funding for arts groups by 70 percent. While the GR Arts Council can't bridge that funding gap directly, it can help local arts groups sell some tickets. But first, you've got to know what show is playing today. Stad DiPonzi writes the "Mean & Sober" column for REVUE West Michigan. He also provides open-source consulting to arts, business and media organizations on how to leverage their synergies in a paradigm-shifting global economy. If you are interested in blogging for the "Diary", please email us at: grandrapidssocialdiary@gmail.com Are you in? "Art Battle" ~ photography by Tim Motley Diary Entry: February 10, 2010
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