the experience of airlines, before you get anywhere near the airport

I stumbled across this guy, who designs websites, and got so angry with his poor experience on the American Airlines website, he critiqued it, redesigned it, and sent them a letter about it. He's a smart guy - he rightly points out that we're at the point with marketing and technology that a poor website design, that does not provide for easy navigation, usability, and sale of services, is beyond useless, but detrimental to a company; it not only limits revenue possibility, but damages the brand.

As a part of my job at the NCTA, I book airline travel for our contract staff, up to 70 flights for a single event. Airlines prices are way down this season - fewer people are traveling for vacation, fewer companies can afford to have employees travel for business. It's not a good time to be an airline.

Curtis points out that "new, young, and innovative" airlines like JetBlue and Virgin America gain repeat business and thus market share by providing an "excellent customer experience."

What is the excellent customer experience? I might argue that once you're at the check in counter, and especially once you're on the plane, the service is all about the same. All the airlines pass out peanuts, and have equally educated pilots and polite attendants - no real difference there. The airline's only real chance to differentiate themselves is before you're provided the service - when you're making the ticket purchase, that is, when you're on the website. They differentiate themselves by how difficult or easy they make this process, and the emotions they inspire when the traveler is making a reservation. Do they feel calm and confident? Or stressed; bogged down with tedious search functions, nebulous options, and unclear pricing? This experience of booking a ticket may turn a consumer totally on, or totally off, to your brand (exactly as Curtis claimed it did for him). And consumers are both emotional and loyal - once they don't get a good feeling from your brand, or don't connect with it as a part of their identity, they'll quickly develop a disdain for it, and probably tell all their friends to do the same.

Who knew we'd come to a point where the actual product we're paying for is all homogeneous. It's the high or low quality of the free experience we get beforehand that determines which brand we prefer. This isn't always true - quality of actual experience certainly counts...sometimes. But more often, it's all in the packaging; the feeling we get when engaging with the company's image.

The essence of programming, and a roadtrip mix

Program is an overused, tired word - anyone can call anything a program. But in the context of the arts, there's a big difference between a quality program and a pointless one, or a season being well or poorly programmed: How well did we really communicate with the audience? Did we do anything to bring new light to the work? Did the art presented mean something together, as a body of work?

A programmer for a presenting arts organization, for an outdoor music festival, say, or a performing arts center, selects work from a variety of sources, to be presented to the public as a collection. A good programmer presents some background information: here's why these works were selected - here's what they mean in context of each other - here is why this work is artistically important, and what we are trying to do for the world by presenting it - here are the themes and ideas that can be extracted from each individually and as a group - and here's what I hope you'll be able to take away from seeing them together. For a producing organization, this function is performed by the artistic director, who selects the work the company will perform that year. At a museum, this job is done by the curator, who selects different individual works and puts them together to create an an exhibit focused on a time period, or theme, or genre.

The important thing, I think, is this: A programmer does not just select random work and set it before the audience, hoping for magical fireworks of understanding, but rather uses his background and expertise to give information, a short, informal education to the audience about the work (plural) and its relevance as a collection.

I went to a concert here in DC of the University of Michigan Men's Glee Club spring tour, in which my brother was singing. I was struck by how extraordinarily well their director, Dr. Paul Rardin, programs and presents the program to the audience. The concert was split into sections, with themes such as "House of God" and "Youth and Pleasure" and "Love and Water" which would otherwise seem nebulous to an audience not well-versed in the music. With Rardin's brief, insightful explanations before each section, however, the audience became privy to the intricacies of sound to listen for, the meaning of foreign-language lyrics, and the connection between the varied cultural traditions from which the songs originated - it was impressive how much meaning was packed into what could otherwise seem to be a simple selection of songs. I could look around and see by the delighted faces responding positively to his witty remarks, many were able to better enjoy and understand the music. A true expert and excellent programmer - who prioritizes not only the music, but equally important, the audience's appreciation for it.

So Rardin being a good example of a programmer, I am truly a lower-end one, but here is my lesser quality example that illustrates my new idea about programming at its simplest:

My mom and I went on a road trip to her home state of Nebraska a few weeks ago to see our family and say goodbye to my grandpa's house. For the twelve-hour car ride west on highway 80, I put together a burned CD for her, made up of songs about "home, travel, and leaving," I called it. Its tone was a solemn one. I pointed out the lyrics to her, "one more song about moving along the highway" in So Far Away, and "Home where my thought's escaping" in Homeward Bound. And as she said, "You know how much I love Carole King!" I said back, "Well, it's my small attempt at programming."

And then it occurred to me, I think the mixed tape (I'm just barely old enough, but I did indeed make mixed tapes in the 90s before CDs came out) is one of the greatest rudimentary programming endeavors that we've all tried our hand at. You put together a collection of carefully selected works with a common theme or story, and hand it off to someone else with a perhaps fumbled explanation, hoping the collective message, if you've communicated it accurately, will be as meaningful to them as it is to you.

Well-informed Giving

I have a few brave friends going into Development, or plainly, fundraising. We've learned both in study and practice, I think, that donors and philanthropists are becoming more hip, more aware, and more investigative regarding the organizations to whom they give their money (and rightfully so!) I was reminded of our discussions about this trend when I stumbled across this website: http://www.charitynavigator.org/. They are non-profit themselves, and have earned numerous accolades since their 2001 inception for their endeavors in evaluating and publishing financial health information on charities, to help donors make better decisions. They specifically report on how responsibly a charity functions day to day, and how well it is positioned to sustain its programs over time. There are "top 10" lists of different qualities - some fun ones such as "10 Highly-Rated Charities with Low Paid CEOs" and "10 Charities Drowning in Administrative Costs" (Jobs with Justice, and Boys Choir of Harlem tops this list).

New Radicals

Today, I read about Julia Moulden, who has authored an idea called "New Radicals" about how regular, everyday people can change the work they do to make a living, to help save the world. She alludes to social entrepreneurship, but approaches everyone's ability to give back more broadly. I liked this column, where she poses six questions for "Emerging New Radicals" because as I read them, I found them quite similar to the questions I posed to myself when I decided to go to grad school for arts admin a couple years ago: How can I contribute seriously to the world I am a part of? What do I love to do, what am I good at, and what things meet both qualifications? Now, what do I need to do to get there? Answering these questions for myself keeps me focused. I want to be a festival director; because I believe art and community activity have the ability to greatly influence quality of life for many people; I like to organize, coordinate, think, plan, and execute. A graduate degree will give me good preparation to do these things, in both the title and knowledge it totes. Focusing on these questions also has prepared me with a decent response when people ask, "Arts what? Administration? Is that, like, museums?" I always happily explain, and almost always get, "Wow, what a cool job." I am so very fortunate to have found something I like, I'm decent at, and that makes a contribution.

Tax time

I am a very lucky kid, and my mom helps me fill out my taxes. I better learn fast, though, because now all 501(c)3 non-profits are required to file taxes (it used to be only those with income over $25,000, and those of us working at really small non-profits didn't have to worry about it). Now those with less than $25,000 need to file a simplified version of the 990, called a 990-N, or an e-Postcard. The IRS website says, "The Pension Protection Act of 2006 added this filing requirement to ensure that the IRS and potential donors have current information about your organization." Interestingly, though, they're not due until a month after everyone else's tax day: "The e-Postcard is due every year by the 15th day of the 5th month after the close of your tax year" (so May 15, presuming your tax year ends Dec 31). Last year was the first year this was required.

Logo heaven at Danziger Projects

I'm working on designing logos for a couple things right now, and in reading for my last post, I looked up the Danziger Projects in New York City. (They're the ones selling Garcia photos that the Obama Hope poster was based on, for $1200.) What they have that is even more interesting, is an exhibition of graphics and art from the Obama campaign, including a draft page of early-on possible logos. I maintain his campaign is one of the most brilliant marketing stunts of recent history. Seeing the preliminary sketches, as a designer, is awesome.

Shepard Fairey and the Obama poster

This flashed me right back to Langvardt's art law class.

Artist Shepard Fairey is the creator of the famous Obama "hope" poster. But the high-contrast, red and blue shadowed images were apparently based on an Associated Press photograph, taken by freelance photographer Mannie Garcia. (Additionally, there still seems to be some contention about who holds the copyright between Garcia and the AP, but we might suppose Garcia took the photo on a work-for-hire basis granting the AP the copyright). The parties sued and counter-sued, and I've google-news searched it and I can't find any results. So the question stands: did Fairey violate copyright law?

Fairey's poster is a derivative work, and only the owner of a copyright maintains the right to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work. Strike, he's out?

Fairey might argue "fair use." Fair use includes use "by reproduction...for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching..., scholarship, or research..." and is not considered copyright violation, meaning you can use someone else's work without permission and without paying them if you're using it for these purposes. Fairey might claim commentary, but this wouldn't be obvious without his explanation. These four factors must also be considered in determining if the use of a work is fair use: (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes (Purpose of the original was to report the news, the purpose of the derivative was to influence a campaign and project an opinionated image of a candidate, giving the derivative some transformative boasting rights; that said, Fairey sold his posters and kept the money); (2) the nature of the copyrighted work (the photograph had been published); (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole (derivative used one of the two significant features of the photograph); and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work (use has definitely INCREASED, not damaged, the market value for the original work to $1,200 apiece for prints).

What do we think?

I might argue an additional consideration is that Fairey's Obama image is not so obviously derived from Garcia's photo, until you put them side by side. Obama is a consistent looking guy, generally lacking any drastic facial expressions - most photos of him look similar. A talented arist could render an image of him that looks seemingly identical to a thousand pictures of him. Garcia himself did not recognize Fairey's image as a derivative of his own. A Reuters photo by Jim Young was so similar, the photo was incorrectly reported as the source of the poster image, for some time. Fairey used only a portion of the original photograph; if the original was a zoom-in on Obama's face, it might be different.

Copyright infringment is qualified by three factors: (1) access to the original work can be proven (Fairey found the pic on google. Check.), (2) there was copying of the distinct expression of the original work, not just the idea, or style, (Maybe...AP/Garcia has a copyright on the composition of the photo, not on Obama's facial features and posture.) and (3) the substantial similarity to the original work is evident – that is, there is enough copying that it could not seem coincidental to an average observer (The buck stops here....) If I looked at Garcia's original photo, and all other Obama photos, and realized as I have that his facial expression is about the same, the copying of the head tilt in Fairey's poster would probably seem coincidental to me. It's not; Fairey did use Garcia's pic. But it took months for anyone to notice, and hours for image searchers to put the two together.

Arts supporters walk a fine line regarding which way we wish copyright law to fall - both sides are worthy of support: 1) you want intellectual property to be protected so artists can make a living from what they create, and have incentive to create, but 2) you don't want it too strict, so other artists can make new art from old art and not stiffle new work.