Tom asks what social networking companies I was referring to in my previous post.
I was thinking of projects such as Digg, Flavorpill, Xanga, MySpace, Pitchfork, YouTube, Flkr, NewsVine - even Yahoo Media, which has abandoned plans to be a big producer of video content in favor of giving its users the ability to produce and share content for the site. All of these companies are building interactive communities where the roles within the community are varied and changing. Sometimes you're the consumer, sometimes you're the artist, sometimes you're both. People make a bigger investment in these communities when they feel like participants in some way rather than passive bystander.
One of the most successful of these, by the way is Harlequin Romance, which has an elaborate and high-trafficked site that helps aspiring romance novelists to write their own books, post stories, ask for help, and interact with the publisher and its writers. The site helps these visitors imagine themselves as writers, treats them seriously and hooks them up with others who care about these books. They become seriously loyal to Harlequin and part of its core audience.
Wouldn't You Love To Write Trashy Romance Novels?
Thomas Cabaniss
Thinking about these interactive networks on the web and John Shibley's exhortation to think more deeply, radically about intentions and beliefs makes me realize how incrementally tentative we can be in the orchestra world. Perhaps a more drastic reimagining could help point us in more productive directions.
What if there were an orchestra that was a flexible ensemble, performing equal amounts chamber music, early music, (perhaps an even greater proportion of) new music, education concerts for all ages, and defined its mission as an artistic/educational institution on a 50/50 basis? (admittedly, sounding a lot like St Luke's) And what if this ensemble did not perform concerts but mounted participatory events that combined aspects of concertizing, multi-disciplinary explorations and network building, drawing on some of the groundbreaking work of the Berlin Phil's ed department...Would you want to come to events like those?