Audience Engagement Platform

Hello everyone, my name is Ron Evans, and I’m a technology consultant who has worked on various levels of the design of AEP in the past, and recently I was brought back on board to lend a hand in the software testing process. My recent role included leading the interview process of early users of the software, which is always a fascinating experience.

The initial experience that a first-time user has with new software is an incredibly useful event to witness and record. And it only happens once for each person — after that, they are already somewhat aware of the software and how it works. So, user experience testing at this stage is designed to gather the most amount of feedback from users, on all aspects of their experience — things like their thoughts on the look and feel of the software, their expectations on what it should “do,” and how effectively it “does” that at this point in development. Even people’s facial expressions are important if you can get them — they can tell you when someone “doesn’t get it” right away, and how long it takes them to figure “it” out. It’s incredibly interesting from a software design perspective, but even more interesting from a psychological perspective.

For AEP, a number of individual artists and small organizations were invited to participate in this first round of testing. They were given the url and password to the AEP demo site, and asked to create an account, login, play around, create some content, and generally kick the software around a bit and see how it worked.

The testers were split into two groups — one group was given detailed instructions on how to login and do all of these things, and the other was given almost no information. This A/B test was designed to show how easily understood the functionality of this early stage of development was without training for the “B” group, vs. the “hand holding” of the “A” group.

After a set testing period, I contacted the testers individually, and scheduled interview times to meet with them and discuss their experience in AEP. The AEP staff and I had designed a number of questions to ask the testers to help them describe their experience in a way that would create useful feedback for the AEP developers. There were 15 questions, including:

* What do you think AEP is now? What is it being designed to accomplish?
* How do you hope those goals and functionality will fit into your organization?
* What did you think about the look and design of the site? How does it compare to other sites you frequent?

The feedback from the testers was very interesting — it’s remarkable how certain people are very focused on one aspect — say, look & feel — while others are totally focused on some other specific aspect. With the variety of testers we were able to interview, we received a healthy view of how these early users view AEP, and that info will be used to improve the product into the next testing stage.

Sharing a product at an early a stage is always somewhat anxiety-inducing for any developer. But the feedback you receive can offer the potential for detailed levels of course correction that would be too costly to discover later on, as well as validation that the choices you’ve made up to this point in development were ultimately accepted and understood by your users. I’d like to thank the initial testers for their dedication and great feedback, and I look forward to working with them in future testing stages!

Ron

Ron Evans, Principal
Groupofminds.com Arts Marketing Consulting

Aug. 10, 2010, Filed under category Development

A lot of people have been asking me how, as an dance artist, have I become interested in technology and software creation. The way I see it, there are two main types of ways that technology intersects with the arts:

1) in creating access and ways of experiencing the art and

2) as part of the art itself.

Today I thought I’d share a few thoughts on the first, and write more about the second at a later time.

I am both very interested in artistic creation itself, and in the ways that audiences connect with it, and are impacted by it. I believe that audiences are inherently co-producers, in that they bring their own history and ways of seeing to the art as they experience it. Since there are many different kinds of people seeing any single work of art, I aim to create multiple access points which people can choose to augment their overall experience. These are ways that individuals can gain access to the art, creation process, and to the community around the art. Technology provides ways for artists to extend and manage these exchanges for their audiences, which has driven my interest in making the web easier for myself, and for other artists to use.

While I haven’t stopped choreographing for more that six months at a time since I was 14 years old, my undergraduate degree was actually in Public Policy, focusing on federal level involvement in the arts and education. In addition, I spent a lot of time taking and being a teaching assistant for computer science classes, and worked in the Brown University Computer Graphics research group. I started to recognize how creative software programming could be, and even to see some parallels to the choreographic process. While I haven’t personally written software code for years, these above experiences fed my familiarity with and interest in applying the smart use of technology to helping artists on a systems level to involve audiences in realizing their artistic visions.

As the founder of a small dance company in NYC, I experience first-hand the challenges of managing the company, alongside creating art. My interest is to engage our audiences around both the artistic and production process, so that they can feel closer to the experience, and so that artists can both deepen their impact on audiences and benefit from the partnership of audiences in helping to support the growth of their work.

Yes, managing a software development process is quite different from being in the dance studio. But at core, building AEP is about furthering the mission of our artistic work, to create deeper impact on our audiences and to progress the art.

–Chris

Chris Elam
Artistic Director
Misnomer Dance Theater
www.misnomer.org

Jul. 7, 2010, Filed under category Program info

Hey everybody, Chris Elam here, and I wanted to talk a little bit about my recent experience performing and speaking at TedxEast. Are you familiar with the Tedx series? TEDx was created in the spirit of TED’s mission of “ideas worth spreading.” The program is designed to give communities, organizations, and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level. At TEDx events, unique talks given by live speakers combine with TEDTalks videos to spark conversation and connections.

Speaking at TEDx was amazing. I’m a huge fan of the TED video series, and knew that what I shared during my presentation would be viewed by a really large audience from a broad range of backgrounds. I wanted to bring attention to the subject of how we as audiences and artists shape our relationships to the arts, and the opportunities to co-produce and collaborate as active cultural participants. That’s one of the main points of why we wanted to create AEP, and it was an honor to spread the word about the great movement that artists are taking to give audiences more involvement. I was one of seven speakers at the event, including great talks by the founder of MeetUp.com and the CEO of GroundReport.com

It was particularly exciting to perform my dance solo “Cast Iron Crutches” for the audience before I spoke. I think there was something magical in preparing people to talk about the interaction between art and technology by allowing them to see the art and then hear from the artist immediately after. It was a thrilling challenge to dance a 5-minute solo and then change out of my costume in 20 seconds and go directly into speaking for another 5 minutes!  My heart was beating quickly during the talk from having just danced, but that’s live performance, and part of the charm which the audience seemed to enjoy. I’m glad the video captured both live, and I hope you enjoy watching it here:

-Chris

May. 24, 2010, Filed under category Program info

We are pleased to announce that we are starting our alpha testing process. If you have signed up to be part of this process please be patient. We are rolling out a few invites at a time. We are excited by all the requests we have received. If you have not signed up yet please go here and sign up today.

May. 11, 2010, Filed under category Announcements

It was just announced that AEP is one of five arts-related start-ups chosen to present in the ART START-UPS SHOWCASE at the Social Media Art Camp (SMartCAMP) conference this weekend in NYC.

We are delighted to give a “sneak peek” at AEP, on the eve of beginning alpha testing with a select group of artists. AEP is projected to have its public launch later this year, so sign up now on the “Connect With AEP” tab above to keep updated! See below for info on attending and to read about the other great presenters!

ART START-UPS SHOWCASE
When: Sun, Mar 7, 2010 12:00 PM – Sun, Mar 7, 2010 12:45 PM
This session will feature a diverse selection of some of the best arts-related start-ups New York City’s innovative technology community has to offer. Each presenter will have 5 minutes to deliver an overview of their product and demonstrate its significance to the cultural sector. Presenters include:

THE AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT PLATFORM FOR THE ARTS (AEPlatform.org)
AEP is an open-source platform that helps artists design and efficiently manage their relationships with audiences, while giving individual audience members exciting ways to interact with artists and the arts. AEP aims to extend the meaningful moment of the live performance and transform how art fits into our daily lives. Created by and for artists, AEP is developed for the arts fields by Misnomer Dance Theater, a dance company based in Brooklyn, New York.

AVIARY
Aviary is a pioneering and leading provider of fully web-based design tools. With a suite of digital creation software available as an online service, Aviary offers a simple and cost-effective solution for creators of all genres – from graphic design to audio editing – to produce, modify, and share digital creations. Based in New York and backed by leading investors and visionaries such as Spark Capital, Jeff Bezos, Joi Ito and Reid Hoffman among others, Aviary is changing the way digital assets are created and distributed online.

TOURA
Toura’s mission is to be the leading technology platform for the efficient and cost-effective creation and distribution of smartphone-based mobile guides for the travel and tourism industry and its customers around the world. Mobile guides created with the Toura platform will entertain and educate onsite and offsite “visitors” to a broad range of travel and tour attractions, including museums, galleries, zoos, parks, historic sites, trails, stadiums, universities, and others.

ART.SY
Art.sy is the place to buy, sell, and discover original fine art online. Our online gallery benefits both professional artists and traditional galleries by increasing exposure to collectors and creating more sales. Art.sy does this by making your art easily discoverable and shareable on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. This way it’s more likely that the right collector will find you, so you don’t have to spend all your time trying to find them. The result: more sales and more time to focus on just creating beautiful art.

TRANSIT
Transit is a web publishing system for creative individuals to own and completely customize their own space on the web. With a comprehensive plugin system and drag-and-drop layout, Transit makes it simple to share media, fund new projects, and participate directly in the new media economy without being held hostage by a huge portal company. Transit is currently in late-stage prototype, and the creators are looking for feedback from independent media makers on where to take the platform next.

Mar. 2, 2010, Filed under category Announcements