The Past Is Gone

For human beings, the past is a presence.  It’s with us all the time in both simple and complex ways.  When we step off the curb into a busy street, the hundreds of times we’ve successfully crossed a street safely guide our decisions or the story we heard about a person who didn’t.  When we [...]

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The Springsteen Refunds

Here’s the news: The FTC has told Ticketmaster to refund those consumers who bought tickets to 14 Bruce Springsteen concerts last year.  What happened was that since Ticketmaster had acquired secondary market seller, Ticketsnow, the company was passing ticket buyers over to Ticketsnow when its full price tickets had been sold.  The result is that [...]

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Membership Has Its Rewards

I found this story about  Goldstar supplier and major regional theatre ACT (Seattle) extremely interesting.  Here’s a tidbit:
“In early 2003, ACT Theater was down to its last $3,000. Only an aggressive fund–raising campaign and ruthless budget cuts kept the theater afloat. Despite the belt tightening, over the past five years ACT has piled up another [...]

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Should You Be Selling “The Arts”?

Back in the 90s, banks got this idea that people didn’t want to do business with just a bank.  They wanted to do business with an organization that could give them their mortgage, be their stockbroker, set up their 401(k), and issue them a credit card.
They went from being banks to providing “Financial Services.”
I guess [...]

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Shutting Down the Factory…not a Key to Success

Michael Kaiser of the Kennedy Center wrote this in the Huffington Post:

“Many arts managers are angry with me. They do not appreciate my advice not to cut programming during this recession. I continue to say that creating large, important projects is central to creating fiscal health. Especially when there is less money for the arts [...]

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My Interview on Mixergy

Andrew Warner, the impresario of Mixergy, was kind enough to interview me live on the site yesterday. His is an excellent site for entrepreneurs, and he interviews entrepreneurs who hopefully have something to teach other entrepreneurs. It’s a terrific site, and you should check it out!
In the meantime, you can watch the interview [...]

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TED This Week and the 1 Year Anniversary of Live 2.0

Tomorrow through Friday, I’m lucky enough once again to be going to the TED conference in Long Beach.  I’m not speaking this year, but I am looking forward to being part of all the great conversations and discussions that swirl throughout the place.  It’s a truly amazing thing to participate in and contribute to.
It does [...]

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Know Your Customers or Just Think You Do

Like many of you, I watched the Super Bowl yesterday, and it was a pretty terrific game.
Typically, I ignore (or fast forward through) commercials, but since the Super Bowl commercials are noteworthy, I actually paid attention to them.  I’m not particularly interested in breaking down which ones worked, etc., (though for my money, in terms [...]

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The Truth Hurts, but Also Sets You Free

Goldstar’s John Loken forwarded me a blurb from the New Yorker by Alex Ross that included the following graph:
So this graph shows the percentage of people of different generations level of participation in attending classical music as they age.
From the point of view of what it portends for the future, there’s one word I’d use [...]

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