Technology in the Arts Conference, the Canuck version

Doug and I first heard about the Technology in the Arts conference sometime last year when we were called to participate in an impromptu brainstorming session by Bill Poole. It appears that Carnegie Mellon's Centre for Arts Management and Technology had launched this conference as a sort of anniversary party get together thing and it ended up being so successful they decided to bring it North of the 49th. The whole thing was at that time orchestrated by a fascinating and charismatic woman named Cary McQueen Morrow. Since leaving Carnegie Mellon she has started her own arts consulting firm in San Francisco.


During the brainstorming session to choose possible conference topics, we discovered three things.
1) Nobody had much to say about technology. One man amused/bored us for hours with his tale circa 1985 of the discovery of word processors.
2) Our firm actually has a strange amount of experience with leading arts clients to technology, the way one might try to lead a horse to water (you can't make them drink). Our most recent experiences with that involved the Canadian Music Centre, whose plight I described in an earlier entry. Another project involved creating an evaluation template for an arts facility. More on that project another time, I think.
3) Although funding bodies felt strongly that they had the perogative to decide whether certain agencies deserved increased funding for technology projects/upgrades, one officer pretty much outright admitted her department lacked all knowledge in this area (and were therefore unable to evaluate the usefulness of any project).

Doug later sat on the advisory panel for the conference in Canada, which took place May 9 and 10th (we were unable to attend due to prior committments).

It is also worth noting that the Canadian Music Centre did end up submitting and presenting the story of their digital revolution and newfound awareness during the conference. We congratulate them.