Networking with the Web Heads

So as head of this here operation, I have to get the word out. I gotta do a little leg work, kiss a lotta babies. And let's face it. I'm not great at the whole networking thing.

So tonight I got myself out there - printed up some crappy Kinko's cards to hand out and went to the SF Beta Web 2.0 Mixer Meetup. Things went surprising well.

First off, I've named the site. So I didn't have to be all awkward saying, well it's gonna be this great site, but it doesn't have a name yet...

We're going to be Art Head. (I'm an Art Head, you're an Art Head, wouldn't you like to be an Art Head too?) What I'm most excited is my idea of commissioning a different artist every quarter or so to create a new "head" logo. Heads! Here's what I think of when I think of Heads:

Those are all plucked right from my good buddy Joe Sayer's website, by the way. Thanks, Joe! But I'm sure there's no end to the art heads supply.

So the highlight of tonight was running into Josh, editor of Newsdesk.org and media director of Independent Arts and Media. I've volunteered many times for their Expo for the Artist and Musician event. They share my dedication to the vitality of the grassroots arts community and therefore are a natural partner for my project. If I made only one connection at tonight's event, Josh was the one to make. I look forward to finding opportunities to work together with these guys to achieve our shared mission!

One Sentence Opera Synopsis

Mozart's The Magic Flute
"Dude has a little flute."

Courtesy of Matt.

Don't call it MySpace for Artists!

Awww yeah. You found Humble Voice.

I read about Humble Voice on (in? what's the proper preposition for online media??) Solution Watch this morning. It's an online community specifically built "by artists for artists". Hooray! This site has a lovely graphic design and a "gallery" feature that lets artists compile works into multiple galleries to display on their profile.

Key differences between sites like this one and my concept:

My site focuses on a specific geographic region: the Bay Area
The intent here is for the virtual community to support and augment the actual real-life community. I'm looking for real impact with tangible results - like more work being produced, more money being contributed, and more audience members filling the seats. Not that I don't think sites like Humble Voice can do that, too. I just think starting small and focused a.) makes it more likely and b.) speeds up the process.

My site is about funding projects
I want my users to take a step beyond becoming virtual buddies with an artist they think is cool. I want my users to contribute real-life resources to a project they think is worthwhile - a project they want to see happen.

My site includes arts organizations
My real passion: the grassroots arts organizations. I want to see organizations like City Concert Opera succeed. I want my site to provide them with the tools to do that.

In any event, I'm excited to see communities like Humble Voice cropping up. The more places for artists to flourish, the better.

Operatic Obscurity

One of my goals as administrator of this soon-to-be online community is to regularly profile deserving artists and organizations. Tonight, I'd like to write a little about City Concert Opera, an entirely volunteer-run* organization dedicated to concert performances of rarely performed operas.

What I love about this organization is the focus on obscure works. This is what being a small arts organization in a culturally rich city is all about - serving those niches that the larger institutions find too cost ineffective to serve. This is also why it's essential that these organizations receive support from the community. They provide us with choices, variety, discovery! I've already SEEN Der Rosenkavalier! THREE TIMES!

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

But back to the subject at hand. I bet most classical music fans would be surprised (and delighted) to learn that City Concert Opera is planning a performance of a Haydn opera that has never even been published. (Unless those same people were paying attention during an earlier Haydn opera revival period.) That's right. The score for this piece exists only on microfiche in the collection of the Library of Congress. How fortunate are we to have someone with the dedication and passion to pursue a project of this nature? The answer is: very fortunate.

Being a girl whose musical tastes tend to the modern, I am also whole-heartedly supportive of the organization's plans to record an opera by David Carlson, an American composer who was recently commissioned by the Florida Grand Opera to write an opera based on Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (premiering May of this year). In 1993, David wrote an opera with writer Peter S. Beagle (author of The Last Unicorn and an episode of Star Trek!) entitled The Midnight Angel. Apparently he has recently re-scored the piece for 8 singers and a 21-piece orchestra - meaning it's now the perfect size for a chamber orchestra to perform! Or record for that matter.

I sincerely hope organizations like City Concert Opera benefit from my project. If you know of other organizations you'd like to see profiled, please let me know!

*Note: the only staff the organization DOES pay is its musicians!

A Vision

I have a vision of thousands of bay area residents giving thousands of dollars to local artists and arts organizations struggling to get a foothold in the community.

Instead of ONE $25,000 donation to the San Francisco Symphony, I see ONE THOUSAND $25 donations to any number of individual artists, collectives and grassroots arts organizations in the bay area.

I see an online community that makes it all possible...

I am building a website. My website is going to make it possible for anyone trying to create and deliver art in this community to promote, fundraise, and build a community around their project(s). My website is going to root for the underdog. You may not have the Symphony's donor list, and you may not have the Symphony's donor's means, but you will have my website. If you have $20 and a passion for graffiti art, then my website will be for you.

(My website has not been named. Otherwise I would refer to it by name and not as my website.)

This is going to be a great project, and I greatly appreciate my readers' interest. Please feel free to post comments here, sign up for my Google Group, or email me directly with your comments or questions.

A few other notes of potential interest:

• I am contracting with CivicSpace on this project.
  
• My website will be in Beta test starting next week. Let me know if you would like to be one of my testers!
  
• I plan to launch the website in late March. There will be a party, oh yes.
  
• I will be blogging here and using my Google Group to communicate with interested individuals.
• I still need a name for this website!
  

Thank you for your support!