- The IRS says not so fast on the L3C, stressing that it has not yet weighed in on the tax implications of the new legal form.
- Generation Y likes to talk a big game about change, but Rosetta Thurman says that if we really want it we’re going to have to prove it. Stephanie Evans wonders if arts management programs should incorporate advocacy elements.
- The Wallace Foundation has a new report out on what “quality” really means in the context of arts education.
- CultureFuture’s Guy Yedwab has finished reading The Rise of the Creative Class and has thoughts on it here, here and here.
- Via Mind the Gap, an interesting critique of the downside of the wisdom of crowds (watch the video): that crowds “have no taste.” Meanwhile, Corwin Christie from Technology in the Arts wonders whether, amid all the hype about building audiences through social media, we’re actually just speaking to the choir.
- Great list of ten things every nonprofit manager should know about information technology.
- Hmm, what happens to economic models when it’s possible to conjure 23 quadrillion bucks out of thin air?
- Cool new tool from the Foundation Center called Philanthropy In/Sight now available. And Andrew Taylor writes about the possibilities of geotagging for arts institutions:
It’s not far off to imagine that any and all on-line content could include geotags, so that you could filter theater reviews, event listings, culture blogs, or political conversations to include only those related to your immediate surroundings, or your favorite places. And it’s not a big leap to see the opportunity for place-based institutions — like museums, theaters, performing arts centers, and such — to take a leadership role in ensuring such content is available and tagged appropriately.
- In a striking show of nonprofit media power, WNYC will acquire WQXR classical radio from the New York Times.
- This week’s BLOGGER ON FIRE is Doug McLennan of diacritical, who writes about the Attention Economy (with responses from Andrew Taylor and Barry Hessenius here and here), building community, and the value-add and pitfalls of more choice. (The last one is interesting to consider from an arts advocacy and economic research standpoint. At least one economist has told me that part of the arts’ value lies in an externality having to do with more choices.)
- Here’s a new way to do a matching donation drive. Not bad, Community Foundation of Southeastern Michigan.
- I found this lead-in to an item on the Freakonomics blog a bit telling in light of recent discussions on gender bias:
If you care about baseball, you should care about Buster Olney. He is the ESPN baseball reporter who seems to know everything about everything, on the field and in the general managers’ offices, and presents it with a calm authority.
Note that there’s nothing here to suggest that Olney actually knows what he’s talking about. Just that he presents with confidence. (For what it’s worth, I followed baseball quite closely from about 2001-2005 and found Olney perfectly acceptable, albeit no Tom Verducci or Peter Gammons.) That Freakonomics (a virtually estrogen-free space) would choose these attributes to highlight above all others made me think about the phenomenon of male Twitter users following other men, the revelation that women read men’s books but men don’t read women’s, the dearth of commercially successful “big idea” books written by women, and gender differences in overconfidence bias. Not ready to make any big claims on this, but there does seem to be a pattern.
- Seth Godin recently wrapped up his six-month alternative MBA program (SAMBA), and the participants each posted blog entries about their experience. I particularly liked this one from Ishita Gupta, especially her advice that “time is an illusion – don’t measure it by the amount of hours/effort you put in, measure it by goals you accomplish,” “doing things quickly and repetitively helps you get over anxiety about failure,” and “you don’t have to do everything alone.”
