Project Audience Solution Description

Transcription

1 Project Audience Solution Description OCTOBER 2010 Presented to: Project Audience Steering Committee Prepared by: Al Collins VShift

2 Table of Contents 1. INTRODUCTION THE PROJECT AUDIENCE GOALS FIVE GUIDING PRINCIPLES MAXIMIZE THE ADVANTAGE OF SCALE USE THE POWER OF AGGREGATED DATA UNDERSTAND THE NECESSITY OF A SERVICE MODEL ENCOURAGE DEVELOPMENT OF EVENT LISTING SERVICES MAINTAIN A MARKETING ORIENTATION A CONCEPTUAL VIEW OF THE SOLUTION DATA REPOSITORY & SERVICES DATA CAPTURE DATA DISTRIBUTION DATA REPOSITORY & SERVICES ARTS & CULTURE DATA TAXONOMY DATA ACQUISITION DATA REPOSITORY ADDITIONAL SERVICES THIRD PARTY DATA ACCESS ARTS EVENT WEBSITE CONSUMER-FACING INTERFACE ADMINISTRATOR-FACING INTERFACE ARTS EVENT LISTING MOBILE APPLICATION FUNCTIONALITY DISTRIBUTABLE WIDGETS FUNCTIONALITY SERVICE BENEFITS INDIVIDUAL ARTS AND CULTURE ORGANIZATIONS COMMUNITIES OF ARTS ORGANIZATIONS FUNDERS TICKETING AGENCIES MARKETING RESEARCH COMPANIES ARTS ADVOCACY ORGANIZATIONS DEVELOPERS MEDIA JOURNALISTS ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS CONVENTION & VISITORS BUREAUS & LOCAL GOV TS ARTS AND CULTURE CONSUMERS APPENDIX I: METHODOLOGY DUE DILIGENCE INTERVIEWS ANALYSIS APPENDIX 2: RECOMMENDATION ENGINE COMPLEXITY EXAMPLE SHORT LIST OF OTHER COMPLEXITIES POTENTIAL FOR SYSTEM APPENDIX 3: DIFFICULT ISSUES ARTS AND CULTURE TAXONOMY INTEGRATION WITH OTHER SYSTEMS/PROJECTS CONTENT REVIEW AND APPROVAL RATINGS AND REVIEWS Project Audience Solution Description & Project Status VShift 2010 Page ii

3 About this Document This document is one of the deliverables from the second phase of the Project Audience initiative. It follows a series of interviews, work sessions, competitive reviews, analysis and conceptual prototyping. This document serves two primary purposes: to describe the vision and principles behind it and to describe the solution to a degree useful for ensuing stages of the project. This document serves two primary purposes: first, to describe the goals, vision and principles that led to the development of the Project Audience technical solution; and second, to describe the solution and its major components to a degree that will be useful for gaining consensus among key participants, for developing high-level budget and timing estimates, and for discussing the initiative with potential third-party partners. Parts of this document may help in writing a formal RFP for the technical solution, and parts of it can be seen as precursors to the system requirements, but the document is not intended to describe the service in sufficient detail to move directly into implementation; it really is an interim deliverable before either of those begins. It should be stated further that though this document does undertake to describe a number of initial features of the initiative, it purposely does not purport to anticipate all uses of the service. In fact, it is hoped that there will be many unforeseen uses of the system and development efforts that partner with or use the service for the advancement of culture and arts throughout the United States. Notes about Terminology Throughout this document, we refer to arts and culture organizations without defining what arts and culture specifically means. For the moment, the reader should consider it to be as inclusive as possible, but the issue is not an incidental one; it will require much thought and deliberation. For a preliminary discussion, please see an overview in the appendices. When we refer to arts and culture organizations, the reader should think the very large and the very small individual organizations as well as local or regional communities of arts organizations. Though how each of these will interact with the system will vary somewhat, the overall approach is similar for all. Project Audience Solution Description & Project Status VShift 2010 Page 1

4 1. Introduction The Project Audience initiative is focused on developing technologies to help community-wide arts service organizations improve participation in arts and culture events. Project Audience aims to build awareness and demand and at the community level increase participation in the arts. Project Audience began in 2009 with a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation with the goal to improve national participation in arts and culture events and programs. Beginning in 2009 with a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the project conducted a series of projects designed both to build collaboration among arts and culture organizations nationwide and to develop the conceptual framework to guide this and future efforts. This was the first phase of a planned three-phase effort. The result of this initial Project Audience phase was a communityconceptualized approach for a collaboratively-built, technology-based solution to assist arts and culture organizations to market and promote themselves more effectively. This concept was approved and adopted in the spring of A few months later, the second phase of the Project Audience initiative was started. The stage two goals were to further define the solution and to develop requirements for the technology initiatives. This phase involved hiring a contractor to help with this effort. VShift, a digital marketing firm based in New York, was engaged to facilitate the translation of the project s high-level goals into a welldescribed set of technology that ultimately could be built in a later phase of the project. The results of this phase have resulted in a different path from what was envisioned at the end of the first phase. Months of research, analysis, interviews and further clarification on the most important project goals have led to a solution that is significantly larger in scope but would change the landscape of how arts and culture organizations would be able to market themselves and compete effectively with movies, television and sports. This is the result of that work. Project Audience Solution Description & Project Status VShift 2010 Page 2

5 2. The Project Audience Goals At the broadest level, the goal of Project Audience is to help the national arts & culture community act collaboratively to compete more effectively with other entertainment options, to increase people s involvement with the arts, and to increase attendance at cultural events and programs. A series of more deeply articulated goals were adopted as part of the technology solution process, but all fall under the main goal of increasing arts and culture attendance nationally. In order to make specific recommendations on technology, it first was necessary to more deeply articulate the specific goals that the technology will address. After discussion among the Project Audience community, the following goals were adopted: To increase arts & culture attendance nationally; To increase awareness of arts & culture as an everyday entertainment option; To specifically target persuadable audiences those who are not frequent, committed arts and culture event attendees, but are likely to attend more events if they become aware of them; To provide better ability to find and learn about arts and culture events by making listings available through several search options, through multiple sources and with more complete information; To enable better analysis of arts and culture audiences and organizations both to help target appropriate audiences and to help program appropriate events; To enable preference-oriented marketing, where events can be suggested to an individual based on their previous behavior, on their stated preferences, on the preferences or ratings by other individuals, or on editorially-guided recommendations; To enable data-oriented marketing of events, where data derived either directly from consumer actions on services using Project Audience data or from other related systems (such as ticketing) can be used to better target prospects for an event; To enable arts and culture researchers to use a Project Audience data repository to look at audience trends, interest and behavior either alone or with other outside research to better understand audience cultural behavior; To take advantage, where possible, of other arts-audience initiatives that are seeking to solve this or related problems. Project Audience Solution Description & Project Status VShift 2010 Page 3

6 3. Five Guiding Principles In addition to the goals just described in section two, the development of the solution also is based on five higher-level principles that emerged during this and earlier phases. They are described below. The first two of the guiding principles revolve around the necessity of scale and data in order to compete effectively with other entertainment options like film, television and sports. 3.1 Maximize the Advantage of Scale Small arts and culture organizations compete for audiences with every other entertainment option that exists. Many of them are supported by enormous budgets that come from a combination of large commercial organizations (Sony Pictures, for example, or NBC), leagues (the NFL, for example) and industries (the music industry, for example, or even merchandising industries). Arts and culture are at a major disadvantage because even the largest cultural organizations can t come close to matching competitive marketing resources. By acting collaboratively, however, arts and culture organizations approach or surpass the scale of many large entertainment industry competitors, and the national collective audiences of arts and culture organizations, programs and events are large enough to exert real influence. Thinking about all arts and culture organizations collectively makes a disadvantage into an advantage. 3.2 Use the Power of Aggregated Data Another challenge faced by arts and culture organizations is that they tend to operate in narrow bands of geography, genre and audience. Movies, television and sports, on the other hand, operate in much broader segments, and each has the advantage of product consistency from geography to geography, of well-defined and understood genres, of mass-market products that appeal to many audience segments and of resources to promote them widely. The ability to solve the narrowness problem increases dramatically as program and event data, organization data, attendance data, recommendation data, preference data, ratings data, and other behavioral data (click-throughs on websites, for example) are aggregated across geographies and genres and made accessible through standardized and universal tools. Some of the most intriguing and exciting audience initiatives, in fact, are only really effective with significant organization participation and large amounts of data that is aggregated in one place. Some of these include nationally-distributed listings, deeper analysis of customer behavior, wider syndication to other media, and supporting technologies such as a recommendations engine and integration with social media. This is a key principle to the proposed solution. Project Audience Solution Description & Project Status VShift 2010 Page 4

7 3.3 Understand the Necessity of a Service Model A service model is one that is built and operated centrally. Though the initial idea of the Project Audience was a distributable, open-sourced application and associated software code, a service model allows for numerous benefits: The third and fourth guiding principles are about the necessity of a service model and the need for the solution to allow for open development by any interested third parties. It ensures that data will be successfully aggregated, normalized and made available across many different channels; It allows small, resource-challenged organizations to participate easily and at low cost, without extensive technology implementation; It can be made available to all arts & culture organizations and it allows for many different distribution channels (websites, mobile applications, print publishers, ticketing agencies); It allows for the sharing of major software development efforts across a large number of participants, thus enabling large efforts such as Project Audience which would otherwise be out of reach. With the advantages of scale and aggregated data so clear, a service model (rather than a distributed software model) also is an important principle for the Project Audience solution. 3.4 Encourage Development of Event Listing Services It is the philosophy of Project Audience that attendance at arts and culture events will be increased through wide distribution of event listings, and thus it is in its interest to make access to the data widely available. Though the Project Audience solution proposes its own distribution vehicles (a consumer facing website, white-labeled organization websites, a mobile application, structured data downloads, RSS feeds and programs) it also encourages others to develop applications or distribution channels based upon the data and services openly made available. Tools for the service should allow authenticated users to access its data structured for use in other media, including websites, mobile application and event listings sections in print publications. The service will be based on open standards for data and data exchange, allowing anyone with the appropriate skills to access, manipulate and re-publish information. Because of the second principle listed above (the power of aggregated data), it will be strongly encouraged that these systems also send user data back to the centralized Project Audience database creating a twoway open data exchange to capitalize on the combined power of aggregated data. Project Audience Solution Description & Project Status VShift 2010 Page 5

8 3.5 Maintain a Marketing Orientation Underlying all the Project Audience goals outlined in Section 2 is the problem of marketing arts and culture events and programs. With that in mind, any technology-based solution must remember to consider the question of how the solution will enable improved marketing. There are a number of questions that were kept in mind regarding marketing. They included: The last of the guiding principles is the importance of maintaining a marketing orientation so that local marketing researchers can work to maximize their own attendance. Does the solution enable large (potentially complete) participation among cultural organizations? Does the solution offer marketing options that most organizations could not undertake on their own? Does the solution help cultural organizations to compete with the marketing initiatives of other entertainment options? Can this solution help with offline marketing efforts as well as online? Though the proposed solution does address these questions, it does not address the fact that every organization still will need to use the service effectively, and that in order to do so they may require training and services beyond the technology service model. Project Audience Solution Description & Project Status VShift 2010 Page 6

9 4. A Conceptual View of the Solution A conceptual view of the Project Audience solution shows how it is really a set of integrated technology components that, taken together, support the goals of the initiative. The heart of the solution is the Data Repository and Services where event and program information, organization and venue information, reviews and ratings and links to ticketing services all will reside. Though the whole system is broken down in following sections of this document, top-line descriptions of the components are described here. 4.1 Data Repository & Services Central to the solution (and in yellow in the center of the diagram) is a standards-based, open data repository that will collect and normalize data about arts & culture events and audience behavior, and then make them available to any number of potential distribution points. The data repository will contain data on events, organizations, artists, genres and other event-specific areas, and it also will maintain data that comes from the use of the components on the right side of the diagram. Because the data will be open, it is further anticipated that data from related efforts can and will be integrated into the single repository. In addition to maintaining data, this central component also will service the data by performing some analytics on it, conducting some preference identification on the events and programs, and link to or communicate with various electronic ticketing systems (including both already existing and those in development or to be developed). Project Audience Solution Description & Project Status VShift 2010 Page 7

10 4.2 Data Capture On the left side of the diagram are green boxes under the label Data Capture. One of the Project Audience components will be an administrative interface to allow for data acquisition, including qualifying organizations and tools for form-based manual data input (such as forms to input event, organization and program data). Data distribution will be done through a variety of methods including (clockwise from top left) a website, smartphone apps, widgets and structured data. 4.3 Data Distribution On the right side of the diagram are a number of different distribution components that would be included in the initial service. These are suggested initial components and they likely would be built in a staged methodology, and there may be others not mentioned here that get developed concurrently. Consumer-Facing Website A consumer-facing events listing website will allow consumers to search for or browse events listings, learn more about them and either purchase tickets or learn how to purchase them. Because this (or white-labeled versions of it) will be a primary access point for consumers, they also will be able to find organization information, program information, artist information, reviews, recommendations, and downloadable applications for smartphones or widgets for their desktops or websites (like blogs or other fan-based sites). Events Listing Mobile App Another initial component will be a Project Audience consumer-facing mobile application for use on smartphones that will allow for timebased, geo-located event listings, as well as the ability to search and browse for listings in other geographies or other times. This app also will provide some organization and program information and provide access to reviews and recommendations. Distributable Widgets Project Audience will develop application widgets that can be distributed on other websites or on user desktops. These will work similar to YouTube embedded videos. The widgets will allow publishers of other websites to curate selections of events from the Project Audience event repository and add highly functional listing objects (with calendaring, event details, ticketing links, reviews and ratings) to their own sites or to their desktops. Structured Data Another distribution component would be to allow downloads of structured data from the system. This would allow the development of new applications, research to be done by organizations, research to be combined with other marketing research, and other uses that are not yet known. Project Audience Solution Description & Project Status VShift 2010 Page 8

11 Other methods of distribution of the Project Audience data will be things that users can opt to receive, such as s and RSS feeds. RSS Feeds The service would distribute RSS feed that would both allow users to subscribe to event or program information and allow publishers of event and program information to stay updated of all the information that they wish to publish (as with most RSS feeds, the exact information requested can be segmented in a number of ways to make it most useful and interesting). These RSS feeds will alleviate the multiple information requests that organizations get to input their information into publishers information systems as well as allow individuals to stay abreast of events and programs that are of interest to them. s The system also will allow for users to sign up for Project Audience s that could recommend events or programs, alert users to new events or programs, or tell users other messages. Two-Way Data Transfer It is important to note that all of these data distribution models (and others that are not yet conceptualized) also will be opportunities for data capture that is, as users open s or use their smartphone applications, their actions will be tracked and sent back to the Project Audience database. Capturing user behaviors and expressions of interest will be critical for the development of the recommendation engine and will make for potentially revolutionary analyses of structured data downloads. Project Audience Solution Description & Project Status VShift 2010 Page 9

12 5. Data Repository & Services The data repository and services component is the core of the Project Audience solution. A multifaceted set of technology, this component will accept, validate and store the event data, and it also will provide most of the other supporting functionality that will enable the service. The data repository itself is a complex data model that will capture the various data elements that make up the arts and culture universe, including information about events, organizations and artists. It also will hold data about users of the data that can be used for targeting and analytics. The services provide support functionality that either enrich the data, add functionality that third-party services can use to better promote events, or make data available for marketing and analysis. A standardized data relationship model will be challenging because it needs a full arts and culture taxonomy that will necessitate categorizing venues and organizations, among other things. 5.1 Arts & Culture Data Taxonomy The project will develop a standardized data relationship model for arts and culture concepts. These ultimately will be represented in the database, and they will provide the basis for delivering event listings to other services. This is a challenging activity since definitions of many of these concepts can be ambiguous, but they will need to be standardized and precise in order to satisfy the needs of a database system. There are existing efforts (NYC Arts in New York) and others already in development (the Arts Genome project) that can be built upon or partnered with to ease the effort, but it still is likely to be a major undertaking. Concepts needing definition will include (at a minimum) the following: Events: Data describing an arts & culture event, including: o Title and description; o Presenting organization; o Discipline & genre; o Venue or location; o Run dates & times, including opening dates; o Pricing & ticketing information; o Performers / artists; o Third party reviews; o Event ratings; o Tags (for additional terms describing an event); o Event groupings (such as festivals); and o Images and videos. Organizations & venues: Data describing an arts & culture organization, including: o Name; o Description; o Locations & addresses; o Facilities & collections; Project Audience Solution Description & Project Status VShift 2010 Page 10

13 o o Accessibility; and Associated events. Users & Participants: Data describing users of the data, including: o address or unique identifier; o Stored alerts and profiles; o Subscriptions; o Viewed event; and o Event ratings & reviews. Acquiring data can be done electronically through a structured file exchange, but it is just as likely to come from a data input website, where the interface might look something like the image to the right. 5.2 Data Acquisition The project will develop mechanisms to accept data from sources including presenting organizations and other contributors. Data will be accepted from authenticated users who have been authorized by Project Audience to contribute. There are three primary methods of adding data to the repository: Data input website: Users (such as those from qualified organizations and constituents) will be able to add data (such as event details, organizational details or venue details) through a web form interface. See the Centralized Website section for more details on data input through a web interface. Structured data file exchange: Organizations and data owners that are supported by technical teams may choose to upload structured data files directly to the repository. The Project Audience repository will accept data in an open format, such as well-defined XML, and standard image and video files. To support our goal of aggregating data, the Project Audience service will work with third party providers of technology that support arts and culture organizations to develop methods to exchange data between those systems. Our goal is to ensure that the service can accumulate data as easily as possible from Project Audience Solution Description & Project Status VShift 2010 Page 11

14 organizations, and to grow the number of participating organizations in order to leverage the power of aggregated data. User activity tracking: The service also will provide a mechanism for tracking user activity with any of the distribution components (website, mobile app, widget, s, etc.). As further components are developed by third-parties, there will be the opportunity for those components to also feed tracking data into the centralized repository. One of the additional services provided by the Data Repository & Services component of Project Audience will be the ability to geolocate both users and location information for events, programs, organizations and venues. As data gets entered into the system, it first will be validated and, once in the system, will be editable. These two steps are called validation and management. Data Validation: Any data entered into the repository will be validated on rules to ensure it is within acceptable bounds. Clear results will be provided to data contributors to let them know of any validation failures. Data Management: Data contributors will be able to delete or modify data based on real-world events such as venue changes, time changes, artist or performer changes and cancellations. System administrators will be able to delete or modify data. 5.3 Data Repository Project Audience data will be maintained in a normalized database repository. The repository will maintain data on events and organizations, as well as other supporting information including users, activity, roles & responsibilities and derived data. 5.4 Additional Services The Project Audience service will provide a set of other functions that will improve or enhance the data, combine it with third-party data, make it available to data users, provide security, and allow for contributing organizations to extract it for analytic purposes. User registration, authentication & authorization: The data repository and services will require authentication for adding, modifying or accessing data. Multiple user types will be supported, including Project Audience administrators, organizational administrators and consumer users. The data repository will include a set of tools to register and authorize users. Public registration will be available for consumer users. Organizations contributing data will be directed through a private registration process that includes verification of organization status. Geo-coding of venues and organizations: The Project Audience services will geo-code addresses, including those for venues and organizations. Project Audience Solution Description & Project Status VShift 2010 Page 12

15 Another service from the Data Repository & Services component will be User Activity reporting that will track usage from the various distribution components. Recommendation service: The Project Audience service will include a recommendation service that makes event suggestions to users based on predictive algorithms. This is likely to be implemented after the service has accumulated a large amount of content and a sufficiently large user base. Search service: The Project Audience search service will allow searching through events, organizations, artists and other data by a variety of criteria, including location, proximity, genre, discipline, title, venue, organization, run date or performers. User Activity Reporting: In addition to the mechanism for tracking user activity, the system will allow reports to be viewed for aggregated user activity on each of the distribution components and aggregated in total for all distribution components. The service will also provide a set of tools for extracting data for different analytic purposes, and in different formats such as Excel or XML. Alerts: The Project Audience service will allow setting up alerts based on changes to repository content. These alerts can be tied to or text alerts, RSS feeds, social media or other alert systems. Alerts will be available for a range of conditions including: o o o New events within a city or geography; New events by an artist, genre, discipline; and New events at a venue or from a presenting organization. Syndicated Data: The data repository will create, manage and deliver RSS feeds for selected event data. Potential RSS feeds include city or geography, organization or groups of organizations, artist and genre/discipline. 5.5 Third Party Data Access The Project Audience solution will include an API or similar mechanism both for delivering structured data to third-party applications and for receiving usage data back to Project Audience. Transactions allowed via this mechanism are TBD but likely to include the following: Searching for an event or range of events by criteria including title, date, location, proximity, genre, title, artist/performer; Retrieving event details for a selected event, including description, location, pricing & ticketing, ratings or reviews; Creating user alerts for event updates; and Retrieving recommendations for an individual user. This service will be available for specified purposes (such as distributing event listings or combining them with other websites), and will be subject to usage and licensing restrictions TBD. It is intended that this service will be used only by users with adequate technical skills in web application development, not by general audiences. Project Audience Solution Description & Project Status VShift 2010 Page 13

16 6. Arts Event Website Project Audience will provide and maintain a website that has two primary interfaces: one for consumers and one for administrators. The consumer-facing interface of the website will allow users to search for cultural activities in a variety of fashions, including search, browse, reading features and comparing ratings and reviews. 6.1 Consumer-Facing Interface The consumer-facing interface will be a place where consumers can search or browse for program, event, organization and artist information, where they can read feature articles on select programs and events, artists, and organizations, and where they can find editorial groupings, such as Fun things to do on a first date, Cultural activities with your children, Getting to know the arts in your neighborhood, Culture during the Day, or Late Night Arts. The website also will be a place where consumers can interact with the site by submitting reviews and recommendations; downloading smartphone apps, desktop and website widgets; or signing up for alerts about cultural activities of particular individual interest. A white label version of the consumer-facing interface may be made available to organizations, local geographies or groups of organizations who will be able to customize its appearance and functionality for local use. While the default view of the website will be national, consumers quickly will be able to select a geography by city and state or by zip to see a selection customized for a geographical area. For consumers who are Project Audience Solution Description & Project Status VShift 2010 Page 14

17 interested in particular artists, programs or events, they also would be able to search nationally for them. While the website s full features and functionality should be determined in conjunction with the developers of the site, much of the functionality can be outlined here: Users will be able to search or browse and select different events or programs to learn more about, to review or to buy tickets. Anonymous or known browsing: Any consumer will be able to browse through the website and use most of its functionality without identifying him or herself. However, consumers also will be invited to identify themselves (with some incentive for doing so, such as the ability to rate or recommend), and once they have done so, they will be able to use the full set of features and functionality. The system will track both anonymous and known users of the system. Search & Browse: The search and browse features will allow consumers to find the information they are looking for or to discover things they might not otherwise have considered. Searching will be able to be done through a combination of drop downs and search term entry. Consumers will be able to limit their searches by geographic area or by date, and they will be able to search by almost any aspect of arts and culture events and programs, including name, artist, location, organization, genre, and rating. Browsing can be done simply by clicking around the site, but also by looking at a number of pre-selected categories, such as date and geography, genres, Featured, Recently Opened, and editorially driven categories. View listings: Once a consumer has done a search or selected a browse method, they will be able to see listings corresponding to their search terms or browse categories. These listings will have program or event information, location, time or hours, ratings and reviews, length (if appropriate), and ticket information. Ticketing information or services: The system will not provide its own ticketing information and service that problem already has been solved and is offered by many different entities. The idea here will be to allow integration with those entities, provide links or have purchasing enabled by going through a whitelabeled version of their processes. Register: As mentioned earlier, anonymous browsing and searching will be allowable on the site, but consumers who register will be able to set preferences, sign up for alerts and interact with reviews, ratings and recommendations. It will be necessary to obtain some information from these users in order to provide these services so a registration and an associated Manage my Account feature will be an important aspect of the website and system. Project Audience Solution Description & Project Status VShift 2010 Page 15

18 The consumer-facing interface will allow users all sorts of interesting features, including signing up for text or alerts, downloading apps and widgets and interacting with reviews and ratings. Alerts: Once a consumer has signed up, the user will be able to select alerts via , texts or through social media alerts. Users may wish to select updates on artists, genres, locations, venues, programs or events. They also may be able to sign up to be alerted about activities that come out of the recommendation engine. Mobile-enabled applications: The website also will be the place where consumers can read about, try and download applications for their smartphones. Subscribe to RSS feeds: Similar to alerts, RSS feeds are automated data delivery that alerts consumers to news or changes about programs, events, users or organizations. SEO friendly: Almost inherently, the system is likely to be very friendly as far as Search Engine Optimization is concerned. There will be volumes of program and event information and both users and organizations are likely to link to the website, which will make it score very high on search engine results. Nevertheless, when it is built, it will be built with good search engine optimization practices. Social media integration: The website should be integrated with social media efforts and consumers should be able to let their social media friends know about their interest in the effort and the website. The integration will be easily identifiable and easy to use. Reliable and Scalable: This system is likely to be used very widely and, if successful, by millions of consumers. These are big numbers, and it is important that the effort be built to be reliable around the clock and scalable for surprising peak usage, to allow new components to be added, and to allow for large leaps of growth. 6.2 Administrator-Facing Interface The site also will have a second view interface: one for administrators. From this area, organizations and community-wide service representatives (including regional and local community arts organizations, Convention and Visitor Bureaus, local governments, college departments, etc.) will be able to enter data about organizations, artists, venues, programs and events. 1 For Project Audience, this also will be the interface where tasks can be performed like user management, content management for features and articles on the site, ratings and review oversight, data can be downloaded for analysis and review, apps and widgets can be uploaded for use by consumers, s can be created and sent, and alerts can be managed. 1 It is worth repeating (originally described in section 5.2) that the Project Audience repository will accept data in an open format, such as well-defined XML. For organizations that already have an event database, this will allow them to have their data uploaded automatically instead of manually. Project Audience Solution Description & Project Status VShift 2010 Page 16

19 In other words, this is the hub of control over the entire system. As with the consumer-facing website, many of the features and functionality will be determined in conjunction with the developers actually building the site and will be determined at least partially by the consumer-facing features and functionality. Some features can be considered standard, however, and the following are descriptions of some of them: The administrative interface will have different levels of permissions but will the primary place where data will be entered, including all the event and program information and all the written content of the site. Authentication & Authorization: Many different organizations, users, and staff will be using the site for different purposes. It will be necessary, therefore, to have a solid authentication and authorization system with many different levels of permissions. Data entry: For many organizations (particularly those without their own event database), data entry will be their starting point (though this is not limited to organizations, data entry also will be available to arts service organizations, and potentially artists and venues). The data entry component will be where one can create, edit and delete organization, venue, program, artist and event information. User management: Users here are defined as consumers, organizations, staff members, and others who may be granted permission to use the administration interface. It will be necessary to occasionally update consumer information, and it will be necessary to grant permissions and levels of authorization to users of the administrative interface. Content Management: The consumer website will have a lot of editorial content, including features, organization of collections of events into special editorial categories, and recommendations. All this will be managed through a content management area. Workflow: When content is added through the administrative website, there likely will need to be some review of it before it becomes live (see appendices for further discussion of this). The process of creation, review, edit, and publish is the essence of workflow and will be a component of the system. Security: Authentication alone does not make a site secure. It needs constant monitoring for security leaks, for potential hackers, and site attacks. This won t be managed completely through the administrative interface, but much of it will. Structured data downloads: Third parties who wish to download data from the system will be able to structure what exactly they are looking for and download it through the administrative website in a variety of formats. Create and manage s: While some s will be automatically generated by the system based on user preferences, even these will need a standard format to be written and applied. Custom s will need to be written, formatted and edited. This will be another component of the administrative interface. Project Audience Solution Description & Project Status VShift 2010 Page 17

20 7. Arts Event Listing Mobile Application Project Audience will develop and distribute a mobile application for smartphone users (including the iphone and Android phones). The application will be powerful in that it will leverage the Project Audience data repository to consolidate and present event listings from anywhere in the country. 7.1 Functionality The Project Audience mobile application will provide smartphone users with a way to find local events. It will take advantage wherever possible of the location detection functions on the phone. The initial Project Audience smartphone app will allow users to find cultural and arts activities nearby while they are out and about. Find Nearby Events: The app will show events or programs happening close to a consumer s current location, through accessing the location detection functions on a smartphone. Results can be displayed on a map or in a list format. Users can select an event to get more information. Go Now: The app will show events or programs that either are ongoing or are starting in the next hour. Results would include distance from the consumer, ratings, and information similar to the search functionality described below. Other Categories: The app will present events corresponding to other event data, potentially including Opening Today, Starting soon, Events this weekend, Events for kids, or Free Events. Search & Browse: Beyond location-specific searching, the app will allow for searching and browsing events by categories including other dates, geography, organization, genre, event title, artists, venue or price. View Event Details: The app will allow consumers to see detail about any event that is listed, including location, ticketing Project Audience Solution Description & Project Status VShift 2010 Page 18

21 Smartphone users will be able to have alerts sent to their phones and if they then click into that alert to find out more, the system will capture their activity. information, description, ratings & reviews, artists, and hours or schedule. Alerts: The app will allow consumers to set up profiles or alerts for particular categories of events (such as genre, presenting organization or venue), and be alerted through their mobile device when an event is published that matches their criteria. (For example, consumers might be able to indicate that they want to be alerted whenever a new dance event is scheduled in their local area.) Ticketing: The app will allow, where possible, immediate ticketing through the smartphone. API: The mobile app will exchange data through the Project Audience API, allowing event data to flow through to mobile devices, and user information (such as searches, ratings, alerts or saved profiles) to flow back to the database. Project Audience Solution Description & Project Status VShift 2010 Page 19

22 8. Distributable Widgets Project Audience will produce and make available widgets for other websites and for user desktops. Website widgets will be easily extractable pieces of code that allow for parts of the Project Audience functionality to run on other websites and appear to be part of that site. This is a common feature of websites, and is most familiar in objects like embedded YouTube videos and banner ads (which are served by third party websites). Users will be able to download widgets either for their desktops or for use on a website such as a blog or an organization website. Desktop widgets are downloadable apps similar to smartphone apps but live on a user s desktop instead of within a phone interface. These are similarly common, and would allow users to have web-like features that are always on when a user is connected to the Internet. Potential users of widgets include consumers themselves, local interactive media (such as newspaper or radio websites), individual arts and culture organizations (or communities of arts organizations who run a consolidated website) and users who run blogs or websites focused on artists, genres or lifestyles. 8.1 Functionality Project audience widgets primarily will be focused on distributing different curated views of event listings. Interested third parties can configure a widget on the Project Audience administrative web site and either can extract the code and add it to their own site or can download the app and run it on their desktop. Users of the widgets will have access to a rich set of Project Audience functionality, including seeing details about an event, finding ticketing information, and reading reviews. Project Audience Solution Description & Project Status VShift 2010 Page 20

23 Users will be able to create, customize and download or publish widgets onto other websites: Users who run blogs or organization websites will be able to curate a widget and publish it easily to their own website this will not require advanced technical knowledge. Select a widget template: Project Audience will make available a set of different widget templates, designed for different purposes. Potential templates include a widget for single event listing; a curates artist- or genre-specific event listing widget; a geographic-specific event listing widget; an organization-specific event widget highlighting events offered by a single organization; and festival widgets offering event listings across organizations or venues related to a festival. Curate a widget: Widget creators will be able to choose events that appear in their widget, by selecting specific individual events; choosing events from an artist, genre, presenting organization, venue or geography; or by choosing a pre-built widget. Publish a widget: Widget creators can download or cut and paste code for inclusion on other websites. Users with only modest technical abilities will be able to publish widgets. Customize the appearance of a widget: Widget creators will be able to name a widget, and potentially add other content (such as a brief description). This name and information will appear in the widget when it is included in other websites. Potentially, some additional visual elements (such as background, fonts or colors) also could be customized. User Functions Users will be able to take a number of actions in a widget: View Event Information: Users will be able to view short descriptions of events and click on an event to learn more about it. Anonymous Viewing: Users on a widget will be anonymous; to access functionality requiring authentication (such as rating an event or purchasing tickets), they will click through to the Project Audience site and continue their session. Project Audience Solution Description & Project Status VShift 2010 Page 21

24 9. Service Benefits Though we hope by now that many of the benefits of the solutions are intuitive and that the preceding sections allow readers of this document to see the potential of the system, it is worth calling out some of the benefits to different audiences, thus making it a bit more clear why such a system might be adopted. The benefits to individual arts and culture organizations will be extensive, but they are all centered around the ultimate goal of getting more people to attend events and programs. 9.1 Individual Arts and Culture Organizations The benefits to individual arts and culture organizations are extensive. The ultimate goal, of course, is to get more people to attend the events and programs created by, sponsored by, and put on by these organizations. Very large organizations will benefit by opportunistically using Project Audience components and by contributing to the whole, while the very small organizations will have opportunities that they otherwise would not be able to afford. The following benefits will be available for any arts and culture organization. Have a single entry point for calendaring their events and programs, lessening the need for multiple entries with different news and listing systems. Get feedback on their programs in the form of user recommendations and reviews. Provide multiple (and more widespread) distribution systems of their calendars and ticketing options through a national website, their own websites, smartphone apps, widgets, and other listing services that use the Project Audience data. Target alerts to potential audience members who have expressed an interest in the specific organization s programming, artists or performers who will be part of an event or program, genres of events or programs, or their own preferences. Use Project Audience widgets on their own websites for calendaring, ticketing, and audience engagement. Engage in discussions with previous and potential audience members on specific programs, events, performers. Analyze data about online (either through the Internet or via a smartphone) interest, traffic, referring websites, alert signups, participation in reviews, recommendations, and discussions. Combine data with data from marketing organizations, ticketing agencies, and other data efforts (like the Cultural Data Project) to find new ways of looking at audiences, programs and events. 9.2 Communities of Arts Organizations The benefits to regional, local or discipline-specific arts service organizations include almost all of those listed for individual organizations, plus a few others. They would have the ability to: Combine data for geographies and for groups of local and regional organizations to look at different trends. Project Audience Solution Description & Project Status VShift 2010 Page 22