Technology in Art

Technology in the Arts encourages guest bloggers to contribute their thoughts to our conversations.  I am please to introduce to you Debra Sherrer who offers a perspective you might find useful if your organization is in debate concerning implementing or evaluating a recent implementation of “Tweet Seats.” Enjoy!

To tweet seat or not to tweet seat; that’s the question on everyone’s mind. After a rather engaging conversation at the Theater Communications Group Annual conference in Dallas, I went home thinking about the pros and cons of new technology and how it can be used to engage today’s audience. If our audiences are evolving, why are we still connecting with them in the same manner as the previous generation of administrators? After the success of email, facebook, and blogs, it only makes sense to give the Twitter verse a try, right? But what I realized in Dallas was that the question, “Why?” can be applied to anything; and should actually be applied to everything. Your success with Twitter, just like your success with any initiative, will have a direct correlation to a clearly defined “Why?” It’s easy to think that you should jump on the tweet seat bandwagon because supposedly everyone is doing it, but that is simply not the case. If you’re “Why?” is something like “I want tweet seats because XYZ Theater has tweet seats,” then you will have a hard time finding success. Every organization is unique and you should do what is in its best interest.