Go take a walk with Elastic City
This Summer, Elastic City (one of our recently launched projects), is giving walks throughout New York City. But these are not your typical tourist walks. These walks are led by artists. Todd Shalom, the founder of Elastic City, realized the idea while suffering from altitude sickness in Cusco, Peru.
The walks intend to make its audience active participants in an ongoing poetic exchange with the places we live in and visit. Artists are commissioned by Elastic City to create their own walks. These walks tend to focus less on providing factual information and more on heightening our awareness, exploring our senses and making new group rituals in dialogue with public space in the city.
The walks have been featured in TimeoutNY, WNYC, Wallstreet Journal, Gothamist, and other publications.
To listen Todd talk about the walks on WNYC, click here, or hit play on the player below
Browse the walks listing and rediscover New York.
WordPress Plugins
For the past two weeks, I’ve been leading a wordpress class at 3rdWard. During the first two classes, we covered how to setup hosting, how to use a feedburner account, and how to install plugins and themes.
During the 2nd class, I also listed out a few of my favorite themes and plugins. For a review of what we covered in our 2nd Class, download this document.
In this post, I’ve included a few favorite plugins. For a list of some my favorite themes, visit this post.
WordPress Plugins
Wordtube
This plugin manages the JW FLV MEDIA PLAYER 5.1 and makes it easy for you to put music, videos or flash movies onto your WordPress posts and pages. Various skins for the JW PLAYER are available via http://www.longtailvideo.com
wordTube supports the streaming video format (Format .flv or .swf), sound files as MP3 and JPG, GIF or PNG grafic files. With wordTube you can simply insert it into your blog with the tag [MEDIA not found] or as playlist [PLAYLIST not found].
Since Version 2.0 it supports LongTail’s AdSolution which allows you to run pre-roll, overlay mid-roll, and post-roll advertisements in your media player. Click here to sign up for LongTail.
You don’t need to change the WYSIWYG mode or special HTML knowledge to insert such a tag. You can show a simple media file (i.e. a flv Format) or a playlist of all your media files.
Upcoming : WordPress Workshop @ 3rd Ward
Here’s a freakin’ awesome deal from 3rd Ward : Sign up for the WordPress Workshop (section starting 6/13), Illustrator Intensive (6/13), OR Intro to After Effects (6/19) and get a FREE Apple Wireless Keyboard and Mouse.
Starting June 13th, I will be leading a 3 week workshop on WordPress. I’ve helped many organizations build their sites using WordPress and simply love the platform (in fact, this site is running on WordPress). It’s great for blogs, portfolio sites, and creative folks. You can even run ecommerce sites using WordPress.
Go on. Register for the class
A bit about the class :
You’ll learn the in’s and out’s of setting up, customizing and running your own website using WordPress, the most popular blogging platform.
WordPress is used for top blogs like CNN Money, all the New York Times blogs, and many non-profit arts websites. Simply put, WordPress makes publishing your website much easier.
We’ll start off with the basics (like setting up your own hosting) and then move to more advanced topics like customizing a theme (through the WordPress template engine), and inserting plugins for Twitter and Facebook. We will also set aside some time to review content strategy, site architecture, and look at popular plugins to help you sell your products online. This class will work well for both beginners and experts.
You can register for the class by clicking this link.
And to learn more about wordpress, visit my wordpress archives. Really. Click on that link. Or, you can take a look at some sites I’ve built using wordpress.
Upcoming classes at 3rd Ward
This Spring and Summer, I’ll be leading a series of workshops and classes at 3rd Ward. Topics will focus on ecommerce, online marketing, social media, online communications, building an online audience, and finally – a 3-part wordpress workshop.
The classes were initially designed to be taken together, but are now flexible enough to be taken as individual components. Below is a description of all the courses.
Curious about past courses and workshops I’ve led? Want to peruse lots resources or just kill a Saturday nigt? Great. Check out my new archive of workshop resources.
Create Using Social Media
Facebook is now among the top 3 most visited sites in the world. This course will focus on how to leverage platforms like twitter, facebook, and flickr to create dialogue around your work, support your research, and build community. Many artists, non profits, and businesses are successfully using these online publishing platforms to share their mission, values, and process.
Section 1: Tuesday 7:00-10:00p, May 11
Email marketing is the most effective way to reach your customers, audiences, donors, and constituents. During the workshop, we’ll cover best practices for generating effective email campaigns. We’ll take time to actually consider what you can do to grab your reader, and move them to action.
Section 1: Monday 7-10p, May 24
Learn the basic mechanisms of e-commerce: who’s involved in transacting online? What are the roles of different parties? What happened when users click the “Submit Order” button? We’ll cover the necessary steps to set up and run your own online store: Get an Internet merchant bank account. Find a reliable host. Learn how to utilize your ecommerce technology.
Section 1: Tuesday 7-10p, May 25
Live Performance on the Web, Saturday 7pm
Please join us tonight for this very special event. We’ll be streaming this dance performance live on the web and feature a live webchat.
Misnomer Dance Theater
Live from Symphony Space, April 3rd | Saturday at 7pm
Premiering Cellophane, Misnomer’s newest piece – watch the rebroadcast here :
iPhone apps versus Mobile Website
For the past year, I’ve been working with clients who are itching for an iPhone app, but don’t yet have a dedicated mobile site. iPhone apps have great potential for engaging your current customers and building out your location based services. Before beginning development on an iPhone app, though, you need to ask “Should we focus on building out an iPhone app when we don’t yet have a mobile site built out? Do we have resources to do both at the same time?”
Why should you develop your mobile site before investing in an iPhone app?
Heather from DIOSA Communications addresses this questions in her latest article. Below are the 5 main points. For the full explanation, visit the original article.
1) Almost anyone with a mobile phone can access your mobile website whereas only iPhone users can access your iPhone App.
There are 4.1 billion mobile subscribers worldwide (277 million in the United States) and just a small fraction of those are iPhone users.
2) Mobile websites are easy to update whereas if you want to update an iPhone App, then the user has to download the Updates.
Essentially, updating an m.yoursite.com is a bit easier than updating your app and asking users to download the update.
3) As the smartphone market expands, are you then going to also launch multiple versions of your App?
Are you going to also create Apps for Palm, Blackberry, Android, etc.?
4) Social networking sites all have mobile websites and their traffic grows every single month.
(think m.twitter.com, m.facebook.com, m.youtube.com)
5) Text alert campaigns need mobile websites to be successful.
If you’re engaging customers via text messages, a mobile compatible site that loads quickly is absolutely essential
Related Links:
Four Reasons Why Nonprofits Need a Mobile Website
10 Nonprofit Mobile Websites
PhotoKast’s Guide on How to Build an iPhone App
Social Media Bootcamp | Resources
During SMartCamp (Social Media Art Camp), nonprofits, artists, arts organizations, bloggers, strategists, and a bunch of other really really interesting people gathered to talk about the intersection of Arts, Culture, and Technology.
As part of SMartCamp, we also ran a 4 hour Social Media Bootcamp. The workshop, which was limited to 20 participants (broken up into smaller groups of 5), allowed attendees to develop the foundations of a social media strategy, or workshop an existing social media strategy in a small group setting with one-on-one support from workshop leaders.
The workshop leaders included
Farra Trompeter
Maryann Devine
Damien Basile
and me, Jaki Levy.
Each facilitator gave a short 10 minute presentation, and then led a conversation within the small groups. All 4 presentations are included below (for even more SMartCamp presentations, go here).
SMArt Camp at Roger Smith Hotel
This weekend, I’ll be participating in SMartCAMP with a host of very distinguished folks. Tickets are going quick, so you can read on, or just go to the site and register (I’ll be leading a Social Media Bootcamp session on Sunday). 1/2 day passes are still available.
ABOUT SMartCAMP
Taking place during art fair week, SMartCAMP will be tackling some of the most important topics in social media as it relates to the cultural sector. Designed to give an overview of how professionals working in the arts can put these new communications tools to work for them, SMartCAMP will be offering a series of panels, presentations and case studies to help artists and arts professionals put together a course of action. For those already familiar with the social web, it will be an opportunity to deepen their knowledge, hone new skills, refine social engagement strategies and gain inspiration from distinguished peers and colleagues working at the intersection of art and social media. For social media professionals who are looking to connect with arts organizations, SMartCAMP offers an opportunity to learn about the challenges and possibilities unique to the cultural space.
“Social media is changing the way people share and discover content, the way they consume information, the very essence of modern-day communication itself,” says Julia Kaganskiy, ArtsTech founder and SMartCAMP program curator. “No industry, especially one as socially significant as the arts, can afford to ignore the social web.”
SMartCAMP will address a variety of topics; social media strategies, technology art start-ups, emerging trends and measuring social media success. The program will begin on each day with keynote speeches from Marc Schiller, Founder of Wooster Collective and CEO of Elecrtic Artists, and Maria Popova, founder and editor-in-chief of Brain Pickings, respectively. The remainder of the day’s agendas will include case studies from artists and institutions, a mobile media presentation, an online ‘video kit’ instructional and a bloggers panel.
In addition to this agenda, several top social media and branding strategists will lead a small group workshop entitled Social Media Bootcamp. The workshop, which is limited to 20 participants broken up into groups of 5, will allow attendees to develop the foundations of a social media strategy, or workshop an existing social media strategy in a small group setting with one-on-one support from workshop leaders.
For full symposium schedule click here
For full speaker list click here
Website: socialmediaartcamp.com
Follow on Twitter: twitter.com/SMartCAMP
Friend on Facebook: facebook.com/SMartCAMP
Setting Up an Ecommerce Site
This winter, I’ll be teaching a series of classes at 3rd Ward. The first part of the series will be a workshop focused on setting up an ecommerce store. We will look at live sites and multiple ecommerce platforms. This will be a great class and flexible enough to meet your needs. Read below for more
COURSE DESCRIPTION
Running an online store enables you to sell your works and products without the constraints of time and space. This seminar serves as a crash course in running your own online business. Two main topics will be covered:
The basic mechanism of e-commerce: who’s involved in transacting online? What are the roles of different parties? What happened when users click the “Submit Order” button?
Steps to set up and run your own online store. Get an Internet merchant bank account. Find a reliable host. Learn how to go about your ecommerce technology. Consider buying an off-the-shelf solution, renting technology from a 3rd party provider, or using open-source or free shopping cart software packages. Learn about payment processing with PayPal, 3rd-party hosting and doing it yourself. Get familiar with shipping methods, managing inventory and your products, securing online transactions, designing your store appearance, and basic search engine optimization (SEO).
Instructor
Jaki Levy founded Arrow Root Media, a New Media Production and Consulting company. Jaki has worked with multiple non-profits, including: Issue Project Room, The Field, Dance/USA, Rockaway Waterfront Alliance, Queens Council on the Arts, DanceBrazil, and Soundstreams. His online initiatives and work with Misnomer Dance Theater helped the company secure over $1.25 million in grants from the Doris Duke Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation to help develop new initiatives for the arts online. He was also the recipient of Cisco’s $25,000 Digital Incubator grant. In 2010, he will be officially launching elastic-city.com, a full ecommerce site devoted to artistic walking tours in NYC.
Location
573 Metropolitan (btw Lorimer & Union), Brooklyn
Social Media Week NYC 2010
The first week of February is Social Media Week in NYC. Along with Little Big Pictures, we’ll be co-hosting this month’s #artstech event, which is exploring the creative overlap between social media and the arts.
Instead of the usual discussion of Facebook fans and Twitter followers, we wanted to take a look at some of the most inventive implementations of social media we’ve come across: social media art experiments. We’ll be taking a look at how artists are incorporating social media in their art-making practices. You want to talk about creative community engagement strategies? Look no further than this round-up.
