I attended the NAMP (National Arts Marketing Project) conference this weekend as both an attendee and as a worker.
I started Saturday off with attending “Beyond Cocktails and Facebook: Strategies to attract young adult audiences” which was a packed room with people having to stand. Unfortunately, the session left many of us wishing there had been more sharing of strategies and less Q&A of the audience as several of us felt like we were taking part in a survey, rather than a discussion. Kudo’s to Susanna Greenwood of Artsopolis for keeping the conversations rolling.
The networking luncheon was alright, I had been feeling a bit drained from the long week already and had tried to hide myself in the back corner, however a couple of interesting people joined me and I ended up getting a new contact that I could potentially collaborate with at some point.
During the afternoon I attended “There’s an App for that: Connect with your audience via their phone and achieve results”. This particular session was being broadcast on Livestream, though the in person audience was a bit light. I don’t know if it was the speakers, the subjects or what, but I began to zone out a little during the talks here. While it was interesting to hear about the Yerba Buena web projects, I couldn’t find anything to take away from this group.
During the same time I started noticing tweets from the concurrent session on “Audience Engagement” I don’t know what happened in that session as I couldn’t find anyone (in person) to talk to about it, but apparently something interesting happened during it. I saw several tweets come through mentioning how they didn’t like one of the speakers and were leaving, but then several other tweets about how the panel they had during this session was amazing. I really wish I had attended that group instead of this mobile one.
The opening reception went well I think. There was a good turnout, and though I didn’t get any feedback (yet) from the live tweets I had placed up on displays in the dining area, it was at least fun to watch people come in, look at the screen, and then tweet something with the keywords to see themselves on the screen.