The New Communicators (Amended)

Note: I'm a bad bad web monkey... I completely forgot to mention in the post below that this event is organized and led by Portland's own Abundant Artist Cory Huff - mea culpa! If you're an artist and you're not following Cory on Twitter, you're really missing out!

Original Post:

I'm honored to be part of "Art is War: Reinventing the Art Sales System with New Media," a panel discussion tomorrow night from 7 - 9 PM at the Art Institute Portland (1122 N.W. Davis Street • Portland, OR 97209-2911, Portland, Oregon - Click here for a map).

The discussion is part of the New Communicators Conference, an innovative decentralized conference aiming to "share experiences and inspire discussion about how we communicate with others using both online and offline media."

In a nutshell, the conference is about understanding the massive shift in communications we find ourselves in the midst of right now... more and more avenues for communicating with friends, family, business associates, and customers are popping up each day. Ten years ago, "social networking" meant going to parties and get-togethers and interacting in person with people... then came email lists, which were followed by blogs... and then, suddenly (over the course of about three years), we had MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo, and any number of new "social networking" applications that could be accessed from home or office.

Now, we could argue 'til the cows come home about the pro's and con's of this shift (Pro: easier to stay in touch with friends and family, broadening connections around the world... Con: Wall*E. 'Nuff said there). One thing that can be agreed on though, is that the potential for businesses to reach new customers through social networking is enormous.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: "there's no business like show business, but show business is like any other business." As actors, we have to market ourselves to our customers (the audience) and our business partners (the other actors we want to work with and the producers who hire us). These social media outlets give us a valuable, inexpensive way to do just that - market our services and increase our audience-base. Sadly, many actors don't utilize the internet to market themselves effectively. There are a lot of reasons; they may be intimidated or overwhelmed by the breadth of social media channels, they may be undereducated about what's available, they may be worried about how much time is spent... whatever the reason, this event is a good introduction for actors and visual artists to utilizing the internet to effectively sell themselves and their work.

I hope you'll join me tomorrow night... this promises to be an inspiring and energizing evening!

See you then...

-Harold