There’s been a tempest in a teacup this week: the Edmonton blogosphere meets the Fringe Festival. Brittney wrote a good summary.
The too-long, didn’t-read version: Blogger writes what seems like a positive review of a Fringe theatre show produced by a local company. Artistic director of said company posts a rather catty comment on her review. Mack weighs in, and a long conversation ensues. Brittney did a follow-up interview with the rather loquacious artistic director Jeff Haslam.
You can identify the heroes and villains of this little Albertan farce on your own. I wanted to highlight what seems to be the crux of this situation. First, an excerpt from Brittney’s first post:
I won’t say that I’m a qualified professional reviewer. I’m not. But I’ve been seeing plays since I was little and saw a high school production of Oliver. Since then, I try to go see plays whenever the opportunity presents itself. Although friends of mine are active in Edmonton’s theatre community and can tell you about technical flaws, lighting, sound, direction… I can’t. But I don’t want to. Because, I feel, the average theatre-goer doesn’t necessarily know all that. We just go to things we like. What we hear friends and family speak highly of.
And here’s part of a comment on that post:
I think Haslam is venting a particular frustration many people in the arts industries feel. They are unhappy with the new role bloggers have taken in their business. It is true that most bloggers are not professional reviewers and don’t have the vast experience and training that writers for respectable publications do, however, I think they serve some purpose. They present a view of a regular person and their opinions aren’t useless.
It’s often said that the web is disruptive, and this is a classic example. Artists–the subjects of criticism–have had to re-contextualize their understanding of and response to criticism as the ranks of critics have broadened.
Once, artists lived in a world with only two kinds of critics:
Friends
Professional critics published in mainstream media
A Critical Continuum
Now, of course, that dichotomy has become a continuum, with friends at one end, bloggers (and Twitter users and Facebook fans and so forth) in the middle and professional critics at the other end.
Artists should (and many do, certainly) understand that they have different expectations and get different benefits from different critics on this continuum. Friends may provide unfettered approbation, while bloggers can offer anything from friendly word of mouth to professional-level criticism. And professional critics can be hit and miss in their analysis, too.
If artists only expect professional criticism, then they’re not going to know how to react when they encounter other responses to their work. This seems to have been the case with Mr. Haslam.
I regularly write theatre reviews on this site (I used to write theatre reviews for a Victoria newspaper, so I have a little mainstream media cred). I work hard on reviews, because I want to be thorough and fair. I was slightly dismayed then, when I heard from a local director earlier this year that he’d enjoyed a review of mine, but found it “oddly incomplete”. Lo, the tables are turned. The critic gets critiqued.
Read the Body Language of the Blog
But, again, I think this is an example of changing contexts. Not all of my theatre reviews are carefully crafted pieces that seek to emulate the reviews I read in the Globe or the Straight. Sometimes I’ll just write a shorter piece describing my immediate, less-measured response to a performance. Such is the fluid nature of this site–I don’t have many rules.
The lesson? It’s that hoary old friend “don’t comment in anger”. But there’s a subtler lesson as well: consider the context of the critique. Read the body language of the blog (the bloggy language?). Recognize whether the critique is friendly or chilly, professional or amateur. And, of course, be gracious.
In a clever bit of PR, the folks at Edmonton’s water utility, EPCOR, released this chart showing city water consumption during the gold medal hockey game last weekend (click for a slightly larger version):
I wonder if there will be any impact on other parts of our lives? Will there be a small blip in the number of babies born nine months from now?
Small, related marketing lesson: I originally found this graphic on a coupleof blogs. I genuinely tried to find its original source on EPCOR’s website, but couldn’t. Google was no help either. When you’ve got a clever idea that gets some legs like this, make sure that people can discover and link to its original context easily.
We’re currently on a road trip from Vancouver to Edmonton. We taught two social media marketing workshops in Kamloops last week, tomorrow it’s Calgary and then on to a session in Edmonton on Wednesday. We spent the weekend in Yoho National Park.
Updates may be a bit light over the next few days, between the workshops, client work and travel in-between. In the meantime, here are a few photos from the road. I see that this slideshow goes backwards, but I’m sure you’ll manage:
Speaking of workshops, we have a few spots left in our Vancouver session on September 16, if anybody’s interested.
As I mentioned back in March, we’ve been running a series of all-day social media marketing ‘bootcamps’ in Victoria and Vancouver. Attendance has been good, thus far, and we’re running our fifth one in Vancouver on July 23 (there’s a few spots left for that session).
We’ve taking the rest of the summer off, but, come September, we’re going to take our bootcamps on the road. We’ve scheduled events in Kamloops, Kelowna, Calgary and Edmonton in the second and third weeks of September. The details and registration links are below:
Kamloops
Campus Activity Centre Thompson River University Thursday, September 3 9:30am – 4:30pm Register Now!
Kelowna
Delta Grand Okanagan Resort Friday, September 4 9:30am – 4:30pm Register Now!
Calgary
University of Calgary 2500 University Drive NW Tuesday, September 8 9:30am – 4:30pm Register Now!
Edmonton
The Mettera Hotel Wednesday, September 9 9:30am – 4:30pm Register Now!
Vancouver
BCIT Downtown Campus 555 Seymour Street Wednesday, September 16 9:30am – 4:30pm Register Now!
In promoting these events, we’re looking to connect with local marketing and communications groups. We usually offer a discount to their members or a free spot for a staff member in exchange for an email announcement or mention in their newsletter. If you’re such a person, or know such a person, drop me a line.
Because I’m a big nerd, I made a Google map showing the bootcamp locations. Google actually chose the route, so I welcome alternative suggestions. We’re also going to spend a weekend somewhere between Kelowna and Calgary, so I’m up for recommendations there, too.
Apparently Edmonton has a municipal airport a stone’s throw away from the centre of town. It’s called Edmonton City Centre Airport (also known as Blatchford Field), and has been around in some form or another since 1929. Google Maps says it’s 4.4 km from the airport to Edmonton’s City Hall, or seven minutes of driving time.
I gather that the airport is used for regional flights and private air travel. It also gets annually converted into a race track for the Edmonton Indy. Larger aircraft and international flights come through the Edmonton International Airport, which is 26 km southwest of the city centre.
Some of the people who have made submissions to the public hearing want the downtown airport closed and the land developed into a transit-oriented community with housing for thousands of people, along with commercial and retail space.
Other presenters have told city councillors the airport must stay open because it is vital for the business community. They describe it as a hub to the north and argue that it is critical for medevac flights. About 4,000 medevac flights a year go through the facility.
I learned about this whole business from Mack’s site. He’s started NotMyAirport.ca (here’s the associated Facebook group), which argues for replacing the airport with “a new transit-oriented, green community”, as well as an expansion of Edmoton’s NAIT campus. Removal of the airport would also apparently change building height limitations in the city, which is a good thing. A dense city, after all, is a healthy city.
Mack launched his site in response to SaveOurAirport.ca, which argues that the airport “plays a vital role in making Edmonton one of Canada’s leading health centres, as a hub for air ambulance and other essential health services for all of Alberta, the Northwest Territories, British Columbia and Saskatchewan.” This claim is disputed by the CEO of Edmonton Airports in the aforementioned CBC article, who says “”what the City Centre Airport offers is a tremendous amount of convenience for corporate travellers and those people who live in the downtown area and have private aircraft.”
