Unknown Speaker 0:01 Welcome to Engaging Ideas, the bi weekly podcast from Parsons TKO, bringing you conversations with mission driven leaders and luminaries to shift your perspective and challenge your assumptions on the art of the possible. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of engaging ideas, the Parsons TKO podcast where we like to explore all kinds of ideas, innovations and thoughts in the nonprofit sector to help you imagine the possibility of what can be and start guiding towards a different future state. And as always, we are the nonprofit consulting firm focused on Engagement Architecture, which is technology roadmapping, data analysis and analytics. If you ever want to talk, feel free to reach out to us. And also, by the time this podcast comes out, we are going to be well over two years into running Engaging Ideas, and we would love your feedback. So please leave us any comments on LinkedIn. Or you can feel free to email and I will read all of it at create change at Parsons tko.com. Without further ado, today, I am joined by my good friend, who I've worked with for many, many years in many different capacities. Mr. Eric Johnson, who is currently serving as the Director of Digital Access at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Eric, welcome. Thank you, Tony. Great to great to be on the show here. And I appreciate you inviting me to be on this episode. So glad to have you. I think we're gonna have a robust conversation today got a bunch of questions lined up. And before we dive into that, though, for anyone who's listening who might not be as familiar with the Folger if you just want to give us a little background about the Folger how it's organized and structured, and a little bit about yourself, that'd be wonderful. Yeah, absolutely. So the Folger Shakespeare Library was founded in 1932 by Henry and Emily Folger. It is located on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. We are definitely in a very, very important neighborhood. Folger is an anomaly for Capitol Hill for non private residences on Capitol Hill and that we're a private institution. We were part of Amherst College in Massachusetts. Folgers gave the the library to Amherst, which Henry Folger had gone to when he was an undergraduate, at the time of his death in the late 1920s. When the Folgers were alive, they assembled the greatest and most extensive, extensive collection of the early printed editions of Shakespeare. There are more copies of the the collective, the first edition of the collected works of Shakespeare, usually called the First Folio at the Folger than any other place in the world. So there are 230, some copies of that book still in existence from 1623. And the folder holds 82 of them. So about roughly a third of the exome copies, great libraries of its kind and has a worldwide reputation. The folder is also a multifaceted cultural institution. And not just the library, it is also has museum like qualities. In fact, we are embarked in a renovation to greatly increase our public exhibition space. And when we reopen in fall of 2024, we have been a performing arts space for several decades. We have Folger Theatre, which is a very well regarded Theatre in in Washington, Folger consort, performing early music, we have poetry readings, we have scholarly lectures that are open to the public. So there's a lot that goes on the Folger on site, and digitally, which is where I come in. The team that I lead is called Digital Media and Publications. And as the name implies, we run a wide range of digital projects for the Folger, also the Folgers publications to help guide what the institution does, in terms of the strategies for for digital and publications. I should say, too, I'm on this episode Speaking for myself, this is all about necessarily folders official voice with that said, you know, I remain who I am and and, you know, Unknown Speaker 4:12 hopefully ably representing the work of the Folger the work of my team tos, I don't want to downplay the fact that there's a lot of people who are involved and all the things that we're that we're about to talk about. For myself, I didn't really think that I was going to get into anything digital when I graduated from college in the mid 1990s. But the internet was pretty big back then. I had always had an interest in technology. I knew how to a the rudiments of programming and just sort of fell into working on the web always thought that I would eventually move out of it and never quite did. One of the most constant themes of my career is that I've been able to work with a lot of different kinds of smart people who need to convey their knowledge to Unknown Speaker 5:00 The rest of the world. So I started off. And I would say that the things that I've been able to do across all these different realms is provide both technical and editorial leadership. So I've been a developer, and built some pretty extensive systems work as the lead of development teams. But I've always kept my hand in the editorial side as well. So not just text, but other types of production as well. As far as the technologies that I've usually worked on. It's been more skewed towards web application development, and CMS. And that was where Tony and I met was working on a company who was very much focused on those things as well. Just one last note about how I came to the Folger. When I was getting my master's degree in English, I needed to complete a project thesis projects. And I was also in the marine reserves was deployed to Iraq in 2003. I found myself in a tense in Kuwait after being in Iraq, with not a lot to do, but with a laptop and a really crummy internet connection. And I decided that I wanted to build a Shakespeare site. So I started in hopes that that could be the thesis project to complete my master's. When I came home, I had a rudimentary Shakespearean complete works of Shakespeare sites, with a search engine attached to it, what and convince George Mason University to give me a shot at developing it as my thesis projects. And that's a became called Open Source Shakespeare, which has also become very popular, even though there's a lot of other Shakespeare websites out there, still gets a lot of attention for its search engine and the concordance and hosted 1.3 million people last year. So way back when before I came to the Folger, they had actually given me some advice. So this was half members, give me some advice about building the site, which was quite good. Then the Folger had this position, director of digital access open up in 2012. I looked at the job description, and maybe it was written just for me, it was not. Unknown Speaker 7:13 But I applied for it. And I've been at the folder since since 2013. Wow. Thank you for all that. And before we dive in just one question. So the first folios I think you've said this before, we have more here in the States than they do in England. Is that correct? Yes. I believe that's, I believe that's true. There are many different in many different places. I think the British Library has three copies. Oxford University has one copy. They're definitely in the UK. But it actually Mesa University in Japan has 18 copies. They're the only ones that believe they're the only other institution that has double digit numbers of copies. Wow. And for anyone who has walked by the building for I think it's the statue of PuCT. That's up front with the little thing underneath it. Yes, but summer's night, memory recalls. It's one of my favorite I like I always enjoyed seeing podcast there. Alright, so Eric, you've been thinking about online access and experience of materials, just thinking of all the books, manuscripts, you're talking about read even before we heard the name COVID-19. Know, what should we be looking to in terms of increasing digital access for scholarship to rare and archived physical materials, like you were talking about? Are there lessons from the pandemic that might become a boon and new types of research of if more materials can be brought online into a digital realm for scholars taxes. So I think that the what the pandemic did it this is definitely not limited to the realm of scholarship. But the pandemic accelerated a lot of a lot of friends. I wouldn't say that in talking to other institutions that hosts researchers and foster research, and also in reading developments and other other institutions. It's pretty clear that remote research, while it certainly was an increasing trend, while more research resources were devoted to it, as time has gone on, it's now seen as non optional, whereas before, traditional, onsite physical scholarship was seen as the norm. But then once it was non optional, a lot of institutions had to figure out how they're going to do this. Luckily, the Wii Folger have been thinking about this for a long time, the Folger was going to be closed for renovations, no matter what. So we closed to the public in January of 2020. March 1 2020, was the final on sites Unknown Speaker 10:00 performance of Folger theatre was the closing night of very wise Windsor. So by March of 2020, we were going to be closed, we were going to be closed, and have an active construction sites for quite a while, the physical closure, the Folger actually didn't affect us nearly as much as, as other institutions would have. So, so there's considerably more disruption on the public programming side. I think that one of the lessons and this is from conversations with scholars is that, again, this is not, this is not a before and after, it's just more like an enhancement or acceleration. There's a lot of research efficiencies that can be wrung out working remote. And again, I don't want to make it sound like scholars were not doing this already. But in order to do research more efficiently, frequently, scholars will do a lot of their preliminary work in terms of identifying materials they would like to see prior to physically coming to the folder. Unknown Speaker 11:04 And now the moment, they can't come to the folder and see materials. So I think that the practice of only being able to look at the bibliographic data or metadata that the Folger can offer about the collection items, and then whatever digitized representations we have of those items, that I think will foster more efficient research, because there's a lot to be said about being in person with the object, you know, whether it's a book or manuscript or whatever else, as you're studying it about 80% of the value of the being with the objects by seeing a properly digitized version of of the object, it's never going to give you the same sensory feedback. There are people who are interested in what's in the books, and there are people who are interested in the books as books, quite frequently that the same people but a book historian is going to look at a book differently, or differently than somebody who's researching the history of early modern medicine. If you're researching the history of really modern medicine, the facts about the books production are material, but secondary. If you're doing book history, the facts of the books production is usually primary, you want to know where the book was made, where they got the text from, how the any illustrations were manufactured, was this book illegally produced. They were kind of pirated, pirated, and license books, in the early modern era, just the same way that there are pirated movies on the Internet today, the more digitized material there are there is out in the world, the more accessible it is around the world. So I remember very early in my time at the Folger, I was in a conference in the UK, and I ran into a couple of scholars in India. And they mentioned that they didn't have access to Early English Books Online, which is a commercial product that universities license. And it's digitized copies of varying quality of early modern books exactly what it sounds like. So I said, so your your, your university in India doesn't have access to EVO, he said, No, there is no, they boasted, there are no universities in India that have access to emo. Unknown Speaker 13:27 And so there have been a lot of resources that are the since the now freely available and are continuously, you know, made available. But yes, in in American universities and colleges that don't have that are not large, and they have to really focus their expenditures, they might not have access to the same types of resources, the more libraries, museums, archives make their materials accessible to the public. Two things happen first, that's really their mission. I mean, it doesn't matter whether it's privately owned nonprofits publicly owned, one way or another, there's supposed to be some sort of public mission. That's why nonprofits are not taxed by the government is fulfilling some sort of mission for the for the public good. And so this gives them the ability to enhance their dancer mission. I would say another side effect of the pandemic has been that a lot of institutions are probably they're used to not paying for travel now. And certainly a lot of that is coming back. But you know, when your travel budget drops 90% in one year. Unknown Speaker 14:37 It's easy to keep it just like with any with most, most institutions, you know, you asked for an increase or or contemplated decrease based on last year's numbers, whatever the budget line is, and so all of a sudden if the travel budget line has dropped in nearly nothing, you've got to then read justify why it's necessary to physically travel to do Unknown Speaker 15:00 Research, I'm hearing that that's kind of a tough conversation at a lot of a lot of institutions, which are mostly universities. And kind of adjacent to that is, a lot of people are concerned about their carbon footprints, and whether or not and I've seen this come up rather suddenly, when talking about also events, not just research trips, but also events, like conferences where people will say, in fact, I just, I just heard a colleague at another institution, say that that their institution had, for environmental reasons, clamp down on travel, you know, because the university is trying to reduce their level of carbon emissions with the bonus that they also get frees up money to spend on other things. So any, I think a lot of it remains to be I not, if I can predict the future, I'd be trading bonds and not working in a Shakespeare Library. But I think a lot of these these trends will, will continue, it'll be fascinating to see how whether things will kind of slowly revert to the mean, in which things will will continue. I suspect that a lot of these trends are here to stay, though. Oh, yeah, I think this is the way forward, I don't think there's a return. And it'd be interesting to see how much of the budget starts to go Unknown Speaker 16:20 towards more digital efforts. You know, I was thinking when you were talking to a difference between digital and just straight Tech, I think, because you had mentioned in your intro to and there's something about content that goes into that, you know, in a way that pure tech doesn't, right, it's just a function of a system, yes, digital, which then gets these other things. And I feel like we're in the moment coming through. There at least was an awakening during the pandemic, you know, and maybe it's the rise of digital asset management. What that could be just within organizations themselves, you know, I had a lot of conversations with one org, it was even like, it's just in a printout on somebody's desk, like, someone's going to have to figure out how to get back in the building to get this sheet and move things forward. And it was like, because he just didn't think right. Okay, well, I need to have it here. And what's a cue drive out? Or what use it or what are the systems I'm seeing more people in more tools coming available, but you know, if I recall, correctly with cue, we got into initial exploratory conversations about where we were kind of the time a digital asset platform, we weren't calling it a system. That was like 2015. But I'm just curious to know, can you tell us a bit about what drove you, when you were, you know, your what, a year or two into the position? And, you know, I think we did a road map with you. But then this really became where you wanted to drive a lot of attention. I mean, what was it back then 2015 2014, we're like this acid platform is, this is what we've got to get into. So when fold has been around for a while, between the records that the Folgers kept when they were collecting their books, and everything that they collected, we've got roughly a century of worth of of assets that we've been generating away. And that includes the 10s of 1000s of images and the image collection, largely derived from, from digitized books and manuscripts, the audio recordings of lectures and recordings, concert recordings, video and various formats, datasets, which, you know, I think people thought of as just spreadsheets, they're actually datasets, and no way to get these things out in to the public. In the vast majority of cases, all these assets were either owned by the soldier, or in a few cases, they're in the public domain. And that was part of my initial remit of when I joined the soldier was trying to figure out, how do we take what we have, and then bring it out to the world in a, in a way that's going to get to be beneficial. It was pretty clear to me that we needed to have some sort of consolidation. I actually started thinking about this even before I started the Folger. So it's pretty common and academic institutions to bring a candidate in for a job talk is, I think, pretty much ubiquitous when it comes to terms of professors. So the person comes and gives a talk about something that their past work and maybe reflects on the work that they that they would like to do if they are chosen for the open position. So actually proposed having some sort of single platform for the Folger in February 2013 weeks before I was offered the position. Yeah, it didn't seem like having a consolidated Asset Management solution was something that we could hold off on that it was either the stick with the disparate things that Unknown Speaker 20:00 We that we had, or just to have these materials not have a venue for for publication. And so this seemed like the best path forward. Unknown Speaker 20:10 So when you say desperate just for the audience to me, when I hear you say these disparate systems, what you're really talking about is if you kept those, you'd have to find a way to normalize all of the data, make a system that could call across all of these individual systems through some kind of probably custom coded Application Protocol interface or an API, and then you'd have to maintain those on top of maintaining the system. Don't worry about cycle life. So coming up with a, an idea for the system. Yes, I could see exactly why that is probably the route and it felt right. And you said the word Miranda. So that is that's the application that it became. That's the name it took on eventually. But so in common parlance, I think a lot of people listening probably heard the phrase, at least, you know, build your pie. Should I build this? Or should I buy it? In this case you decided to build? Can you tell us a little why you went that route? Instead of you know, was there just nothing commercially available as a SaaS tool that you could have used? And, yeah, tell us a little bit about that. I don't know if we're doing this today, that we've done something that was as highly customized as Miranda, but I don't know that we wouldn't. And the reason I say that is that these digital asset systems that are mainly pitched for galleries, archives, and libraries, and museums, have come a long way, in the last seven years, there are a lot more what I would consider professional, they are definitely lagging behind the asset management systems that say, a for profit media company would use, but they are more flexible. So one of the big things the Folger one of the things is called as a Special Collections Library, which might not mean anything to the folks outside the library world. But a special collections library could be many different things does not necessarily limit itself to books and other printed media, they're usually focused on not something that's generalized, like a public library has many different wide range of subjects. Special Collections, libraries are usually more focused on particular topics, than some cases a particular author different types of assets. So for example, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as the library, obviously they are, they've got a lot of audio in their their library, and they don't have classical music or world music or me they might have a little bit, but the focus is on a particular type of music, generated in particular type era. And so they collect media, that's particular types of media that that pertain to, to that musical genre. So because of their nature, Special Collections, libraries have to describe their collections and the items in their collections in ways that are often different from at almost always deeper than a general library, the general collection. So in the case of Shakespeare, we start with the Library of Congress, subject headings, which have a lot of things about Shakespeare in them, having multiple copies of the same title is not uncommon. But having multiple copies of the same title, that have different characteristics is uncommon, if you're approaching it from a library system perspective. So for example, the differences between the copies of Shakespeare's first folio are relevant, some are missing pages, some of them have annotations in them from previous owners, some of them have evidence of use. Like there's there's one that has the outline of scissors, there's another copy that we have, that's kind of doodle from a young girl writing in her or 18th century parents Unknown Speaker 24:07 copy of the First Folio. Unknown Speaker 24:10 You can only imagine the reaction of the parents when they see that Unknown Speaker 24:15 their daughter has written, you know, a little notes in a picture of a house in, in a book that is today probably worth, you know, some number of millions of dollars. Unknown Speaker 24:25 But in case the software is catching up with with the needs of special collections, libraries, I would say that the component driven nature of Miranda, you know, I always thought that that was a great architecture to have in the end. If one is building a platform, that the ability to have it built in a modular way so that we can split swap out pieces instead of just being able to do big, galumphing upgrades of a major software version that I think was the most intelligent part of the architecture. You know, if we Unknown Speaker 25:00 We decided that we don't like one part, we, we developed a replacement part, swap it in, we don't have to replace the whole. And we've continued to, to keep brand up to date on the back end. And so that that architecture seems to have, and seems to have worked well, from a sustainability perspective. Unknown Speaker 25:20 It's great to hear especially a lot of custom builds, you know, yeah, the, the lifecycle isn't as long and it is usually, either it's all or nothing when you gotta get a new piece put in or move something around. So that's, I think that's interesting. And hopefully some of the people listening if you're thinking about a build versus buy, and that sort of modular componentry into your development seems like something that's worth it. So just kidding, it's in your eye. So you know, 2020 comes along, you have all this experience of getting all of this material ready and online and proper taxonomies, it's easy to find, and you can pull it up, how did it help that experience help the organization overall, if it did as you you're already, we're planning to be remote anyways, but the building going down. But you know, a lot of organizations when we get into the pandemic, they have never thought about it digital asset management before. Where are these files? How do I share them? What is going on? And then somebody randomly says, but we have SharePoint, but no one's ever put anything in it. No one knows how to use it. Don't call anything, you know. Yeah, I'm just curious for an organization like yourself that, that put the work in ahead of time, and a lot of the intellectual work that goes into thinking about what you do with your assets, how do you call them up? Who shares them? What was it like for y'all when, when it all happened there March 2020 ish. And I think this was like a lot of other lot of other institutions, we did start immediately thinking about what we can offer to the outside world and a reaction to the lock downs and the fact that a lot of people we're going to be we're going to be confined to their their homes for the most part. So one of the things that we did was, because so many of our Folger Shakespeare edition books are used in classrooms, we did a couple of things, we open up the seven forecasts, full length recordings that we have of Shakespeare plays, so the top six best selling plays, plus Richard the Third, the big ones, Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, etc. And we made them available, free of charge to anyone who wanted to listen to them. Those are commercial products. So our, our publishing partner, Simon and Schuster agreed to, to allow us to open it up and let anybody listen to, to those recordings. We were told, it's anecdotal, but we were told that teachers really appreciated this because suddenly they were thrown into the situation where they're having to do remote lessons. And you know, normally they would read portions of the of the play out loud in the in the classroom, and they don't have the opportunity to do that. Now they can hear professional actors for the recordings, Folger created a filmed performance of Macbeth that was filmed in the in the Folger theatre was co directed by teller of Penn and Teller. And so we quickly scrambled around is offered as a commercial product, quickly scrambled around and got permission from everybody, we needed to get permission from to rip the DVD of Macbeth, the teller Macbeth, and put it online. Between that and the the audio recordings, we were able to reach 10s of 1000s of people, I don't know what the final count was. But the Macbeth is still up on YouTube, and can be seen, and it's been an watched, as I say, quite a few times, and it's made its way into into the school lessons as well. So, so yeah, I mean, I think that the the fact that we had already been thinking in terms of how to exploit our assets, how to get it out in front of the public thinking in terms of audiences, audience reception, user journeys, I think this all helped us a lot as we were thrown into the, the pandemic world like everyone else, is I think we're gonna make sure we link to the pen Macbeth, or the teller Macbeth, sorry, if that's on YouTube, and without MIT, I'm just curious for your thoughts, you know, how do you think new digital asset management systems are going to play into the museum space going forward? You know, like, is there more access for people to see things ahead of time do we? Do we still physically go to museums? What are your thoughts there? Unknown Speaker 29:49 So I have two, two main thoughts. The first is that digital asset management is part of the plumbing. If you're a museum or another Unknown Speaker 30:00 cultural institution that is trying to reach the public. Even if it's not properly, he was not exposed at all to the public, they they're still, you got some sort of way to track your your digital assets, even if it's not a formal, formal system, or even if it's something like SharePoint. The other is, I guess I'm, at least for the digital asset management systems that I'm familiar with, they're great if you know what you're looking for. Unknown Speaker 30:26 But if you don't, they're not a particularly satisfying experience. So if you know that you're looking for images of Macbeth are recordings of Macbeth, and you want to see them from, you know, this century, they're great, you know, you can, the systems do what they're what they're supposed to do, but they're not really interpretive. They're not designed to be interpretive, so I'm not, I'm not faulting them at all. But the one thing that cultural institutions have to do if they're reaching the public, is do some sort of interpretation. And all all a digital asset management system will ever do is collect digital objects, information about the digital objects, and then put tools on top of them, that will display the information the object and help you find them and maybe do other things like create a list that you can turn into a bibliography or a data set or something like that. But that's all they are, they're not going to be the same deeply satisfying experience that you get, when you see a physical exhibition that's done really well. Or when you hear a lecture from an expert that is, has brought slides and other media to try to tell you why something's important to tell you why an object has survived, you know, why this should be important for us to learn about a digital asset management system is never really going to be a substitute for, for any of those things. I don't think that's as much of a challenging statement to museums, because museums have always had interpretation built into them, or at least, they they have for a very long time. I think things I've just kind of reaching back to the early history museums, I think, museums in their most primitive state, were kind of like digital asset management systems, you got a bunch of Greek and Roman statues, you had some old master paintings, you put them in rooms, and people would walk in and look at them. They were supposed to be inspired, like the the name museum would apply. But yeah, I mean, for however, many years now museums assume that they're going to be helping their visitors learn more about what they're seeing, I think for libraries and archives, that has not traditionally been a mode that they're used to libraries and archives are much more passive. But I don't mean that in a in a deleterious sort of, sort of, sort of way or decades away that you come to a library or an archive to see materials because you have something you have questions you want to answer. You want to do research, and then the librarian and archivist or whoever's helping you will help you find that material will tell you things about that material, might even or frequently if it's placed, like the folder will help think with you about what you are trying to accomplish. But interpretation, the idea that we're going to take something and highlight it, and synthesize a narrative and produce lessons for you, whatever, whatever that looks like. And then putting it in front of people is almost, I would say, at least from my own observations, it's almost in this presumption. It's like you're not supposed to tell people what they should be interested in. Unknown Speaker 33:59 But museums do that all the time. libraries and archives, certainly for a number of years now have become more museum like the Folger included in that. They're eager to tell the stories about their collection, stories in their collection, get things out in front of the public, I actually think there's a very positive development, digital asset management system, I think, are a part of what cultural institutions need to use to put things out in front of the public. But I don't think that they're going to ever provide those interpretive structures, except insofar as they can feed other systems, digital systems that do help with that with that interpretive layer. Unknown Speaker 34:46 got super helpful. Yeah, I mean, I could see the digital asset management systems, the infrastructure they, Unknown Speaker 34:53 they, they help you to leverage to then have the creative layer, the interpretive layer, the man who's doing it best them Unknown Speaker 35:00 is building that that makes a lot of sense. So this next question, you know, pontificating into the future. But, you know, everyone's sort of got ideas coming through the pandemic of like, How can I not get caught unawares again? So, if that's a possibility, none of us can really read the future, as you alluded to earlier, but as a leader in the nonprofit industry, you know, what specific advice would you give to organizations that want to try to future proof themselves? Sure. Well, as I said, Before, we were recording, funny, you should ask, because when I was in the UK last week, the first is the importance of of teams, and how they're organized. That's not something that's ever going to go obsolete. Humans work the way humans work, our habits can change, our circumstances can change. But the way that teams are LED and motivated and work together is pretty durable. I don't mean the technology, I just mean the way that the humans are, interact. So making sure that team leads have clear missions that they are leading their teams toward having, you know, that doesn't need to be excessively delineated, but having defined roles within the team, and making sure that people know what they're responsible for, that's also very important. One thing that the nonprofit space doesn't do a lot of that I think would be very beneficial, is doing more management, training, and leadership training. Yeah, a bit more of that in a bit. The second thing is that infrastructure matters should be more of a top of mind concern for leaders, I would say cluding, senior leadership, and senior leadership does not need to see leaders do not need to necessarily know what the best cloud solution is for a given product, but should have enough familiarity to be able to know that digital projects are being managed properly. It also, just like we were talking about earlier, having the simplest possible infrastructure, thinking about things like life cycles, and not assuming that software is going to live forever. That's also very important, obviously, to know, knowing what's gonna endure, and what's not. Content is pretty durable, you know, you can you can open up a Word file from 25 years ago, or JPEG from 2004. And it'll look pretty much the way that it did back then. So making sure that you're, those types of kind of hard digital assets are being taken care of properly. And, you know, that that's, that's all part of, and then the tools on top of them are being managed properly to you know, that's, I think, a key infrastructure. Concern. Number three expertise has no transitive property. By that, I mean, just because you're good and knowledgeable in one area and able to apply that knowledge effectively. That doesn't mean that you are necessarily good in an area that sort of kind of looks like that. It also doesn't mean that someone who's an expert is good at managing other people. And that's, that's a mistake that that's definitely not limited to the nonprofit world. As I mentioned, the I spent 13 years in the Marine reserves, they don't assume that you know, anything in the military. By that I mean, you can be a colonel with over 20 years, being an officer and get promoted to be a general. And even though as a colonel, you've been working around generals for a long time, you know, what they do you know how to be a leader, they're gonna send you to general school. Unknown Speaker 38:51 There, the assumption is not that that you're starting with a blank slate, the assumption is, you do know some things, but we don't know what you don't know. And we're going to teach you in a methodical sort of way. There should not be the presumption that because you are the world's fourth, foremost expert in anything that you are, therefore, capable of leading a team that's, that has largely to do with your area of expertise. The fourth thing, and I think this is one of the tougher things about the world that we're in is the need to distinguish between marketing and communications and publications. I will give my definition of those three things and how they are discretes marketing is figuring out who your audience is, whether its current audience or aspirational audience. Communication is more ephemeral it is how your community how you are reaching the audiences that you've discovered in marketing, and publication. I distinguish between publication and communication because publications are more durable. They might eventually be Unknown Speaker 40:00 all the way because everything has a lifecycle. But just in the same way that we're still reading things that Shakespeare wrote in the 1500s. What we are not, what was not preserved was the publicity around the place except a very small number cases and none other than Shakespeare. publications are durable publications are assets, their intellectual property, they shouldn't be treated differently than communication. I think when Marketing and Communication and Publications exist on a continuum, if they are blurred together, if they're combined, I think it's really messy. And that's not to say that if you're sending out a newsletter, that you shouldn't also be the that you should also be trying to figure out from the response who the people are rating like that, that that's bad thing. Yeah, being able to, to keep those things straight. And to try to figure out when you're doing which one is critical. The last one is, the last lesson is difficult for a lot of people in cultural institutions to hear, which is that audiences will never enjoy precisely what we enjoy in the way that we enjoy it. But I mean, I'll use myself, I love Shakespeare, I love Shakespeare for a very long time. There are certain plays that I like, such as, say, Richard the second, which are just not popular plays, I think, Richard, the play is a super, is a superb play. If you've never seen the BBC Hollow Crown version of Richard the second, which has been several years ago, you should it's a revelation. It's a it's a wonderful production. However, I recognize that not everybody likes Richard the second, or indeed likes Shakespeare. The way I like Shakespeare and audiences, Unknown Speaker 41:54 popular audiences will find certain things interesting that a lot of people who are more deeply enmeshed in, in a field, don't think are interesting, or vice versa. Unknown Speaker 42:09 And it is often a disappointment to discover. Unknown Speaker 42:13 I think I think it comes from a very good place. Most people who work for cultural cultural institutions work because work in them because they love something about what it is that they are trying to get out into the world, and they're trying to share it with other people. Unknown Speaker 42:29 And, but I don't think we need to be disappointed when that when that happens. I think that Unknown Speaker 42:36 you know, I don't think that that's a bad thing. I think the most important thing is that people are able to, to benefit in some way from, from from what we're offering. And not to be disappointed. That is I don't think it's our job to train people with what they should like, I think we should offer and help guide and explain and if people can do it to the same understanding that that we do great if they don't? Well, that's at the very least, we've made the offer and that we've Unknown Speaker 43:09 we've gotten things out there. So Unknown Speaker 43:12 that's awesome. Thank you for that. I mean, recap for everyone. I mean, I think you're right teams and the way we organize ourselves and stuffs not going away. You got to think about it. You got to think about who's doing the leading, can you motivate how to reorganize for most effectiveness on infrastructure matters just for everyone here. I mean, it's technical infrastructure, the underpinnings to make the work, you know, happen and facilitate expertise has no transitive property. I like that one a lot. Unknown Speaker 43:37 Marketing Communications publication, I've never heard it phrased that way. I hope people in the audience listen to that. But that was really interesting. I do think that's a great take you have there i i can't see. It's messy. I mean, one thing I have talked about on the podcasts and just written about and talked about the difference too is just is the communications tend to in the nonprofit sector too big like, you have technical project management along with people who do press releases. Unknown Speaker 44:03 That just I don't know, there's something about that. And I like the way you've broken the way you've set it up here with marketing communications publication makes a lot of sense. Audiences will never enjoy precisely what we enjoy the way we enjoyed a really like that, you know, we've spent a lot of time for I mean, I've spent a lot of time in my career, it's really hard, the audience is coming. They need information in a different way. And to digest it differently than someone who spends eight hours a day looking at it and thinking about it. And that's their whole job, because they're not coming for that amount of time to go smaller bit of time. They want smaller chunks, they want something a little differently, and how do we how do we take everything we know and package it and then to think to your point, like take a look at that data and see how people are reacting and how do we tune it over time? It doesn't have to always be perfect on day one. So thank you for that. And Eric, thank you for the great conversation today. I really like this modern how do we transfer digitally transform in the modern era with the UN Unknown Speaker 45:00 repinning of Shakespeare and early modern history there. So, as everyone has been listening knows, I do have one question that I end every episode with because we have created a Spotify channel. So anyone who's also a listener of this podcast can grab that Spotify channel and feel get a boost and feel motivated. If you're on a run or you're working on you. You just want to get a little bit out of your own head and enjoy what you're doing. So Eric, my question to you is, what is your go to song when you need a boost? And why? So I That's a great question. I thought about this a lot. I wasn't able to narrow it down to a single song. So I will give you three and you could pick one if you want. Unknown Speaker 45:41 Three magic number. So if I needed encouragement while I'm working something tough. Unknown Speaker 45:48 I find there's nothing better than classic country. And the song that I would pick as an example that would be Merle Haggard's Working Man Blues. Unknown Speaker 46:01 If I am kind of ideating while I'm in a creative mode, resorting to classic jazz, of course, is is a great thing. So I'd say the song sweet Georgia Brown, Unknown Speaker 46:17 which is the Harlem Globetrotters theme but has been recorded as actually, I just looked it up that's only 100 years old. Unknown Speaker 46:25 And Unknown Speaker 46:27 but But yeah, that's it's one of it's been done a million different ways to do point of ideation. Unknown Speaker 46:34 If I am looking to be inspired to greatness, I love an energetic classical composition. And I would say the overture to The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart. I think that is, it's probably my favorite musical piece of all time. I think it is absolutely. Perfect. Is it from note one to the final note? Well, thank you. I appreciate that. We're going to put all of those into the Spotify channel. Unknown Speaker 47:02 And we will we do every other fret like the podcast comes out every other Friday. And in between those Fridays we also promote some of the tunes from our guests. So you'll have three slots that over the course of time to Unknown Speaker 47:15 thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you, Johnny. Unknown Speaker 47:22 Thank you for listening. Join us again for more engaging ideas with your host Parsons TKO CEO Tony Kopetchny. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a comment and share with your friends. Send us your feedback at create change at Parsons tko.com. Transcribed by https://otter.ai