Editor-In-Chief

Drew McManus

Arts Consulting

“I hear that every time you show up to work with an orchestra, people get fired.”

Those were the first words out of an executive’s mouth after her board chair introduced us. That executive is now a dear colleague and friend but the day that consulting contract began with her orchestra, she was convinced I was a hatchet-man brought in by the board to clean house. I understand where the trepidation comes from as a great deal of my consulting and technology provider work for arts organizations involves due diligence, separating fact from fiction, interpreting spin, as well as performance review and oversight.

So yes, sometimes that work results in one or two individuals “aggressively embracing career change” but far more often than not, it reinforces and clarifies exactly what works and why. In short, it doesn’t matter if you know where all the bodies are buried if you can’t keep your own clients out of the ground, and I’m fortunate enough to say that for more than 15 years, I’ve done exactly that for groups of all budget size from Qatar to Kathmandu.

Technology

 but don’t let that title fool you into thinking he’s just a tech geek. He brings 20 years of global broad-based arts consulting experience to the table and helps clients break the cycle of choosing one-size-fits-none solutions and instead, deliver an option that allows them to get ahead of the tech curve instead of trying to catch up by going slower.

With the vision of legacy support strategy and the delights of creative insights, his mission is to deliver a sophisticated next generation technology designed especially for our business. The first step in that journey began in 2010 when he released The Venture Platform, a purpose-designed managed website development solution designed especially for arts organizations and artists.

His expertise spans across multiple sectors and regularly quoted as an industry expert in media outlets including New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post and The Chronicle of Philanthropy along with more than 100 additional newspapers, trade journals, and magazine outlets. Broadcast appearances include NPR’s All Things Considered, NPR’s Weekend Edition and MPR’s Morning Edition

As a sought-after speaker and panelist, he has worked with  Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network, Opera America, Americans for the Arts, National Arts Marketing Project Conference, Southeastern Theatre Conference, National Performing Arts Conference, and Chamber Music America. He’s been a featured lecturer at University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Bolz Center for Arts Administration, Northwestern University School of Music, Eastman School of Music, and Arizona State University. In 2011, he was featured presenter for Chicago’s TEDx Michigan Ave conference.

For fun, he writes a daily blog about the orchestra business, provides a platform for arts insiders to speak their mind, leads a team of intrepid arts pros to hack the arts, founded a free arts admin jobs board, and loves a good coffee drink.

Drew McManus Poise

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Doing Wrong Things The Right Way

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Using The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine To Improve User Experience

The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which archives screencaps of your website, has been around for some time and it’s just as useful now as ever. Sure, it’s fun to see how some of the cringe-worthy designs from 2001 but go back within the last year and look for changes. Outside of something like your homepage hero image, is anything different? If not, then you just discovered a problem that needs to be addressed and here’s how you can go about fixing it.
how i get things done drew mcmanus

I’m Drew McManus, ArtsHacker Editor-In-Chief. This Is How I Get Things Done.

When your business covers everything from data analysis, to communication, to programming and design, it is easy to get overwhelmed with stuff to get those jobs done. At one point in time, my solutions to those tasks centered on expansion: bigger work surfaces, more peripherals, dedicated equipment, fancier chairs, etc. Somewhere along the way, all of that stuff started to have a counterproductive impact on day to day efficiency so the new goal became work smarter with fewer tools of higher quality.