An Apology and Some Breaking NewsAn Apology and Some Breaking News

It’s been 44 days since my last post. Oops. After four months of posting about twice a week, suddenly I just dropped off the face of the earth (at least in terms of blogging). Sorry about that.

First there was spring break:

• I premiered my first (almost full length) play at Yale Cabaret. It’s called Radio Station, it was a hard and heartbreaking and thrilling and terrifying experience. Buy me a beer and I’ll tell you about it sometime.
• I spent a week in LA meeting with senior executives at ABC, NBC, Fox, Warner Bros, Focus Features, Disney, Activision Blizzard, and ICM to talk about the future of the entertainment business. I also needed to catch up with old friends, all trying to “make it big,” or at least make it through next week. They were playwrights, and actors, and directors, and agents, and PAs, and everything in between, and they were all working their ass off in pursuit of great art.
• I spent a week in Peru with my fabulous playwright friend Gonzalo Rodriguez Risco traveling between his hometown of Lima and his favorite vacationing spot Cusco (11,000 feet above sea level). We ate incredible ceviche, went to see Peruvian theatre, hiked ancient Incan ruins, and imbibed way too many Pisco Sours. He was an absolute doll to put up with me for a week, and I can’t wait till Machu Picchu opens back up and I have an excuse to return. I also celebrated visiting my 5th continent in just over a year!
• I spent a week in my hometown of Austin Texas for SXSW. Since I’m a starving student, and apparently a glutton for punishment, I decided to volunteer 50 hours during the music festival so that I could attend the film festival and interactive conference for free.  I went to panels about How to Make a Viral Video (in which we tried to actually make a viral video), Donations 2.0 (and got to finally meet the infamous Beth Kanter), Playing with Place: Location Based Games and Services (where I ran into my old colleague Rob Bole, tirelessly advocating for the future of public media), Rules of Brand Fiction: Twittering MadMen (which was brilliant), Way Cool Maps: Beyond Simple Mashups (where I was in way over my head technically, but had the most awsome down to earth presenter), Design for Big Surfaces (where they showed that those cool scenes from Minority Report are actually viable). I saw luminaries like Ev Williams, Gary Vaynerchuck, Randi Zuckerberg, Pete Cashmore, and Robert Scoble speak. I went to premieres of awsome indie movies like Cherry, The Runaways, and Skateland. I played roadie for Jakob Dylan (that guy Bob’s son), Neko Case, and two dozen other rad artists. I’ve got a few half written posts about the whole experience. Until I get my act together, check out all the SXSW slideshow presentations on Slideshare.

I came home for four days of school, and then off again to the Humana Festival! I fell in love with Fissures (which smacks you in the forehead with a brilliant ending), Ground (which should be in every regional theatre in America), and Heist (best work I’ve ever seen out of the A/I company, and one hell of a night by the inestimable Sean Daniels). And I can’t help but give props to home town heroes, the Rude Mechs. I also snuck in a #2amt tweet up of 2 with the always stellar David Loehr.

That gets us to about ten days ago. I’m exhausted just remembering it all. But I’ve also got a full time job, and a full time course load to pack in there. I’m currently in the middle of:

• Designing a dashboard of key institutional metrics for Yale School of Drama/Yale Repertory Theatre
• Tracking the changing gender trends of managing directors in TCG theatres since 1970
• Creating a regression model that shows cause and effects (or at least correlations) of TCG theatres’ expansion of seating capacity over the past 40 years
• Expanding my original LORT social media study to include all 473 (!) TCG theatres
• Designing and teaching hands-on workshops for the staff of Yale Rep about ‘How to Facebook and Tweet’
• Building a social media strategy for Vocalo (the so-called, ‘YouTube of Radio’)
• Finishing the 9th draft, 3 years later, of my masters thesis: Strategic Priorities in the Effective Use of Technology at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. It’s quite a mouthful.
• Writing a fully functional business plan for opening an employment services agency in Kabul Afghanistan

That last one came out of nowhere, right? Ah, the joys of business school.

And I’m graduating. Classes end in 3 weeks. Graduation is in 41 days. I don’t have a job. So I’ve been grabbing every opportunity possible to get my name out in the field. And the good news is, things are finally coming together.

• I’m presenting my research at the TCG Conference in June!
• The following weekend, I’ll be at the American for the Arts conference, co-leading a roundtable discussion on Branding Yourself through Technology and Social Media with my former classmate Ian Moss, without whom which I probably never would have contemplated blogging in the first place.
• I’ve gotten requests for interviews from both Theater Magazine and Southern Theatre Magazine to discuss the future of social media in the theatre.

There’s also this hilarious/exhausting tradition at SOM called April Foolery in which there is a school wide party planned for every night of April, for all 400 students. We’ve got first year-versus-second year hockey games, a fundraiser auction that pays for all the MBAs working in non profit internships, easter egg hunts, bloody mary brunches, BBQ’s on East Rock Park, and all sorts of messy karayoke and trivia madness.

But on top of all that, I’ve got to

• Lead 2 extracurricular clubs at the School of Management
• Fulfill all of my responsibilities as a teaching fellow for the Innovator course at SOM with 230 first years
• Interview 3 prospective SOM applicants a week for the Admissions office
• Mentor first years pursuing careers in media and entertainment
• Show up to five classes a week prepared to intelligently debate with the best and brightest minds in the country
• Wrap up my job as Director of Research and Analysis at Yale Rep
• Find a freaking job
• Pay all my bills

It’s that last one I’m the worst at. My electricity got shut off this week because I’m two months behind on my bills. Not that I don’t have the cash (although I’m not exactly swimming in that either), but because I haven’t opened my mail in two months. So it might not surprise you that I fell ill this past week and couldn’t get out of bed for 3 days. I’m in full recovery mode now, holed up at my favorite coffee shop, trying to bust through this post, answer the 119 emails I’m behind on, and work on all that other stuff mentioned above.

So, forgive my absence the past month. It’s been a busy one. But I haven’t forgotten about you. In fact, I sat straight up in bed at 6am this morning, knowing that I just HAD to write a post about what Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution can teach us about actively participating in our own communities. I already have the perfect headline: The Naked Artist. Now is that link bait or what?

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