• HOME
  • About
    • Musicians
    • Spotlights
    • Videos
    • Photos
  • News
    • Concerts And Events
    • Arts Advocacy
  • HISTORY
    • ASOPA Press Releases
    • Letters
    • Blogs
    • ICSOM/AFM SUPPORT
  • Donate
    • How You Can Help
  • Contact Us
  • HOME
  • HOME
  • About
    • Musicians
    • Spotlights
    • Videos
    • Photos
  • News
    • Concerts And Events
    • Arts Advocacy
  • HISTORY
    • ASOPA Press Releases
    • Letters
    • Blogs
    • ICSOM/AFM SUPPORT
  • Donate
    • How You Can Help
  • Contact Us
  • HOME
ATL SYMPHONY MUSICIANS

letters

aN OPEN LETTER

2/2/2015

0 Comments

 
An Open Letter to the ASO Board Posted on January 27, 2015 by saveoursymphonyatl To: Mr. Terry Neal, Interim President

and Board of Directors, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra

From: Save Our Symphony Atlanta

Dear Mr. Neal and Board,

Our readers (your constituents) are growing frustrated. Your marketing messages are untimely, incomplete, grammatically incorrect, and sloppy. Your website is convoluted and does not work well. You don’t take full advantage of social media.   SOSA supporters tell us that they find better, more timely information from us than the ASO.

On December 4, 2014, SOSA posted A Vote of “No Confidence” expressing our concerns regarding marketing at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. We began looking for improvements starting December 5th, hoping Mr. Petroccione, then head of your marketing department, would have read our post and taken the message to heart. It’s been almost two months and sadly, there has been no progress and we note that Mr. Petroccione has moved to Vice President for Strategic Initiatives and System Improvements. (Really? really?) Maybe we weren’t succinct enough, so let us simply state our position:

ASO Marketing is failing and tickets sales are suffering as a result.

Maybe we weren’t detailed enough, so let us clearly explain the issues:

First and foremost, you need to hire someone who proofreads everything you post online. We understand that the marketing department is short staffed, but virtually everything we see posted has typographical errors. Consistent errors reflect on the professionalism and reputation of the organization.

ASO Website

Error messages, outdated information, and misspellings continue to plague the website. The following is just a sample of what we have found:


  • To the Board – You might want to note that Stanley Romanstein’s picture is still on the ASO website on your Newsroom page, under Leadership Biographies. His biography has been removed but his picture is still used for the Biography tab and featured on the Biographies page. How long has Mr. Neal been interim president? His bio is on the Woodruff website. Why is it not on the ASO newsroom page?
  • Under the Plan Your Visit section, the Restaurants, Bars & Lounges, and Hotel are still not functional and bring up an ugly yellow page of code. Wouldn’t it be nice for people who take advantage of your Valentine’s Day concerts with a couples’ getaway – dinner, concert and an overnight away from the kids? They can’t get there from your site.
  • Teen Night at the ASO? It was held this last Saturday; however, the FAQ tells the teen that they can pick up their tickets the day of the concert, November 22nd.
  • We’ll let you see if you can find the error under American Roots Music.
  • Your rotating ASO players under your calendar? Keith Buncke has a blank picture and no biography. Will he be gone before you ever get this fixed?
The number of errors is, in fact, pretty astounding. Your website is the first impression many people have of the ASO and our musicians. From our experience, it’s a bad one. We understand that the software you’re using is old and clunky, (Stanley’s last bonus could have purchased one heck of a platform) but that doesn’t weigh in very heavily when the mistakes are mostly grammatical.

Read more in the full letter.


0 Comments

January 6, 2015 by Robert Levine @polyphonic.org

2/1/2015

0 Comments

 
Full Letter
What mattered in 2014?

Of the three lockouts that concluded in 2013/2014, there was one which will matter the most in the long term, closely followed in importance by a lockout that didn’t happen. The most significant of the ones that did, in my view, was Atlanta.

It’s generally a mistake to think of orchestra labor negotiations as a contest in which one side wins and the other loses. The reality in most cases is that neither side is trying to “win”: rather, both sides are trying to reach deals that will work for them over the long term, which necessarily means deals that the other side can live with. But Atlanta was different; put simply, the musicians whupped their employer. The orchestra’s CEO was forced out, the real decision-makers on the employer side – the Woodruff Center board – were smoked out and had to come to the table, and the employer’s most important demand – unilateral control over the orchestra’s size – was rejected essentially with no compromise at all. Almost as important, it happened pretty quickly, without the prolonged bloodletting that happened in the Twin Cities.

Of course, none of this would have happened had the Woodruff Center, which was calling the shots, had actually been trying to negotiate, rather than defeat – or impose its will on – the musicians. It helped that the employer’s proposals were, on their face, unreasonable. It certainly helped that the Woodruff Center showed itself in such a bad light in so many ways. Arguably the most telling of these moments was when it was revealed that the Woodruff Center had sold land that had been designated for the orchestra’s (abandoned) hall project and then giving the $2 million in proceeds to an organization outside of the Woodruff Center, all while pleading poverty at the negotiating table. It certainly helped that the musicians had also been locked out in 2012 and had both experience dealing with the tactic and ample motivation to drive a stake through its heart once and for all.

But the musicians and their advisers (in particular Liza Medina and Randy Whately) deserve great credit for handling the situation in such a way that the lockout failed so completely and so quickly. Our field owes them a tremendous debt for disarming a large grenade thrown at the heart of the concept of constructive labor relations.


0 Comments

January 1, 2015 | New Year, New President? by SOSA

2/1/2015

0 Comments

 
New Year, New President? Posted on January 1, 2015 by SOSA

What do the Atlanta Falcons and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra have in common, other than Doug Hertz? They’re both in the market for new leadership. The Falcon’s rather dismal showing and the ASO lockout of its musicians were both signs that all was not well in the leadership department. While we have no advice for the owners of the Falcons, we do have a few words to say about the next ASO President/CEO.

The ASO is in a rather unenviable position. They have just gone through a thoroughly embarrassing lockout of the musicians – the second in as many years. They have reported that they have been losing money steadily for 12 years. They are in a state that ranks at the bottom, nationally, in arts funding. The WAC corporate structure (and therefore, the ASO Board structure) is convoluted and in our opinion, detrimental to the best interests of the orchestra. Whomever the ASO hires must be able to answer to not one but two boards, whose priorities and goals may conflict.

Hiring a new ASO President/CEO will be a formidable task.  What the ASO needs is a leader. That leader will need to be fully informed about the difficulties he or she faces.

With those facts in mind, we have a few questions.


Full Letter
0 Comments

    Categories

    All

    Archives

    February 2015
    January 2015
    October 2014
    September 2014

    Author

    Write something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview.

    RSS Feed