I worked for the MAMAs as the Musical Director, which included booking bands and calling the show from backstage. I was on their board of directors and helped with the cause of putting musical instruments into the hands of deserving children. In addition to the MAMAs, I also volunteered as the chairperson of the Events Committee for a local public radio station. This station put on several outdoor events per year, including a stage at a local weekend-long festival (Willy Street Festival) and also their own annual block party. We planned a birthday party for the station at a big music venue in December each year. I was part of a team that did all of the bookings, flyers, and day-of-event work for the station. In addition to these bigger events, I put on events of my own at dance clubs throughout the Madison area for the years spanning 1998-2011. For these club nights, I did nearly everything except run the DJ booth. If you asked anyone at my current job in the library about this, they likely would not know about it. Some know the broad brushstrokes, but very few know the impact this work has had on my current gig. Here are the ways that being a musical promoter prepared me for librarianship.
1. Know your audience. What good is a service if it is not needed and no one will use it? Using User Experience methods and talking to the users of a service can be so beneficial to libraries as they embark on new endeavors. Just like you would not book a country band for an industrial music night, librarians need to tailor their language and services to the audience and local conditions.
2. Have an elevator pitch. If no one can understand what you are trying to do in a brief amount of time, you will not have the buy-in that you need to get people on board. This is important whether you are promoting your latest electronic music event or your new bibliography service for faculty.
3. Look for conventional and unconventional partners. At the MAMAs, we were able to partner with Broadjam, a company that was based in Madison and was already supporting local musicians online. This allowed us to move from paper ballots for voting to the same online system that is used by the Academy of Country Music. At WORT radio station, we partnered with UW-Madison students to create a Friends of WORT group on campus. This allowed us to distribute information to the students in the dorms. In libraries, this might mean working with the Service Learning office to serve as a client for a capstone course or partnering with Student Affairs to give out free coffee at exam time.
4. Be creative and keep improving. It's not enough to simply keep up with the status quo. To keep people's attention, you have to keep upping the ante. In music promotion, this means coming up with a new theme, a new giveaway, etc. In librarianship, this means making sure our services and customer service are always under scrutiny and getting better.
5. Market yourself! Learn the basics of creating a flyer and how to grab people's interest. Even if you are not using Photoshop, figure out something that works for you and still looks professional. Flyers are not always enough. Get out in the community and meet people. They will be more likely to show up if they know you and get a personal invite.
6. Be flexible. This was a big lesson I learned when planning for outdoor shows. You simply cannot plan for everything. For instance, you can have a solid lesson plan and good presence in the classroom, but you cannot predict that the students will be engaged or even fully awake when they get there. Be willing to take a risk and trust yourself if you decide to change something up. For instance, add a short active learning exercise to get them moving.
7. If called in to do tech support, be confident and keep your cool. It is the absolute worst if the audio is not working and everyone is waiting for you, whether you are in the DJ booth at a dance club or in front of a group of 20 students in a library classroom. This is the toughest thing to master, but you have to keep your cool. Do not rush, and keep a positive and confident attitude. It is usually something simple.
8. Have fun. None of it is worth it if you are not having fun. Of course, it is not going to always be a foam party on the 4th of July, but you should love what you do. If you are not enjoying yourself, it is going to show to the patrons in the form of bad customer service.
Some other things I learned are to always dress the part (evening wear, for the win!), pay people fairly for what they do and on time, and to never give up. In addition to these more global adages that I learned as a music promoter, I also learned a whole lot about audiovisual equipment, cables, audio and video editing, making flyers, and how to talk to people.
Most of you readers have done something other than librarianship in their career. What have you done that prepared you for librarianship? How did it prepare you? Tell me in the comments!
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| Backstage at the MAMAs, 2011, Calling the show |
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| MAMAs Finale, 2010, Overture Center for the Arts, Madison, WI |
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