Here’s the chance to add/subtract or discuss the list on page 13 of the May/June 2010 issue of The Harmonizer. Apologies if you came to this site earlier and didn’t find this post as mentioned in the magazine. I just came back from vacation to find that the printer had managed to mail the issue nearly a week earlier than scheduled — I thought I was going to have a few more days to put this post online!
If you don’t agree with this list, take it up with me — I take full responsibility for it ….
… unless you do like the list, in which case I emphasize that while the words are mine, the concepts didn’t exactly spontaneously pop into my head. Here in Nashville, especially in the last 18 months, we’ve been talking about issues like these A LOT. I’m sure if I checked back into my meeting notes, I’d see some version of most of the below concepts. But I generated this based on little more than a personal brainstorming session and sent it around the office for feedback.
Hate it: MY FAULT. Like it: THANK THE STAFF. Clear?
So how does this list jibe with your experience? Some successful chapters prominently feature traits not listed below, but the idea is to identify traits that pretty much ALWAYS seem to be present in growing, thriving chapters.
Would you add anything? Remove something? Modify something? Your feedback is appreciated!
Read the rest of this entry »
Guest nights. Handing out flyers. Performing for the local community. All good ways to promote your chapter and barbershop in hopes of garnering interest and possibly gaining a few new members.
Well – is it working? What do you have to show for it? Hopefully these methods are successful as they require a good amount of effort, but maybe you’re hoping for a bit more; more gigs, more people at guest nights, more phone calls asking your chorus to sing at an event, and ultimately, more registered Barbershoppers.
Bob Fichter (from the Midwest Vocal Express), with the help of Montana Jack, has written an article titled, “Social Media for Barbershop Quartets and Choruses” – it explains how to reach more people and target the younger generations. For those who are intimidated by the Internet – have no fear! Bob gives step-by-step instructions – fool proof!
If you’ve used Facebook for the purpose of recruiting new members, advertising a show/meeting, or anything barbershop-related, tell us about your experience. What works best and what doesn’t – let’s hear it!
Chapters are constantly sending me clips and links from news coverage they get, mostly from their local newspapers, and sometimes in local and even national magazines. (The above is a recent clip from NEA Today, the magazine of the National Education Association. They got our membership numbers off by about 6,000, but we and Al appreciate the plug!)
Here’s the deal: What these chapters are doing is awesome, and it turns out they’re only sending us a fraction of what’s out there. But I have no idea what to do with most of these clips or how to share them. We already put some of the best on the front page and news section of barbershop.org and also in Livewire. Is that enough? Read the rest of this entry »
We would like you all to think over a suggested change to our competition schedule, for choruses only. We’re in the early “what if?” stage right now, but the Society is investigating the possibility of switching our international chorus competition to a two-year rotation.
Currently, we allow approximately the 28 best Society choruses from each fall district contest (district champs and wild-cards), in addition to a few international affiliates, to compete at the next international contest, which takes place 8-9 months later. We want to gauge reaction to the idea of a system in which (approximately) the 56 best Society choruses would compete on alternating years (an equal top-down mix of still roughly 28 per year). They would also qualify roughly 20 months before the international contest, to give them more time to financially and artistically prepare.
This PDF is a hypothetical example of how a two-year cycle switch could be implemented.
This Excel spreadsheet shows an example configuration based on 2009 scores. (Please note that the spreadsheet opens to a tab that shows the final results. There are two other tabs at the bottom of the spreadsheet that show how those results were generated.)
Sweet Adelines International has used a two-year rotation since the early 1970s. Initially, they experienced alternating “strong” and “weak” years, but the “second tier” competitors raised their competitive level, and soon all years were strong years. As seen in the above hypotheticals, were the Society to implement a two-year rotation, we would avoid the “weak year” challenge from the outset. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Lorin May | Posted in Music, Run your chapter, Uncategorized | Posted on February 12, 2010, 11:34 AM
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In reply to an earlier post on this blog, Tom Goldie shared some interesting suggestions regarding copyright laws and how the Society had get music into members’ hands more easily. With his permission, quoted below are Tom’s ideas (in quotes) and responses from Julie Grower, who manages the Music Library and Licensing for the Society.
Tom brings up some interesting possibilities. What do you think?
Julie begins:
Tom,
Thank you so much for taking up an issue which I know many barbershoppers feel strongly about. Your ideas are very positive and forward-looking. We always appreciate hearing about the issues that mean the most to members. I will attempt to address some of the comments below as best I can.
I believe a great place to start would be in copyright issues. An immediate change would be to allow society members the rights to record and post songs to which the Society holds copyright as long as its for non-commercial purposes. This would allow for many more performances to link to on YouTube, and for a lot more “free” distribution of high-quality .mp3s.
Read the rest of this entry »
Here’s something for all you snowed-in barbershoppers to chew on: How would we have structured things if 30,000 barbershop singers had somehow gotten together just today to form a singing Society? How would we be structured? What would we do that we don’t do now? What would we modify or drop that we are doing?
On balance, we’re far too critical of ourselves as barbershoppers. We’re so intimately aware of our own warts and unrealized hopes that we rarely realize that the outside world is far more impressed with us than we are. Ever heard the “Wow!” from a sharp music professional once he starts to become familiar with our educational system, our contest and judging system, our organizational structure, youth outreach, fraternal culture, etc.? (Maybe that’s a post or Harmonizer article for another time!) So I don’t want this to devolve into a gripe session of “What’s wrong with the Society,” cuz frankly we hear plenty of that already.
That said, organizations can be like computers. After you’ve had one for a while, installed this program, tweaked that, added this data, both a computer and an organization can start become sluggish. There’s really no way to avoid it, but all those necessary tweaks and changes can build up “lint” that can hamper system performance. For all the customizations you can’t live without anymore, you still wish your machine were operating the way it did when it came out of the box. Read the rest of this entry »
God bless the realists, the folks who tell it like it is—who call a spade a spade, who never stick their head in the sand, and who know they aren’t doing anyone any favors in varnishing the truth. The Barbershop Harmony Society needs all the reality it can get. If the preceeding words describe you, this post isn’t directed at you.
On second thought, this post may be ESPECIALLY for you.
What I say next will probably brand me as a blind Pollyanna skipping to the precipice, but oh well:
STOP BEING SO NEGATIVE! YOU’RE ONLY MAKING THINGS WORSE!
Realism is vital, but it is severely overrated. If that last sentence made you cringe, I’ll point out that science is on my side for this one.
It turns out, a large portion of self-described realists are also pessimists. And because they are pessimists, they will not have access to the thoughts and actions that will lead their chapters and our Society to better days. Want proof? Want examples? Keep reading. Read the rest of this entry »
In an upcoming issue of the magazine, we’re going to be running an article on how some chapters and quartets are using Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, etc. to get new fans, new members, new audiences and build new relationships. I know of a few examples of barbershoppers who are using Facebook to sell more tickets and locate potential members. I would sure like to know some more.
- Do you know any success stories? (Yours or another group?)
- Do you you have any expertise on how to use social networking effectively in a barbershop or other singing environment?
- Do you have any questions that you want answered in an article like this?
Please share what you know or what you want to know right here!
(Note: Feel free to provide links in your response (if you know they’re clean), but know that comments that contain multiple links will usually go into moderation before they can be posted. If you comment doesn’t show up immediately, that’s probably why.)
“Some people try to find things in this game that don’t exist, but football is only two things – blocking and tackling.“
— Vince Lombardi, ESPN’s Coach of the Century
Thanks everyone who responded to our Commanders Intent post last month. We discussed how an army commander ensures his forces cannot lose sight of the core objective and then we asked you to fill in the blank, “If a chapter does nothing else, it must _____.” So many insightful answers! If you haven’t read them, click on the above link and please do so.
As promised, we looked at everyone’s comments and discussed them at our Sept. 16 meeting. We’re not done processing and reacting to everything we learned from your participation, but I’ll say this: We didn’t see anything in your feedback that surprised us, and that was great news. I hope the following explains why.
While it might be wise to stick with the military motif for this post, please indulge me in switching to a related analogy: winning football teams and winning chapters. (To be clear, staff doesn’t define winning chapters by competitive scores but by whether a chapter is a exciting and fulfilling place that’s attracting more and more men. High-level performance and a healthy chapter culture often go together, but it’s very common to find one without the other.) However, successful chapters of all types are strong on similar key fundamentals. One goal of the commander’s intent post was to determine whether we’ve identified the same key principles as you have. 80+ insightful responses later, our strategic planning appears to be well in line with what you consider most important.
Now, a few words about arguably the best football coach of all time, and what fundamentals mean to strong barbershop chapters. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m about to launch into what amounts to a pep talk, and I hate pep talks. They don’t work for me. The emotions fade quickly, and then I’m left with the same circumstances and no more solutions than I had before. I’m left even more cynical. Don’t give me a pile of shiny, trite mantras that don’t point me where to go next.
I’m not pretending to have all the answers here, so why am I even writing this? Because I see a lot that makes me feel positive about the future. You choose whether I’m being trite or not. If I get to be dismissive about empty motivational speeches, it’s only fair that I be equally dismissive toward the gloom and doom demotivational speeches many of us have been giving lately, even if unintentionally. Read the rest of this entry »
This is a VERY important post—so important that staff will be meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 16 to discuss your replies. It’s a little long, but worth it.
If you can fill in the above blank without hesitation, you probably misunderstood the question. Read on, your answer will require some pondering. Your answers could also help focus staff, Society, district and chapter efforts for years to come. We look forward to some thoughtful discussion! Read the rest of this entry »
I received the following email a while back from a member, who appears to be concerned about whether a chorus will inevitably decline if they keep the same musical leadership. Here’s his question and here’s my answer. When you’re done reading this, please comment on the following two questions:
- Was my answer correct?
- Was he asking the right question?
First, the question: Read the rest of this entry »
It’s waaaaaaay to early to see what the Membership Growth Task Force is going to come up with — they are keeping their minds open and their options open while they study the sources of our membership decline and guide us toward remedies. Suffice it to say, we’ve got some really bright minds working on this issue. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Rick Spencer | Posted in Music, Quartetting, Run your chapter | Posted on May 26, 2009, 9:00 AM
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Guest post by Society Music Specialist Mike O’Neill, (also bass of Lunch Break, 2008 international semi-finalist):
Currently, we have 1,444 registered quartets in the Barbershop Harmony Society. That means, approximately 5,776 (it is probably less since several men are registered in more than one quartet) members of our Society sing in a registered quartet. Can you believe that fewer than 22% of our current membership is enjoying this incredibly important component of membership? I can’t either! As a matter of fact, I know it is more than that. We have hundreds of quartets in our organization who are not registered with the Society.
Many ask the question, “other than to compete, what do I get for being in a registered quartet?” Let’s help answer that. Read the rest of this entry »
Picture that happening to you. Suddenly, a small group of experienced barbershoppers want to start a new chapter in a neighboring city. SINKING GUT FEELING #1. “What will we ever do?” This is a totally factual story (as best as my memory and our records might provide). You might be surprised by the result. Read the rest of this entry »
I know, I know, Aptify progress seems to be an oxymoron, a two word phrase where the words mean opposite things. But seriously, folks, some very dedicated people have been working diligently to bring progress to our database. Remember, it took many years before the old AMS was useful, and Aptify is already churning out many, many more bits of useful data. Most of our data fields are dependent on the local chapter and or member’s input. Garbage in, garbage out, but that’s what we have to work with. So here’s a short progress report: Read the rest of this entry »
Society Music Specialist Mike O’Neill, has submitted a short compilation of great tips for selling more tickets to your annual show:
Is your annual chapter show a sellout every year? Is there someone in your chapter that is a wizard at selling 50-100 tickets without breaking a sweat? What are the tricks of the barbershop ticket selling trade? Discuss some of your success stories and help others around the world of barbershop have successful tickets sales to their annual shows.
Below are two examples of proven methods from the Nashville, TN chapter:
Read the rest of this entry »
Recently I sent an email to all the men who joined the Society in the first quarter of 2008, asking for comments about their first year in barbershopping. The following is one of many replies. Read the rest of this entry »
So far registration numbers are ABOVE last year at this time but we can always use more help in getting the word out. Please tell your chorus mates, local music teachers, friends in the Sweet Adelines and Harmony Incorporated organizations, or pretty much anyone that you meet that Harmony University is THE place to be July 26-August 2 this summer. Let’s work together to make this year’s event the most fun and exciting HU yet!
If you haven’t registered or decided on your final schedule yet here are few class titles you should consider. Read the rest of this entry »
What gets measured gets rewarded.
Our Society has a great system to find and honor the groups that put the best product on stage every year — and there are a million good reasons to continue to honor these achievers. We’re also getting better at recognizing the best recruiters among us. (When Roger Lewis was Society president, he recognized the best recruiters on the international stage, something I’d like to see return.) But those are easy: add up the scores or run a report and there are your winners.
Then there’s the hard stuff to track that matters at least as much. Read the rest of this entry »
I recently received these questions in an e-mail: “If Membership Growth is the Society’s greatest need/problem, and now is our leaders’ first priority, (1) why does the list of Harmony U 2009 classes, and Anaheim convention interest classes include practically nothing that could be considered Marketing & PR? and (2) can HQ now pressure the Districts to stress Marketing & PR in their upcoming COTS/Leadership courses?” I want to share my (not necessarily the) answer with you here on the blog. Read the rest of this entry »
This is a cool idea from the Rocky Mountain District.
Has anyone else tried this? Have you participated in this? Inquiring minds want to know!
Read the rest of this entry »
I am writing an article (probably for the Harmonizer) about choruses that have some sort of private voice instruction (PVIs) included either in their weekly meeting or available for their members outside the meeting night. I would appreciate any feedback you can offer about this topic. Here are a few questions that may guide you: Read the rest of this entry »
Here are the raw facts:
Last year, January 1, 2008 to April 15, 2008 we recruited 473 new members into the Society
This year, January 1, 2009 to April 15, 2009 we recruited 647 new members.
Everyone say Hazzah! Read the rest of this entry »
