 Hi, everyone. I work for Auckland Live. For those of you who don't know, we are a performing arts organisation, so we present live arts entertainment across venues in Auckland. We collaborate with national and international arts companies to present big shows, concerts and festivals. At the heart of what we do, we provide the opportunities for people of all ages to engage with the arts. And we introduce to young people the excitement of the stage. So today, I want to talk to you about the digital space around the performing arts and some of the opportunities very briefly that this digital space hold for performing arts. What do I do? Cool. So in performing arts, the artists are by necessity travellers. They pursue crafts, creativity ideas, phenomena and cultural connections that help by people together. They bring this knowledge and experience and background to the stage and perform them and perform live in front of the audience. In many ways, performing arts is about shared experience, about conveying expressions, emotions and feelings. It takes place in the presence of physical attendances at a certain place, at a certain time. So out of this premise, how do artists interact with their audiences and increase their artistic landscape? How do marketers develop a wider population of new audiences? And how do venues understand the experience of existing customers to provide them with the better experience? Last week, a colleague of mine told us that ticketing used to be the first point of interaction between the patrons and the venue. Nowadays, with online ticketing, that first point of interaction has been taken away. For many people coming to see the show at a venue, that's probably the first experience that they practically have with the stage, the artists or the arts. In other words, a website, an email, a post on social media, a digital banner. A digital experience establishes the first point of interaction that they have with the arts or the artists or the show or the brand or the venues. Given that many services nowadays are digitised and available on digital platforms, how can we ensure that there will be consistency and continuity between the experience that happens in the digital space with that of the physical space? How can we enable the digital experience to complement and blame in well with the physical and environmental experience? So, what makes this digital space? I have to admit that I personally struggle to find a definitive answer for this because it's just too broad and there are so many ways to look into this. One way to look at this is the possible digitisation of performing arts. So traditional, this is how performing arts looks like. The arts producers or the artists will create or produce the show, create the content, materials which then be distributed, typically presented live on stage in front of an audience at a particular venue. The show is attended by the audience, the content is consumed, experience is created, that's performing arts traditionally. So if we re-look at the whole process with digitisation, the artists can still produce arts, content and materials with the help of digital technologies. In this case, they can also co-create and collaborate virtually with other artists. The content and material will then be digitised and distributed via digital, multiple digital outlets, for example live streaming, online libraries, a connected partner networks on demand, a Netflix of performing arts, a Netflix of theatre or musical, you name it. The content is still consumed, but in this case, delivered with a digital experience. Here digitisation can create opportunities, increase the inclusiveness and for patrons of accessibility needs who may find that coming to the show could be so much of their hassle, this would increase the exclusiveness for them or people who just kind of thought to come to the show. What's more, the content once digitised can be preserved and potentially be available to audience that are not geographically available or to the next generation. Or the other way to look at the digital space is a mash-up of digital marketing and customers experience. For me, I like to think about the theatre experience that is one that should not be interfered or disturbed or interrupted by digital. Once you are in the theatre, you're supposed to enjoy the show 100%. Also, not many shows or venues allow you to bring phones or use your phones during the performances, let's be honest. Everything else out of that theatre experience before the show or after the show could be enhanced by digital. Let's take a look at before the show, the digital platforms offer a unique opportunity for storytelling. This is what I usually call value-edit content or an extension of theatrical dialogue, content that is around or about the show. For example, fun facts about the tour, profiles and interviews of cast and crew, the inspirations and background of the production footage of the rehearsals. A welcome message directly from the artists. This content often utilising the social media as a distributing channel helps attract the audience and engage them earlier in the creation process and also in the ticket sales process. Marketers, artists and producers should take advantage of these opportunities and leverage on it. From the venue point of view, digital can provide customers with access to navigate through the venues before they even set foot inside the venue. This is what I mean by the digital experience which can be transformed into the physical experience. An example of this is the virtual tours that we have launched earlier this year. These are the 3D tours which offered an immersive 360 degree views of our theatres, foyers, bars, cafes, toilets. Our showgoers can literally, virtually walk through the venues and familiarise themselves with where the box office is. How do I find my seat with the theatre? How does it look like? What's the setup? What's the configuration? How do I get to the auditorium? This information helps them plan their journey and visit to the theatre more easily and at the comfort of their armchair. As we see an increase of engagement with these virtual tours, it gives us the confidence that we are on the right track. This brings me to a very exciting project that I would like to share with you first at NDF. It is not yet launched but it is our new accessibility virtual tours. Property 3D is in the house today and they have set up the monitor outside so please come and have a play if you can. So basically these are the virtual tours enhanced with the accessibility pathways that show the routes for patrons on wheelchairs or patrons with walking difficulties. Together with the pathways, we also include step counts and estimated distance between certain points. That hopefully would be sufficient information for people to plan their visits easier. From our research and feedback, we understand a lot of people coming to our venues and coming to the show. They have a lot of anxiety about where do I ask my taxi to drop me off, how do I get into the theatre, whether there's any staff that would be around to help me with my wheelchair. So this is the digital tool that we create to help them reduce some of those anxiety and put the confidence back into their hands. This project for us is a commitment for exclusiveness and to always having our customers and patrons at heart of whatever that we do, to always provide them with enhanced and better digital experience. So what's in store for after the show? The key thing for us is with social media and digital connections, we know almost instantly the customer feedback after the show. Whether the experience is good or bad, we know exactly what to expect from them and how to learn from their experience to iterate better and deliver better experience next time. Also with the availability of data gives us the opportunity to understand our audiences better, who are they and how they would like to engage with the arts. So to wrap up my talk, I would like to share this quote. We are building the technologies but they are also building us. And we have to know how they are constructed in order to know how they affect us and what messages they are sending to us. Will Facebook be the future of the libraries or archives? Is Instagram the gallery or the museum of tomorrow? Will YouTube replace theatre stages? Will Instastories be the next behind the scenes? Are we relying on digital technologies to socialise performing arts? Or should we be rethinking performing arts in the digital context with the audiences being emerging digital natives? If we build a digital space or a digital stage for these digital audiences, how will we engage them beyond our current functions of digital marketing, digitisation, customer experience to provide them a better space to hang out? What change would we need to make today for tomorrow? So I know that I have probably left you with more questions than answers but I'm keen to hear your thoughts and ideas so drop your line or let's chat over coffee. Thank you.