 and to potentially treat us to a song or two, please join me in welcoming Lisa Mount to the stage. And cover, as you will. Yeah, we figured we'd start with a little art and a banjo is about as little art as you can possibly get. So I took a little bit of Lieber and Stoller via Fats Domino and stuffed it into an old time banjo sock. And what you get is our first, possibly not last, it's really up to you, convening song. It's a banjo, it's not a whack. I'm going to Kansas City. Kansas City, I come. Kansas City, gonna get me some juicy information about where my audience is coming from. I'm going to Kansas City. Kansas City for the beers. Gonna cook me up a cohort to revolutionize my audience's engagement fears. You might be a flanker. Meet me in the buckets and let's proto to city for two nights. When it's done, I will be smarter because I sure can't work no harder. I know that's right. Meet me in the hall. Well, actually not really. New Orleans ranks a lot higher. I hate to break it to you. Gonna boogie down with TCG on ethics and diversity. And my, I'm so very, TCG, that has been kindly provided to us by the fabulous Kauffman Foundation Conference Center. Now, here's a first of many logistical tips that you might need. There are two Kauffman Centers in Kansas City. There is the Kauffman Performing Arts Center downtown. There is the Kauffman Foundation Center. If you miss the bus and you're gonna Uber to get here, Kauffman Foundation. You gotta know that part. All right. So I'm gonna do a little bit of context, a little bit of overview, a few of the organizing principles, and some logistical notes. And then we're gonna do some moving around and skills building. So the first thing I want to do is look at, I've got to invent myself. There I am. Look at who's here among us. So we're gonna do a little bit of stand up, sit down, mapping. And this is stand as you are able and as you are comfortable. If it's not comfortable for you to stand, wave your arms and get mapped. So who is here? Oh yes, welcome, welcome. Come on in. Find a seat almost anywhere in the unorthodox arrangement we have created just for this convening. The chairs are like this on purpose. So who is here at Audience Revolution or any TCG gathering? If this is your first time at any kind of TCG gathering, who's here as a first-timer? Stand as you are able because we want you to be able to look around. All right. Make eye contact with each other. Newbies, you are the Audience Rev class of 2015. All right, beautiful. All right. So as you are able to stand and identify yourself, who was in Philadelphia for Audience Revolution 2013? All right, take a look around. Newbies, catch these folks. They know a few things. And some of you may get to stand up again. If you have been attending TCG conferences and gatherings for more than five years, please stand as you are able. All right, these are the old hands. Again, look around. These folks know a few things. They know where the skeletons are. They know what the gossip is. Great, thank you. And last and certainly not least, I want to honor our folks who are hosting us here in Kansas City, everybody who's from Kansas City. Please stand as you are able so that we can thank you for letting us be in your town. Now, some of you have just parsed an interesting distinction about being from a place and living in a place. So you can decide for yourself whether Whitmick Loughlin is from Kansas City or he lives in Kansas City. That's great. All right, so we're about engagement for this conversation. Go away. That's me. Touch the wrong button, you're in trouble. And we want people to know one another. So we are going to do one minute each introductions. Take a look around you. Ideally find somebody that you don't know. You each get one minute, and I am timing you. And the question to introduce yourself with is what did you bring to this conference and what did you seek? Two minutes, go! One minute! And the other person should start. Twenty seconds remain. Twenty seconds remaining. Twenty seconds. Lucky me, yeah. Zoom your seat and your pose of quiet certainty and focusing up here, because now we get all the big context. Brilliant. Q, that was great. I hope you met someone you didn't know, or if you met someone you did know, you now know them a little bit better. So I'm going to walk you through the organizing principles that the incredible Audience Revolution team has used as we've put together this convening. All right? We, for those of you who were in Philly in 2013, my last name notwithstanding, this is not a remount of that conference. This is a new conference, because here we are at the confluence of two rivers and all the paddlers will tell you it's never the same river twice. So audience and engagement and community development are coming together here in Kansas City in a different way than we did in Philadelphia. So the extraordinary TCG staff, when you applied to be part of this convening, asked you what your major challenges were. And they took those major challenges and turned them into what we're calling the six challenge buckets. Got a little bit of jargon that you're gonna get used to and you can see all around the room these big buckets plus one that says other, all right? We're going to be using these six challenge buckets so I'm gonna walk you through what they are, balancing new audiences and existing subscribers right over here, measuring effectiveness and data collection back on the back wall, using new tech tools and social media over there in the corner, motivating staff and aligning departments, which is back here next to the beautiful DeFina, developing and sustaining authentic partnerships with diverse audiences, you'll find it over here, creative placemaking over there, appropriately behind Raymond Bobgan. And then because we always want to allow you a path to choose that is your own and not necessarily one that we designate for you, there's always a wild card in any session, we're calling that other, the other bucket, it's over there, all right? And these are the organizing principle for the cohort building exercise that we're gonna embark on this afternoon and also for the first two thirds of the breakout sessions that we're gonna do tomorrow afternoon. We've asked a variety of you because this is a peer learning conference, we've asked a variety of you to hold down those breakout sessions around the challenge buckets tomorrow afternoon and we've called those people anchors, right? And then they've got other folks who are working with them, who are flankers, right? So we got a whole language for audience revolution, 2015. And the reason that Lynn Carruthers, who's our fabulous graphic facilitator back there in the red shirt, who looks a lot like me, so you might think we're sisters, we'll try not to wear the same thing every day. The reason that Lynn, that Amelia and Kevin and Defina and Devin and the amazing Hannah Fenlon asked Lynn to be part of this to create these what we're called the bucket boards is so that we can capture and document this learning exchange that we're having in real time. So as you have an aha or as you have a penetrating question or a salient observation about any of these, there are pens stuck into the holders right here. For you to go write that stuff down. If you think of these as walls, this is a conference where it's okay to write on the walls, right? So capture it, handwriting neatness does not count. Spelling does not count. Capturing your ideas is what counts. So behind the six challenge buckets are a set of assumptions that we made. And I have to say on the door into the kitchen right behind there is a sticker that says invalidate my assumptions. And I take that as a personal challenge by God. So you will find the challenge buckets listed. You will find these assumptions and you will find the expectations that I'm about to talk about listed in these fabulous workbooks. But I would not advise you to open them up and follow along. It's gonna be in front of you. The workbooks are designed to get you through the whole convening. And so that you've got something tangible to take home and you don't have to spend all your time scribbling notes or tippity-tapping on your touch screens, right? So the assumptions that we're working with as we work on this convening is that we're here to connect theory to practice, right? And we're connecting individual theaters to what's happening nationally in audience engagement and community development, right? There's going to be a huge quantity of information coming through here and much of it is going to be coming from you to you, right? This is really all about peer learning. We've designed it to engage you, right? Which we hope we've begun with and we hope that you will continue to develop a community of practitioners who are learning together. And there are incentives for that built into the audience revolution program itself. So we're all on this learning curve somewhere, right? Some of us count ourselves as experts. Some of us count ourselves as novices in the field. We're all on the learning curve and the language is still shaping out, shaking out and the ideas are still shaking out. So don't be intimidated by that, which means ask questions. It's okay not to know the answers, right? These are some of the assumptions that we've built underneath this. This is a highly heterogeneous group. Some of you are leading your organizations, you are the visionary leaders of today and tomorrow. Some of you are the decision makers within your organization who follow those leaders and many of you are the people who are implementing this on the ground. All of those perspectives are valuable and we're not trying to privilege anyone over any of the others. We expect that this learning process is going to continue online on TCG 2.0. The TCG Circle has an incredible array of blog posts curated by the amazing Karadad Spitsch. So if you haven't had a chance to look at the TCG Circle, I highly recommend it. And then of course, we're going to Cleveland. Yeah, look, come on. If you haven't been to Cleveland lately, you don't understand how cool that is. Cleveland is highly, highly cool. And there may be some connections that form here that you will want to continue and use that to apply for audience revolution funding. Now, Amelia Ketropero is going to say more about the Audrev funding program tomorrow, but I just want to let you know that the audience revolution funding program is predicated upon building cohorts among theaters. So that's part of why there's so much emphasis on cohort skills building as a part of what we're doing today and it will pick up again on Friday. So you might find the perfect cohort here. You might already be working in collaboration in what you think is the perfect cohort. All of those things are great. We just want to encourage you to be open to the serendipity of what happens when the field comes together and that you might meet some or several people that you are really entranced with and who are working on the same things that you're working on. So after the assumptions, we have some expectations. Now some of these are expectations that I as your facilitator have of you for how you're going to behave. And some of these are just reasonable things to expect from a convening like this. So I'm expecting that you're gonna learn one new thing. To get more than that, whoo, bonus points. But one thing that you can take home, I am not expecting that there's a silver bullet here that's gonna solve, that's going to revolutionize all your audience engagement fears, to quote my own damn song lyrics. Do, while you're in this process, endeavor to quiet your inner critic. If you can, as theater practitioners, we are trained to lead with critique and sometimes that's not always the best first step. So just let her have a little hiatus for a couple of days as you absorb all this information that's coming down. In the breakout sessions and what we're calling the prototype sessions, the last of our breakouts tomorrow afternoon, you may hear proprietary information, please respect that, right? Don't go telling everybody secrets all the time. Oops, back up. Do share your ideas graphically. That's why we've provided this and Lynn will be capturing some of the brilliant things that will be said in the sessions that we're doing tomorrow and Friday. Also, like I said, right on the walls, go for it. All right. Try not to get caught in the either or, it's a terrible, terrible trap. It's not art or engagement, it's art and engagement. For example, and there are many other either ors that might be out there, feeling overwhelmed is completely normal. We are, we who've organized this are quite overwhelmed. And we're gonna move around a lot. Today and tomorrow we are in this fabulous space, this big room and all of the meeting rooms that were on all the way along that wall over there. On Friday, as many of you have already signed up for them, we're going on field trips and we're gonna be at the Westin Hotel, which is not the Sheraton Hotel, although it's attached to it. So there's gonna be a lot of moving around. Feel free to ask questions of any of us with the fabulous Burgundy staff badge or just about anybody else will do our best to do the wayfinding, but it's always okay to ask for help. And to the best of your ability, be here now. As much as you can leave your other work back at the office, try not to be texting and answering emails in the big sessions, because you're gonna miss something amazing, right? Some fabulous quote or some insight that you really needed all the way along. Last on the expectations is challenging yourself toward inclusion, equity and diversity. These are powerfully important principles and they're threaded throughout everything that TCG is doing right now and to me are a fundamental aspect of high quality audience engagement and community development. And practice a little forgiveness of yourself and others. I forgive me, I did something wrong, forgive me now. Tweet a lot, right? Hashtag, odd rev 15, right? Tweet it up in Philadelphia, we were trending and we wanna trend again. And if you are masochistic enough to want more banjo, which makes me question your taste, we will crowdsource the lyrics to a closing song. Should you wish? Hashtag banjo lyrics, we own that one. Nobody else out there is hashtag tweeting banjo lyrics. Okay, so I'm gonna do some logistics because I am sort of your Neo mistress of ceremonies. Restrooms, first and foremost on the logistics line are all the way down the hall toward the end. They're just one little door and then they're surprisingly ample inside. Smokers, you get to go all the way down the hall and past the restrooms and past the vending machines out the back is your designated smoking spot. Breakfast on Thursday morning is going to be in the Troust and Passeo and Brush Creek rooms. There are three rooms that are aligned along those walls. The rooms are small, get in, get your food, get out, move around, circulate. Although we do somewhat discourage you from bringing your food in and hunching over a chair in here. Just keep the flow going, right? But we will be serving you breakfast tomorrow morning. The opening night party is tonight and if you dig deep into your tag bag, you will find one drink ticket. After that, ya know. And it is a true cash bar, cash only. There is an ATM across from the theater if you didn't bring any cash and you want to drink more. If you have indicated that you've got dietary restrictions, there is also a ticket in your tag bag to get you to the fabulous food truck. The rest of us carnivores will be eating barbecue. But if you're gluten-free or any of that sort of stuff, then we've got a food truck set up at the reception for you. There will be shuttles leaving after the reception, right? So we're gonna be here for this. Then we're gonna get shuttled over to Kansas City Rep, which is like a four and a half minute ride away. We're gonna have a fabulous party. Many of us are gonna see hair tonight. If you are not seeing hair, shuttles will start leaving from Kansas City Rep to go back to the Sheraton and take you back to your hotel and there will also be shuttles after the performance. So we will get you there. Tomorrow morning, the buses begin departing from the Sheraton at 8 a.m. and breakfast is served here at 8.30 in the coffin room. Also, tomorrow, if you're thinking that the breakout session in the afternoon for knowledge sharing that you wanna do is new technology and social media, please bring your devices. Have them all charged up and ready to rock and roll. I think most of you signed up for the field trips on Friday, so we've got that covered, but you can still sign up for them. We'll visit three out of the four places on the list. They're all fabulous, so you can't go wrong, but we do wanna try and get that stuff signed up in advance. And we have some musical needs. Kansas City folks, this is for you. Can you source us an accordion? Just putting that out there. Preferably, bye tomorrow afternoon. No. I'll say no more. Okay, so we're in this space from now until the time that we leave to go get some fabulous barbecue at Kansas City Rep. But don't get too attached to your chair in this space because we did this unusual arrangement so that we can start moving around. Tomorrow morning, we'll be back in this big room again, and tomorrow I'll do a walkthrough of that agenda because you've probably heard more.