Collaboration is King

I mentioned before that the Performing Arts Alliance is hosting a national conference for the Association of Performing Arts Service Organizations (APASO). Yes, there is an association for everything. That conference kicks off this week. Terry Olson's office of arts and cultural affairs at Orange County is co-hosting the event. Fifty people from 23 different organizations (our Alliance and Terry's office not included) from 16 cities as far as London and Vancouver are attending the event.

We are excited and overwhelmed at hosting the event. On the exciting front, many of the attendees will be visiting several of our area arts and culture venues for exhibits or performances and the conference itself as we are using cultural venues for the presentations. It will be a time to highlight our growth as a cultural community and to showcase our city to those attending from rich in cultural history like Philadelphia, Chicago, New York City, Boston and London. The overwhelmed part is the to-do list.

One of the topics that will be discussed in great deal will be the concept and practice of collaboration. Each of the 25 organizations represented is a catalyst in some form or fashion in their respective cities. Many of these organizations have decades of experience at helping to leverage the collective power of a community's arts and culture organizations.

Many of the cities are represented in a Power Point presentation from Alan Brown & Associates research. When talking to those in leadership positions at these organizations, many have commented that Orlando is in a good position to establish and build on collaboration early and often. I couldn't agree more and couldn't be more excited about our potential to positively build on our early victories of collaboration. Here is to picking up some more best practices.