Speakers and Professional Development Sessions

Keynote Speaker: Laura Zabel - Tuesday, September 13, 6:00-7:30 PM

Laura Zabel is the Executive Director of Springboard for the Arts, an economic and community development agency run by and for artists. Zabel has been honored with numerous awards, including the YBCA 100, Gard Foundation Award of Excellence, Common Future Local Economy Fellowship and the Bush Foundation Leadership Fellowship. She chairs the board of directors of the Metropolitan Consortium of Community Developers and serves as an advisor to Dakota Resources, The Laundromat Project, Local Initiatives Support Corporation, and the University of Kansas Department of Theater and Dance.  

Her Keynote topic is: "Creative People Power"As our communities work towards recovery and rebuilding, we need creativity and culture to help imagine and build a more equitable, connected and vibrant future. Laura's presentation will focus on how arts and community leaders can reach and engage more people, increase community relevance and connection and find creative ways to collaborate with local government and community agencies. Laura will share examples of locally-grown, small-scale projects and programs that demonstrate how artists use critical processes to reconnect, imagine and build a better future.  


 Plenary Speaker: Ruby Lopez Harper - Monday, September 12, 9:00 AM

Ruby's work experience includes operationalizing equity strategies in external facing programming and external relations, developing and designing field education experiences, leadership development, local arts advancement, and cohort building for the local arts agency field, arts and culture administrators, and arts marketers. She led Americans for the Arts' equity work, including assisting in the transformation of its signature field research project, Arts and Economic Prosperity study. She was the chief architect of the National Arts Marketing Project Conference from 2017 to 2021, successfully transitioning from in-person to online. Recently, she was selected for the 2021 BIPOC Leadership Circle Cohort with Artequity. She was a 2019 Arizona State University Practices for Change Fellow. She was recognized as an 2019 Inspirational Woman (Arts Advocate) by “And I Thought” Women in Literature. She is a steering committee member for the National Coalition on Arts Preparedness and Emergency Response, serves as Chair of the Gard Foundation, serves on the board for the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County (Grants Committee/Advocacy Committee) and serves on Aha Media board and PBS/WETA Community Advisory Council.

Ruby Lopez Harper will kick-off OAPN's 2022 conference during our morning breakfast on Monday, September 12 at 9:00 AM with an inspirational and educational discussion on equity in the arts. Ms. Harper will also make herself available for one-on-one's and sit in on our "Diversify Your Programming" panel discussion. Plan your travel and arrive a night early to enjoy our Sunday night free pre-conference events so that you don't miss a minute of #OAPN2022. 

Professional Development Sessions

Tuesday, September 13, 11:30 AM-12:30 PM

Room A: Backed by Audience Data: Your Digital Marketing Priorities - Capacity Interactive

MP (they/he) is Capacity Interactive's Industry Enrichment Content Producer, leading CI's Industry Research through the Performing Arts Ticket Buyer Media Usage Study and the Arts Industry Digital Marketing Benchmark Study. They produce the CI to Eye podcast as well as all of CI's livestream and webinar content and are part of the team that produces the annual Digital Marketing Boot Camp for the Arts. 

What does it mean to be a loyal ticket buyer two and a half years into a pandemic? Where do audiences spend their time online? What influences them to purchase a ticket? In this session, we’ll answer these questions and more through the results of the 2021 Performing Arts Ticket Buyer Media Usage Study, built on responses from 17,000 performing arts ticket buyers. Find out which platforms to prioritize, what these findings mean in the context of sweeping privacy changes to the digital landscape, and how to adapt your digital strategy to meet the moment.


Room B: Ways to Survive and Thrive. How to creatively meet the needs of Presenters as an Artist - Michael Ingersoll

As artists, we often focus exclusively on creating work that we hope is “good enough” to create income, rather than creating work that solves a problem for a potential client. In this workshop, participants will learn to approach booking and selling as problem solvers in order to identify how their work can best meet the needs of the people who can (and want to!) employ them. Topics covered in the workshop include: Building peership with presenters and ‘gate-keepers’,
creating income in saturated markets, creating employment opportunities by sharing risk with clients, building a client network, and using setbacks to pivot and grow.

Michael Ingersoll
is the creator of the Artists Lounge Live concert series and has toured the country performing with his retro-rock vocal group Under the Streetlamp, whose television concert specials aired in millions of homes nationwide. He is also known for starring as Nick Massi of the Four Seasons in Jersey Boys for the original Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles companies. 


Room C: Demystifying Grant Writing - Dan Katona
Dan Katona

This session will explore the basics of grant writing for nonprofit arts organizations – and how to be successful at it – with a focus on the application, adjudication, and award-making processes used at the Ohio Arts Council. Tips on how to best tell your story, maximize relevant data, and engage reviewers will be shared, along with other strategies to make your next application nearly painless to prepare, yet highly competitive at the review table.

Dan Katona is the Deputy Director of the Ohio Arts Council which is a state agency that funds and supports quality arts experiences to strengthen Ohio communities culturally, educationally, and economically. Dan works with Donna Collins, the OAC’s Executive Director, on overall policy, crafting funding guidelines, and overseeing grantmaking. He leads a great deal of the agency’s strategic planning work and oversees their internal work plan. The Deputy Director also plays a role in the agency’s human resources work and compliance with the state.

Dining Area: Roundtable Session - "Diversifying Your Programming", Panel: Josh Benson, Ruby Lopez Harper, Mary Jennings

Wednesday, September 14, 9:00 AM-10:00 AM

Room A: Level Up Your Email Marketing - Capacity Interactive

Aly Gomez (she/her) is a Senior Analyst at CI serving clients across the country, sharing insights with organizations including American Conservatory Theater, Tilles Center, Museum of the American Revolution, Emerson Colonial Theatre, Denver Art Museum and more. Prior to joining Capacity Interactive, Aly worked as the Associate Director of Marketing at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, a Tony Award-Winning regional theatre where she managed all website, email and social media marketing. Outside of work, you can find her with her husband Sebastian and baby Miles, or hanging from the ceiling on her sling, silks or lyra.

It’s no secret that email is a critical channel for arts marketers. With 3.9 billion daily email users and crowded inboxes, arts marketers must stand out. In this session, you’ll learn how to create engaging, user-centric emails campaigns, from subject lines to segmentation. You’ll also learn why lead generation campaigns are an essential tool to grow your email list and what metrics you can rely on for measuring and optimizing your email performance.



Room B: Booking your venue Monday through Thursday: Creative ways to reduce risk and program all week long - Michael Ingersoll
This session will focus on leveraging local and regional resources as well as targeting low risk/high reward national acts in order to provide mid-week programming without breaking the bank. Topics include: structuring deals that allow both the artist and the venue to share risk, pairing national talent with local resources to reduce overhead, partnering with regional acts and theatrical productions to provide new platforms for artists and reduce production costs, and increasing presenters’ revenue by turning ‘dark nights’ into income generating opportunities.

Michael Ingersoll
 is the creator of the Artists Lounge Live concert series and has toured the country performing with his retro-rock vocal group Under the Streetlamp, whose television concert specials aired in millions of homes nationwide. He is also known for starring as Nick Massi of the Four Seasons in Jersey Boys for the original Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles companies. 


Room C: Making Artistic Cents, Beyond the Deal: Collaboration After The Contract Is Signed - hosted by NAPAMA 

The deal is only the beginning! Collaboration between presenters, agencies, artists and managers after the contract is signed is a crucial part of ensuring a successful show. Learn about the dos and don’t of communication, marketing, advance and other aspects of effective preparation from the perspective of experienced industry professionals. Special guests include Andrea Sabata (Agent, Skyline Artist Agency), Joe Ferlo (Presenter, The Grand Oshkosh), Crandall Rogers (Tour Manager, FourMortals Productions), and others.

 






Dining Area: Roundtable Session - Making Creative Deals for Presenters, Agents & Artists - Amber Hansen, BiCoastal Productions

After serving as a presenter for more than 10 years and now as an agent and presenter simultaneously, Amber will share ideas on how we encourage venues who received pandemic relief to trickle those funds down to the artists who did not receive similar support. We will discuss ways to collaborate with our clients while minimizing risk and sharing costs.  Amber would like to share some solutions she has come up with as a Presenter and as an Agent, and hear your ideas as well - to best serve our Artists and create winning solutions for both parties.
 





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