In preparation for the 2010 SXSW Film and music festival in Austin Texas the staff and board have come up with a unique online method for soliciting ideas and interest in their week long panels.The Online Panel Picker gives the digital community the ability to browse through programming proposals and vote on which ideas they feel are most interesting for SXSWeek 2010. The voting from the panel picker will only play a percentage participation in the final decisions - 30% - while 40% of the weight of the decision remains with the advisory board and 30% with the festival staff.
I must say this is an interesting public participation experiment in arts programming. Non-profit arts organizations are always wrestling with the problem of knowing weather their programming is serving their constituency. The panel picker creates an easy to use feedback loop both for, sort of whiteboarding ideas, but also for pre-testing them before their target audience.
This is a method that could easily be used in other membership organizations like IFP, Screenwriters' Workshop, Minnesota Film Arts and the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival.
Here is the URL:
http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/
