I am back in the office after attending my first AMA (Arts Marketing Association) conference this week. Held from 19-21 July at the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow, the theme of this year’s conference was ‘Brave New World - how marketers can help the arts thrive.’

It was interesting to dip my normally digital feet in the larger world of arts marketing, and mix with people working for venues, charities and other arts organisations across the UK - and indeed the world. Stand-out sessions for me included a presentation by Sebastian Chan of the Sydney Powerhouse Museum (which I visited about 10 years ago and loved!), a talk from Shelley Bernstein of the Brooklyn Museum and the final keynote by Russell Willis Taylor from National Arts Strategies.

Supported by Creative Scotland, the morning keynote sessions were broadcast by Envirodigital, and you can watch the keynote presentation from Sebastian Chan and Jane Finnis (Culture 24) online.

The good folks at Culture Sparks, Glasgow, put on an open top bus tour of Glasgow for delegates. A fan of bus tours (even in cities I know well), I happily sat on the top deck in the breezy sunshine. You can see some of my photographs of both the bus tour and the AMA conference on Flickr.

The craftscotland website

I was very excited to announce our appointment of Wildfire Technology Limited as our new website providers earlier this week. I’ve been doing a huge amount of work on the new site already, and can’t wait to unveil it later in the summer. I have some opportunities coming up which are linked to the new site, so watch this space for more details.

Regular visitors may have noticed that I modified the ‘share this’ links which appear on the website. I’ve added a facebook ‘like’ button, a Google+ button (for those early adopters out there, like me), and I’ve also made the general sharing buttons a little bigger. These buttons let you email, print, or share the link to the page with your friends.

Installing these new buttons made me remember a great video I saw that was made by English National Operas for their recent production Two Boys, so I leave you for the weekend with this: Can I Be Your Friend?