Tickets.com supports Aren Murray (Texas A&M) and Derek Younger (Washington Nationals) for the INTIX Board of Directors:
Aren Murray, Assistant Director MSC, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX has been in her current position since 2000 and an INTIX member since 2002. At A&M she manages ticket operations for over 250 events accounting for over 2 million in annual sales. Aren served on the 2000 Houston annual conference committee, is the INTIX silent auction chair, and is president of the Greater Houston Area Ticketing Association (GHATA).
"As your Board member, I would bring my belief in the importance of ticketing professionals continuing to rub elbows, share life stories, mentor and encourage each other. I will bring my action-oriented nature with an intention to foster professional relationships and information-sharing through exciting and fun avenues."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Derek Younger, Director of Ticket Operations, Washington Nationals, Washington, D.C. has been a member of INTIX for almost 10 years and a frequent conference speaker and presenter at the annual conferences as well as a 2003 Washington DC summer conference committee member. He has a broad background in ticketing - performing arts, concerts, ticketing for a major league baseball team, a Papal visit, and the experience of opening two new ballparks. Derek previously worked at the Wang Theatre and Citi Center for the Performing Arts in Boston. In 2006, he was the recipient of the Outstanding Ticketing Professional Award.
"As an INTIX member I have both given and received support from the wealth of experienced members of INTIX. I will continue our goals of working as a team to provide more support and outreach capabilities for members; and by helping INTIX spotlight advanced technologies, tools and information which catapults ticketing into the future."
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Tickets.com partner Turnkey tackles ticketing with new technology
Sports Business Journal
Eric Fisher
Turnkey Sports & Entertainment this month is introducing Prospector, a ticketing software program it believes will dramatically change how teams seek to fill their buildings.
The program was developed over the past four years at a cost of more than $1 million. It uses inputs such as individual ticket purchases, survey responses and merchandise buys, and blends that data with a variety of demographic, housing and income information on those same fans to create detailed ticket-sales leads that are scored by their likelihood of success.
The software’s custom-built algorithms also allow for customization to rank sales leads for fans’ likelihood to purchase different ticket packages. For example, a high-income fan might score high as a candidate to purchase a luxury-seat package and score lower as a candidate for a smaller, value-oriented ticket package. But if survey data also arrives indicating a propensity by the fan to bring his family to games and participate in youth-oriented promotions, the lead scoring for that person could change, and the sales pitch as a result may then veer away from the more-corporate seating options.
Turnkey successfully beta-tested the effort with the Texas Rangers and Miami Heat earlier this year and will launch the program with at least 18 pro teams over the next several weeks, including the Dallas Stars, Minnesota Timberwolves and Kansas City Royals. The effort seeks to reverse years of declining ticket-sales trends. Pro teams in the early 1990s commonly were able to close sales on 3 percent to 4 percent of their outbound sales calls, but they’ve seen that rate fall below 1 percent in more-recent years as people grow more resistant to any sales call, particularly calls not customized for them.
“The key factor is boosting the close rate back up to where we were 20 years ago,” said Len Perna, Turnkey chief executive. “It’s the only thing that will work. Staying at 1 percent just isn’t going to get it done, so this is about creating tools that will enable more efficiency and improving that close rate.”
To create Prospector, Turnkey needed to strike a series of licensing and commission-based deals with a large group of related parties, including Ticketmaster, Tickets.com, and database marketers Acxiom and InfoUSA. Others, including Veritix and MLB Advanced Media, are also being sought out.
To that end, the Turnkey effort seeks to collate and analyze data that exists at these various outposts or has been voluntarily provided and perform analytical functions that in many instances now occur in a more rudimentary fashion. Many pro and college teams for years have sent lists of names to companies such as Acxiom for additional data enrichment and analysis, but such a process often has been time-consuming and performed in large batches.
Prospector, conversely, performs such analysis daily and on an individual level, more akin to the type of extensive and rapid consumer profiling common in the retail industry.
“This has definitely made us a lot more intelligent and efficient,” said Andy Silverman, Texas Rangers executive vice president of sales. The Rangers posted the highest percentage attendance increase in the American League this season and now are fully deploying the Prospector system in preparation for 2010.
The Heat, similarly, posted during its offseason sales period for the 2009-10 season seven times more ticket-sales revenue from its highest-rated Prospector-generated leads than from those at the bottom end of the scoring.
“This looks like it’s a really slick product,” said Glenn Christian, an Acxiom sales executive who works exclusively with sports teams and properties. Turnkey will act as a reseller of Acxiom data. “There are still some teams that are going to want to have raw data and data enrichment from us, but what they have done to get their secret sauce in there is really interesting.”
Teams will pay a monthly licensing fee to use the service, with an introductory rate of $4,000 a month. The participating teams’ data will be stored on Turnkey’s servers, and the data can be both uploaded to the clients’ computers and woven into teams’ existing CRM systems.
As with any new product, there are some issues continuing to be worked out. The Rangers are among the teams purging buys from ticket brokers from their Prospector analysis, as broker behavior is typically very different from individual and corporate buyers.
The product also promises to create a bit of a management issue, as ticket salespeople at individual teams may start clamoring for only highly rated sales leads as opposed to lower prospects. The Prospector system allows for a variety of view levels, though, depending on organizational seniority and responsibility.
Turnkey is a research partner of SportsBusiness Journal and SportsBusiness Daily.
Eric Fisher
Turnkey Sports & Entertainment this month is introducing Prospector, a ticketing software program it believes will dramatically change how teams seek to fill their buildings.
The program was developed over the past four years at a cost of more than $1 million. It uses inputs such as individual ticket purchases, survey responses and merchandise buys, and blends that data with a variety of demographic, housing and income information on those same fans to create detailed ticket-sales leads that are scored by their likelihood of success.
The software’s custom-built algorithms also allow for customization to rank sales leads for fans’ likelihood to purchase different ticket packages. For example, a high-income fan might score high as a candidate to purchase a luxury-seat package and score lower as a candidate for a smaller, value-oriented ticket package. But if survey data also arrives indicating a propensity by the fan to bring his family to games and participate in youth-oriented promotions, the lead scoring for that person could change, and the sales pitch as a result may then veer away from the more-corporate seating options.
Turnkey successfully beta-tested the effort with the Texas Rangers and Miami Heat earlier this year and will launch the program with at least 18 pro teams over the next several weeks, including the Dallas Stars, Minnesota Timberwolves and Kansas City Royals. The effort seeks to reverse years of declining ticket-sales trends. Pro teams in the early 1990s commonly were able to close sales on 3 percent to 4 percent of their outbound sales calls, but they’ve seen that rate fall below 1 percent in more-recent years as people grow more resistant to any sales call, particularly calls not customized for them.
“The key factor is boosting the close rate back up to where we were 20 years ago,” said Len Perna, Turnkey chief executive. “It’s the only thing that will work. Staying at 1 percent just isn’t going to get it done, so this is about creating tools that will enable more efficiency and improving that close rate.”
To create Prospector, Turnkey needed to strike a series of licensing and commission-based deals with a large group of related parties, including Ticketmaster, Tickets.com, and database marketers Acxiom and InfoUSA. Others, including Veritix and MLB Advanced Media, are also being sought out.
To that end, the Turnkey effort seeks to collate and analyze data that exists at these various outposts or has been voluntarily provided and perform analytical functions that in many instances now occur in a more rudimentary fashion. Many pro and college teams for years have sent lists of names to companies such as Acxiom for additional data enrichment and analysis, but such a process often has been time-consuming and performed in large batches.
Prospector, conversely, performs such analysis daily and on an individual level, more akin to the type of extensive and rapid consumer profiling common in the retail industry.
“This has definitely made us a lot more intelligent and efficient,” said Andy Silverman, Texas Rangers executive vice president of sales. The Rangers posted the highest percentage attendance increase in the American League this season and now are fully deploying the Prospector system in preparation for 2010.
The Heat, similarly, posted during its offseason sales period for the 2009-10 season seven times more ticket-sales revenue from its highest-rated Prospector-generated leads than from those at the bottom end of the scoring.
“This looks like it’s a really slick product,” said Glenn Christian, an Acxiom sales executive who works exclusively with sports teams and properties. Turnkey will act as a reseller of Acxiom data. “There are still some teams that are going to want to have raw data and data enrichment from us, but what they have done to get their secret sauce in there is really interesting.”
Teams will pay a monthly licensing fee to use the service, with an introductory rate of $4,000 a month. The participating teams’ data will be stored on Turnkey’s servers, and the data can be both uploaded to the clients’ computers and woven into teams’ existing CRM systems.
As with any new product, there are some issues continuing to be worked out. The Rangers are among the teams purging buys from ticket brokers from their Prospector analysis, as broker behavior is typically very different from individual and corporate buyers.
The product also promises to create a bit of a management issue, as ticket salespeople at individual teams may start clamoring for only highly rated sales leads as opposed to lower prospects. The Prospector system allows for a variety of view levels, though, depending on organizational seniority and responsibility.
Turnkey is a research partner of SportsBusiness Journal and SportsBusiness Daily.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Calling all INTIX members!
Vote MARDI Dilger for INTIX Board.Why MARDI?
Because she is an accomplished professional with over 15 years of quality management performance in the hospitality and entertainment industry. Her communication, organization, leadership and presentation skills are exceptional. Not to mention that she is a positive and enthusiastic INTIX member committed and dedicated to the organization's mission.
MARDI has been a member of the International Ticketing Association since 1993 and over the years has volunteered on these programs:
- Summer Conference Committee
- Awards Committee
- Awards Committee Chair
- Fundraising taskforce
The question then becomes, why wouldn't you VOTE for MARDI?
EBay generated $400M in business from iPhone app
Mobile Marketer
By Giselle Tsirulnik
EBay President/CEO John Donahoe said mobile is one of the key areas that the company is focusing on since devices will surely impact the way that consumers shop.
Mr. Donahoe said that the iPhone and BlackBerry devices are already changing consumers’ shopping habits and recommended that retailers change and evolve if they want to compete. He spoke at the Shop.org annual summit in Las Vegas.
“Mobile devices will play a role and the notion of mobility will have a huge impact on ecommerce,” Mr. Donahoe said.
In two years, about 40 percent of Internet access will happen from a mobile device. IPhones are only about 8 percent of the market, but they make up about 40 percent of Internet usage at present.
Since $400 million was generated in business since the eBay application’s launch, Mr. Donahoe said that devices like this one and others like it are going to impact his company.
Mr. Donahoe is president/CEO of eBay
Last week someone bought a $350,000 Lamborghini on the iPhone. Also, someone bought a $150,000 boat from their iPhone.
Consumers are bidding via mobile, browsing products and eBay’s mobile sales volume is growing in the double digits every month.
“I know this will be an important device for ecommerce,” Mr. Donahoe said.
Mrs. Freeman Evans is vice president and research director of Forrester
One of Mr. Donahoe’s colleagues came into his office and laid a book on his desk. To cover the title of the book, his colleague placed a pack of M&Ms on it. He snapped a picture with his iPhone and was able to locate various book stores that sell it and their prices for it.
Mr. Donahoe believes that innovation is driven by the small application developers and that they will impact how people will shop.
EBay is launching its first developer conference and will open its PayPal and eBay platforms for developers.
Mr. Donahoe talked about PayPal and said the payments side of ecommerce is what stifles the business.
“People are just not comfortable providing their credit card information over the Internet,” Mr. Donahoe said.
Mobile payments are the future.
EBay is right at the center of the technology and commerce worlds. 300-400 million people use eBay products worldwide.
The reason for eBay’s success?
“You have to adapt to compete and that is what we have done,” Mr. Donahoe said. “We adapted to the fact that consumers are embracing new technologies and we took advantage of that.”
Ecommerce is maturing as a market, but it is only about 5 percent of overall retail sales.
Mr. Donahoe forecasts it will eventually end up at 20-30 percent.
Traditionally in retail people talk about the online and offline, but the lines are blurring.
People are researching online, go in-store to buy and then once they are at a retail location, they use their mobile phones to comparison shop.
“There won’t be just one winner in ecommerce,” Mr. Donahoe said. “There will be many winners. When there is a lot of innovation, there are multiple winners.
“Online payments are a bit different, as it is a major friction point for online retail,” he said. “The online payments world will soon mirror the offline.
“It is all about convenience and speed and mobile payments and micro payments will help bring that 5 percent to 10 percent.”
After Mr. Donahoe’s keynote, Patti Freeman Evans, vice president and research director at Forrester Research interviewed the eBay executive.
She asked who he considers as his competition and he said instead of worrying about competition, eBay focuses on the customer.
Most likely this type of an approach is what got eBay 90 million unique visitors per month. A whopping 75 percent of that traffic is organic. The marketplace also buys about 20 million keywords from Google.
EBay is all about giving its merchants – big and small – access to traffic so that they can sell their merchandise.
“When we though about competition we did not want to focus on any competitor,” Mr. Donahoe said. “Instead we ruthlessly focus on customers. We need to think about how to win and get our sellers to win."
Senior Editor Giselle Tsirulnik covers ad networks, advertising, content, email, media, messaging, legal/privacy, search, social networks, television and video. Reach her at giselle@mobilemarketer.com.
By Giselle Tsirulnik
EBay President/CEO John Donahoe said mobile is one of the key areas that the company is focusing on since devices will surely impact the way that consumers shop.
Mr. Donahoe said that the iPhone and BlackBerry devices are already changing consumers’ shopping habits and recommended that retailers change and evolve if they want to compete. He spoke at the Shop.org annual summit in Las Vegas.
“Mobile devices will play a role and the notion of mobility will have a huge impact on ecommerce,” Mr. Donahoe said.
In two years, about 40 percent of Internet access will happen from a mobile device. IPhones are only about 8 percent of the market, but they make up about 40 percent of Internet usage at present.
Since $400 million was generated in business since the eBay application’s launch, Mr. Donahoe said that devices like this one and others like it are going to impact his company.
Mr. Donahoe is president/CEO of eBay
Last week someone bought a $350,000 Lamborghini on the iPhone. Also, someone bought a $150,000 boat from their iPhone.
Consumers are bidding via mobile, browsing products and eBay’s mobile sales volume is growing in the double digits every month.
“I know this will be an important device for ecommerce,” Mr. Donahoe said.
Mrs. Freeman Evans is vice president and research director of Forrester
One of Mr. Donahoe’s colleagues came into his office and laid a book on his desk. To cover the title of the book, his colleague placed a pack of M&Ms on it. He snapped a picture with his iPhone and was able to locate various book stores that sell it and their prices for it.
Mr. Donahoe believes that innovation is driven by the small application developers and that they will impact how people will shop.
EBay is launching its first developer conference and will open its PayPal and eBay platforms for developers.
Mr. Donahoe talked about PayPal and said the payments side of ecommerce is what stifles the business.
“People are just not comfortable providing their credit card information over the Internet,” Mr. Donahoe said.
Mobile payments are the future.
EBay is right at the center of the technology and commerce worlds. 300-400 million people use eBay products worldwide.
The reason for eBay’s success?
“You have to adapt to compete and that is what we have done,” Mr. Donahoe said. “We adapted to the fact that consumers are embracing new technologies and we took advantage of that.”
Ecommerce is maturing as a market, but it is only about 5 percent of overall retail sales.
Mr. Donahoe forecasts it will eventually end up at 20-30 percent.
Traditionally in retail people talk about the online and offline, but the lines are blurring.
People are researching online, go in-store to buy and then once they are at a retail location, they use their mobile phones to comparison shop.
“There won’t be just one winner in ecommerce,” Mr. Donahoe said. “There will be many winners. When there is a lot of innovation, there are multiple winners.
“Online payments are a bit different, as it is a major friction point for online retail,” he said. “The online payments world will soon mirror the offline.
“It is all about convenience and speed and mobile payments and micro payments will help bring that 5 percent to 10 percent.”
After Mr. Donahoe’s keynote, Patti Freeman Evans, vice president and research director at Forrester Research interviewed the eBay executive.
She asked who he considers as his competition and he said instead of worrying about competition, eBay focuses on the customer.
Most likely this type of an approach is what got eBay 90 million unique visitors per month. A whopping 75 percent of that traffic is organic. The marketplace also buys about 20 million keywords from Google.
EBay is all about giving its merchants – big and small – access to traffic so that they can sell their merchandise.
“When we though about competition we did not want to focus on any competitor,” Mr. Donahoe said. “Instead we ruthlessly focus on customers. We need to think about how to win and get our sellers to win."
Senior Editor Giselle Tsirulnik covers ad networks, advertising, content, email, media, messaging, legal/privacy, search, social networks, television and video. Reach her at giselle@mobilemarketer.com.
Monday, October 19, 2009
TicketNews Guest Commentary: The myths about dynamic pricing
By Barry Kahn
TicketNews.com
I was recently asked to be a panelist at the upcoming Ticket Summit 2010 and it made be think back to the last two Ticket Summit events that I’ve attended.
The first was the conference’s second year. Back then, Alfred Branch was the lone reporter for TicketNews, StubHub was the controversial young company, and there were only three representatives from the primary market (although once you consider that Fred Rosen was retired and Qcue was in its infancy, there was actually just one, Derek Palmer of Tickets.com).
Fast forward to this past July. StubHub’s president gave a keynote address, the New Jersey Nets had a booth, and Qcue was the controversial young company. In fact, our pricing panel stirred up such a healthy debate on what dynamic pricing really is and how it affects brokers and season ticket holders, that I thought it would be appropriate to revisit the three the biggest misconceptions raised during the discussion.
“With dynamic pricing, I won’t be able to resell my tickets for bad games since teams will just drop prices.”
What if I told you that prices are more likely to rise than fall over time, even for the worst games? Dynamic pricing is about being smarter with pricing, not just dynamic. That means that at the start of the season, a game played on Tuesday night against the last place team will start at a lower price than a game played on Saturday afternoon against your archrival. And there isn’t much that can happen to that Tuesday night game to make it worse. Sure it can rain, but barring that, prices will only move up as tickets sell and the game becomes, with any luck, better than it looked on paper.
You’ve always known that those games had different values because you could sell them for different prices -- but with dynamic pricing, you can’t pretend you paid the same price for them anymore, because you didn’t. Once you consider your real cost for those low value games, you’ll quickly realize that you can sell them at a fair price and dynamic pricing helps.
“I just found an interesting blog post about dynamic pricing for Giants tickets. For the first two games, it looks like ticket prices increased leading up to the game. Under the dynamic pricing model, don’t prices generally go down as the game approaches?”
If you track prices for tickets on StubHub or the other exchanges, you’ll see ticket prices drop immediately prior to an event. But dynamic pricing is very different from pricing on the secondary market. One element of this is that teams have more tickets to sell, meaning that they’re going to be more conservative with prices earlier in the sales cycle. As more tickets sell, and availability decreases, the prices leading up to a game will actually increase.
If you aren’t convinced that primary and secondary market pricing are different, take a look at group sales. Any team will gladly give you a discount for 25 tickets together because they have 20,000+ seats to sell and bigger sales are advantageous. But that same purchase on the secondary market will cost you a premium because for a broker, 25 seats together is a scarce commodity.
“Dynamic pricing is going to devalue my tickets. The team will just try to undercut me on the secondary market.”
Season ticket holders are the lifeblood of teams, and teams will always protect those loyal customers. Dynamic pricing brings more fans to the game, providing a better fan experience across the stadium, and increasing the resale value of tickets. More tickets sold also means more revenues for teams, which ultimately translates into lower costs for season ticket holders.
Dynamic pricing is really about teams being more intelligent and flexible with pricing – which means protecting your most loyal customers and increasing the value they receive. Increasing attendance and more accurately pricing premium games are two ways in which dynamic pricing achieves those goals.
Barry Kahn is the founder and CEO of Qcue, the world’s only dynamic pricing engine for live entertainment events. Sports teams, concert promoters and venues use Qcue’s patent-pending technology to set the right price at the right time, and provide the best value for fans, from the onsale date right up to the event date. Customers and partners include the San Francisco Giants, Major League Baseball and Tickets.com.
TicketNews.com
I was recently asked to be a panelist at the upcoming Ticket Summit 2010 and it made be think back to the last two Ticket Summit events that I’ve attended.
The first was the conference’s second year. Back then, Alfred Branch was the lone reporter for TicketNews, StubHub was the controversial young company, and there were only three representatives from the primary market (although once you consider that Fred Rosen was retired and Qcue was in its infancy, there was actually just one, Derek Palmer of Tickets.com).
Fast forward to this past July. StubHub’s president gave a keynote address, the New Jersey Nets had a booth, and Qcue was the controversial young company. In fact, our pricing panel stirred up such a healthy debate on what dynamic pricing really is and how it affects brokers and season ticket holders, that I thought it would be appropriate to revisit the three the biggest misconceptions raised during the discussion.
“With dynamic pricing, I won’t be able to resell my tickets for bad games since teams will just drop prices.”
What if I told you that prices are more likely to rise than fall over time, even for the worst games? Dynamic pricing is about being smarter with pricing, not just dynamic. That means that at the start of the season, a game played on Tuesday night against the last place team will start at a lower price than a game played on Saturday afternoon against your archrival. And there isn’t much that can happen to that Tuesday night game to make it worse. Sure it can rain, but barring that, prices will only move up as tickets sell and the game becomes, with any luck, better than it looked on paper.
You’ve always known that those games had different values because you could sell them for different prices -- but with dynamic pricing, you can’t pretend you paid the same price for them anymore, because you didn’t. Once you consider your real cost for those low value games, you’ll quickly realize that you can sell them at a fair price and dynamic pricing helps.
“I just found an interesting blog post about dynamic pricing for Giants tickets. For the first two games, it looks like ticket prices increased leading up to the game. Under the dynamic pricing model, don’t prices generally go down as the game approaches?”
If you track prices for tickets on StubHub or the other exchanges, you’ll see ticket prices drop immediately prior to an event. But dynamic pricing is very different from pricing on the secondary market. One element of this is that teams have more tickets to sell, meaning that they’re going to be more conservative with prices earlier in the sales cycle. As more tickets sell, and availability decreases, the prices leading up to a game will actually increase.
If you aren’t convinced that primary and secondary market pricing are different, take a look at group sales. Any team will gladly give you a discount for 25 tickets together because they have 20,000+ seats to sell and bigger sales are advantageous. But that same purchase on the secondary market will cost you a premium because for a broker, 25 seats together is a scarce commodity.
“Dynamic pricing is going to devalue my tickets. The team will just try to undercut me on the secondary market.”
Season ticket holders are the lifeblood of teams, and teams will always protect those loyal customers. Dynamic pricing brings more fans to the game, providing a better fan experience across the stadium, and increasing the resale value of tickets. More tickets sold also means more revenues for teams, which ultimately translates into lower costs for season ticket holders.
Dynamic pricing is really about teams being more intelligent and flexible with pricing – which means protecting your most loyal customers and increasing the value they receive. Increasing attendance and more accurately pricing premium games are two ways in which dynamic pricing achieves those goals.
Barry Kahn is the founder and CEO of Qcue, the world’s only dynamic pricing engine for live entertainment events. Sports teams, concert promoters and venues use Qcue’s patent-pending technology to set the right price at the right time, and provide the best value for fans, from the onsale date right up to the event date. Customers and partners include the San Francisco Giants, Major League Baseball and Tickets.com.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Metropolis Celebrates El Dia De Los Muertos with The Magic Ofrenda
Students will learn all about El Día de los Muertos and Mexican heritage with The Magic Ofrenda at Metropolis Performing Arts Centre October 26 – 31, 2009.
To celebrate El Día de los Muertos (The Day of the Dead), young Anjelita visits her goofy Grandpa Juan in Mexico.
He tells Anjelita and her brother Mateo all about this celebration honoring loved ones who are no longer living. Along the way, Anjelita meets painter Frida Kahlo and lots of singing, fun-loving spirits who help her learn all about her Mexican heritage.
Performances of The Magic Ofrenda will run October 26 – 30 at 9:45 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. and October 31 at 11 a.m. Tickets are $9.50 for students under 12 and $12 for adults. Suggested for grades K – 3.
More about Stories in Action!
The Magic Ofrenda is part of Metropolis’ Stories in Action! series – educational productions designed to feed the minds and imaginations of young audiences and bring families together through the performing arts. Watch for other upcoming Stories in Action! productions including Frindle, Peter Pan, The Diary of Anne Frank and Seussical Jr.
Outreach and Group Sales
The Metropolis School of the Performing Arts offers group discounts and companion workshops to the Stories in Action! performances. These workshops introduce students to various dramatic elements and help increase their understanding and enjoyment of the performing arts. Benefit from the knowledge of the teaching artists and actors who come to your group to enhance your Metropolis experience.
By booking a group through our Group Sales department, you’ll save up to 20% on tickets, we’ll waive the ticket handling fee, and you’ll receive comps for group chaperones. To discuss the needs of your group, contact Alyse Perkowitz at 847.577.5982 x241.
To create a package with a companion workshop, contact Aimee-Lynn Newlan, Outreach Manager, at 847.577.5982 x 230.
Metropolis is supported in part by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council. In addition, Metropolis receives generous sponsorship from the American Airlines, Daily Herald, DoubleTree of Arlington Heights, and FastSigns of Arlington Heights.
Metropolis is located in the heart of Chicago’s northwest suburbs in downtown Arlington Heights at the intersection of Campbell and Vail Avenue (111 West Campbell Street). Street parking is available. Free parking is available in the public garage behind the theatre. For more information about Metropolis and a complete 2008/2009 performance schedule, go to MetropolisArts.com or call the Box Office at 847.577.2121.
To celebrate El Día de los Muertos (The Day of the Dead), young Anjelita visits her goofy Grandpa Juan in Mexico.
He tells Anjelita and her brother Mateo all about this celebration honoring loved ones who are no longer living. Along the way, Anjelita meets painter Frida Kahlo and lots of singing, fun-loving spirits who help her learn all about her Mexican heritage.
Performances of The Magic Ofrenda will run October 26 – 30 at 9:45 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. and October 31 at 11 a.m. Tickets are $9.50 for students under 12 and $12 for adults. Suggested for grades K – 3.
More about Stories in Action!
The Magic Ofrenda is part of Metropolis’ Stories in Action! series – educational productions designed to feed the minds and imaginations of young audiences and bring families together through the performing arts. Watch for other upcoming Stories in Action! productions including Frindle, Peter Pan, The Diary of Anne Frank and Seussical Jr.
Outreach and Group Sales
The Metropolis School of the Performing Arts offers group discounts and companion workshops to the Stories in Action! performances. These workshops introduce students to various dramatic elements and help increase their understanding and enjoyment of the performing arts. Benefit from the knowledge of the teaching artists and actors who come to your group to enhance your Metropolis experience.
By booking a group through our Group Sales department, you’ll save up to 20% on tickets, we’ll waive the ticket handling fee, and you’ll receive comps for group chaperones. To discuss the needs of your group, contact Alyse Perkowitz at 847.577.5982 x241.
To create a package with a companion workshop, contact Aimee-Lynn Newlan, Outreach Manager, at 847.577.5982 x 230.
Metropolis is supported in part by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council. In addition, Metropolis receives generous sponsorship from the American Airlines, Daily Herald, DoubleTree of Arlington Heights, and FastSigns of Arlington Heights.
Metropolis is located in the heart of Chicago’s northwest suburbs in downtown Arlington Heights at the intersection of Campbell and Vail Avenue (111 West Campbell Street). Street parking is available. Free parking is available in the public garage behind the theatre. For more information about Metropolis and a complete 2008/2009 performance schedule, go to MetropolisArts.com or call the Box Office at 847.577.2121.
Friday, October 16, 2009
IT managers put data dedupe at the top of their future tech list
Being able to address data management through consolidation is key
ComputerWorld
Lucas Mearian
IT managers interviewed at Storage Networking World here this week said the key technology in their near future is data deduplication, though how they would implement that technology differed from person to person.
Most managers said their data silos have grown to the point where they're becoming difficult to manage, and growth over the next several years is expected to be exponential. Data deduplication would offer them significant relief in that it could drastically reduce capacity requirements and costs by allowing them to use their storage assets more effectively, they said.
J. Travis Martin, CIS infrastructure services manager for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., said his operation manages 750TB of data that will soon be growing to more than a petabyte.
Martin said Lawrence Livermore uses Data Domain appliances to deduplicate its backup data, but he wants to move to a technology that performs deduplication globally, across geographically dispersed nodes.
Martin is considering deduplication vendor Exagrid Systems Inc. in Westborough, Mass., which uses byte-level data de-duplication on a grid architecture.
"That's what tips Exagrid over the top for us, global dedupe across nodes," said Eric Ghere, a systems architect with Lawrence Livermore.
Martin said he would like to get any data deduplication technology as close to the source of data as possible versus deploying it as he does today, as part of the data backup stream.
Brett Michalak, CIO at online ticket retailer Tickets.com, said data deduplication and WAN optimization technology would help him deal with about 100TB of virtualized storage capacity on arrays from 3Par Inc. Through virtualization, Michalak said he is able to provision storage on the fly and keep up with changing customer service level agreements, but that doesn't address growing bandwidth requirements.
"I'm looking at those two primarily because as we start rolling out more assets globally, and the fact that our data will be distributed ... the impact on our networks is going to grow," he said. "I think deduplication will be necessary for us for obvious reasons - for backup and recovery."
Michalak sees in his company's future the complete elimination of tape-based backup and a move toward nearline disk-based storage.
"It's just a waste of time in my opinion. The time it takes to retrieve that data and bring it back takes too long," he said.
Mark Saussure, director of digital library infrastructure for Penn State University, said his 160TB of disk-based data is expected to grow exponentially over the next few years. To address that growth, he has been rolling out the eXtensible Access Method (XAM), a specification developed by the Storage Networking Industry Association that will help him not only to automate backup across tiers of storage, but also allow anyone to search silos and retrieve data through the use of standardized meta data.
"Information silos, if not controlled, will outstrip our ability to manage the objects in them," he said. "The demand is just phenomenal. We can't continue to manage the silos the way we've it done for years."
Saussure hopes to go live with a gateway appliance in front of his backend disk storage that will automatically populate data with standardized meta data that will in turn assist him with data routing, meta data extraction for reporting, data retention and give him low-level search capabilities.
Saussure also hopes to deploy a grid-based storage architecture that will assist him in seamlessly moving data objects around his various storage silos.
ComputerWorld
Lucas Mearian
IT managers interviewed at Storage Networking World here this week said the key technology in their near future is data deduplication, though how they would implement that technology differed from person to person.
Most managers said their data silos have grown to the point where they're becoming difficult to manage, and growth over the next several years is expected to be exponential. Data deduplication would offer them significant relief in that it could drastically reduce capacity requirements and costs by allowing them to use their storage assets more effectively, they said.
J. Travis Martin, CIS infrastructure services manager for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., said his operation manages 750TB of data that will soon be growing to more than a petabyte.
Martin said Lawrence Livermore uses Data Domain appliances to deduplicate its backup data, but he wants to move to a technology that performs deduplication globally, across geographically dispersed nodes.
Martin is considering deduplication vendor Exagrid Systems Inc. in Westborough, Mass., which uses byte-level data de-duplication on a grid architecture.
"That's what tips Exagrid over the top for us, global dedupe across nodes," said Eric Ghere, a systems architect with Lawrence Livermore.
Martin said he would like to get any data deduplication technology as close to the source of data as possible versus deploying it as he does today, as part of the data backup stream.
Brett Michalak, CIO at online ticket retailer Tickets.com, said data deduplication and WAN optimization technology would help him deal with about 100TB of virtualized storage capacity on arrays from 3Par Inc. Through virtualization, Michalak said he is able to provision storage on the fly and keep up with changing customer service level agreements, but that doesn't address growing bandwidth requirements.
"I'm looking at those two primarily because as we start rolling out more assets globally, and the fact that our data will be distributed ... the impact on our networks is going to grow," he said. "I think deduplication will be necessary for us for obvious reasons - for backup and recovery."
Michalak sees in his company's future the complete elimination of tape-based backup and a move toward nearline disk-based storage.
"It's just a waste of time in my opinion. The time it takes to retrieve that data and bring it back takes too long," he said.
Mark Saussure, director of digital library infrastructure for Penn State University, said his 160TB of disk-based data is expected to grow exponentially over the next few years. To address that growth, he has been rolling out the eXtensible Access Method (XAM), a specification developed by the Storage Networking Industry Association that will help him not only to automate backup across tiers of storage, but also allow anyone to search silos and retrieve data through the use of standardized meta data.
"Information silos, if not controlled, will outstrip our ability to manage the objects in them," he said. "The demand is just phenomenal. We can't continue to manage the silos the way we've it done for years."
Saussure hopes to go live with a gateway appliance in front of his backend disk storage that will automatically populate data with standardized meta data that will in turn assist him with data routing, meta data extraction for reporting, data retention and give him low-level search capabilities.
Saussure also hopes to deploy a grid-based storage architecture that will assist him in seamlessly moving data objects around his various storage silos.
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