As you know, and as anyone who sits next to me on a subway, airplane, or a park bench knows, I like to start conversations about the theater.  That was the whole point of this blog – to get more people talking about the theater.  Because if we get more people talking about it, and its “issues,” maybe we can make it an even better experience for audiences tomorrow.

In the age of souped-up “Greased Lightning”-like technology, it’s easy to count on online conversations like blogs, emails, etc., to start all those convos for you.  But one of my most important rules of marketing in the 2000-teens is to make sure you bring the conversation offline at times, or in other words . . . live.

This is the theater after all.  We’re talking about live entertainment, right?  So we better do some of this talking in person!

That was one of the reasons I was so excited to help organize the very first TEDxBroadway.

And now, Damian Bazadona, Jim McCarthy and I are about to present the THIRD!  Woo-hoo!  The conversation continues!

If you’ve been to a TEDxBroadway then you know why I’m excited.  When you put several hundred passionate theater people in a room and throw up some provocative speakers from our industry as well as from outside our industry and tell them to talk about “What’s the best Broadway can be?” . . . good #%@$ happens.

In fact, I implemented at least five things I learned at last year’s TEDx on my shows and my business in the last 9 months . . . to great success.

And the next TEDx is only about 90 days away!  And look at the speakers we have already!

We’ve got Bobby Lopez (from those little groundbreaking shows, Avenue Q and Book of Mormon).  We’ve got fitness-guru Mark Fisher from Mark Fisher fitness.  We’ve also got Gamification expert Gabe Zichermann, Super-Duper Director Diane Paulus (Porgy and Bess, Hair, Pippin), Jonathan Mann (The song-a-day guy, who you bet will be writing us a TEDxBroadway tune), one of the country’s leaders of the crowdfunding movement, David Drake, Lea “I can scat like you can’t believe” DeLaria, Sree Sreenivasan, the Chief Digital Dude at the Met Museum . . . and we’re not even done yet.  More speakers are still to be announced.

Normally I would wait until I had all the speakers to announce TEDx on my blog, but here’s the thing . . . the first two TEDxBroadways have sold out . . . well in advance.

So I’m announcing it now.  And I’m telling you, with no marketing speak at all, you should buy your tickets now, because we will sell out and soon.  We actually soft announced it a few weeks ago, and we’ve already sold more tickets than we did last year at this time.

Like the cronut, they are going fast.  And they are hot.

The third annual TEDxBroadway will be held on Monday, February 24th, from 11 AM to 6 PM.  Get your tickets here.

And super thanks to big time sponsors Jujamcyn Theaters, Google and Broadway.com.

See you there!

 

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