Inside AMP

Monday, April 20, 2009

AMP Internal Affairs

Hey Guys,

My name is Urooj Khalid and I will be the Internal Affairs Chair for the 2009-2010 year. Internal Affairs is responsible for membership enrichment and promoting both sustainability and outreach initiatives within AMP. I have the pleasure of working with an amazing committee this year and we are all looking forward to a great year for AMP and W&M. We are currently brainstorming events for AMP members in the Fall, but if you guys have any suggestions we would love to have your input!

In the upcoming semesters, IA will be focusing on promoting diversity and sustainability within the organization. We hope to colloborate with other organizations on campus and branch out to other groups. We also definiteley want to promote "going green" and hope that next semester we can make AMP more sustainable overall. If you have any questions or want to share your thoughts take our survey and we can respond on the blog!

Enjoy the rest of your semester and good luck with finals!

AMP Love,

Internal Affairs

Sunday, April 19, 2009

AMP Films Fall Event Ideas

Hey Everybody,

Academically things may be winding down, but they're just starting up for AMP Films 09/10. We're already starting to plan our events for next fall!

We want to hear what you think about our ideas and what ideas you have of your own. We got some input at our feedforward forum on Friday, but we want even more, so we're piggybacking off of ContempoCult and doing a survey of our own.

Click on the link below and tell us what you're thinking!
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=6mBZOjd_2f3lPJ3WBjfv3lkg_3d_3d

If you're having trouble with the link, it may be because the survey shuts off after 100 votes. Check to see if we've posted a new link...we promise we're going to work hard to keep it up-to-date. OR vist the facebook event page and click on the link there: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/event.php?eid=79145816715&ref=ts

There's also plenty of room for feedback on the survey, so send us any questions or concerns you might have and we'll respond to them here on the blog.

Thanks for your input!

Love,
AMP Films

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

AMP Contempo Cult wants your input!

Hi everyone,

AMP's Contemporary and Cultural Issues Committee is currently looking into speakers for next Fall. We have been looking into a lot of exciting possibilities, but we would love to know what type of speaker YOU would be most interested in coming to see next semester!

Please visit the link below to give us your input!
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=bw3DIZWPVa_2fq0hjiW3Vy7w_3d_3d

Also, if you know of a speaker or event that you think would be perfect for William and Mary, please email them to us. You can send any ideas to committee chair Caitlin Clements at csclements@wm.edu. We'd love to hear from you!


We will keep you all posted as the event planning process continues, and in the meantime, thanks so much for your input!

-AMP Contempo Cult, '09-'10

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Hello Everyone!!
I am Olyvia Salyer, and I will be the Special Events chair for the '09-10 year! We are currently planning our events for the fall so if you have a great idea that you want to see happen on campus you should definitley let us know! The Special Events committee goal for next year is to bring bigger and better events that everyone on campus can enjoy, so we would love to hear the ideas you have and your input on ideas that we come up with in the next couple of weeks! If you do have an idea or any type of feed back you want Special Events or AMP in general to know you should come out to the FeedForward Forum in the York Room of the SC this Friday, the 17th at 4pm! Hope to see you there!

-Olyvia

Transparency and Feedback

Greetings AMP Community,

Last week, I posted on one of the music committee's most successful reforms of the past year: a new schedule that emphasized multiple medium-sized shows rather than one large show. Stay tuned, I have some exciting news on that front that will be made public within the next few days.

Today's blog post focuses on an area in which we were significantly less successful. We began the year with a commitment to more purposefully collecting campus feedback and acting upon it. For reasons partly within and partly without of our control, we have been unsuccessful in our attempt.

As my last blog post alluded to, there has been a perceived disconnect between the campus and the music committee for several years. On the music committee, we have always assumed that this causes frustration only because we cannot effectively communicate the restraints acting upon us. If the campus knew how difficult it was to draw impressive bands to campus, the theory goes, then we could have a more meaningful dialogue about how to proceed. So, our effort to address problems of feedback and transparency was rooted first in educating the community as to the complicated system we work within, and second to create an outlet for a meaningful dialogue to begin.

In order to do this, we created a Facebook Forum. In the forum, we explained how our booking process works, updated with every offer we put in to a band, and accepted feedback from the community. Every week, a new committee member was assigned to monitor the forum and respond to all comments. In theory, this was an adequate solution, but in practice it reached too few students and lead neither to a widespread understanding of how we function nor an engaged dialogue. At best, numbers for the group hovered around 150 and participation was sparse.

Though the facebook forum was a good start, we should have broadened our scope and diversified our methods of outreach if we were to fundamentally change the nature of the relationship between the music committee and the community. Campus newspaper editorials, online polls, feedback stands at each of our events: many tactics such as these could have been combined with the forum to create a more sustained discussion between the music committee and community.

This, however, would take serious swathes of time. As with any programming committee, the music committee faces multiple tasks that have to be prioritized in order for the group to function successfully. In the end, we decided to focus on booking, publicizing, planning, and running our events. As chair, sometimes the most difficult realization is knowing that your committee is a group of unpaid students, who cannot devote every hour of every day to AMP. If we had infinite time, I would have been thrilled to more drastically overhaul the feedback process; in the end, though, I am happy we chose to prioritize booking and hosting successful shows.

Next week: how we reformed the tasks that committee members do across the year.

-Sean O'Mealia

Monday, April 13, 2009

Updated Link for TribeVision Poll

Thanks to everyone who has voted for May's TribeVision line-up! Here's the updated poll for everyone who still wants to do so:

Remember, you have until this Wednesday at midnight.

Happy voting!

Love, AMP Films

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Vote for Your TribeVision May Line-Up

Hey everybody,

You can now vote for your TribeVision May line-up online. Visit the facebook event page. Or, go directly to the survey. The poll closes after 100 votes though, so if you have a problem, check the blog for an updated link. You can vote through next Wednesday, April 15.

Democracy AND great movies whenever you want to see them? Well, that's a beautiful thing.

Love,
AMP Films

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Jose Canseco Event CANCELED

Hello,
We regret to inform you that An Evening with Jose Canseco that was scheduled to take place tonight at the PBK Hall has been canceled. AMP deeply apologizes for any inconvenience.

Many people have been asking why the event was canceled with such short notice on Saturday. We were all ready to go by Saturday morning, but unfortunately Mr. Canseco was unable to be with us due to an unexpected family emergency. AMP will keep you updated on the process of what will be happening in light of this situation and how we will be moving forward (ie, rescheduling, postponement, new event, etc.). 

Thanks for your understanding.
AMP Events

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Fridays @ 5

Hi guys!

Come to the interns' first Fridays@5 tomorrow, April 3 at the SC Terrace! Junk Science from Fredericksburg will be rocking the house, and you can even win a free goldfish. What's not to love?

www.myspace.com/junkscienceband

~Taylor

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Concerts

As my time as chair of the AMP music committee comes to a close, I'm reflecting upon changes we've made. At least since I've been a W&M student, the music productions committee has struggled to please the W&M community, often receiving persistent criticism from students. This year, we've made several reforms in an effort to better serve the campus. For the next several weeks, I will examine notable changes and discuss the reasons we made them. I hope that this series will provide an insider's perspective into how AMP works and illustrate the give-and-take that comes with any decision made by the music productions committee.

This blog post focuses upon the different approach we took to scheduling concerts this year. As you have probably noticed, we are not hosting a big "Spring Concert." This has been a deliberate decision on our part, made in an effort to reach as many students as possible. Instead of one large show, we booked five medium-sized shows.

In the past, spring concerts have almost always been our most critiqued shows. Much of this criticism has been justified: if your genre of music was not represented by the Spring Concert, then you would not get to take advantage of money paid to student activities fees. No matter what genre we picked for spring concert, the majority of campus was upset that their music was not being represented. Each year, we faced strong criticism. As the bands that could potentially draw several thousand W&M students (Dave Matthews, Kayne, Radiohead) are way out of our price range, we were left every year with between 800 and 1,800 students attending Spring Concert, and fierce criticism from segments of campus that felt excluded. We were consistently left to sell the majority of tickets to non-W&M students, which we felt was outside the central mission of AMP.

Our decision to book numerous medium-sized bands is grounded in the fundamental insight that there are numerous different groups of music enthusiasts at W&M. Different genres have different fans, and all are entitled to be represented by the bands AMP music brings. If we have several medium-sized shows throughout the year and fill 800 person venues, we will have served more students and brought more diverse acts to campus. Splitting up the money typically allocated for spring concert has allowed us to bring Virginia Coalition, Jens Lekman, Girl Talk, David Cook, and one last show we'll announce soon. Taken together, attendance at these events already far outstrips what we would normally get for spring concert. And, just as importantly, we have been able to appeal to a wide range of music interests, making students feel more represented by AMP.

This approach does have its drawbacks. Theoretically, we could get lucky one year and book that perfect band that unites the campus and becomes immensely popular. Though it hasn't happened recently, it could (and from our perspective, nothing beats a well-attended, well-regarded event). This year, we felt past experience proved that mode of thinking was impracticle; next year, the new music productions committee may return to the one-big-concert framework. These questions don't have easy answers, feedback is always appreciated.

I am proud of the decision to revise our schedule. In my opinion, we reached an unprecedented amount of students who listen to diverse genres of music and made them feel included by AMP. Next week, I'll discuss a reform I am less proud of: our effort to increase transparency and feedback.