2023-2024 Digital Discoverability Program: Call for Participation

Calling all performing arts organizations! You are cordially invited to participate in the newest edition of CAPACOA’s Digital Discoverability Program, as part of the Linked Digital Future Initiative (LDFI) and in support of the Artsdata project.

Between July 2023 and March 2024, you will have the opportunity to work one-on-one with Digital Transformation Agent Dessa Hayes. Together, we will optimize your organization’s event pages, artist profiles and/or Wikidata items for search engines (ex: Google, Bing) and recommendation systems (ex: Siri, Alexa). As a result, local arts goers and tourists alike will have a much easier time finding your events and contents online.

Requirements

To apply to the 2023-2024 cohort of the Digital Discoverability program, you must:

1. Be a presenter, artistic company, agency/management company, or arts service organization
2. Have a website and access to a web developer
3. Possess a basic level of digital maturity
4. Assign a dedicated staff member to become your “Discoverability Lead”. This person will act as the primary cohort participant and contact person for the entire duration of the program

Costs

The value of this kind of work from a consultancy or other for-profit company is estimated at $2,500. However, the Digital Discoverability program is free for CAPACOA members.

Non-members whose applications are successful will have two different options:

1. Submit a $250 registration fee to participate in the program only; OR 
2. Join CAPACOA for a $250 introductory rate and take advantage of other complementary services and member-only benefits (learn more).

Please note that current CAPACOA members will be given priority during the selection process.

How this will work

If your application is successful, you will receive a preliminary diagnosis of your webpages and Wikidata item(s). This document will outline your current level of discoverability, including crucial aspects such as SEO (Search Engine Optimization), meta tags, sitemaps and structured data. It will also provide a list of possible solutions to be worked on with the LDFI and its partners.

About structured data

Structured data helps machines understand the contents of a web page (learn more in this blog post). For example, they tell search engine robots exactly what is described on a web page (for example, an event, artist or venue, instead of a blog post or product). Structured data also identifies key information about the main subject: in the case of an event, its date, time and location.

Pages with structured data are not only more likely to appear on search results. They can also be shared to Artsdata, Canada’s knowledge graph (a type of database) for the performing arts. Up-to-date information about events, organizations, venues and artists in Artsdata is publicly available to anyone who wants to reuse it. This is particularly helpful for digital platforms, such as cultural calendars, listing sites and membership directories (including CAPACOA’s LIVE Performing Arts Directory).

What you should expect

The 20 participants accepted to the Digital Discoverability cohort should anticipate a time commitment of somewhere between 4 and 40 hours over the July 2023 – March 2024 period. This exact number will depend on the number of performances in their programming and the discoverability solutions they choose.

Cohort participants will need to:

• Join the LDFI for an initial meeting via web conference
• Potentially participate in additional training sessions (depending on their chosen discoverability solution)
• Collaborate with their webmaster to implement discoverability solutions on the backend of their website
• Work one-on-one with the LDFI to troubleshoot any technical issues that may arise

Selection criteria

Cohort participants will be onboarded one at a time and selected primarily on a first come, first served basis. If selected, participants may begin their initial training session before the application deadline.

Unselected applicants will have the opportunity to apply for a future cohort.

How to apply

Interested organizations must fill in this application form.

The deadline for applications is Wednesday July 26, 2023. Applications may close at an earlier date if the cohort is already complete.

About the Linked Digital Future Initiative and the Artsdata Project

From 2018 to 2023, the Linked Digital Future Initiative deployed a range of research, prototyping and digital literacy activities to foster discoverability, digital collaboration and digital transformation in the performing arts. Since 2023, the LDFI has gradually given way to the Artsdata Linked Open Data Ecosystem project. As the name suggests, the Artsdata project pursues the same vision of an ecosystem where multiple collaborators enable the free circulation of performing arts data.

This project is funded by the Government of Canada and by the Canada Council for the Arts.