The Show Must Go On: Tech and COVID-19 in Creative Industries

Creative industries have been hit hard by the pandemic-related restrictions on face-to-face contact. In this episode of the Cloud Talk podcast, Troy Peters, musical director at Youth Orchestras of San Antonio, shares his experiences of how he and his colleagues are enabling young musicians to continue their musical education with some surprising results, including, as he puts it, “a magical, virtual souffle of sound”.

At Cloud Talk we spend much of our time talking about the impact of technology on business —typically in the context of managed changes to operations. But, more recently, we’ve been talking about technology’s role in maintaining operations and keeping newly-remote workforces productive, collaborative, happy and safe in the age of COVID-19.

Yet during this time, in all walks of life and far beyond the enterprise, technology has stepped up to fill the gaps left by social and physical distancing. And look how far we’ve come: just four months ago a Zoom cocktail party might have been a career-ending suggestion.

While knowledge workers who are accustomed to collaborating over Zoom and similar platforms have found these changes relatively easy to adjust to, the creative industries are uniquely reliant upon close, in-person interaction.

To provide a fresh perspective on technology’s role in helping people through the pandemic, we invited Troy Peters, musical director at Youth Orchestras of San Antonio, to share his working experiences of the pandemic.

Troy and his colleagues have leveraged technology to keep creating, and Troy’s story offers many parallels for technology leaders to consider both during these challenging times and in their longer-term transformation strategies.

This episode of the Cloud Talk podcast will explore:

• Troy’s observations of how an industry that has worked in much the same way for hundreds of years rapidly pivoted to ensure creativity doesn’t grind to halt
• How the pandemic has acted as a forcing function, driving wide-ranging innovations that no one thought to try until they had to
• The increased levels of collaboration that have arisen from a “building the airplane as we fly it” approach to problem solving
• The similarities between the challenges and solutions associated with returning to the office and returning to live performances and in-person rehearsals
• How upskilling of students and teachers has been a happy by-product of the enforced reliance on technology for creating and sharing music with each other

What to do now? – Rackspace is hosting a collection of free events called Solve Strategy Series. It covers everything that you need to know from multicloud to cloud-native innovation. The event is on August 19th and focuses on managing technology budgets with shifting priorities, hosted by Jeff DeVerter. Watch the event here.