Journal articles on the topic 'Superstore Networks'

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to achieve intelligent superstore site selection. Yonghui Superstores partnered with Cardinal Operations to incorporate a tremendous amount of site-related information (e.g. points of interest, population density and features, distribution of competitors, transportation, commercial ecosystem, existing own-store network) into its store site optimization. Design/methodology/approach This paper showcases the integration of regression, optimization and machine learning approaches in site selection, which has proven practical and effective. Findings The result was the development of the “Yonghui Intelligent Site Selection System” that includes three modules: business district scoring, intelligent site engine and precision sales forecasting. The application of this system helps to significantly reduce the labor force required to visit and investigate all potential sites, circumvent the pitfalls associated with possibly biased experience or intuition-based decision making and achieve the same population coverage as competitors while needing only half the number of stores as its competitors. Originality/value To our knowledge, this project is among the first to integrate regression, optimization and machine learning approaches in site selection. There is innovation in optimization techniques.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to elaborate pros and cons of two coding methods: the rapid network assessment (RNA) and the manual content analysis (MCA). In particular, it focuses on the applicability of a new rapid data extraction and utilization method, which can contribute to the timely coordination of disaster and emergency response operations.Design/methodology/approachUtilizing the data set of textual information on the Superstorm Sandy response in 2012, retrieved from the LexisNexis Academic news archive, the two coding methods, MCA and RNA, are subjected to social network analysis.FindingsThe analysis results indicate a significant level of similarity between the data collected using these two methods. The findings indicate that the RNA method could be effectively used to extract megabytes of electronic data, characterize the emerging disaster response network and suggest timely policy implications for managers and practitioners during actual emergency response operations and coordination processes.Originality/valueConsidering the growing needs for the timely assessment of real-time disaster response systems and the emerging doubts regarding the effectiveness of the RNA method, this study contributes to uncovering the potential of the RNA method to extract relevant data from the megabytes of digitally available information. Also this research illustrates the applicability of MCA for assessing real-time disaster response networks by comparing network analysis results from data sets built by both the RNA and the MCA.

Convolutional neural networks (CNN) are the most popular class of models for image recognition and classification task nowadays. Most of the superstores and fruit vendors resort to human inspection to check the quality of the fruits stored in their inventory. However, this process can be automated. We propose a system that can be trained with a fruit image dataset and then detect whether a fruit is rotten or fresh from an input image. We built the initial model using the Inception V3 model and trained with our dataset applying transfer learning.

AbstractCollaboration networks provide a method for examining the highly heterogeneous structure of collaborative communities. However, we still have limited theoretical understanding of how individual heterogeneity relates to network heterogeneity. The model presented here provides a framework linking an individual's skill set to her position in the collaboration network, and the distribution of skills in the population to the structure of the collaboration network as a whole. This model suggests that there is a non-trivial relationship between skills and network position: individuals with a useful combination of skills will have a disproportionate number of links in the network. Indeed, in some cases, an individual's degree is non-monotonic in the number of skills she has—an individual with very few skills may outperform an individual with many. Special cases of the model suggest that the degree distribution of the network will be skewed, even when the distribution of skills is uniform in the population. The degree distribution becomes more skewed as problems become more difficult, leading to a community dominated by a few high-degree superstars. This has striking implications for labor market outcomes in industries where production is largely the result of collaborative effort.

The performance of mobile opportunistic networks mainly relies on collaboration among nodes. Thus far, researchers have ignored the influence of node sociality on the incentive process, leading to poor network performance. Considering the fact that followers always imitate the behavior of superstars, this paper proposes FollowMe, which integrates the social importance of nodes with evolutionary game theory to improve the collaborative behavior of nodes. First, we use the prisoner’s dilemma model to establish the matrix of game gains between nodes. Second, we introduce the signal reference as a game rule between nodes. The number of nodes choosing different strategies in a game round is used to calculate the cumulative income of the node in combination with the probability formula. Finally, the Fermi function is used to determine whether the node updates the strategy. The simulation results show that, compared with the random update rule, the proposed strategy is more capable of promoting cooperative behavior between nodes to improve the delivery rate of data packets.

Headwater streams are the beginnings of fluvial networks and therefore fill a critical role in the development of the Earth’s drainages. Therefore, it is important that we understand the role that disturbances have on these systems and how they translate disturbance downstream. Hurricane Sandy struck the eastern seaboard of the United States in late October 2012 and produced record snowfall in the Appalachian Mountains, which caused widespread destruction of trees and subsequent deposition of large wood (LW; pieces ≥1.0 m × 0.05 m) in many headwater streams throughout the region. We investigated these effects in 25 West Virginia headwater streams and found varying levels (0%–195% change from previous annual data; 0–820 LW pieces·km−1) of new wood additions. When compared with years prior to Sandy, the rate of LW deposition was significant across all size classes and streams (p < 0.0001). We also found a significantly (p < 0.01) negative pattern of LW impact based upon elevation, with higher elevations receiving lower levels of LW deposition. This research provides a unique glimpse at the initial magnitude of natural wood addition on headwater streams following a large disturbance.

This study has the objective of plotting the effects of network externalities and superstar software for the visualization and analysis of industry ecosystems. The output is made possible by gathering sales from a tracking website, associating each sale to a single consumer and by using a network visualization software. The result is a graph that shows strategic positioning of publishers and platforms, serving as a strategic tool for both academics and professionals. The approach is scalable to other industries and can be used to support analysis on mergers, acquisitions and alliances.

AbstractWe investigate a mechanism that facilitates the provision of public goods in a network formation game. We show how competition for status encourages a core player to realize efficiency gains for the entire group. In a laboratory experiment we systematically examine the effects of group size and exogenously monetarized status rents. The experimental results provide very clear support for the concept of challenge-freeness, a refinement that predicts when a repeated game equilibrium will be played, and if so which one. Two control treatments allow us to reject the possibility that these observations are driven by social preferences, independently of the competition for status.

<p>Agricultural products, as essential commodities, are among the most sought-for items in superstores. Barcode is usually utilized to classify and regulate the price of products such as ornamental flowers in such stores. However, the use of barcodes on some fragile agricultural products such as ornamental flowers can be damaged and lessen their life length. Moreover, it is time-consuming and costly<em><strong> </strong></em>and may lead to the production of massive waste and damage to the environment and the admittance of chemical materials into food products that can affect human health. Consequently, we aimed to design a classifier robot to recognize ornamental flowers based on the related product image at different times and surrounding conditions. Besides, it can increase the speed and accuracy of distinguishing and classifying the products, lower the pricing time, and increase the lifetime due to the absence of the need for movement and changing the position of the products. According to the datasheets provided by the robot that is stored in its database, we provide the possibility of identifying and introducing the product in different colors and shapes. Also, due to the preparation of a standard and small database tailored to the needs of the robot, the robot will be trained in a short time (less than five minutes) without the need for an Internet connection or a large hard drive for storage the data. On the other hand, by dividing each input photo into ten different sections, the system can, without the need for a detection system, simultaneously in several different images, decorative flowers in different conditions, angles and environments, even with other objects such as vases, detects very fast with a high accuracy of 97%.</p>

This study examines the case of basketball superstar LeBron James, who openly identifies as a liberal. Our analysis of LeBron James’ Twitter profile revealed normal distribution between liberals and conservatives following his account. We then compared James’ followers’ distribution to those of the singer Lady Gaga and liberal-tilting sport network ESPN and found that James’ followers’ distribution represented the most diverse distribution of the three accounts. We further found that James was the only liberal source in most of his conservative followers’ profiles. The findings highlight the potency of celebrity athletes to narrow the trend of political polarization.

Using data of worldwide network of GPS receivers we investigated losses of GPS phase lock (LoL) during two strong magnetic storms. At fundamental L1 frequency, LoL density is found to increase up to 0.25 % and at L2 frequency the increase is up to 3 %. This is several times as much compared with the background level. During the 2003 November 20 magnetic storm, the number of total electron content (TEC) slips exceeded the background level ~50 times. During superstorms, the most number of GPS LoL is observed at low and high latitudes. At the same time, the area of numerous TEC slips correspond to auroral oval boundaries.

PT.Herbal Penawar Alwahida Indonesia (HPAI) merupakan perusahaan bisnis halal network di Indonesia yang fokus pada produk-produk herbal. Salah satu BC (Bussines center) HPAI yang terdapat di pekanbaru yaitu,BC 4 HPAI beralamat dijalan Melati III No.4 Bina Widya,Panam. Berdasarkan obeservasi yang dilakukan, data transaksi pelanggan pada tahun 2019 di BC 4 mencapai 1000-2000 transaksi setiap bulannya, yang terdiri dari data agen biasa dan agenstok. Berdasarkan wawancara dengan owner BC 4 HPAI Pekanbaru, masalah yang terjadi yaitu pihak BC 4 HPAI belum bisa mendapatkan informasi dari setiap data agen biasa dan agen stok,mana pelanggan yang potensial dan loyal terhadap perusahaan. Sehingga menyebabkan pihak BC akan sulit untuk menentukan strategi pemasaran yang tepat dalam memanfaatkan kesempatan atau peluang yang ada dalam pemasaran. Mengatasi permasalahan tersebut, penelitian ini menerapkan strategi customer Relationship Management (CRM) yaitu menggunakan Metode RFM untuk mengetahui karakteristik atau prilaku agen biasa dan agenstok kemudian Clustering menggunakan Agoritma K-Medoids untuk pengelompokan sesuai kemiripan karakteristik agenbiasa dan agenstok yang telah didapat sebelumnya. Dengan percobaan 2 cluster sampai dengan 7 cluster, menghasilkan 2 Cluster Terbaik agen biasa dan 3 Cluster Terbaik agenstok berdasarkan DBI (Davies Bouldin Index). Dengan masing-masing nilai DBI terbaik 0.228 agen biasa dan 0.234 agenstok. Hasil tertinggi 2 cluster agen biasa berada pada cluster 1 dengan tipe pelanggan Superstar yang memiliki 472 customer loyal. dan hasil tertinggi dari 3 cluster agenstok berada pada cluster 3 dengan tipe pelanggan Superstar yang memiliki 60 customer loyal.

Modeling and forecasting of Total Electron Content (TEC) values by an Artificial Neural Network model (ANNm) have high agreement on November 2003, 2004 superstorms. The work discusses Solar Wind Parameters (SWp) from OMNI (Operating Missions as a Node on the Internet) and TEC (TECU) data (International Reference Ionosphere) IRI-2012, IRI-2016 on November 20, 2003 (Dst = –422 nT) and on November 08, 2004 (Dst = –374 nT) Geomagnetic Storms (GSs). The paper commences with a 120-hour GS exhibition of SWp and proceeds with the correlation data of the variables, their hierarchical tracks, and inner dispersions. The ANNm with SWp as the input and TEC data as the output are introduced. The performance of the ANNm for 2003 and 2004 superstorms is adequate. The Correlation Coefficient (R) and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of the ANNm are 97.5%, 1.17 TECU (IRI-2012), and 97.9%, 1.09 TECU (IRI-2016) for the 2003 GS and 97.0%, 0.89 TECU (IRI-2012), and 98.0%, 1.61 TECU (IRI-2016) for 2004 GS. Parameters effect of the R constant of TEC data points out to the dynamic pressure (nPa), the magnetic field Bz component (nT), the flow speed (km/s), and the proton density (1/cm3). Besides, the absolute total error and the variance of the predicted TEC data for November 2003 and November 2004 GSs are 0.06 (0.30%) with 0.013 variance (IRI-2012), 0.09 (0.49%) with 0.016 variance (IRI-2016) for 2003 storm and 0.13 (0.73%) with 0.033 variance (IRI-2012), and 0.11 (1.06%) with 0.035 variance (IRI-2016) for 2004. It means that the paper models TEC data with considerable consistency over the SWp.

Creative thinking skills play an important role in Business English writing, but university students are not creative enough due to the overemphasis of knowledge input in traditional Business English writing classroom in mainland China. To solve this problem, this study involves in the mobile learning environment as the medium. By encouraging students to practice various self-regulated learning strategies while studying the learning content designed under the guidance of Production-Oriented Approach via the mobile app Superstar, this study aims to develop a theoretical framework and consequently promote students’ creative thinking skills in Business English writing. Students reported increased self-regulated learning ability after the experiment. It is found that there is a significant positive relationship between online self-regulated learning and creative thinking and students’ creative thinking skills are significantly improved in post-test. Among all the nine self-regulated writing strategies, goal-oriented monitoring and evaluation, idea planning, and emotional control are the most important predictors of students’ creative thinking levels.

Superstar Learning System is a popular e-collaborative learning app especially in English reading learning. This study randomly selected 2061 out of around 2500 students in a public university. Through a large-scale questionnaire survey and some semi-structured in-depth interviews, the study collected plentiful data to extending the task-technology fit model in an e-collaborative English learning context. It is concluded that in an e-collaborative English learning context (a) system quality, information quality, service quality, compatibility, actual usage, and user satisfaction exert a significant influence on TTF at the significance level .05 in an e-collaborative English learning context; (b) TTF exerts a significant influence on performance impact at the significance level .05; and (c) significant correlations are revealed between system quality, information quality, service quality, compatibility, actual use, user satisfaction, and TTF at the significance level .05. This study initiates the model extension, which is beneficial to researchers and practitioners.

Due to the Europeanisation of law, and the constitutionalisation of the European Union in particular, the Habermas argument seems to be quite appealing to many. Globalisation is interpreted as having curbed the State's capability to impose norms on the transnational process of expanding markets. This evolution seems to have not only reduced the action potential of the State but, at the same time and even more importantly, it also has reduced the value of citizenship. Citizenship can no longer be the core element of the relationship between the individual and the State in the postmodern society. It cannot be constituted via a direct relationship with the State, which at the same time constitutes the realm of deliberation because the diffuse networks of transnational inter-relationships beyond the State cannot be reflected by the process of public deliberation. The space of the State is, on the one hand, too small. On the other hand, it may appear to be too big. Against this background Europe cannot be regarded as the bearer of the European acquis étatique (the acquired state).

In this work, using characteristic mode analysis, a multi-layered nonuniform metasurface structured antenna has been optimized. The driven patch of square structure and the parasitic patch elements of circular radiating cross-slotted meta-structure are used in the proposed model. The modal significance characteristic angles and surface currents are analyzed based on characteristic mode to optimize the nonuniform structures. The antenna is resonating between 5.5–6.1 GHz, covering WLAN applications with an average gain of 7.9 dBi and efficiency greater than 90%. Transient mode, terminal mode, and eigenmode-based analyses are performed on the proposed design, and comparative analysis has been presented in this work. The prototype model fabrication and real-time measurement analysis with simulation results matching are presented for application validation.

Abstract. Similar to the Dst index, the SYM-H index may also serve as an indicator of magnetic storm intensity, but having distinct advantage of higher time-resolution. In this study the NARX neural network has been used for the first time to predict SYM-H index from solar wind (SW) and IMF parameters. In total 73 time intervals of great storm events with IMF/SW data available from ACE satellite during 1998 to 2006 are used to establish the ANN model. Out of them, 67 are used to train the network and the other 6 samples for test. Additionally, the NARX prediction model is also validated using IMF/SW data from WIND satellite for 7 great storms during 1995–1997 and 2005, as well as for the July 2000 Bastille day storm and November 2001 superstorm using Geotail and OMNI data at 1 AU, respectively. Five interplanetary parameters of IMF Bz, By and total B components along with proton density and velocity of solar wind are used as the original external inputs of the neural network to predict the SYM-H index about one hour ahead. For the 6 test storms registered by ACE including two super-storms of min. SYM-H<−200 nT, the correlation coefficient between observed and NARX network predicted SYM-H is 0.95 as a whole, even as high as 0.95 and 0.98 with average relative variance of 13.2% and 7.4%, respectively, for the two super-storms. The prediction for the 7 storms with WIND data is also satisfactory, showing averaged correlation coefficient about 0.91 and RMSE of 14.2 nT. The newly developed NARX model shows much better capability than Elman network for SYM-H prediction, which can partly be attributed to a key feedback to the input layer from the output neuron with a suitable length (about 120 min). This feedback means that nearly real information of the ring current status is effectively directed to take part in the prediction of SYM-H index by ANN. The proper history length of the output-feedback may mainly reflect on average the characteristic time of ring current decay which involves various decay mechanisms with ion lifetimes from tens of minutes to tens of hours. The Elman network makes feedback from hidden layer to input only one step, which is of 5 min for SYM-H index in this work and thus insufficient to catch the characteristic time length.

Abstract. We use multi-satellite and ground-based magnetic data to investigate the concurrent characteristics of Pc3 (22–100 mHz) and Pc4-5 (1–22 mHz) ultra-low-frequency (ULF) waves on the 31 October 2003 during the Halloween magnetic superstorm. ULF waves are seen in the Earth's magnetosphere, topside ionosphere, and Earth's surface, enabling an examination of their propagation characteristics. We employ a time–frequency analysis technique and examine data from when the Cluster and CHAMP spacecraft were in good local time (LT) conjunction near the dayside noon–midnight meridian. We find clear evidence of the excitation of both Pc3 and Pc4-5 waves, but more significantly we find a clear separation in the L shell of occurrence of the Pc4-5 and Pc3 waves in the equatorial inner magnetosphere, separated by the density gradients at the plasmapause boundary layer. A key finding of the wavelet spectral analysis of data collected from the Geotail, Cluster, and CHAMP spacecraft and the CARISMA and GIMA magnetometer networks was a remarkably clear transition of the waves' frequency into dominance in a higher-frequency regime within the Pc3 range. Analysis of the local field line resonance frequency suggests that the separation of the Pc4-5 and Pc3 emissions across the plasmapause is consistent with the structure of the inhomogeneous field line resonance Alfvén continuum. The Pc4-5 waves are consistent with direct excitation by the solar wind in the plasma trough, as well as Pc3 wave absorption in the plasmasphere following excitation by upstream waves originating at the bow shock in the local noon sector. However, despite good solar wind coverage, our study was not able to unambiguously identify a clear explanation for the sharp universal time (UT) onset of the discrete frequency and large-amplitude Pc3 wave power.

In 2015, the cable television network Lifetime broadcast the biopic Whitney, depicting the troubled life of the late superstar singer Whitney Houston. Whitney is the first film by director Angela Bassett, who, as actress, famously portraited Tina Turner in the biopic What’s Love Got to Do with It (Brian Gibson, 1993). In this article, I will first position Whitney within a larger tradition of the Hollywood biopic by making a comparison to earlier important biopics about black female entertainers, namely Lady Sings the Blues (Sidney J. Furie, 1972), starring Diana Ross as Billie Holiday, and What’s Love Got to Do with It. Second, I will discuss how the narratives of these three biopics tend to reduce their female subjects to victims, emphasizing the tragedy in their personal lives, while assigning much more agency to the male partners of these black female entertainers. Third and finally, I will analyze the final scenes of these three biopics in detail, as each presents a grand finale musical performance that seems to resolve the contradictions of the triumph and tragedy in their subject’s lives, yet in significantly different ways.

Influencer marketing includes teaming up with famous and significant are influencers in your specialty to advance your image and increment your income. Influencers described by an enormous number of faithful and devoted web-based entertainment devotees. They are seen as specialists in their specialties and their proposals are much of the time profoundly respected by their supporters. What recognises influencers from traditional superstars is that the previous offer areas of strength for a with their fan networks. They outfit the openness of virtual entertainment to lay out unique interactions with and gain the trust of their devotees. Influencers are in many cases are genuine shoppers who have top to bottom information about specific subjects. This gives them certain influence and engages them to spur their devotees to make wanted moves. A fruitful influencer marketing requires strong preparation and a profound comprehension of your interest group and marketing goals. The fundamental objective of this study was to figure out how different aspects of influencer marketing through social media creates an impact on a brand and its success & image, how the mind-set of the customer changes through influencer marketing and how brands are going with the help of influencer marketing technique by choosing the right influencer for their brands. To fulfil this objective the research will be followed by mixed approach of qualitative and quantitative data. The qualitative data will be comprising of primary research which will be acquired through survey and questionnaire. The quantitative data will be comprising of the secondary research which will be acquired through the articles, review articles, published academic papers, journals, statistical database and records.

Purpose This study aims to identify the current state, the emergent research clusters, the key research topics and the configuration of collaboration in scientific production related to the market value of soccer players. Design/methodology/approach This article analyzes 52 articles published between 1985 and 2021 and from the Scopus and WoS databases. Findings The subject is of growing interest both in academic and practical areas. A variable that frequently appears as a determinant of market value is crowd wisdom. The largest cluster related to the co-citation level shows that the main issues about soccer player market value are player performance, team performance, and the determinants of the superstar formation. Spain and Germany stand out as essential countries both in literary production and citation rate. The network of collaborations is still low. Research limitations/implications This study is supported by databases being constantly updated, resulting in continuous variation in the number of indexed journals. Consequently, a bibliometric analysis regarding an emergent topic can, in fewer years, be subject to essential variations. Another limitation is that it has analyzed a particular topic using the most influential databases, and the global perspective could be improved with the incorporation of other different databases. Data regarding collaborations could be helpful for investigations or policies that propose to approach the topic supported by specialized groups. This study offers the possibility for future researchers to extend the databases used, the level of analysis, or focus on specific topics or variables affecting the soccer player market value. Originality/value This study contributes to knowing the current state of the soccer player market value research. Studies on such topics are relatively limited concerning the literature review.

Abstract The fitness model was introduced in the literature to expand the Barabasi-Albert model’s generative mechanism, which produces scale-free networks under the control of degree. However, the fitness model has not yet been studied in a comprehensive context because most models are built on invariant fitness as the network grows and time-dynamics mainly concern new nodes joining the network. This mainly static consideration restricts fitness in generating scale-free networks only when the underlying fitness distribution is power-law, a fact which makes the hybrid fitness models based on degree-driven preferential attachment to remain the most attractive models in the literature. This paper advances the time-dynamic conceptualization of fitness, by studying scale-free networks generated under topological fitness that changes as the network grows, where the fitness is controlled by degree, clustering coefficient, betweenness, closeness, and eigenvector centrality. The analysis shows that growth under time-dynamic topological fitness is indifferent to the underlying fitness distribution and that different topological fitness generates networks of different topological attributes, ranging from a mesh-like to a superstar-like pattern. The results also show that networks grown under the control of betweenness centrality outperform the other networks in scale-freeness and the majority of the other topological attributes. Overall, this paper contributes to broadening the conceptualization of fitness to a more time-dynamic context.

Numerous studies over the past decades established that real-world networks typically follow preferential attachment and detachment principles. Subsequently, this implies that degree fluctuations monotonically increase while rising up the ‘degree ladder’, causing high-degree nodes to be prone for attachment of new edges and for detachment of existing ones. Despite the extensive study of node degrees (absolute popularity), many domains consider node ranks (relative popularity) as of greater importance. This raises intriguing questions—what dynamics are expected to emerge when observing the ranking of network nodes over time? Does the ranking of nodes present similar monotonous patterns to the dynamics of their corresponding degrees? In this paper, we show that surprisingly the answer is not straightforward. By performing both theoretical and empirical analyses, we demonstrate that preferential principles do not apply to the temporal changes in node ranking. We show that the ranking dynamics follows a non-monotonous curve, suggesting an inherent partition of the nodes into qualitatively distinct stability categories. These findings provide plausible explanations to observed yet hitherto unexplained phenomena, such as how superstars fortify their ranks despite massive fluctuations in their degrees, and how stars are more prone to rank instability.

Herein we report a hydrogen-bonded three-dimensional superstar network originated from a single source precursor, sym-triisopropylaminotriazine that is both donor and acceptor of hydrogen bonds. The C3h symmetric design allowed the...

Platform markets involve indirect network effects as two or more sides of a market interact through an intermediary platform. Many platform markets consist of both a platform device and corresponding software. In such markets, new software introductions influence incumbent software sales. New entrants may directly cannibalize incumbents. However, entrants may also create an indirect halo impact by attracting new platform adopters, who then purchase incumbent software. To measure performance holistically, this article introduces a method to quantify both indirect and direct paths and determine which effect dominates and when. The authors identify relevant moderators from the sensations–familiarity framework and conduct empirical tests with data from the video game industry (1995–2019). Results show that the direct impact often results in cannibalization which generally increases when the entrant is a superstar or part of a franchise. For the indirect halo impact, superstar entrants significantly increase platform adoption, which can help all incumbents. Combining the direct and indirect impacts, only new software that is both a superstar and part of a franchise increases platform adoption sufficiently to overcome direct cannibalization and achieve a net positive effect on incumbent software; all other types of entrants have a neutral or negative overall effect.

A growing body of community resilience literature emphasizes the importance of social resources in preparing for and responding to disturbances. In particular, scholars have noted that community based organizations and strong social networks positively contribute to adaptive capacity, or the ability to adjust and respond to change while enhancing the conditions necessary to withstand future events. While it is well established that strong civic engagement and social networks contribute to enhanced adaptive capacity in times of change, there is more to learn about how adaptive capacity at the civic group and network level is impacted temporally by multiple and compounding crises. Research has shown that the ability for communities to adapt and respond to crisis is closely tied to longer term recovery. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has overlapped and intersected with multiple additional climate crises as well as a reigniting of the ongoing American reckoning with racial injustice, the ability for communities to adapt and respond to compounding crises seems more crucial than ever. This paper uses qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with 34 civic environmental stewardship groups in New York City to explore their role in building adaptive capacity. In order to better understand how past crises have impacted stewardship groups' response to COVID-19, we focus on how groups have demonstrated flexibility and learning at an organizational scale. We look at two other crises, both acute (Superstorm Sandy, which hit the East Coast in 2012) and chronic (systemic racism) to identify instances of learning that lead to organizational transformation. We further aim to understand how group professionalization, measured by budget and staff size, and network connectivity impact their actions. By comparing the groups' experiences and responses to each event, we uncover strategies learned from past events (e.g., sharing contact lists, holding internal dialogues, leveraging new funding sources) that enable stewardship groups to respond to disaster in a way that builds their organizational adaptive capacity as well as contributes to the long-term resilience of their communities.

Abstract This study focuses on household disaster preparedness in New York City (NYC) prior to Superstorm Sandy occurrence on October 25, 2012. The purpose of our analysis is to explain the level and patterns of disaster preparedness before a relatively rare natural disaster event occurred and to investigate the factors that influenced the capacity of NYC households to prepare for emergencies and disasters. A random telephone (RDD) survey comprised of 2001 NYC residents across all five boroughs was conducted by the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and completed before Sandy struck the City. These data were explored using frequencies, cross-tabs, and factor analysis to build a path model of household disaster preparedness. Findings indicate that household disaster preparedness levels in NYC are high, especially regarding the acquisition of emergency supplies and communication resources. A trust in local government and assistance from one’s social network are the strongest predictors of general household preparedness. Exogenous variables in our model – low income households and those with functional and access needs residents – will be more vulnerable during an actual disaster since they are less able to access communication technologies to search for self-protective disaster information and to communicate their needs during an emergency.

With the development of telecommunications and its applications, the design of compact antennas with high performance has become a great necessity. Among the important requirements is a high gain. In this article, a microstrip patch antenna using near zero-index metamaterial (NZIM) is proposed. This prototype is designed with the designing parameters of a rectangular microstrip patch antenna. The substrate material is FR-4. Simulation results show that this antenna operates at 5.8 GHz for a wireless local area network (WLAN). The proposed single antenna element achieves side-lobe suppression better than -13 dB. The 4×4 proposed antenna array is designed using 16 single elements and a T-shaped power divider to split power for each element. By covering a single-layer NZIM coating with a 4×4 array over a microstrip antenna, a gain enhancement of 14 dB is achieved in comparison with the single element. Over the operating band, the antenna prototype demonstrates steady radiation patterns. These characteristics are in good agreement with the simulations, rendering the antenna a good candidate for 5G applications. These antennas are designed, optimized, and simulated using CSTMWS2020.

AbstractWith the advent of platform economies and the increasing availability of online price comparisons, many empirical markets now select on relative rather than absolute performance. This feature might give rise to the ‘winner takes all/most’ phenomenon, where tiny initial productivity differences amount to large differences in market shares. We study the effect of heterogeneous initial productivities arising from locally segregated markets on aggregate outcomes, e.g., regarding revenue distributions. Several of those firm-level characteristics follow distributional regularities or ‘scaling laws’ (Brock in Ind Corp Change 8(3):409–446, 1999). Among the most prominent are Zipf’s law describing the largest firms‘ extremely concentrated size distribution and the robustly fat-tailed nature of firm size growth rates, indicating a high frequency of extreme growth events. Dosi et al. (Ind Corp Change 26(2):187–210, 2017b) recently proposed a model of evolutionary learning that can simultaneously explain many of these regularities. We propose a parsimonious extension to their model to examine the effect for deviations in market structure from global competition, implicitly assumed in Dosi et al. (2017b). This extension makes it possible to disentangle the effects of two modes of competition: the global competition for sales and the localised competition for market power, giving rise to industry-specific entry productivity. We find that the empirically well-established combination of ‘superstar firms’ and Zipf tail is consistent only with a knife-edge scenario in the neighbourhood of most intensive local competition. Our model also contests the conventional wisdom derived from a general equilibrium setting that maximum competition leads to minimum concentration of revenue (Silvestre in J Econ Lit 31(1):105–141, 1993). We find that most intensive local competition leads to the highest concentration, whilst the lowest concentration appears for a mild degree of (local) oligopoly. Paradoxically, a level playing field in initial conditions might induce extreme concentration in market outcomes.

In this Dialog, seven scholars consider the theoretical implications and research opportunities a changing environment presents for the Attention-Based View (ABV). With its roots in the 1950s Carnegie School, ABV is expanding and evolving in ways that accommodate the changes in the corporate context characterized by distributed, porous structures of organizational networks such as ecosystems and platforms. The authors emphasize a shift toward a more dynamic orientation of this research, one that addresses the challenges of sustaining coherent attention and sensemaking, a shift from quantity to quality of attention, and how corporate communications ranging from formalized strategy presentations to less formal social media communications can spin attention in ways that lead to intended as well as unintended outcomes. Emerging organizational trends open up radically different perspectives on attention: today's superstar firms draw new kinds of attention and many new business models are based upon the attraction and selling of customer attention.

City officials increasingly maintain relations with foreign stakeholders, both public and private, a practice that is generally referred to as city diplomacy. In the past, city diplomacy activities focused on bilateral cultural and knowledge exchanges. Although this type of collaboration still exists, contemporary city diplomacy has become more dynamic and diverse, and increasingly includes an economic dimension. In addition, many cities currently prioritise becoming involved in a variety of multilateral inter-urban networks. Despite wide-ranging conversations on the challenges and opportunities of these new types of city diplomacy, theoretical reflections regarding the underlying processes and the potential consequences remain largely absent from the literature. In this article, we argue that the city diplomacy literature can therefore be enriched by engaging with concepts and debates developed in economic geography in two main ways. We first elaborate on contemporary varieties of urban entrepreneurialism and the extent to which these correspond with city diplomacy practices. We argue that city diplomacy contains elements of both traditional entrepreneurialism and managerialism. Second, we look at city diplomacy through the lens of uneven development, hypothesising that city diplomacy may entail a self-reinforcing effect in terms of enhancing socio-spatial differences between ‘superstar cities’ and ‘places that do not matter’ respectively.

Millions of cubic yards of sediment are dredged every year in coastal New Jersey for the operation and maintenance of an extensive marine transportation system stretching from the New Jersey Harbor south along the Atlantic Coast from Sandy Hook to Cape May and north up the Delaware River. Dredged material from these public and private projects has been managed using a variety of placement approaches and technologies, from open-water disposal to landfilling to construction materials. For the past several decades, the State of New Jersey has advocated for and implemented a policy of beneficial use of dredged material rather than its disposal. The New Jersey Department of Transportation’s Office of Maritime Resources (NJDOT/OMR) is the lead state agency for research and implementation of beneficial use statewide. NJDOT/ OMR is also responsible for the recovery of the 200-mile network of shallow-draft navigation channels along the Atlantic coast of New Jersey that was damaged by a series of severe coastal storms, most notably Superstorm Sandy in 2012. For the past decade, considerable effort has been made to develop methods that use clean dredged material from the Atlantic region to rebuild and improve coastal features such as marshes, dunes, and beaches, thereby retaining the sediment in the ecosystem. Although there have been a number of successful beneficial use projects, concerns remain about the long-term sustainability of the program due to high cost, timelines, scalability, habitat sensitivity, resiliency, aesthetics, and other factors. This paper explores some of these issues and proposes solutions. It focuses on the use of available coarse-grained material as a way to provide resiliency to these restored features while increasing scale and efficiency, protecting aesthetics, and providing increased habitat value.

An event occurred recently in the world of professional sports in North America which may have set a precedent for superstar (celebrity) retirement and celebrity/fan interaction in the future. The event was hockey superstar Wayne Gretzky's last National Hockey League game, played between the New York Rangers and Pittsburgh Penguins (with Gretzky a member of the former), a Sunday 'matinee' contest at the famous Madison Square Garden in New York City. An event occurred recently in the world of professional sports in North America which may have set a precedent for superstar (celebrity) retirement and celebrity/fan interaction in the future. The event was hockey superstar Wayne Gretzky's last National Hockey League game, played between the New York Rangers and Pittsburgh Penguins (with Gretzky a member of the former), a Sunday 'matinee' contest at the famous Madison Square Garden in New York City. What makes this particular event unique is that the game itself (which, if not for Gretzky's retirement, would have been of little interest, since the Rangers were long since eliminated from the playoffs) was virtually 'staged' as a component of Gretzky's retirement ceremony, and indeed resembled a television entertainment special, musical and/or theatrical program in every way. So, every facet of this, one of the last regular season games, was focussed on "The Great One", as he is known to his adoring fans. This is where the pivotal part comes: Gretzky announced his long- speculated retirement, that his last game would be this match, just several days beforehand (in most cases of note, for obvious reasons, this announcement comes after the season ends). This of course sent the media into a frenzy to prepare for what Gretzky himself referred to as a final "celebration", which would honour not only himself, but also involve in an 'intimate' setting those players, coaches, etc. (professional hockey and other sports figures alike; Mario Lemieux, former leader of the Pittsburgh team and former team-mate Mark Messier as the "greatest players he has played against and with"), celebrities from the world of music (Bryan Adams sang the Canadian national anthem) and screen (Christopher Reeve) whom Gretzky considers friends and influences in his life -- and of course his wife, actress Janet Jones, their three children, and parents. And let's not forget the devoted fans and audience, providing the necessary backdrop for it all. What was to be, then, your run-of-the-mill, pre-play-off regular season meaningless hockey game was transformed into an entertainment spectacle, complete with pre-game ceremonies of presentations by his buddies, former and present team-mates, gifts (the usual icons of North-American status excess) of a Jaguar (or Mercedes?), and a massive "high- definition" television set. The network television lead-in confirmed that this was to be "Wayne's day", with highlight reels of his 20-year career in the NHL and his earlier days on the backyard pond. These snippets were even interspersed throughout the breaks in the action during the game, along with short interviews with Wayne's friends in the audience, which by the way inevitably offered the same synopsis: "he was great for the game, but he was also great off the ice." It is this 'off the ice' congeniality/patience with the fans (and media) which has added immensely to his popularity, and has guaranteed that many "billions more will be served" at McDonald's. Perhaps what made this whole spectacle most interesting, however, was the hockey game itself, which seemed something of an afterthought lost in all the hoopla surrounding it. Colour commentator Harry Neal remarked after a period and a half or so of play that it was a "no-hitter", but stopped short of using 'boring' as an adjective. This of course was no accident given the circumstances: Gretzky was a gifted player who relied on skating and playmaking rather than hitting, and who was against fighting in the NHL -- it was obvious that the players on both teams were catering to Gretzky's wishes in honour of this, his last game. They were not going to spoil his 'party', and no-one laid a hand on him, much less each other, during the course of the action. Even Matthew Barnaby, Pittsburgh's noted 'dirty' player was uncharacteristically polite throughout. Indeed, how could they not be on their best behaviour, given that they were as much a part of the pre-game ceremonies as everyone else (the whole Pittsburgh team was seen to 'clap' their sticks against the ice in appreciation after each presentation to Gretzky). The net effect of it all was that everyone could not help but be in awe of "The Great One", who was characteristically humble and gracious throughout it all. By extension this also had the effect of making the play of the game much more 'tentative', where normally aggressive players were seen to compromise their styles in order to 'accommodate' Wayne. In a game which is normally brutally physical and sometimes downright violent (concussions are not uncommon) this particular contest was definitely out of place, more akin to an all-star game where players are careful to avoid bodychecking and injury. But unlike an all-star game because of this tentativeness, it was also low-scoring; short of capping off a 'scripted' ending with Wayne scoring the winner, it was the captain of Pittsburgh who decided the contest into overtime (which was probably appropriate lest the drama seem a little too 'given'). Playing the devil's advocate, I couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if one of the opposing players had really 'had it in' for Gretzky, and realising that this was his last chance to make a little history of his own had taken the liberty to 'take Wayne out'. But then that sort of behaviour simply wouldn't have been tolerated on either side, and it was likely no coincidence that there were no grudges between these two teams (for this game at least). Closing ceremonies were appropriately tearful and long, with Wayne making repeated return appearances/encores to skate around the ice acknowledging the fans and players alike, the highlight reels again, and finally the last intimate interview and press conference. To me, the upshot of it all is this: to my knowledge, no other sports figure has demonstrated the power to 'tailor', if you will, a regularly scheduled contest such that the arena was utilised as a 'stage', with players from both teams willing 'actors', including the audience, of course, in order to provide Wayne with the type of send-off that he would (as 'director') have wished for. And what Wayne wanted was a "celebration" for everyone, hence it was no accident that his retirement announcement came before the season ended. The timing in the 'lull' between the regular season and the playoffs was also perfect. Here I believe we have a case of that 'blurring' or "slipping" between reality and fiction, or fantasy which Marshall refers to in a previous M/C article (b. 8). For what was created in fact was a 'staging', involving an altering of normal player/player and fan/player interaction, such that in the player/player interaction, the staging consisted of an oscillation between how the game is normally played in the minds of the players and an 'acted' version of this in order to accommodate "Wayne's World". The result was a rather unique version of the fastest and arguably the most dangerous of team sports -- truly, a celebrity version. In terms of the fan/player interaction, that 'oscillation' was present here as well, whereby cheering for a team inevitably was dominated by cheering for a single player (thus how the game is normally watched versus watching Wayne's game). The game itself had indeed become meaningless and was transformed into a Gretzky entertainment special; thus it was that the chant "Gretzky, Gretzky" which came up regularly, in order to spur "The Great One" on to his last goal at MSG (as it turned out, he managed an assist). The "slippage" was occurring at this level also, as fan participation reached new heights such that the collective consciousness of encouragement for Wayne provided an idyllic setting for the feature; they had become a part of the film, along with the Gretzky family in the stands, cheering him after every shift, and the distance between hero/player and audience was lessened by Gretzky's acknowledgments (something that simply wouldn't happen, at least to this degree, in a normal game). Fans always like to think that they have some influence on the players and the outcome of the game; in this case that influence was magnified as a sharing of a part of Wayne Gretzky's life. They had become a part of Wayne's movie. The 'slippage' had occurred on a grand scale. To be sure, a sporting contest is entertainment, but this event had 'slipped' into a theatrical contest for all, player and fan included. Everyone was in the picture; the normally fiercely competitive player interaction was tempered, and the fan involvement moved a notch closer to the ice surface. To conclude, I believe that these 'virtual movies' will become more commonplace as both fan/player interaction demand and player as celebrity status increase. For the player/celebrity, it's a way to go out with a 'bang' and satisfy a number of demands in one convenient package. For the fan, it's a step closer to that craved intimacy with their hero, another escape from the confines of the reality of the mundane, only closer yet to that elusive illusory ideal. Thus we will have willing 'actors' in these retirement dramas, where a sports contest is fundamentally altered to an emphasis on sentiment value, an opportunity for a collective 'feel-good' experience where everyone wins -- except for those who come to watch a good hockey game, or whatever the sports 'feature' of the future may be. References P. David Marshall. "The Fiction of Public Life." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.1 (1999). 13 June 1999 <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9902/life.php>. Citation reference for this article MLA style: David Riddell. "Wayne's World: The Making of a Hockey Movie." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.4 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/wayne.php>. Chicago style: David Riddell, "Wayne's World: The Making of a Hockey Movie," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 4 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/wayne.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: David Riddell. (1999) Wayne's world: the making of a hockey movie. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(4). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/wayne.php> ([your date of access]).

Media critics tend to think about reviews in two ways: either as autonomous acts of creative intervention or as necessary fodder for publicity campaigns. Rather than elevate either of these options, I offer an account of my own reviewing experience as anecdotal evidence of the interrelation between creative intervention and commodification at work in every printed newspaper review. As Frederick Jameson argued long ago in his essay “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture”, capitalist culture always contains elements of utopian or counter-hegemonic fantasy, but these elements are quickly absorbed and squelched within the market. Indeed, the appearance of literary criticism itself is bound up with the transformation of cultural activity into commodity form. In order to appreciate how reviews function within the economy of literary journalism, one should underestimate neither the ease with which even the most insightful review has always already been absorbed into the process of commodification nor how this process can work against the market’s own best interests. (For a study of the economic impact of reviewing, see Cameron. For the complications involved in writing a history of reviews and reviewers, see Fosdick.) For the last few years, I have written book reviews primarily for my local newspaper, the Iowa City Press-Citizen. As a 15,000-run newspaper, the Press-Citizen is listed in the small newspaper category for journalism awards and is one of the smallest newspapers owned by the giant media conglomerate, Gannett. Because Iowa City is home to the Big Ten, 30,000-student University of Iowa, the Press-Citizen has a more highly educated audience than that of other newspapers with similar press runs. Yet the educated readership also means that the local population expects a journalistic product with the sophistication of the New Yorker while the marketplace is only slightly larger than that of the little old ladies in Dubuque. Because of budget limitations, the Press-Citizen’s cultural reporting occupies a small percentage of its local news pages. As a result, the editorial staff deems newsworthy only those reviews demonstrating a clear local angle. From one perspective, this decision represents a commitment to the community. In practical terms, however, the policy means that the newspaper solicits reviews only for the authors who participate in “Live from Prairie Lights”, a reading series jointly sponsored by the university’s not-for-profit, public radio station, WSUI, and one of the city’s independently owned bookstores, Prairie Lights. The reading series owes its reputation, in part, to the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, consistently hailed by U.S. News and World Report as the number one MFA creative writing program in the nation. Because the Workshop attracts established alumni (such as Michael Cunningham and John Irving) as well as ambitious younger writers, Prairie Lights has become a popular stop for authors touring in the geographical pentagram between Chicago, Minneapolis, Omaha, Kansas City, and St. Louis. Before I even type a word, therefore, any review I send to the Press-Citizen already has been commodified by the editorial staff’s decision to base its definition of newsworthiness on the publicity needs of a network of local businesses. Furthermore, if I decide not to write a review – or if the editorial staff decides it cannot afford to pay any correspondent for the review – the newspaper simply saves money and hassle by reprinting wire reviews published in any of the other 100 Gannett newspapers in the U.S. In order to add to the variety – to increase heterogeneity in the public sphere – I must first submit to a very restricted notion of what that sphere is. While Gannett’s business model involves absorbing and centralising local media outlets, Prairie Lights’s business model tends to undermine such a corporate mindset through its role as the area’s largest independent bookstore. Sponsoring “Live from Prairie Lights” is one way that the store, with help from the radio station, fights for its survival against superstore chains and discounted on-line giants. My review’s extra publicity for Prairie Lights, then, helps a brick-and-mortar independent bookstore maintain its independence. To the bookstore staff, the fact that my review appears in the local paper matters more than whether I denounce or celebrate a visiting writer. So, again, before I type a single word, my reviews simultaneously participate within a compromised commercial system and undermine the corporate policies of my newspaper’s parent company by helping support the independent mindset of a key local business. Just as my printed review is always already framed by the local editorial policies of a media conglomerate and the promotional needs of a large independent bookstore, it is also automatically placed in conversation with the paratextual press releases, plot synopses, and blurbs provided by the publishing houses. Even if I approach the work from a completely different angle than the publicists suggest, readers will readily align my perspective against the myriad of uncritical, press-release-based reviews to be found on Google News, Lexis-Nexis, or Metacritic.com. And even if local readers manage to avoid those reviews, they will still be exposed to the official publicity information if they listen to WSUI’s “Live from Prairie Lights”. Despite the commitment of Iowa Public Radio to an independent assessment of news and culture, the introductions provided by the program’s host nearly always regurgitate the publicity information as the homogenizing conceptual frame into which all aberrant discussions of the work become mere exceptions that prove the rule. The interrelation between creativity and commodification becomes apparent even in best-case scenarios. In September 2002, for example, the University of Iowa Press published a book of recently rediscovered Farm Service Agency photographs from the 1930s that proved complementary to the more familiar photographs of Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans. An Iowa writer worked with the photographer’s surviving family members and wrote a well-documented, insightful, historical narrative to contextualise the photos. Anticipating local interest in the collection, Prairie Lights ordered hundreds of copies and moved the radio broadcast from the bookstore to a larger auditorium. Because of the Iowa connections at every phase of the project, it was easy to convince the Press-Citizen to run a lengthy review accompanied by several photos. After sifting through the photographs, digesting the narrative, and skeptically perusing the university press’s promotional material, I challenged myself to do something more than regurgitate the information provided me. Giving a cultural studies twist to Anatole France’s romantic dictum of the good critic relating the adventures of his soul among masterpieces, I decided to provide my own analysis of the photographs as cultural objects and only then turn to the narrative as a contrasting explanation of the uncanny vibrancy of these images of the last century. While I was sometimes critical of her evaluation, the author was impressed enough with my efforts that she called my editor to inform him personally that my review was the best she had read and that I was the only reviewer who had actually looked beyond the press release. Having never before been so complimented by an author, I decided to attend the reading and meet her face-to-face. Not surprisingly, the experience proved disillusioning. The writer proved as insightful in the program’s question and answer session as she had been in her prose, and the photos were as intriguing on the video screen as they were in the book. Yet the mobile radio production equipment and the portable cashier station – even more so, its constant beeping – made clear just how my investment of time and intellect served crossed purposes. While I was helping my readership make sense of these rediscovered photos from the past, I was also helping the University of Iowa Press and Prairie Lights sell books even as I was helping the Press-Citizen sell ads for the press and bookstore. The photo collections brought enough pleasure that many of the audience members were buying several copies to give as gifts, but that pleasure was both preconditioned for and a by-product of the cycle of production and publicity. At the moment when my review proved insightful enough to warrant a commendatory phone call from the author, it was most at risk of becoming a mere cog in the process of commodification. Rather than declare with any finality that reviews are either inspired or ingratiating, media critics need to continue to account for such interconnections between the creative and commercial factors of publication. References Cameron, Samuel. “On the Role of Critics in the Culture Industry.” Journal of Cultural Economics 19.4 (December 1995): 321-31. Fosdick, Scott. “From Discussion Leader to Consumer Guide.” Journalism History 30.2 (Summer 2004): 91-7. Jameson, Fredric. “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture.” Social Text 1 (1979): 130-48. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Charis-Carlson, Jeffrey. "Creativity, Commodification, and the Making of a Middlebrow Book Review." M/C Journal 8.5 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0510/04-charis-carlson.php>. APA Style Charis-Carlson, J. (Oct. 2005) "Creativity, Commodification, and the Making of a Middlebrow Book Review," M/C Journal, 8(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0510/04-charis-carlson.php>.

This essay originates out of our shared interest in genres and media forms used for identity practices that do not cohere into a narrative or a fixed representation of who someone is. It takes the current heightened visibility of drag as a mode of performance that explicitly engages with identity as a product materialized—but not completed—by the ongoing process of performance. We consider the new drag, which we define below, as a form of playing with identity that combines bodily practices (comportment and use of voice) and adornment (make-up, clothing, wigs, and accessories) with an array of media (photography, live performance, social media and television). Given the limited space available, we will not be engaging with the propositions made during earlier feminist and queer thinking that drag is not inherently subversive and may reinscribe gender and race norms through their hyperbolic recitation (Butler 230-37; hooks 145-56). While we think there is much to be gained from revisiting these critiques in light of the changes in conceptualisations of gender in queer subcultures, we are not interested in framing drag as subversive or resistant in relation to the norms of masculinity and femininity. Instead, we follow Eve Sedgwick’s interest in reparative practices adopted by queer-identified subjects who must learn to survive in a hostile culture (“Paranoid”) and trace two lines of analysis we identify in drag’s new found visibility that demonstrate the reparative potential of automedia.At time of writing, RuPaul’s Drag Race (RPDR) has truly hit the big time. Pop icon Christina Aguilera was a guest judge for the first episode of its tenth season (Daw “Christina”), and the latest episode of RuPaul’s All-Stars season three spin-off show was the most-watched of any show in its network’s history (Crowley). RuPaul Charles, the producer and star of RPDR, has just been honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, decades after he began his career as a drag performer (Daw “RuPaul”). Drag queens are finally becoming part of American mainstream media and drag as an art form and a cultural practice is on its way to becoming part of discourse about gender and identity around the world, via powerful systems of digital mediation and distribution. RPDR’s success is a good way to think about how drag, a long-standing performance art form, is having a “break out” moment in popular culture. We argue here that RPDR is doing this within an automedia framework.What does automedia mean in the context of drag on television and social media? We understand automedia to be about the mediation of identity when identity is both a product of representation and a process that is continually becoming, expressed in the double meaning of the word “life” as biography and as process (Poletti “Queer Collages” 362; Poletti and Rak 6-7). In this essay we build on our shared interest in developing a critical mode that can respond to forms of automedia that explore “the possibility of identity in the absence of narration” (Rak 172). What might artists who work with predominantly non-narrative forms such as drag performance show us about the ongoing interconnection between technologies and subjectivities as they represent and think through what “life” looks like, on stage and off?Automedia names life as a process and a product that has the potential to queer temporality and normative forms of identification, what Jack Halberstam has called “queer time” (1). We understand Halberstam’s evocation of queer time as suitable for being thought through automedia because of their characterisation of queer as “a form of self-description in the past decade or so … [that] has the potential to open up new life narratives and alternative relations to time and space” (2). Queer time, Halberstam explains, comes from the collapse of the past and shaky relation to futurity gay men experienced during the height of the American AIDs crisis, but they also see queer time, significantly, as exceeding the terms of its arrival. Queer time could be about the “potentiality of a life unscripted by the conventions of family, inheritance, and child rearing” (2). Queer time, then, evokes the possibility of making a life narrative that does not have to follow a straight line or stay “on script,” and does not have to feature conventional milestones or touchstones in its unfolding. If queer time can be thought alongside automedia, within drag performances that are not about straight lives, narrative histories and straight time can come into view.Much has been written about drag as a performance that creates a public, for example, as part of a queer world-building project that shoots unpredictably through spaces beyond performance locations (Berlant and Warner 558). Halberstam’s shift to thinking of queer time as an opening of new life narratives and a different relation to time has similar potential when considering the work of RPDR as automedia, because the shift of drag performance away from clubs, parades and other queer spaces to television and the internet is accompanied by a concern, manifested in the work of RuPaul himself, with drag history and the management of drag memory. We argue that a concern with the relationship between time and identity in RPDR is an attempt to open up, through digital networked media, a queer understanding of time that is in relation to drag of the past, but not always in a linear way. The performances of season nine winner Sasha Velour, and Velour’s own preoccupation with drag history in her performances and art projects, is an indicator of the importance of connecting the twin senses of “life” as process and product found in automedia to performance and narration.The current visibility of drag in popular culture is characterised by a shifting relationship between drag and media: what was once a location-based, temporally specific form of performance which occurred in bars, has been radically changed through the increased contact between the media forms of performance, television and social media. While local drag queens are often the celebrities (or “superstars”) of their local subcultural scene, reality television (in the form of RPDR) and social media (particularly Instagram) have radically increased the visibility of some drag queens, turning them into international celebrities with hundreds of thousands of fans. These queens now speak to audiences far beyond their local communities, and to audiences who may not have any knowledge of the queer subcultures that have nurtured generations of drag performers. Under the auspices of RPDR, drag queens have gained a level of cultural visibility that produces fascinating, and complex, encounters between subcultural identity practices and mainstream media tropes. Amongst her many tasks—being fierce, flawless, hilarious, and able to turn out a consummate lip sync performance—the newly visible drag queen is also a teacher. Enacting RuPaul’s theory of identity from his song title—“We’re all born naked and the rest is drag” (“Born”)—drag queens who in some way embody or make use of RuPaul’s ideas have the potential to advance a queer perspective on identity as a process in keeping with Judith Butler’s influential theory of identity performativity (Butler 7-16). In so doing they can provide fresh insights into the social function of media platforms and their genres in the context of queer lives. They are what we call “new” drag queens, because of their access to technology and digital forms of image distribution. They can refer to classic drag queen performance culture, and they make use of classic drag performance as a genre, but their transnational media presence and access to more recent forms of identification to describe themselves, such as trans, genderqueer or nonbinary, mark their identity presentations and performance presences as a departure from other forms of drag.While there is clearly a lot to be said about drag’s “break out,” in this essay we focus on two elements of the “new media” drag that we think speak directly, and productively, to the larger question of how cultural critics can understand the connection between identity and mediation as mutually emergent phenomena. As a particularly striking practitioner of automediality, the new drag queen draws our attention to the way that drag performance is an automedial practice that creates “queer time” (Halberstam), making use of the changing status of camp as a practice for constructing, and mediating identity. In what follows we examine the statements about drag and the autobiographical statements presented by RuPaul Charles and Sasha Velour (the winner of RPDR Season Nine) to demonstrate automediality as a powerful practice for queer world-making and living.No One Ever Wins Snatch Game: RuPaul and TimeAs we have observed at the opening of this essay, queer time is an oppositional practice, a refusal of those who belong to queer communities to fall into step with straight ideas about history, futurity, reproduction and the heteronormative idea of family, and a way to understand how communities mark occasions, conceptualize the history and traditions of subcultures. Queer time has the potential to rethink daily living and history differently and to tell accounts of lives in a different way, to “open up new life narratives,” as Halberstam says (2). RuPaul Charles’s own life story could be understood as a way to open up new life narratives literally by constructing what a queer life and career could mean in the aftermath of the AIDS epidemic in the United States. His 1995 memoir, Lettin It All Hang Out, details RuPaul’s early career in 1980s Atlanta, Georgia and in New York as an often-difficult search for what would make him a star. RuPaul did not at first conceptualize himself as a drag star, but as a punk musician in Atlanta and then as part of the New York Club Kid community, which developed when New York clubs were in danger of closing because of fear of the AIDS epidemic (Flynn). RuPaul became adept at self-promotion and image-building while he was part of these rebellious punk and dance club subcultures that refused gender and lifestyle norms (Lettin 62-5). It might seem to be an unusual beginning for a drag star, but as RuPaul writes, “I always knew I was going to be star [but] I never thought it was going to be as a drag queen” (Lettin 64). There was no narrative of mainstream success that RuPaul—a gay, gender non-binary African-American man from the American Midwest—could follow.Since he was a drag performer too, RuPaul eventually “had an epiphany. Why couldn’t I [he] become a mainstream pop star in drag? Who said it couldn’t be done?” (Workin’ It 159). And he decided that rather than look for a model of success to follow, he would queer the mainstream model for success. As he observes, “I looked around at my favorite stars and realized that they were drag queens too. In fact every celebrity is a drag queen” (Lettin 129). Proceeding from the idea that all people are in fact drag artists—the source of RuPaul’s aformentioned catch-phrase and song title “We’re all born naked and the rest is drag” (“Born”), RuPaul moved the show business trajectory into queer time, making the “formula” for success the labour required of drag queens to create personae, entertain, promote themselves and make a successful living (and a life) in dangerous work environments—a process presented in his song “Supermodel” and its widely-cited lyric “You better work!” (“Supermodel”). The video for “Supermodel” shows RuPaul in his persona as Supermodel of the World, “working” as a performer and a member of the public in New York to underscore the different kinds of labour that is involved, and that this labour is necessary for anyone to become successful (“Supermodel” video).When RuPaul’s Drag Race began in 2010, RuPaul modelled the challenges in the show on his own career in an instance of automedia, where the non-narrative aspects of drag performance and contest challenges were connected to the performance of RuPaul’s own story. According to one of RuPaul’s friends who produces the show: “The first season, all the challenges were ‘Ru did this, so you did this.’ It was Ru’s philosophy” (Snetiker). As someone who was without models for success, RuPaul intends for RPDR to provide a model for others to follow. The goal of the show is the replication of RuPaul’s own career trajectory: the winners of RPDR are each crowned “America’s Next Drag Superstar,” because they have successfully learned from RuPaul’s own experiences so that they too can develop their careers as drag artists. This pattern has persisted on RPDR, where the contestants are often asked to participate in challenges that reflect RuPaul’s own struggles to become a star as a way to “train” them to develop their careers. Contestants have, like RuPaul himself, starred in low-budget films, played in a punk band, marketed their own perfume, commemorated the work of the New York Club Kids, and even planned the design and marketing of their own memoirs.RPDR contestants are also expected to know popular culture of the past and present, and they are judged on how well they understand their own “herstory” of the drag communities and queer culture. Snatch Game, a popular segment where contestants have to impersonate celebrities on a queer version of the Match Game series, is a double test. To succeed, contestants must understand how to impersonate celebrities past and present within a camp aesthetic. But the segment also tests how well drag queens understand the genre of game show television, a genre that no longer exists on television (except in the form of Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy), and that many of the RPDR contestants are not old enough to have seen, performing witty taglines and off-the-cuff jokes they hope will land in a very tight time frame. Sasha Velour, the winner of season nine, won praise for her work in the Snatch Game segment in episode six because, acting on advice from RuPaul, she played Marlene Dietrich and not her first choice, queer theorist Judith Butler (RuPaul’s). Sasha Velour was able to make Dietrich, a queer icon known for her film work in the 1920-1940s, humorous in the game show context, showing that she understands queer history, and that she is a skilful impersonator who understands how to navigate a genre that is part of RuPaul’s own life story. The queer time of RuPaul’s narrative is transmitted to a skill set future drag stars need to use: a narrative of a life becomes part of performance. RPDR is, in this sense, automedia in action as queens make their personae “live,” perform part of RuPaul’s “life” story, and get to “live” on the show for another week if they are successful. The point of Snatch Game is how well a queen can perform, how good she is at entertaining and educating audiences, and how well she deals with an archaic genre, that of the television game show. No one ever “wins” Snatch Game because that is not the point of it. But those who win the Snatch Game challenge often go on to win RPDR, because they have demonstrated improvisational skill, comic timing, knowledge of RuPaul’s own life narrative touchstones and entertained the audience.Performative Agency: The Drag Performance as Resource for Queer LivingVelour’s embodied performance in the Snatch Game of the love and knowledge of popular culture associated with camp, and its importance to the art of drag, highlights the multifaceted use of media as a resource for identity practices that characterizes drag as a form of automedia. Crucially, it exemplifies the complex way that media forms are heavily cited and replayed in new combinations in order to say something real about the ways of living of a specific artist or person. Sasha Velour’s impersonation of Dietrich is not one in which Velour’s persona disappears: indeed, she is highly commended by RuPaul, and fans, because her embodiment of Dietrich in the anachronous media environment of the Snatch Game works to further Velour’s unique persona and skill as a drag artist. Velour queers time with her Dietrich in order to demonstrate her unique sensibility and identity. Thus, reality TV, silent film, cabaret, improvisation and visual presentation are brought together in an embodied performance that advances Velour’s specific form of drag and is taken as a strong marker of who Sasha Velour is.But what exactly is Sasha Velour doing when she clarifies her identity by dressing as Marlene Dietrich and improvises the diva’s answers to questions on a game show? This element of drag is clearly connected to the aesthetics of camp that have a long tradition in gay and queer culture. Original theories of camp theorized it as a practice of taste and interpretation (Sontag)—camp described a relationship to the objects of popular culture that was subversive because it celebrated the artificiality of aesthetic forms, and was therefore ironizing. However, this understanding of camp does not adequately describe its role in postmodern culture or how some queer subcultures cultivate the use media forms for identity practices (O’Neill 21). In her re-casting of camp, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick argues:we need to [think of camp] not in terms of parody or even wit, but with more of an eye of its visceral, operatic power: the startling outcrops of overinvested erudition; the prodigal production of alternative histories; the ‘over’-attachment to fragmentary, marginal, waste, lost, or leftover cultural products; the richness of affective variety; and the irrepressible, cathartic fascination with ventriloquist forms of relation. (Sedgwick The Weather 66)This reframing of camp emphasises affect, attachment and forms of relation as ongoing processes for the making of queer life (a process), rather than as elements of queer identity (a product). For Sedgwick camp is a practice or process that mediates queerness in the context of a hostile mainstream media culture that does not connect queer ways of living with flourishing or positive outcomes (Sedgwick “Paranoid Reading” 28). In O’Neill’s account, camp does not involve attachment to the diva as a fixed identity whose characteristics can be adopted in irony or impersonation in which the individual disappears (16). Rather, it is the diva’s labour—her way of marshalling her talent to produce compelling performances, which come to be the hallmark of her career and identity—that is the site of queer identification. What RuPaul wittily refers to as a drag queen’s “charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent” (the acronym is important), O’Neill refers to as the diva’s “performative agency”—the primary “power to perform” (16, emphasis in original). This is the positive power of camp as form of automediation for queer world making: media forms provide resources that queer subjects can draw on in assembling a performance of identity as modes of embodiment and ways of being that can be cited (the specific posture of Dietrich, for example, which Velour mimics) and in terms of the affect required to marshal the performance itself.When she was crowned the winner of season nine of RPDR, Sasha Velour emphasised the drag queen’s performative agency itself as a resource for queer identity practices. After being announced the winner, Velour said: “Let’s change shit up. Let’s get all inspired by all this beauty, all this beauty, and change the motherfucking world” (Queentheban). This narrative of the world-changing power of the beauty of drag refers to the visibility of the new drag queens, who through television and social media now have thousands of fans across the world. Yet, this narrative of the collective potential of drag is accompanied by Velour presenting her own autobiographical narrative that posits drag as an automedial practice whose “richness of affective variety” has been central to her coming to terms with the death of her mother from cancer. In interviews and in her magazine about drag (Velour: The Drag Magazine) Velour narrates the evolution of her drag and her identity as a “bald queen” whose signature look includes a clean-shaven head which is often unadorned or revealed in her performances as directly linked to her mother’s baldness brought on by treatment for cancer (WBUR).In an autobiographical photo-essay titled “Gone” published in Velour, Velour poses in a series of eight photographs which are accompanied by handwritten text reflecting on the role of drag in Velour’s grieving for her mother. In the introduction, the viewer is told that the “books and clothes” used in the photos belonged to Velour’s mother, Jane. The penultimate image shows Velour lying on grass in drag without a wig, looking up at the camera and is accompanied by nineteen statements elucidating what drag is, all of which are in keeping with Sedgwick’s reframing of camp practices as reparative strategies for queer lives: “Drag is for danger / Drag is for safety / Drag is for remembering / Drag is for recovering.” Affect, catharsis, and operatic power are narrated and visually rendered in the photo-essay, presenting drag as a highly personal form of automediation for Velour. The twentieth line defining drag appears on the final page, accompanied by a photograph of Velour from behind, her arms thrown back and tensile: “Drag is for dressing up / And this is my mother’s dress.”Taken together, Velour’s generic and highly personal descriptions of drag as a process and product that empowers individual and collective queer lives define drag as a form of automedia in which identity and living are a constant process of creativity and invention “where ideas about the self and what it means to live are tested, played with, rejected, and embraced” (Rak 177).Velour’s public statements and autobiographical works foreground how the power, investment, richness and catharsis encapsulated in drag performance offers an important antidote to the hostility to queer ways of being embodied by an assimilationist gay politics. In a recent interview, Velour commented on the increased visibility of her drag beyond her localised performances in “dive bars” in New York:When Drag Race came on television I feel like the gay community in general was focussed on […] dare I say, a kind of assimilation politics, showing straight people and the world at large that we are just like everyone else and I think drag offered a radical different saying [sic] and reminded people that there’s been this grand tradition of queer people and gay people saying ‘actually we’re fabulously different and this is why.’ (PopBuzz)Velour suggests that in its newly visible forms outside localised queer cultures, drag as a media spectacle offers an important alternative to the pressure for queer people to assimilate to dominant forms of living, those practices, forms of attachment and relation Halberstam associates with straight time.ConclusionThe queer time and performative agency enacted in drag provides a compelling example of non-narrative forms of identity work in which identity is continuously emerging through labour, innovation, and creativity (or—in RuPaul’s formulation—charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent). This creativity draws on popular culture as a resource and site of history for queer identities, an evocation of queer time. The queer time of drag as a performance genre has an increasing presence in media forms such as television, social media and print media, bringing autobiographical performances and narratives by drag artists into new venues. This multiple remediation of drag recasts queer cultural practices beyond localised subcultural contexts into the broader media cultures in order to amplify and celebrate queerness as a form of difference, and differing, as automediality.ReferencesBerlant, Lauren, and Michael Warner. “Sex in Public.” Critical Inquiry 24.2 (Winter 1998): 547-566.Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. 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Madison, WI: U of Wisconsin P, 2014. 1-25.Poletti, Anna. “Periperformative Life Narrative: Queer Collages.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 22.3 (2016): 359-379.PopBuzz. “Sasha Velour Talks All Stars 3, Riverdale and Life after Winning RuPaul’s Drag Race.” 16 Feb. 2018 <https://youtu.be/xyl5PIRZ_Hw>.Queentheban. “Sasha Velour vs Peppermint | ‘It's Not Right But It's Okay’ & Winner Announcement.” 23 Jun. 2017 <https://youtu.be/8RqTzzcOLq4>.Rak, Julie. “Life Writing versus Automedia: The Sims 3 Game as a Life Lab.” Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 38.2 (Spring 2015): 155-180.RuPaul. “Born Naked.” Born Naked. RuCo, Inc., 2014.———. Lettin It All Hang Out: An Autobiography. New York: Hyperion Books, 1999.———. “Supermodel (You Better Work).” Supermodel of the World. Tommy Boy, 1993.———. “Supermodel (You Better Work).” Dir. Randy Barbato. MTV, 1993. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw9LOrHU8JI>.———. Workin’ It!: RuPaul's Guide to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Style. New York: HarperCollins, 2010.RuPaul’s Drag Race. RuPaul. World of Wonder Productions. Season 9, 2017.Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. The Weather in Proust. Durham and London: Duke UP, 2011.———. “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading; Or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Introduction Is about You.” Novel Gazing: Queer Readings in Fiction. Ed. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Durham: Duke UP, 1997. 1-37.Sontag, Susan. “Notes on ‘Camp’.” Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader. Ed. Fabio Cleto. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1991. 53-65.Snetiker, Mark. “The Oral History of RuPaul.” Entertainment Weekly (2016). <http://rupaul.ew.com/>.WBUR. “Sasha Velour on Why Drag Is a ‘Political and Historical Art Form’.” 24 July 2017. <http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2017/07/24/sasha-velour>.Velour, Sasha. “Gone (with Daphne Chan).” sashavelour.com. <http://sashavelour.com/work/#/daphnechan/>.

In recent years ecological thinking has been applied to a range of social, cultural, and aesthetic systems, including performing arts as a living system of policy makers, producers, organisations, artists, and audiences. Ecological thinking is systems-based thinking which allows us to see the performing arts as a complex and protean ecosystem; to explain how elements in this system act and interact; and to evaluate its effects on Australia’s social fabric over time. According to Gallasch, ecological thinking is “what we desperately need for the arts.” It enables us to “defeat the fragmentary and utilitarian view of the arts that dominates, to make connections, to establish overviews of the arts that can be shared and debated” (Gallasch NP). The ecological metaphor has featured in debates about the performing arts in Brisbane, Australia, in the last two or three years. A growing state capital on Australia’s eastern seaboard, Brisbane is proud of its performing arts culture. Its main theatre organisations include the state flagship Queensland Theatre Company; the second major presenter of adapted and new text-based performances La Boite Theatre Company; venues which support local and touring performances such as the Judith Wright Centre for Contemporary Arts and the Brisbane Powerhouse; emerging talent incubator Metro Arts; indigenous companies like Kooemba Jdarra; independent physical theatre and circus companies such as Zen Zen Zo and Circa; and contemporary play-producing company 23rd Productions (cf. Baylis 3). Brisbane aspires to be a cultural capital in Australia, Australasia, and the Asia Pacific (Gill). Compared to Australia’s southern capitals Sydney and Melbourne, however, Brisbane does have a relatively low level of performing arts activity across traditional and contemporary theatre, contemporary performance, musicals, circus, and other genres of performance. It has at times been cast as a piecemeal, potentially unsustainable arts centre prone to losing talent to other states. In 2009, John Baylis took up these issues in Mapping Queensland Theatre, an Arts Queensland-funded survey designed to map practices in Brisbane and in Queensland more broadly, and to provide a platform to support future policy-making. This report excited debate amongst artists who, whilst accepting the tenor of Baylis’s criticisms, also lamented the lack of nuanced detail and contextualised relationships its map of Queensland theatre provided. In this paper we propose a new approach to mapping Brisbane’s and Queensland’s theatre that extends Baylis’s “value chain” into a “value ecology” that provides a more textured picture of players, patterns, relationships, and activity levels. A “value chain” approach emphasises linear relationships and gaps between production, distribution, and consumption in a specific sector of the economy. A “value ecology” approach goes further by examining a complex range of rhizomatic relationships between production, distribution, and consumption infrastructure and how they influence each other within a sector of the economy such as the performing arts. Our approach uses a “value ecology” model adapted from Hearn et al. and Cherbo et al. to map and interpret information from the AusStage performing arts database, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and other sources such as previews, reviews, and an ongoing local blogosphere debate. Building upon Baylis’s work, our approach produces literal and conceptual maps of Queensland’s performing arts as they change over time, with analysis of support, infrastructure, and relationships amongst government, arts organisations, artists, and audiences. As debate on Mapping Queensland Theatre gives way to more considered reflection, and as Baylis develops a follow-up report, our approach captures snapshots of Queensland’s performing arts before, during, and after such policy interventions. It supports debate about how Queensland artists might manage their own sustainability, their own ability to balance artistic, cultural, and economic factors that influence their work in a way that allows them to survive long term, and allows policy makers, producers, and other players to better understand, articulate, assess, and address criticisms. The Ecological Metaphor In recent years a number of commentators have understood the performing arts as an “ecology,” a system characterised by interacting elements, engagements, flows, blockages, breaks, and breakthroughs whose “health” (synonymous in this context with sustainability) depends on relationships between players within and without the system. Traditionally, performing arts policies in Australia have concentrated on singular elements in a system. They have, as Hunt and Shaw argue, “concentrate[d] on individual companies or an individual artist’s practice rather than the sector as a whole” (5, cf. 43). The focus has been on how to structure, support, and measure the success—the aesthetic and social benefits—of individual training institutions, artists, administrators, and arts organisations. The “health” of singular elements has been taken as a sign of the “health” of the system. An ecologies approach, by contrast, concentrates on engagements, energies, and flows as signs of health, and thus sustainability, in a system. Ecological thinking enables policy makers, practitioners, and scholars to go beyond debate about the presence of activity, the volume of activity, and the fate of individual agents as signs of the health or non-health of a system. In an ecologies context, level of activity is not the only indicator of health, and low activity does not necessarily equate with instability or unsustainability. An ecological approach is critical in Brisbane, and in Queensland more broadly, where attempts to replicate the nature or level of activity in southern capitals are not necessarily the best way to shore up the “health” of our performing arts system in our own unique environment. As the locus of our study Queensland is unique. While Queensland has 20% of Australia’s population (OESR; ABS ‘ Population Projections’), and is regularly recognised as a rapidly growing “lifestyle superstate” which values innovation, creativity, and cultural infrastructure (Cunningham), it is still home to significantly less than 20% of Australia’s performing arts producers, and many talented people continue to migrate to the south to pursue career opportunities (Baylis 4, 28). An ecologies approach can break into oft-cited anxieties about artist, activity, and audience levels in Brisbane, and in Queensland, and create new ideas about what a “healthy” local performing arts sector might look like. This might start to infuse some of the social media commentary that currently tends to emphasise the gaps in the sector. Ecologies are complex systems. So, as Costanza says, when we consider ecosystem health, we must consider the overall performance of the system, including its ability to deal with “external stress” (240) from macro-level political, legal, social, cultural, economic, or technological currents that change the broader society this particular sector or ecosystem sits within. In Brisbane, there is a growing population and a desire to pursue a cultural capital tag, but the distinctive geographic, demographic, and behavioural characteristics of Brisbane’s population—and the associated ‘stresses’, conditions, or constraints—mean that striving to replicate patterns of activity seen in Sydney or Melbourne may not be the straightest path to a “healthy” or “sustainable” sector here. The attitudes of the players and the pressures influencing the system are different, so this may be like comparing rainforests with deserts (Costanza), and forgetting that different elements and engagements are in fact “healthy” in different ecosystems. From an ecologies point of view, policy makers and practitioners in Brisbane and in Queensland more broadly might be well advised to stop trying to match Sydney or Melbourne, and to instead acknowledge that a “healthy” ecosystem here may look different, and so generate policy, subsidy, and production systems to support this. An ecological approach can help determine how much activity is in fact necessary to ensure a healthy and sustainable local performing arts sector. It can, in other words, provide a fresh approach that inspires new ideas and strategies for sector sustainability. Brisbane, Baylis and the Blogosphere Debate The ecological metaphor has clearly captured the interest of policy makers as they consider how to make Queensland’s performing arts more sustainable and successful. For Arts Queensland: The view of the sector as a complex and interdependent ‘ecosystem’ is forging new thinking, new practices and new business models. Individual practitioners and organisations are rethinking where they sit within the broader ecology, and what they contribute to the health and vitality of the sector, and how they might address the gaps in services and skills (12). This view informed the commissioning of Mapping Queensland Theatre, an assessment of Queensland’s theatre sector which offers a framework for allocation of resources under the Queensland Arts & Cultural Sector Plan 2010-2013. It also offers a framework for negotiation with funded organisations to ensure “their activities and focus support a harmonious ecology” (Baylis 3) in which all types and levels of practice (emerging, established, touring, and so on) are functioning well and are well represented within the overall mix of activities. Utilising primary and secondary survey sources, Mapping Queensland Theatre seeks: to map individuals, institutions, and organisations who have a stake in developing Queensland’s professional theatre sector; and to apply a “value chain” model of production from supply (training, creation, presentation, and distribution) to demand (audiences) to identify problems and gaps in Queensland’s professional theatre sector and recommend actions to address them. The report is critical of the sector. Baylis argues that “the context for great theatre is not yet in place in Queensland … therefore works of outstandingly high quality will be rare” (28).Whilst acknowledging a lack of ready answers about how much activity is required in a vibrant theatre culture, Baylis argues that “comparisons are possible” (27) and he uses various data sets to compare numbers of new Australian productions in different states. He finds that “despite having 20% of the Australian population, [Queensland] generates a dramatically lower amount of theatre activity” (4, cf. 28). The reason, according to Baylis (20, 23, 25, 29, 32, 40-41, 44), is that there are gaps in the “value chain” of Queensland theatre, specifically in: Support for the current wave of emerging and independent artistsSpace for experimentation Connections between artists, companies, venues and festivals, between and within regional centres, and between Queensland companies and their (inter)national peers Professional development for producers to address the issue of market distributionAudience development “Queensland lacks a critical mass of theatre activity to develop a sustainable theatre culture” (48), and the main gap is in pathways for independent artists. Quality new work does not emerge, energy dissipates, and artists move on. The solution, for Baylis, is to increase support for independent companies (especially via co-productions with mainstage companies), to improve (inter)national touring, and to encourage investment in audience development. Naturally, Queensland’s theatre makers responded to this report. Responses were given, for example, in inaugural speeches by new Queensland Theatre Company director Wesley Enoch and new La Boite Theatre Company director David Berthold, in the media, and in blogosphere commentary on a range of articles on Brisbane performing arts in 2010. The blogosphere debate in particular raged for months and warrants more detailed analysis elsewhere. For the purposes of this paper, though, it is sufficient to note that blogosphere debate about the health of Queensland theatre culture acknowledged many of the deficits Baylis identified and called for: More leadershipMore government supportMore venuesMore diversityMore audience, especially for risky work, and better audience engagementMore jobs and retention of artists Whilst these responses endorse Baylis’s findings and companies have since conceived programs that address Baylis’s criticisms (QTC’s introduction of a Studio Season and La Boite’s introduction of an Indie program in 2010 for example) a sense of frustration also emerged. Some, like former QTC Chair Kate Foy, felt that “what’s really needed in the theatre is a discussion that breaks out from the old themes and encourages fresh ideas—approaches to solving whatever problems are perceived to exist in ‘the system’.” For commentators like Foy the blogosphere debate enacted a kind of ritual rehearsal of an all-too-familiar set of concerns: inadequate and ill-deployed funding, insufficient venues, talent drain, and an impoverished local culture of theatre going. “Value Chains” versus “Value Ecologies” Why did responses to this report demand more artists, more arts organisations, more venues, and more activities? Why did they repeat demands for more government-subsidised venues, platforms, and support rather than drive toward new seed- or non- subsidised initiatives? At one level, this is to do with the report’s claims: it is natural for artists who have been told quality work is “rare” amongst them to point to lack of support to achieve success. At another level, though, this is because—as useful as it has been for local theatre makers—Baylis’s map is premised on a linear chain from training, to first productions, to further developed productions (involving established writers, directors, designers and performers), to opportunities to tour (inter)nationally, etc. It provides a linear image of a local performing arts sector in which there are individuals and institutions with potential, but specific gaps in the production-distribution-consumption chain that make it difficult to deliver work to target markets. It emphasises gaps in the linear pathway towards “stability” of financial, venue, and audience support and thus “sustainability” over a whole career for independent artists and the audiences they attract. Accordingly, asking government to plug the gaps through elements added to the system (venues, co-production platforms, producer hubs, subsidy, and entrepreneurial endeavours) seems like a logical solution. Whilst this is true, it does not tell the whole story. To generate a wider story, we need to consider: What the expected elements in a “healthy” ecosystem would be (e.g. more versus alternative activity);What other aesthetic, cultural, or economic pressures affect the “health” of an ecosystem;Why practices might need to cycle, ebb, and flow over time in a “healthy” ecosystem. A look at the way La Boite works before, during, and after Baylis’s analysis of Brisbane theatre illustrates why attention to these elements is necessary. A long-running company which has made the transition from amateur to professional to being a primary developer of new Australian work in its distinctive in-the-round space, La Boite has recently shifted its strategic position. A focus on text-based Australian plays has given way to adapted, contemporary, and new work in a range of genres; regular co-productions with companies in Brisbane and beyond; and an “Indie” program that offers other companies a venue. This could be read as a response to Baylis’s recommendation: the production-distribution-consumption chain gap for Brisbane’s independents is plugged, the problem is solved, the recommendation has led to the desired result. Such a reading might, though, overlook the range of pressures beyond Brisbane, beyond Queensland, and beyond the Baylis report that drive—and thus help, hinder, or otherwise effect—the shift in La Boite’s program strategies. The fact that La Boite recently lost its Australia Council funding, or that La Boite like all theatre companies needs co-productions to keep its venue running as costs increase, or that La Boite has rebranded to appeal to younger audiences interested in postdramatic, do-it-your-self or junkyard style aesthetics. These factors all influence what La Boite might do to sustain itself, and more importantly, what its long-term impact on Brisbane’s theatre ecology will be. To grasp what is happening here, and get beyond repetitive responses to anxieties about Brisbane’s theatre ecology, detail is required not simply on whether programs like La Boite’s “plugged the gap” for independent artists, but on how they had both predicted and unpredicted effects, and how other factors influenced the effects. What is needed is to extend mapping from a “value chain” to a full ”value ecology”? This is something Hearn et al. have called for. A value chain suggests a “single linear process with one stage leading to the next” (5). It ignores the environment and other external enablers and disregards a product’s relationship to other systems or products. In response they prefer a “value creating ecology” in which the “constellation of firms are [sic] dynamic and value flow is multi-directional and works through clusters of networks” (6). Whilst Hearn et al. emphasise “firms” or companies in their value creating ecology, a range of elements—government, arts organisations, artists, audiences, and the media as well as the aesthetic, social, and economic forces that influence them—needs to be mapped in the value creating ecology of the performing arts. Cherbo et al. provide a system of elements or components which, adapted for a local context like Brisbane or Queensland, can better form the basis of a value ecology approach to the way a specific performing arts community works, adapts, changes, breaks down, or breaks through over time. Figure 1 – Performing Arts Sector Map (adapted from Cherbo et. al. 14) Here, the performing arts sector is understood in terms of core artistic workers, companies, a constellation of generic and sector specific support systems, and wider social contexts (Cherbo et al. 15). Together, the shift from “value chain” to “value ecology” that Hearn et al. advocate, and the constellation of ecology elements that Cherbo et al. emphasise, bring a more detailed, dynamic range of relations into play. These include “upstream” production infrastructure (education, suppliers, sponsors), “downstream” distribution infrastructure (venues, outlets, agents), and overall public infrastructure. As a framework for mapping “value ecology” this model offers a more nuanced perspective on production, distribution, and consumption elements in an ecology. It allows for analysis of impact of interventions in dozens of different areas, from dozens of perspectives, and thus provides a more detailed picture of players, relationships, and results to support both practice and policy making around practice. An Aus-e-Stage Value Ecology To provide the more detailed, dynamic image of local theatre culture that a value ecology approach demands—to show players, relations between players, and context in all their complexity—we use the Aus-e-Stage Mapping Service, an online application that maps data about artists, arts organisations, and audiences across cityscapes/landscapes. We use Aus-e-Stage with data drawn from three sources: the AusStage database of over 50,000 entries on Australian performing arts venues, productions, artists, and reviews; the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data on population; and the Local Government Area (LGA) maps the ABS uses to cluster populations. Figure 2 – Using AusStage Interface Figure 3 – AusStage data on theatre venues laid over ABS Local Government Area Map Figure 4 – Using Aus-e-Stage / AusStage to zoom in on Australia, Queensland, Brisbane and La Boite Theatre Company, and generate a list of productions, dates and details Aus-e-Stage produces not just single maps, but a sequential series of snapshots of production ecologies, which visually track who does what when, where, with whom, and for whom. Its sequences can show: The way artists, companies, venues, and audiences relate to each other;The way artists’ relationship to companies, venues, and audiences changes over time;The way “external stressors” changes such as policy, industrial, or population changes affect the elements, roles, and relationships in the ecology from that point forward. Though it can be used in combination with other data sources such as interviews, the advantage of AusStage data is that maps of moving ecologies of practice are based not on descriptions coloured by memory but clear, accurate program, preview, and review data. This allows it to show how factors in the environment—population, policy, infrastructure, or program shifts—effect the ecology, effect players in the ecology, and prompt players to adapt their type, level, or intensity of practice. It extends Baylis’s value chain into a full value ecology that shows the detail on how an ecology works, going beyond demands that government plug perceived gaps and moving towards data- and history- based decisions, ideas and innovation based on what works in Brisbane’s performing arts ecology. Our Aus-e-Stage mapping shows this approach can do a number of useful things. It can create sequences showing breaks, blockages, and absences in an individual or company’s effort to move from emerging to established (e.g. in a sudden burst of activity followed by nothing). It can create sequences showing an individual or company’s moves to other parts of Australia (e.g. to tour or to pursue more permanent work). It can show surprising spaces, relations, and sources of support artists use to further their career (e.g. use of an amateur theatre outside the city such as Brisbane Arts Theatre). It can capture data about venues, programs, or co-production networks that are more or less effective in opening up new opportunities for artists (e.g. moving small-scale experiments in Metro Arts’ “Independents” program to full scale independent productions in La Boite’s “Indie” program, its mainstage program, other mainstage programs, and beyond). It can link to program information, documentation, or commentary to compare anticipated and actual effects. It can lay the map dates and movements across significant policy, infrastructure, or production climate shifts. In the example below, for instance, Aus-e-Stage represents the tour of La Boite’s popular production of a new Australian work Zig Zag Street, based on the Brisbane-focused novel by Nick Earls about a single, twentysomething man’s struggles with life, love, and work. Figure 5 – Zig Zag Street Tour Map In the example below, Aus-e-Stage represents the movements not of a play but of a performer—in this case Christopher Sommers—who has been able to balance employment with new work incubator Metro Arts, mainstage and indie producer La Boite, and stage theatre company QTC with his role with independent theatre company 23rd Productions to create something more protean, more portfolio-based or boundary-less than a traditional linear career trajectory. Figure 6 – Christopher Sommers Network Map and Travel Map This value of this approach, and this technology, is clear. Which independents participate in La Boite Indie (or QTC’s “Studio” or “Greenroom” new work programs, or Metro’s emerging work programs, or others)? What benefits does it bring for artists, for independent companies, or for mainstage companies like La Boite? Is this a launching pad leading to ongoing, sustainable production practices? What do artists, audiences or others say about these launching pads in previews, programs, or reviews? Using Aus-e-Stage as part of a value ecology approach answers these questions. It provides a more detailed picture of what happens, what effect it has on local theatre ecology, and exactly which influences enabled this effect: precisely the data needed to generate informed debate, ideas, and decision making. Conclusion Our ecological approach provides images of a local performing arts ecology in action, drawing out filtered data on different players, relationships, and influencing factors, and thus extending examination of Brisbane’s and Queensland’s performing arts sector into useful new areas. It offers three main advances—first, it adopts a value ecology approach (Hearn et al.), second, it adapts this value ecology approach to include not just companies by all up- and down- stream players, supporters and infrastructure (Cherbo et. al.), and, thirdly, it uses the wealth of data available via Aus-e-Stage maps to fill out and filter images of local theatre ecology. It allows us to develop detailed, meaningful data to support discussion, debate, and development of ideas that is less likely to get bogged down in old, outdated, or inaccurate assumptions about how the sector works. Indeed, our data lends itself to additional analysis in a number of ways, from economic analysis of how shifts in policy influence productivity to sociological analysis of the way practitioners or practices acquire status and cultural capital (Bourdieu) in the field. Whilst descriptions offered here demonstrate the potential of this approach, this is by no means a finished exercise. Indeed, because this approach is about analysing how elements, roles, and relationships in an ecology shift over time, it is an ever-unfinished exercise. As Fortin and Dale argue, ecological studies of this sort are necessarily iterative, with each iteration providing new insights and raising further questions into processes and patterns (3). Given the number of local performing arts producers who have changed their practices significantly since Baylis’s Mapping Queensland Theatre report, and the fact that Baylis is producing a follow-up report, the next step will be to use this approach and the Aus-e-Stage technology that supports it to trace how ongoing shifts impact on Brisbane’s ambitions to become a cultural capital. This process is underway, and promises to open still more new perspectives by understanding anxieties about local theatre culture in terms of ecologies and exploring them cartographically. References Arts Queensland. Queensland Arts & Cultural Sector Plan 2010-2013. Brisbane: Arts Queensland, 2010. 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