Viking pub crawl. (Jamie Kelter Davis)
1. Revel
The sixth annual Viking Pub Crawl is expected to draw more than 300 costumed Vikings to Andersonville. Tickets include a commemorative glass, an appetizer and access to drink specials. If you really want to go all out, a limited number of cow horn drinking horns are available.
Details: 3-6 p.m. Saturday along Clark Street and Ashland Avenue in Andersonville. $35
Looking for more events? Check out the season’s light shows, markets, performances and pop-ups in our 2023 Chicago Holiday Events Guide.
2. Glide
Three ice rinks in the Chicago area open this weekend. Lace up your skates or rent a pair at Maggie Daley Park’s Ice Skating Ribbon or Millennium Park’s McCormick Tribune Ice Rink. Or head to the Chicago Wolves Ice Rink at Parkway Bank Park, where you’ll also find a “Light Up the Park” tree-lighting ceremony Saturday featuring an afternoon of family-friendly programming.
Details for the Ice Skating Ribbon: Friday through March 10 at Maggie Daley Park, 337 E. Randolph St. free-$20 / MAP
Details for the McCormick Tribune Ice Rink: Friday through March 3 at Millennium Park, 201 E. Randolph St. free-$20 / MAP
Details for the Chicago Wolves Ice Rink: Saturday through Jan. 28 at Parkway Bank Park, 5501 Park Place in Rosemont. free-$8 / MAP
McCormick Tribune Ice Rink, 2021. (Courtesy of the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events)
3. Mangia!
At Eataly’s Holiday Kick-Off Taste-Around, guests receive two glasses of regional Italian wine and access to at least 10 tasting stations. On the menu are Wagyu spiedini, black truffle agnolotti, and pear and truffle honey crostini.
Details: 6-7:30 p.m. Friday at Eataly Chicago, 43 E. Ohio St. $65 / MAP
4. Imagine
Calling all “Downton Abbey” fans. “Downton Abbey: The Exhibition” has set up shop in Skokie with production props, exclusive footage from the series, more than 60 costumes, and recreations of Mrs. Patmore’s kitchen, Carson’s office and the Crawley family’s dining room. Read a review from WTTW News reporter Marc Vitali.
Details: 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Wednesday to Sunday through March 31 (closed Thanksgiving) at Westfield Old Orchard Shopping Center, 4905 Old Orchard Center in Skokie. $27-59 ages 12 and up; kids under 12 free / MAP
5. Collect
Shop local and support artists at three markets this weekend. Refine Collective’s third annual Maker Mall features women and POC makers; you’ll find more than 30 businesses represented, plus a non-alcoholic spritz bar courtesy of San Pellegrino. Show of Hands is putting on a 10th Anniversary Holiday Show. Expect one-of-a-kind items from more than 30 vendors; a Friday night preview includes cocktails from Bitter Ex Bitters. And the Millennium Park Holiday Art Market features dozens of local artists selling jewelry, pottery, paintings, drawings and more.
Details for the Refine Collective Maker Mall: noon-6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at salonlb., 1010 W. 35th St., suite 500. Free / MAP
Details for Show of Hands 10th Anniversary Holiday Show: 5-9 p.m. Friday ($10), 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday (Free) at Color Club, 4146 N. Elston Ave. / MAP
Details for the Millennium Park Holiday Art Market: noon-8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, noon-5 p.m. Sunday at Millennium Park, Chase Promenade North, 201 E. Randolph St. Free / MAP
Millennium Park Art Market, 2019. (Courtesy of the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events)
Events listed are subject to change. We recommend double-checking times and locations before you head out the door. Want to share your upcoming events with us for consideration in a future roundup? Send us an email.
November 16, 2023
This week, attend the Baroque Ensemble led by Tekla Cunningham, head to the Duwamish November Native Art Market, engage in a discussion on P. Sainath’s book: The Last Heroes: Foot Soldiers of Indian Freedom, and more.
November 19, 3:00pm | Baroque Ensemble, Brechemin Auditorium
Tekla Cunningham, Artist in Residence and Director for the UW Baroque Ensemble, leads the Baroque Ensemble to perform the “Baroque Pearls from Venice,” a program of works by Merula, Castello, Rosenmüller, Marini, Uccellini, as well as a fully improvised Passamezzo Antico in this end-of-quarter concert.
Free | More info
November 21, 4:00 – 6:00pm | Book Talk with Elliott Prasse-Freeman | Rights Refused: Grassroots Activism and State Violence in Myanmar, Thomson Hall
In this book, Elliott Prasse-Freeman documents grassroots political activists who advocate for workers and peasants across Burma, covering not only the so-called “democratic transition” from 2011-2021, but also the February 2021 military coup that ended that experiment and the ongoing mass uprising against it.
Elliot Prasse-Freeman is the Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the National University of Singapore.
Free | More info & Registration
November 21, 4:00pm | Voice Division Recital, Brechemin Auditorium
Students of Thomas Harper, Associate Professor of Voice, and Carrie Shaw, Artist In Residence for the Voice Program, perform works from the vocal repertoire.
Free | More info
November 24 – 26, 10:00am – 7:00pm | Duwamish November Native Art Market 2023, Duwamish Longhouse & Cultural Center
Come to the November Native Art Market to support native artists and food vendors on site.
Free | More info
November 28, 7:30pm | Concert and Campus Bands: Sonic Luminescence, Meany Hall
The UW Concert and Campus Bands, led by Roger Wu Fu and David Stewart, present “Sonic Luminescence,” performing music by Julie Giroux, Frank Ticheli, David Maslanka, Eric Whitacre, and others.
Buy Tickets | More info & Tickets
November 29, 10:30am | Guest Artist Master Class: Atar Arad, viola, Brechemin Auditorium 
Viola students of Melia Watras perform for renowned violist Atar Arad, longtime professor at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. Arad will also give a talk, “A Tiger in the Room,” about dealing with stage fright.
Free | RSVP & More info
November 29, 4:00pm | Garrick Ohlsson Residency: Panel Discussion, Brechemin Auditorium
The internationally esteemed concert pianist Garrick Ohlsson takes part in a public panel discussion during a three-day residency at the UW School of Music.
Free | More info
November 29, 7:30 pm | Percussion Ensemble: Ionisation, Meany Hall
The UW Percussion Ensemble, led by Director Bonnie Whiting, explores early 1930s percussion repertoire in its program Ionisation, reimagining Edgard Varèse’s iconic early percussion work with the Afrocubanismo pioneer Amadeo Roldán’s Ritmicas as well as music by James Tenney, Gabriela Lena Frank, and Nick Hubble.
Buy Tickets | More info & Tickets
November 30, 5:00 – 6:30pm | LECTURE | P. Sainath | The Last Heroes: Foot Soldiers of Indian Freedom, Kane Hall
Join the South Asia Center for a discussion with acclaimed journalist P. Sainath, who will discuss his new book: The Last Heroes: Foot Soldiers of Indian Freedom. The book features millions of ordinary people living in India – farmers, laborers, homemakers, forest produce gatherers, artisans, and others – that stood up to the British. Dive deep into the difference between freedom and independence through the voices of these people in P. Sainath’s book.
P. Sainath is the Founder Editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI), an outcome of his three decades-plus experience in journalism. PARI aims to report and record the two-thirds of India’s population that were hidden from corporate media.
Free | More info & Registration
November 30, 6:30pm | “Twenty Dreams”: Fall 2023 Katz Distinguished Lecture, Husky Union Building
Katherine McKittrick will present new work that highlights anti-colonial methodologies and addresses some limitations and possibilities of theorizing climate catastrophe and ecocide alongside race and racism. McKittrick’s thinking is propelled by methodological clues and analytical frames that tend to equate environmental toxicities with (degraded) blackness. McKittrick will also center pedagogy and draw attention to how black livingness is not a concept, per se, but a set of actions that teach people how to theorize the environs anew.
The Katz Distinguished Lectures in the Humanities Series recognizes scholars in the humanities and emphasizes the role of the humanities in liberal education.
Free | More info
October – November | “Ways of Knowing” Podcast: Episode 6
“Ways of Knowing” is an eight-episode podcast connecting humanities research with current events and issues. In this week’s episode, Diana Ruíz discusses how the same images can be used on both sides of the same debate. In this case, pro- and anti-immigration. Ruíz, assistant professor of cinema and media studies at the UW, describes how the photos evoked empathy and assistance for humanitarian organizations, but were also used to promote support for vigilante groups by inducing fear.
This season features faculty from the UW College of Arts & Sciences as they explore race, immigration, history, the natural world—even comic books. Each episode analyzes a work, or an idea, and provides additional resources for learning more.
Have an event that you would like to see featured in the ArtSci Roundup? Connect with Lauren Zondag (zondagld@uw.edu)
Tag(s): Center for Southeast Asia & its Diasporas • Department of American Indian Studies • Department of Asian Languages & Literature • Department of Cinema & Media Studies • School of Music • Simpson Center for the Humanities • South Asia Center
‘Do It Right’ with AI: Ally creators experiment with generative AI in marketing test case
Early results show Ally.ai capabilities could boost speed, drive team creativity and productivity
CHARLOTTE, N.C., Nov. 16, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Ally Financial Inc. (NYSE: ALLY) announced today the early results of an experimental generative AI use case with its marketing team designed to help understand the real-world impact the technology could have on campaign development and employee productivity. Using the Ally.ai platform’s large language model (LLM) chat and prompt functionality, a select group of marketers were able to reduce the time needed to produce creative campaigns and content by up to 2-3 weeks and reported an average time savings of 34%, compared to typical processes without AI.
Additional results reported from the month-long experimental program include:
“The best marketing teams know the art of evolution, which includes evaluating and testing of transformative technologies,” said Andrea Brimmer, Chief Marketing and Public Relations Officer at Ally. “The early results demonstrate how AI could enable our talent to focus on creative tasks that needed the most human involvement, while speeding up the routine efforts of our day-to-day work. We look forward to the continued exploration of generative AI and learning more about how the technology can assist our team.”
Ally.ai, the company’s proprietary, cloud-based AI platform that serves as a secure, private bridge between enterprise-grade LLMs and Ally’s data and AI applications, launched in June 2023. The test with marketing comes on the heels of Ally’s pilot with its Customer Care and Experience group where Ally.ai was used to quickly and accurately summarize customer service calls, helping associates focus their energy on more meaningful customer interactions and reduce the time needed to service and close a customer inquiry.
Read more about Ally.ai and the Customer Care use case here.
Both use cases reflect a commitment to Ally’s core principles for the enterprise use of AI: initially focusing on use cases that support employee productivity and optimizing internal business processes; providing human intervention and controls for oversight and training; protecting against the disclosure of personal identifying information and prohibiting third party model providers from using Ally data to train their foundational models.
“The purpose of building Ally.ai in-house, and with foundational data, cloud and network infrastructure already in place, is to scale its use throughout the organization while also keeping a close eye on potential risks and opportunities for new use cases,” said Sathish Muthukrishnan, Chief Information, Data and Digital Officer at Ally. “The value that our marketing colleagues could get from Ally.ai demonstrates how important cross-functional collaboration is to the development of enterprise AI capabilities.”
Generative AI in Marketing: Supporting Productivity
In addition to the preset system prompts and security features already embedded in Ally.ai, the platform needed a place where teammates could engage with the LLM directly. Understanding that most LLMs and generative AI applications are good for summarization, content creation, ideation/brainstorming, and information analysis, Ally’s developers built an open prompt user interface (UI) for Ally.ai that would allow teammates to do two types of work: chat directly with the secured LLM and also develop specialized prompts that could be saved, used again, and shared with colleagues based on their accuracy and usefulness rates.
Teammates could change features of the platform depending on the work they did, including toggling between chat and prompt mode, adjusting prompt length as well as the model’s creative parameters and vocabulary. The participant team frequently used Ally.ai as a starting point for creative development, specifically for first drafts of advertising copy, video scripts or social media posts, or enhancing human-driven ideas that originated from brainstorms or naming exercises.
An example: the content team performed a test of Ally.ai by providing the platform with a transcript of a podcast that featured an Ally executive. The team asked the platform to create the first draft of a 750-word article for Ally’s Conversationally blog with the information provided, plus direction to incorporate the most insightful, informative and entertaining parts that would be relevant to consumers. While the Ally.ai output required editing and the finesse of Ally’s content writers and it still went through Ally’s well-established regulatory review processes, having a quick first draft done in 15 minutes helped reduce the total time needed to create and edit the blog article from four hours to just one.
“We look at Ally.ai as an assistant that will be able to help our teammates with faster and smarter project delivery, which leads to a better experience for our customers,” Brimmer said. “In several different instances, our content writers were able to use thoughtfully crafted prompts to either start up the creative process or help extend the distribution of content to new channels. Anytime we can reduce the time to publish while also letting our creatives do what they do best, that means a lot in our fast-moving, competitive environment.”
Dig deeper on how the Ally Marketing team tested AI on the Ally Tech blog.
With the Ally.ai UI in place, Ally teammates can be trained to use it for the exploration and development of approved business use cases. The opportunity to learn more about AI and train using the platform has created a positive energy inside the company. Earlier this month, Ally hosted its second AI Day – a half-day dedicated to education and knowledge sharing around AI – with almost 1,000 teammates from multiple business units in attendance.
“You can’t escape the conversation around AI, so we are taking hold of that momentum and using it as a springboard to continue to explore new use cases that will drive AI adoption internally while supporting business goals,” Muthukrishnan said. “Right now, there are more than 100 use cases being carefully evaluated throughout the enterprise. While not all of them will pass our rigorous testing, we remain optimistic about what AI can bring to our teammates at Ally and to the financial services industry.”
For more insights from the technology team at Ally, including how the team is exploring new innovations like quantum computing and digital accessibility, visit https://ally.tech.
About Ally Financial
Ally Financial Inc. (NYSE: ALLY) is a financial services company with the nation’s largest all-digital bank and an industry-leading auto financing business, driven by a mission to “Do It Right” and be a relentless ally for customers and communities. The company serves more than 11 million customers through a full range of online banking services (including deposits, mortgage, point-of-sale personal lending, and credit card products) and securities brokerage and investment advisory services. The company also includes a robust corporate finance business that offers capital for equity sponsors and middle-market companies, as well as auto financing and insurance offerings. For more information, please visit www.ally.com and follow @allyfinancial.
For more information and disclosures about Ally, visit https://www.ally.com/#disclosures.
For further images and news on Ally, please visit http://media.ally.com.
Contacts:
Laurie Hurst
Ally Communications (Media)
media@ally.com
SOURCE Ally Financial
One program called Intersections brings together musicians from around the region and the world to share their art by exploring both cultural musical traditions and avant-garde counterpoints. Previous Intersections performers have included a trio of world renowned pianists and virtuoso tabla player, Samir Chatterjee.
“Since the Intersections Concert series launched in 2023, there have been several sell-out shows as well as several endearing reviews by our local music industry. The community support has been quite rewarding and I look forward to an innovative season ahead!” said Waltz.
There’s also the complementary series, Intersecciones.
“It’s an exploration of arts and culture through a binational lens,” said Waltz. “The Intersecciones series highlights writers, singers and artists from across Mexico with the goal of presenting the diaspora of Mexican arts, culture, life, and history”
Park & Market is also home to nearly 30 resident partners such as the Burnham Center for Community Advancement, The San Diego Regional Economic Development Council, the County of San Diego Black Chamber of Commerce, World Design Capital, Digital Gym Cinema, and more.
“Part of the mission of Park & Market is to help incubate and amplify great work happening around the community,” Waltz said of the resident partners.
Furthermore, Park & Market is home to an art gallery that often features exhibitions with a focus on cultural diversity. The building is also the site of educational programs, offering classes and workshops hosted by the UC San Diego Division of Extended Studies in the areas of Arts and Humanities, Business and leadership, Corporate Education and Custom Training, Digital Arts, Education, Engineering, Environment & Sustainability, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Pre-College, and much more.
By connecting with audiences from various backgrounds, the series and its venue hope to contribute to a more informed and engaged society, fostering positive change in the San Diego region and beyond.
To learn more about The Helen Edison Lecture Series, visit the UC San Diego Extended Studies Helen Edison Lecture Series page.
Reserve your tickets for the Helen Edison Lecture Series event featuring Matthew Desmond on December 14.
Learn more about Park & Market: https://parkandmarket.ucsd.edu/
Authored by – Sumit Gupta, Founder The Viral Pitch
Businesses now use influencer marketing as an important means to advertise their products and offerings to a larger audience. It is an effective strategy to connect with your target market, increase brand recognition, and boost sales. However, negotiating and knowing how to create win-win agreements is essential to the success of an influencer campaign. Given the continued rise in influencer quotes across the majority of platforms, negotiating skills are more important than ever. Marketers today are required to have a negotiating plan in place before initiating a contract and to be fully informed of every factor that goes into determining pricing that benefits both parties. Negotiating with influencers can be difficult, but with the appropriate strategy, it can be advantageous for everyone involved.
Here’s a look at some suggestions and tips to keep in mind before beginning your next influencer negotiation-
Know Your Goals
It’s critical to define your campaign’s objectives, before connecting with influencers, whether they are enhanced brand recognition, more sales, or increased engagement. Know about your actual budget and have an appropriate number in mind when negotiating a flat charge and stay within it. Additionally, it’s crucial to be open to end the conversation politely if it becomes obvious that coming to a mutually advantageous agreement on budget with your chosen influencer is not possible while keeping your campaign objectives in mind. This strategy, based on understanding your goals, will not only assist you in choosing the appropriate influencers but also provide you the power to forge partnerships that are in line with your campaign objectives.
Matching with the right set of Influencers
Like businesses, influencers have unique purposes, goals & niche as well. Thus, understanding the niche & goal of an influencer and what they hope to gain from the partnership is essential to starting meaningful discussions. Moreover, learning more about their former partnerships has a dual purpose. First, it provides insightful information about their knowledge & reach in the industry. It is possible to judge someone’s competence and credibility by looking at the kinds of projects & content they have worked on, which can help you make a better-informed choice. Second, it reveals how other brands feel about them, demonstrating their capacity to forge fruitful partnerships. With this deep understanding at your fingertips, you can effectively improve your negotiation technique to ensure that their aims and your campaign goals are compatible.
Being Transparent
Transparent communication is essential for creating effective influencer partnerships. It’s important to be upfront about your requirements and possible contributions. If a creator’s price is out of your price range, think about adjusting campaign requirements to reach a solution that works. Additionally, a creator can be open to lowering their cost if you’re prepared to investigate shorter collaborations or fewer deliverables while still fulfilling campaign goals. Especially when a brand’s eager to work with a particular influencer, adjusting deliverables might be a smart move in scenarios with fixed or stringent influencer contracts. This strategy promotes trust, which enhances the negotiation process for a win-win result.
Offer Value
Since multiple firms approach influencers every day, it is critical to provide them with value and some additional perks if you want to stand out. Think about what you can provide the influencer that will be advantageous to them, such as visibility to your audience, a monetary incentive, or complimentary services or products. To provide the influencer with something special and appealing, be creative & logical, and think outside the box. If you’re extremely close to finalizing the partnership but are still struggling to get over the hurdle, a thoughtful gift can be all it requires.
Monitor and Evaluate the Outcomes
For future collaborations to be shaped, careful evaluation of influencer content performance is essential in the final stage. In accordance with your marketing standards and objectives, this means carefully reviewing reach, engagement, conversions, and ROI. To identify success reasons and areas for improvement, it is equally important to ask for feedback from influencers as well. Additionally, this step includes encouraging collaboration by talking with influencers about potential execution ideas that are founded in their individual styles. This strategy allows for developing relationships that successfully utilize influencer creativity while also assessing prior performance. To ensure that future collaborations are not just transactions but instead value-rich, co-creative endeavours, these careful evaluations serve as the basis for decisions about whether to move forward with them.
Mastering the Art of Negotiation!
It takes a personalized approach, willingness to listen as well as compromise, and experience to negotiate with influencers. Negotiating influencer quotes might be intimidating, but if you have a plan in place and the appropriate resources at your fingertips, you should be able to close the deal. Furthermore, it is essential to be transparent, provide value, know the objectives, and comprehend those of the influencer, then negotiate. Additionally, stick to your spending plan and don’t be shy about doing a little negotiating. Be self-assured, first and foremost, in your brand. Thus, with a well-thought-out plan and a firm belief in your brand, you can form connections that not only help your company but also the influencers you work with, resulting in a win-win situation for all parties.
Weekly News Digest |
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November 16, 2023 — In addition to this week’s NewsBreaks article and the monthly NewsLink Spotlight, Information Today, Inc. (ITI) offers Weekly News Digests that feature recent product news and company announcements. Watch for additional coverage to appear in the next print issue of Information Today. For other up-to-the-minute news, check out ITI’s Twitter account: @ITINewsBreaks. CLICK HERE to view more Weekly News Digest items. |
Exact Editions Captures Source Photography Magazine for Posterity
Exact Editions is now offering the complete digital archive of the Source quarterly photography magazine for individuals and institutions. The archive dates to 1992, with the magazine geared to “[a]nyone with an interest in developing their critical understanding of photography,” the press release states. The magazine has a focus on photographers who work and exhibit in Great Britain and Ireland and offers features, book reviews, portfolio pages, exhibition reviews, and more.
“There is such a wealth of images and engaging articles within the Source archive that can now be accessed on digital devices. The complete archive will be popular with libraries offering art and photography courses worldwide,” says Daryl Rayner, managing director of Exact Editions.
For more information, read the press release.
Send correspondence concerning the Weekly News Digest to NewsBreaks Editor
“Old Blue Truck” by Carol Hilleary will be among the pieces on display at the West Virginia Watercolor Society show at the Parkersburg Art Center where an opening reception will be held 1-3 p.m. Sunday. (Photo Provided)
PARKERSBURG — The Parkersburg Art Center will celebrate the exhibit of the West Virginia Watercolor Society with an opening reception on 1-3 p.m. Sunday.
The show will be on display during regular hours through Dec. 22 and by appointment the week of Dec. 26-29.
The biennial exhibit at the Art Center brings together the works of the most talented watercolorists in West Virginia.
Theme of the show is Anything Goes as artists can use any painted surface and any soluble media. The idea is to have fun and get creative!” Debbie Lester, exhibits director at the Watercolor Society, said.
Watercolor is difficult, according to Abby Hayhurst, artistic director of the Parkersburg Art Center.
“Daybreak” by Kristen Colebank, the Best of Show, 2022 All Member Exhibit, at the West Virginia Watercolor Society exhibition, is among the work to be on display at the 2023 show opening Sunday at the Parkersburg Art Center. (Photo Provided)
“I have nothing but admiration for the artists who produced the work that was accepted for this exhibit,” Hayhurst said.
“When you touch brush to paper, you have to be right the first time. Unlike oils or acrylics, you can’t scrape it off and hope for steadier hands tomorrow,” Hayhurst said. “Precise detail is hard to achieve when your paint wants to go for a stroll.”
Many of these pieces are for sale and several of the artists have made prints of their work that will be available for sale for the duration of the exhibit. A selection of greeting cards also will be available.
Items can be purchased at the reception desk. Original works will be available on Dec. 22 and prints and cards are cash and carry.
The West Virginia Watercolor Society was organized in 1984 to guide and inspire watercolor artists, highlight the broad scope of watercolor painting and promote high standards of the art in the state of West Virginia.
The society holds workshops, publishes a newsletter and hosts both juried and non-juried exhibitions. For more information, go to http://www.wvwatercolorsociety.org.
The opening reception is free for members of the Art Center, children under 12 and artists plus one guest. Otherwise, admission to the opening reception is $10.
Appetizers and beverages will be available.
Hours for the Art Center, 725 Market St., at the corner of Market and Eighth streets, are 10-5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Admission to the exhibit is free from Nov. 21-Dec. 22 thanks to the sponsorship of WVU Medicine Camden Clark Medical Center.
For more information about the Art Center, go to its page Facebook, Instagram or www.parkersburgartcenter.org.
Melbourne-based upcycling clothing project Not Sew Fast is hosting a slow fashion and art market over the coming weekend in Brunswick. With a plethora of labels like Clingy Bags, Pebble Gems, Spiraro and more, you can browse slow fashion pieces while enjoying music and art provided by local talent. For more information, head here.
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