Michael Drapkin is an expert on business strategy, new media entrepreneurship, and the use of technology in creating business solutions with a client list which features major technology firms like Akamai and Sapient. He is also an avid bass clarinetist who has made a second career out of helping musicians gain entrepreneurial and business skills.
In this presentation given at the 2008 meeting of the College Music Society, Michael Drapkin introduces the fundamentals of project management to an audience of musicians and educators. He discusses various ways of organizing tasks, the classic “triple constraint” of time, scope and resources, and how to keep multiple tasks moving forward as your project advances.
In this segment of a presentation given at the 2008 College Music Society Conference, Michael Drapkin introduces what he calls the “feral method” of project management.
In this segment of a roundtable discussion held at the College Music Society’s 2008 meeting in Atlanta, GA, panelists Gary Beckman, Michael Drapkin and Michael Millar are introduced.
In this segment of a presentation given at the 2008 College Music Society Conference, Michael Drapkin introduces what he calls the “to do list” system of project and task management, and assesses its strengths and weaknesses in moving a project forward.
In this segment of a presentation given at the 2008 College Music Society Conference, Michael Drapkin introduces what he calls the “task list” system of project and task management, explains how to generate a structured series of tasks from an unordered to-do list, and walks the audience through analyzing all the tasks that make up a project to determine optimal order, target date and ownership.
In this segment of a roundtable discussion held at the College Music Society’s 2008 meeting in Atlanta, GA, panelist Michael Drapkin discusses his efforts to establish an entrepreneurship curriculum at the Eastman School, and extols the entrepreneurial potential of music school and conservatory graduates.
In this segment of a presentation given at the 2008 College Music Society Conference, Michael Drapkin introduces a formal methodology of project and task management based on his “task list” system of structuring work, including dividing a task list into a series of benchmarked phases, defining stakeholders, defining goals, and more.
In this segment of a presentation given at the 2008 College Music Society Conference, Michael Drapkin expands on his explanation of project and task management by introducing what project managers call the triple constraint – calculating how time, scope, and available resources affect the probable outcome of your project and understanding how changes in one factor affect the other two.
In this segment of a roundtable discussion held at the College Music Society’s 2008 meeting in Atlanta, GA, panelist Michael Millar, Gary Beckman and Michael Drapkin take questions from the audience. Beckman digs deeper into his dissertation study of entrepreneurship education in college music programs - in particular his discovery of how badly faculty, deans and students all want to make curricular changes to embrace entrepreneurship – and the panel debate various strategies for implementing such a curriculum at a school, how to reach students, the merits of the current assessment culture in public education and how it affects incoming students, and much more.
In this segment of a presentation given at the 2008 College Music Society Conference, Michael Drapkin reiterates for the audience the key concepts introduced: the difference between the “feral method,” “task list method” and formal project management and when each is appropriate; how to group and order tasks in a project, and how the triple constraint of time, scope and resources affects your ability to deliver your project or meet your goal on target.
In this segment of a roundtable discussion held at the College Music Society’s 2008 meeting in Atlanta, GA, the panelists discuss the tension between the artistic aspirations of music students, and the reality that there are relatively few jobs out there playing music which afford a livable wage. They then offers suggestions for nudging students to explore ways to have a career in music which do not depend solely on, for example, landing a major orchestra gig, and to think entrepreneurially about using their talents to make a living.
