Honors and Awards
nytheatre.com Winner of Show Your Impact Contest
sponsored by Tech Soup and Microsoft!
On May 11, 2009 Microsoft and and Tech Soup opened the Show Your
Impact Story Contest to elegible nonprofits in the United States and
Canada. Candidates submitted a detailed impact story describing how the
organization has used Microsoft technologies in innovative ways to maximize
or expand the impact it is having on its community. The impact story should
demonstrate how Microsoft technologies have contributed to what the
organization has achieved in specific areas.
On June 26, 2009 Microsoft and Tech Soup announced the three winners, one
for each specified category. NYTE is one
of these winners. You can read NYTE's official entry
here.
Here are the salient points the contest used to describe our Impact
Story:
Optimize Mission Delivery: nytheatre.com
The New York Theatre Experience, (NYTE) uses new and traditional media to
highlight, nurture, promote, and advance the work of thousands of
indie/nonprofit theatre practitioners making groundbreaking and foundational
art in New York City. NYTE has an annual budget under $100K, one full-time
staffer, and an extensive team of nonprofit theatre professionals as
volunteers. The NYTE website, nytheatre.com, received more than 7 million hits last year from
people coming to learn what is playing in New York theatres, buy tickets,
and read artist interviews and production reviews.
NYTE has optimized the performance of nytheatre.com through the
implementation of Microsoft technologies to make it easier to manage and
make it more user friendly, displaying a greater breadth of information.
MapPoint allows NYTE to geocode locations of more than 200 venues listed on
nytheatre.com. Their SQL Server/VB 2005 system facilitates the management
and mobilization of volunteers more effectively, most crucially during
FringeNYC when volunteers sign up to review 1500 performances of more than
200 theatre, dance, puppetry, comedy, and dramatic productions over a 17-day
period. The SQL Server database also enables the website's "Trip Planner"
feature to display a customized page showing exactly what shows are playing
during a given period of interest.
The donated Microsoft software has enabled NYTE to optimize their
user-friendly, feature-rich website to more effectively promote the work of
hundreds of nonprofit theatre companies to an audience of 3 million people
annually, and all at no cost to the nonprofit theatres themselves.
New York Innovative Theatre Foundation Stewardship Award
In
the fall of 2008 NYTE received the
Stewardship Award given for significant contribution to the Off-Off-Broadway community through service, support
and leadership (presented by the New York Innovative Theatre
Foundation). Previous winners of the Stewardship Award are Ellen
Stewart/La MaMa (2005), The Field (2006), and the Alliance of Resident
Theatres/New York (A.R.T./New York) (2007).
Check out the video about us. After the Award Ceremony was
completed Martin and Rochelle had the honor to meet playwright Edward
Albee, who was one of the presenters. Shown are Martin Denton, playwright Doric
Wilson, playwright Edward Albee, and Rochelle Denton. (Photo by Matt Cohen)
Our Town Thanks You Award
Each
year Our Town newspaper, the largest
community newspaper on the East Side of Manhattan, salutes New Yorkers whose
accomplishments deserve to be highlighted with their OTTY (Our Town Thanks
You) awards. Founder and Executive Director of NYTE, Martin Denton, is one
of the honorees for 2008.
He was honored as part of the Culture Club for his "passion for the
stage" where his "love of theater found a life online". The article in the
paper goes on to tell of NYTE's beginnings, the popular website,
nytheatre.com and many of the accomplishments and goals of NYTE.