December 9, 2004 | Read Time: 1 minute
Arts and cultural organizations in the Philadelphia area have a new service to turn to for help in solving everyday technology problems.
TechConnection for the Arts Help Desk offers arts groups 24-hour telephone assistance with their hardware and software questions. The service is provided by the Arts & Business Council of Greater Philadelphia and CAI, an Allentown, Pa., technology-services company.
The council hopes that the new help desk will change the way organizations operate when it comes to technology, says Neville Vakharia, director of technology services and programs at the Arts & Business Council. Many arts groups don’t have technology specialists on their staffs, he says, so when employees encounter a computer problem, they often walk down the hall to ask a colleague they think knows a lot about technology.
While that approach is convenient, says Mr. Vakharia, “the downside is now two staff members are losing time to solve a problem, and often those staff members aren’t the best resources to be addressing that problem.”
Organizations in the TechConnection program will pay $50 to $250 per year, based on the number of employees using the service. Companies often pay thousands of dollars a year for such help-desk services, where an individual call runs between $20 and $100, says Mr. Vakharia.
In the first six weeks the service was available, 46 organizations signed up, with 400 employees among them.
Before the service’s official launch in October, the Arts & Business Council and CAI ran a six-month test that involved more than 300 employees at 30 arts organizations.
For more information: Go to http://www.artsandbusiness-phila.org.
