It's not often that our passions and skills merge to form the perfect profession, but in Martin Denton's case, that's exactly what happened. After years of working in IT, Denton enrolled in a basic Internet class and created nytheatre.com, one of the first websites to chronicle and review theater events in New York City. Founded in 1996, New York Theatre Experience (NYTE) is the producer of the first original podcast series about theater. nytheatrecast.com publishes a yearly anthology of plays by emerging playwrights and operates indietheaternow.com, dedicated to getting new plays into the hands of the public and revenue into the pockets of up-and-coming playwrights. TechSoup has given the organization, which is almost exclusively a Microsoft shop, access to lots of lovely tools and software that it couldn't have afforded.
In 2009, Microsoft selected NYTE as a Show Your Impact winner and awarded $25,000 to use toward new software. This award was the catalyst for completely upgrading the website. Denton is now getting ready to implement a full text search to manage reviews of more than 8,000 shows. Using MapPoint, Expression Studio, and SQL Server has improved infrastructure, added new design, and functionality while eliminating a lot of the grunt work. Before, he had to painstakingly create each new web page one at a time. Now the process to takes about five minutes. The new Microsoft technology has also enabled Denton to double his coverage of indie festivals and performances and to spend more time adding blogs interviews and reviews. Denton's passion and access to new technology fuels his successful promotion of the work of hundreds of nonprofit theater companies to an audience of 3 million people annually, all at no cost to the nonprofit theaters themselves. "Thanks to Microsoft and the TechSoup, we're able to support even more artists than ever before," says Denton.