Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

DECEMBER 23, 2010

Her book kept me company on a number of a long plane trips this year, and if you haven’t read yet it, go get a copy at Amazon. 9 The Participatory Museum by Nina Simon. Open Community by Lindy Dreyer and Maddie Grant. You can pick up a copy here.

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Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 30, 2009

Dear Museum 2.0 readers, I'm almost done with the first draft of The Participatory Museum: A Practical Guide , a book that explores the theory, practice, and design techniques for involving visitors and community members in the creation and sharing of cultural content. Tags: participatory museum.

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Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 27, 2012

The election season, as well as a recent research study on museum membership, has change my perspective on this. A national election is the ultimate participatory project. Why WOULDN'T a science museum engage members in the crusade to draw clear lines between science and pseudoscience?

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Museum 2.0

JUNE 1, 2016

It's packed with practical theories, rags-to-relevance case studies, and inspiring stories from museums and libraries, theaters and parks, dance companies and orchestras, afterschool programs and activists, churches and synagogues. My last book, The Participatory Museum , did well. and then do a little bit more.

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Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 7, 2007

I got my copy of the fall issue of Museums and Social Issues this week. The theme is "Civic Dialogue," and the journal includes articles on the historical, cultural, media, and museum practice of getting people talking to each other (including one by me about such endeavors on the web). A place many museums are not.

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Museum 2.0

MARCH 15, 2010

People often ask me which museums are my favorite. It's not the extent to which they are participatory. I visit lots of perfectly nice, perfectly forgettable museums. In some cases, that's based on subject matter, as at the Museum of Jurassic Technology or the American Visionary Art Museum.

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Museum 2.0

MAY 23, 2008

And now, the research group Forrester provides new insights about different kinds of participatory styles among users of social media sites. I've written before about three types of museum users: contributors, lurkers, and judges. In the same way, we shouldn't think of participatory experiences as being "just for creators."

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Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 20, 2013

It started as a handout for a session that Stacey and I are doing at the California Association of Museums, and then I realized it was so darn useful that it was worth sharing with all of you. The majority of our public programs at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History are created and produced through community collaborations.

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Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Unsurprisingly, some of my favorite museums are small, funky places run by iconoclasts—but that’s not useful to most professionals who work for organizations in which they have little control over size or leadership matters. Maybe the director is obsessed with “company secrets” and you’ll never be able to share behind-the-scenes work.

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Museum 2.0

JULY 2, 2009

How would you design a recommendation system for a museum? When it comes to museums, recommendation systems are a natural solution for the problem of the customized tour. When it comes to museums, recommendation systems are a natural solution for the problem of the customized tour.

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Museum 2.0

MAY 3, 2010

And as someone in the planning stages of a new venue (a cafe that offers craft beer, Belgian frites, and intriguing encounters with strangers), I was looking for information and tools that can help me make the best decisions for the financial and mission-related viability and health of the new company. Who can validate your idea?

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Museum 2.0

AUGUST 7, 2008

For many museums, visitor research--how people use the museum, navigate exhibits, and understand content--may be an equally important arena in which to adopt groundswell listening techniques. I spent an hour this morning "brand listening" to what the online world says about one of my favorite museums, the Exploratorium.

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Museum 2.0

JUNE 27, 2008

Joe explains some of the planned intentional dialogue events: First, for the opening night dinner, we hired a local dance company that is putting together pieces about visiting museums, punctuated by an actor/dancer asking provocative questions to the group. But the Hope Stone dancers aren’t just addressing—they’re engaging.

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Museum 2.0

AUGUST 10, 2009

This can be an incredibly technical topic, as it focuses on the ways that platforms (online, exhibits, museums) can harness the individual activities of many visitors and create meaningful experiential outputs that connect people to each other. But designing an entire museum that functions this way probably isn't your goal. exhibition.

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Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 8, 2008

I have a lot of conversations with people that go like this: Other person: "So, you think that museums should let visitors control the museum experience?" Other person: "But doesn't that erode museums' authority?" If the museum isn't in control, how can it thrive? Me: "Sort of." and my emphatic response is YES.

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Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 18, 2008

In many museums, comment cards are currently the most "participatory" part of the visitor experience. But there are three problems with museum comment cards: The comments are so scattered over a wide range of topics (including generic ones like, "Thank you!") In other words, comment cards aren't effectively organized for use.

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Museum 2.0

MAY 28, 2014

Contrasting that rich human narrative with the kind of gleamy tweaky technology narrative that was emerging from the NISE-NET meeting made me realize that generally speaking, science museums ignore many of the aspects of life that are the most resonant--mortality, sex, humor, tragedy, pity, joy. So we had the key players.

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Museum 2.0

MARCH 6, 2019

While I originally wrote this post to advocate for more participatory practice (i.e. letting museum visitors contribute and collaborate in museums), I now see this as a crucial issue also for more democratic and inclusive practice (i.e. Other person: "But doesn't that erode museums' authority?" Me: "Sort of."

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Museum 2.0

APRIL 19, 2010

"How often do we hear colleagues from museums and galleries stating as their fundamental reason for working co-creatively with audiences that they want to make a great piece of museum work, rather than primarily for reasons of social inclusion or democracy?"

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Museum 2.0

JULY 17, 2008

Traditional exhibition design, in which the museum has a specific story or message to tell, doesn't easily accommodate visitor co-creation. This realization--that a single museum voice was not the best way to tell a particular story--formed the basis for MN150 , the exhibition explored in this post.

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