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). It's fine to drop in and out of the game.

Museum 22

Museum Lecture Denver San Francisco 22

Museum 2.0

APRIL 22, 2008

Why discuss gifting on Museum 2.0? One of my greatest interests is the "p articipatory museum," in which there is substantive, unfacilitated visitor-to-visitor interaction. When I heard the tollbooth story, I started thinking about gifting as a model for participatory experiences in museums. Gifting extends your message.

Gift 23

Gift Participatory Museum Model 23

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 25, 2009

Answers will differ depending on who's asking, but they are also influenced by the designed environment in which questions are asked. The outcome of our conversations is dependent on the diversity of designed environments in which they occur. I'm not talking about guiding content; I'm talking about guiding form.

Design 31

Design Goal Difference Platform 31

Museum 2.0

MARCH 4, 2009

Unlike Superstruct , which employed a very open-ended collaborative framework to invite people to imagine their circumstances in 2019 relative to several provocative scenarios, Signtific is a more focused, tight experience, both in content and format. In other words, a new kind of talkback board or participatory educational program.

Game 24

Game Experiment Participatory Museum 24

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

SEPTEMBER 8, 2014

The Leading Change Summit was more intimate (several hundred people), participatory and interactive, intense, and stimulating. Good instructional design to create an environment for peer dialogue begins with good on boarding and for people to connect with something they already know or believe.

Reflection 124

Reflection NTEN Change Facilitation 124

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 15, 2008

The presumed answer is "yes" your museum needs a blog, a pony, or a set of comfy couches. Does your museum need a custom online social network? Most social networking sites give each user a unique user profile, along with a personal "home base" where you can always find your content, your contacts, and your interests.

Museum 20

Museum Social Network Case Study Discussion 20

Museum 2.0

MAY 5, 2009

I just returned from the American Association of Museums (AAM) annual meeting in Philadelphia. I led two sessions, one on visitor co-created museum experiences, and the other on design inspirations from outside museums. what is the value of the exhibition experience to non-participants, that is, regular museum visitors?

Slides 20

Slides Participatory Museum Children 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 3, 2009

Last month, the Christian Science Monitor published an article entitled, "Museums' new mantra: Connect with community." It took me a couple weeks (and various museum blog responses ) to realize what bugs me about this article--it treats "connecting with community" as a marketing ploy, a "mantra" rather than a mission.

Community 22

Community Museum San Diego San Francisco 22

Museum 2.0

MARCH 12, 2009

I believe that focusing specifically on the social capacity of an object, rather than its content or interpretation, yields new design techniques for museum exhibits and other participatory spaces. I want to connect these students to a larger group of people interested in exploring topics around social technology in museums.

Design 20

Design Experiment Seattle Social 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 12, 2009

It is an exhibit of user-generated content? In almost all cases, museums assure me that they want to be in conversation, that they want to be responsive, that they want to “really hear” what people think. Sadly, it was the second story that was about a museum. Is this a research project? Is it a conversation? Let’s start there.

Conversation 21

Conversation Museum Artist Minneapolis 21

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.

Museum 20

Museum Teen Second Life Discussion 20

Museum 2.0

MAY 16, 2007

into the museum is the potential to encourage more positive in-museum interactions among strangers. I want to see more multi-person exhibits, more prompts for discussion about content, more tools to facilitate connecting wtih other visitors whose interests are similar or in some way useful to your own.

Museum 20

Museum Myspace Facilitation Social Network 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 6, 2008

On June 4, we opened The Tech Virtual Test Zone , a new 2000 sq ft gallery at The Tech Museum of Innovation featuring exhibits on the theme of art, film, and music that were originally developed in Second Life by a community of creative amateurs. Some museum pros have been puzzled by this.

Virtual 21

Virtual Tech Lesson Develop 21

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 2, 2008

They demonstrate that the blog is a more participatory vehicle than other kinds of media. Museum 2.0's It's easy as the blogger to feel this way--after all, I get the most value as a content recipient when you comment back to me, so I (probably incorrectly) inflate the value of those posts. it gets me excited. It's awesome.

Comment 20

Comment Museum Blogger Reflection 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 29, 2010

Now, after attending with museum friends from around the country, I'm hooked. Unlike most museum experiences, where people quietly absorb the work in a room, people were very comfortable pulling each other to specific pieces and extolling their merits or less inspiring qualities. Very few wrote in typical museum or even gallery-speak.

Arts 52

Arts Experiment Artist Social 52

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 15, 2007

I've been thinking recently about the "why" behind encouraging social interactions among strangers in museums. I've been arguing that "visitors as participants" means participating BOTH with content and with other visitors, but that begs the question: do visitors really want to have social experiences with each other?

Museum 20

Museum San Jose Participatory Social 20

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 26, 2009

Here's the basic idea: while you are at the museum, you save digitizable content--either content you make (photos of yourself) or content you collect (museum-supplied text or media of interest). It's an outpost for some cheap content, and that's immediately obvious to me when I get there.

Personal 34

Personal Museum Pledge San Jose 34

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 18, 2008

In many museums, comment cards are currently the most "participatory" part of the visitor experience. It's the one place where visitors can offer direct, open-ended feedback on the institution's content and services. It may be useful if you want to ask "What kind of teen programs should our museum offer?"

Comment 20

Comment Tools Museum Conversation 20

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 28, 2007

Welcome to the second in the four-part series on comfort (and its boundaries) in museums, a day late but just as tasty. I came out of it truly amazed by the power of the museum—not just to elicit laughter, but also to induce bizarre and voluntary acts of silliness in front of and with strangers. By sending people on missions.

Program 20

Program People Museum Lecture 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 11, 2008

s Hawaiian son as applied to museums. Consider these two stories of museum-related wikis that struggled. In May of 2007, Woody Sobey released a wiki for science museum educators to share their demos. Woody had seeded the site with about 12 demos from his own museum, but the wiki never took off. What's a wiki?

Wiki 23

Wiki Wikipedia Museum Doc 23

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 25, 2008

Why do you care about and or work in museums? I don't work in museums because I love them. When I visit a new city, I don't clamor to visit museums. And while I'll visit museums out of professional (and occasionally personal) interest, I don't do it because of a deep emotional connection. And check out the comments.

Museum 29

Museum Alternative Education University 29

Museum 2.0

JUNE 29, 2010

We share an abiding interest in exploring the community-enhancing roles of libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs), especially in terms of the practice of hospitality and service within the institution. Nina's research keeps finding that the right kind of constraints work to produce a better participatory museum experience.

Place 30

Place Discussion Library Museum 30