Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 7, 2010

Nina has written a fantastic book engagement called The Participatory Museum. If you want a chance of winning a copy, leave a comment saying how you might apply some of the science of participation to your social media strategy. Blog commenters are contributors, as are people who engage in contests.

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Model Activities Active Activism 98

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 26, 2012

Writing my masters thesis for Gothenburg University’s International Museum Studies program while also working four days a week as the Director of Community Programs at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History this spring was certainly a challenge but also an incredible opportunity.

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Museum Program Participatory Community 49

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

OCTOBER 16, 2007

blog has set up an experiment using VoiceThreads, a multimedia presentation software that allows people to add their voices to the presentation. engage in this collaboration over the next week by offering your comments about Human + online. html to contribute your comments. My friend Nina who writes the Museum2.0

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Voice Test Museum New York 50

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 18, 2013

This August/September, I am "rerunning" popular Museum 2.0 Originally posted in April of 2011, just before I hung up my consulting hat for my current job at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. I''ve spent much of the past three years on the road giving workshops and talks about audience participation in museums.

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Museum Question Participatory Evaluation 45

Museum 2.0

JUNE 24, 2010

Last week, I visited the Wing Luke Asian Museum in Seattle. I've long admired this museum for its all-encompassing commitment to community co-creation , and the visit was a kind of pilgrimage to their new site (opened in 2008). I'm always a bit nervous when I visit a museum I love from afar. What if it isn't what I expected?

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Museum Participatory Model Seattle 51

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

DECEMBER 23, 2010

The authors were kind enough to give me a copy to give away on this blog, so if you leave a comment you could be the lucky winner of a book! Digital Activism was one of several books I gave to my friends at iHub in Nairobi. Digital Activism Decoded: The New Mechanics of Change , Mary Joyce, Editor. Zilch by Nancy Lublin.

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Amazon Nonprofit Social Media Oregon 116

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 3, 2014

Whoever wrote this comment card: thank you. They diversified the voice of immigration in the exhibition and encouraged people to share their own histories verbally. Each of these activities invited contribution on a different level. The trick is to invite many voices in many forms. You made my month.

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Participatory Museum History Arts 45

Museum 2.0

JUNE 29, 2011

Now that I'm on staff at a museum, I've (re)discovered a more pedestrian value of visitor participation: it's delightful. Every day when I walk by our visitor comment board, I feel like I'm getting little gifts from visitors. Be charming and delightful" isn't one of the bottom-line goals of most museums. But maybe it should be.

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Museum Participatory Comment Sound 47

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 9, 2017

Hosted by a sound art collective, Ultra-red, the 2015 event promised "to investigate listening as a political activity and to interrogate the stakes of participation in neoliberalism." When should you turn down the invitation to share your voice? There are many ways for voices to get chopped and twisted.

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Participatory Museum Voice Press 20

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 16, 2013

It's not every day that a visitor buys pizza for everyone in the museum. Then again, Saturday was hardly normal at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. Ze was really hands-on with everyone, giving hugs, taking photos, jumping in to do activities with participants. The activities had a really low barrier to entry.

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Reflection Community Museum Participatory 43

Museum 2.0

JUNE 12, 2013

TCG is the industry association for non-profit theaters, the way AAM is for museums. Given TCG''s multi-year Audience (R)evolution initiative, I took the opportunity to write a new talk about what revolution has looked like at our small museum in Santa Cruz. At the same time, our community relevance was limited.

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Museum Learning History Arts 55

Museum 2.0

APRIL 1, 2015

Last week, Ian David Moss and I both blogged about the process of developing a theory of change for the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. At the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, one way we''re answering these questions is with a theory of change. It''s a logical flowchart that connects activities to outcomes to impact.

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Change Museum History Arts 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 26, 2008

This week, I'm launching a new site: the Voicemail Museum. It's an experiment that merges two of my greatest interests: finding novel, easy ways for visitors to contribute content to museums finding questions that draw such compelling responses that random peoples' answers would be worth browsing To participate, all you need is a phone.

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Museum Audio Participatory Phone 20

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 30, 2007

Welcome to the first installment of the Visitor Voices book club. This week, we're looking at the first section, Talking Back and Talking Together , which features comment boards, talk-back walls, and discussion forums at a variety of museums. I invite you to do the same in the comments. And now onto the show.

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Voice Museum Lesson Pledge 20

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 8, 2007

This week, with the gracious help of Eric Siegel of the New York Hall of Science , Museum 2.0 In the spirit of that question, Museum 2.0 The first of these is up now and will be active for the next week. If you don't have a microphone, you can contribute text, but the voice component is pretty powerful.

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Museum Experiment New York Voice 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 25, 2011

I've spent much of the past three years on the road giving workshops and talks about audience participation in museums. Feel free to add your own questions and answers in the comments! The Museum 2.0 For more on the differences among different types of museums (with examples), check out this post.

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Question Participatory Museum Evaluation 49

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 2, 2008

When people ask about blogging, the question of comments comes up more frequently than any other. There are many good ways to measure a blog's value , but somewhere inside ourselves, we feel that comments are the thing that validate a blog's existence. So when people ask, "Why don't more people comment?," Museum 2.0's

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Comment Museum Blogger Reflection 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 19, 2015

One of my favorite comments on the first post in this series came from Lyndall Linaker, an Australian museum worker, who asked: " Who decides what is relevant? Who interprets the interests of the community and decides on the relevant themes and activities for the year? My answer: neither. The market decides what's relevant.

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Teen Museum Voice Collaboration 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 3, 2011

Thirteen students produced three projects that layered participatory activities onto an exhibition of artwork from the permanent collection of the Henry Art Gallery. When activities were not facilitated, people were often too timid to interact. As one participant said, "the museum feels friendly in a way it usually doesn't."

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Participatory Arts Audience Museum 51

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 16, 2016

And so the collaborator on the phone asked: would I sign the petition on behalf of our museum? Several museum staff members had gotten involved in the political action personally outside of work, and they wanted to know if we could sign on organizationally. Our museum has a growing advocacy component to our work.

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Policy Advocacy Museum Voice 20

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 28, 2009

What role does “promoting human happiness” play in the mission statements and actions of museums? That’s the question I’m pondering thanks to Jane McGonigal and the Center for the Future of Museums (CFM). Earlier today, the CFM offered a free webcast of Jane McGonigal’s talk on gaming, happiness, and museums.

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Museum Game Structure South America 21

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 13, 2007

William Goldman does something similar with The Princess Bride, commenting about dreadfully dull chapters he has omitted for the reader's sanity. But it's not so easy to integrate into larger-scale museum writing. Have you ever walked someone, a non-museum professional, through an exhibition you have or are working on?

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Museum Model Voice Storytelling 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 29, 2015

These are the slides and notes for the talk I gave at the American Alliance of Museums conference on Monday, April 27 about the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. When I became the director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History four years ago, I took this work with me. They talked about community building.

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Build Community Museum Artist 20

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

APRIL 23, 2008

One of the best projects that illustrates the basic idea of Web2.0 - listening and conversation and stakeholders creating their own experience with your organization - comes from the Brooklyn Museum of Art. o is Transparency - and the best example of that is what the Indianapolis Art Museum has done with its pubic metrics on its web site.

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Arts Social Media Examples Artist 74

Museum 2.0

APRIL 18, 2008

Thanks to Bryan Kennedy from the Science Museum of Minnesota for providing this overview/reflection on the Museums and the Web conference that recently concluded in Montreal. Museums and the Web 2008 guest blogger Bryan Kennedy here. The back-channel was an especially active and important part of the conference this year.

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Museum Web Teen Flickr 20

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 Lecture Denver San Francisco 22

Museum 2.0

JULY 7, 2010

I don't know - and I hope you'll share your thoughts in the comments. Most museums that offer interactive exhibits, media elements, or participatory activities offer them alongside traditional labels and interpretative tools. So what's the solution? Dias de las Muertos or Chinese New Year to attract new audiences.

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Audience Museum Oakland Participatory 40

Museum 2.0

MARCH 25, 2015

This is the first in a two-part series about the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History’s new theory of change. This week, Ian David Moss and I are each writing blog posts about our collaborative process to develop a theory of change at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. For three years, we hit the gas at my museum—hard.

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Process Change Develop Museum 20

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 7, 2010

Last week marked four years for the Museum 2.0 People--especially young folks looking to break into the museum business--often ask me how I got here. Ed Rodley recently wrote a blog post about museum jobs entitled "Getting Hired: It's Who You Know and Who Knows You." hour at the Museum. I made $26/hour at NASA and $7.25/hour

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Museum Boston Participatory Job 52

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 2, 2008

Today, Museum 2.0 And when I think back on the last year and how it compared to year one of blogging, the shining difference is you--your interest, your comments, and most of all, your extraordinary example. I started the Museum 2.0 I started the Museum 2.0 and watched the Museum 2.0 and watched the Museum 2.0

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Museum Voice Minnesota Participatory 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 22, 2009

In the collaborative model, visitors are invited to serve as active partners in the creation of an institutional project which is originated and ultimately controlled by the institution. However, the public is actively involved in multiple steps of the research process, including collecting data, analyzing results, and drawing conclusions.

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Public Research Participatory Report 36

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

AUGUST 12, 2009

Photo by Bradlauster Note from Beth: One of the things I love about blogging is the conversation in the comments because it always leads to understanding, insights, and learning. I've been keeping a careful eye out for thoughtful comments that could turn into guest posts. That's where this post about crowdsourcing came out of it!

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Aggregator Model Leadership Method 82

Museum 2.0

APRIL 7, 2009

Which of these descriptions exemplifies participatory museum practice? Museum invites community members to participate in the development and creation of an exhibit. Museum staff create an exhibit by a traditional internal design process, but the exhibit, once open, invites visitors to contribute their own stories and participation.

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Participatory Design Difference Museum 27

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 5, 2008

Cultural Connections is a group of museum professionals who meet up a few times a year and host excellent programs on a variety of topics. This week, they hosted "Let Them Be Heard: Visitor Participation in the Museum Experience," featuring four presentations on incorporating visitors' content into museums. Here's what they did.

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Case Study Participatory Studies Museum 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 1, 2008

Last year, I wrote a post explaining what Twitter is and how it might be applied in museums. Now, a year later, I’m using Twitter on a daily basis, and it’s brought up some new observations about participation on websites and in interactive venues like museums. I’d love Museum 2.0 and post an average of five comments.

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Twitter Participatory Broadcast Museum 24

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

AUGUST 3, 2008

I wanted to listen to what was on their minds in general, although I was particularly keen on hearing any discussions or snippets about social change, nonprofits, and activism. What follows below is no doubt incomplete and I sure I've gotten ages wrong too -- so please make additions and corrections in the comments. Blogs by Gen Y.

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Blogger Change Social Philanthropy 50

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 Teen Second Life Discussion 20