Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 7, 2010

Nina has written a fantastic book engagement called The Participatory Museum. Most of my work involves museums, but these categories can be useful in any project that involves user participation. I've purchase a two copies, one for me and one to give away. I’ve added one more category to the mix called hosted.

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Connection Cafe

FEBRUARY 24, 2015

In January, Blackbaud employees from all ov the world rallied together to celebrate our cultural customers through our #showyourculture initiative. Blackbaud employees love arts & culture: Not really surprising – Blackbaud has been working with arts and cultural organizations for over 30 years and has over 2200 cultural customers.

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Time Blackbaud Arts Captivate 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 21, 2010

Last week, I took in the new Galileo science show at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. I used to perform these kinds of shows at the Capital Children’s Museum, and I was impressed by the whole production. I can’t imagine seeing a show like this in any other cultural context. It also drove me nuts.

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Demonstration Museum Children Denver 32

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JUNE 14, 2010

The whole idea got started a year ago when James Leventhal who is Deputy Director for the Contemporary Jewish Museum asked me if I would design some trainings for the local arts community. Contemporary Jewish Museum. Tags: Experimentation Training Design arts arts community artslabsf. View more presentations from Beth Kanter.

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Social Media Media San Jose Social 99

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 7, 2010

For years, I've been fascinated and a bit perplexed by the Elsewhere Collaborative , a thrift store turned artists' studio/living museum in Greensboro, North Carolina. By calling ourselves a museum, we respond to those cultural institutions that have separated practice from production, exhibition from process, and work from play.

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Collaboration North Carolina Museum Artist 36

Connection Cafe

AUGUST 3, 2015

” How is this influx of new people influencing Austin’s Arts & Cultural community? It was a fabulous date night (check out said caricature), and the next day I was telling all of my friends – with and without children – that they had to visit Thinkery. Genius, Thinkery, genius!

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Audience Austin Test Portland 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 3, 2007

This week, we look at Chapter 5 of Elaine Gurian's book Civilizing Museums , Choosing Among the Options: An opinion about museum definitions in two parts. First published in Curator magazine in 2002, this essay presents five different museum "types" and their distinct opportunities and challenges.

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Museum 2.0

JULY 12, 2010

But then I started finding more humble projects related to broader issues, and I began to see Kickstarter as a potentially fascinating space for museums and cultural institutions. Why should cultural and arts organizations care about Kickstarter? Kickstarter is a symptom of changes in donor culture.

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Museum 2.0

JULY 20, 2010

Last week, I gave a talk about participatory museum practice for a group of university students at UCSC. During the ensuing discussion, one woman asked, "Which audiences are least interested in social participation in museums?" So what's a museum to do--especially one that is funded to encourage youth and teen participation?

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Teen Social Museum Participatory 49

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 16, 2010

There are many folks who've written about the problems with "value" membership and have recommended that cultural institutions reorient toward offering "affinity" or "relationship" memberships. Unsurprisingly, museums are loathe to cut or alter membership programs that successfully serve visitors' needs and generate revenue.

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Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 10, 2009

Exhibit labels in science centers ask more questions than any other kinds of museums, and yet the questions are often awful--teacherly, overly rhetorical, and totally meaningless. asked by a cop or mother, garners the full attention of asker and askee alike, museum questions like "what is nanotechnology?,"

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Reflection Research Question Museum 20

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 22, 2009

Elizabeth Merritt is the director of the Center for the Future of Museums , a new project of the American Association of Museums (AAM). When I was given the opportunity to found the Center for the Future of Museums (CFM) I had been working for nearly 10 years with Museum Assessment and Accreditation at AAM.

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Museum Game Lecture Model 22

Museum 2.0

MAY 16, 2007

into the museum is the potential to encourage more positive in-museum interactions among strangers. I want in-person museum experiences to be more like experiences on social sites like Flickr, where strangers connect and form relationships around content. A lot of what interests me about bringing 2.0

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Museum Myspace Facilitation Social Network 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 7, 2007

There are some obvious ties to the role of "community" in museums. Recently, some museums have launched initiatives to rebrand as community spaces, acknowledging and attempting to harness the positive social energy around visitation. Could museums do this? around gameplay. How do these game companies steer the discussion?

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Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 21, 2007

You have a kiosk in your museum where visitors can record 30 second videos of themselves sharing their personal opinions on global warming. Media release forms are (typically) used in formal situations—promotional shoots, program recordings—in which the museum, not the user, dictates the circumstances and use of the content.

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Content Museum Podcast Policy 20

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 5, 2009

Today, an interview with staff from a museum with an incredibly healthy attitude towards experimentation with social media. Three things stand out in this interview: Like the Brooklyn Museum , COSI’s social media strategy is focused on local community connections, not national outreach. I think, sadly, that we all know the answer.

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Conversation Columbus Change Museum 20

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

OCTOBER 19, 2006

Photo from public photos tagged with macarthur in NMC flickr stream. This morning I attended the MacArthur Foundation Digital Learning briefing that was taking place at the Natural History Museum in NYC. MacArthur wants to know: How is digital media changing the way that children learn and develop and what are the implications?

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Digital Learning Media Avatar 50

Museum 2.0

APRIL 26, 2010

When a technologist calls me to talk about their brilliant idea for a museum-related business, it's always a mobile application. There are lots of wonderful (and probably not very high margin) experiments going on in museums with mobile devices. Most visitors to museums attend in social groups.

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Museum Group Mobile Project 40

Museum 2.0

MARCH 24, 2010

This is the third in a four-part series about writing The Participatory Museum. When I decided to write a book about visitor participation in cultural institutions, I knew I'd do it in a way that reflected the values behind the book itself--transparency, inclusion, and meaningful community participation. Check out the other parts here.

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Participatory Museum Process Experiment 33

Museum 2.0

JULY 28, 2010

Diane is both visionary and no-nonsense about deconstructing the barriers that many low-income and non-white teenagers and families face when entering a museum. Most large American museums are reflections of white culture. Guards staring at black teens and grumbling about their clothes. Why can't new visitors do the same?

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St. Louis Audience Teen Museum 53

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 18, 2010

Are museum visitors "customers?" The retail analogy falls in and out of fashion in cultural institutions. I don't think cultural institutions should be more like retailers in how we treat visitors who are already in the door. How many museum and library entrances are hard to find, dark, and require opening a heavy door?

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Design People Museum Library 54

Museum 2.0

JULY 31, 2007

This is the penultimate installment of Museum 2.0's s book club on Elaine Gurian's collection of essays, Civilizing the Museum. But today, a conversation about the often sticky world of cultural interpretation with chapter 20, "A Jew Among Indians" How working outside of one's culture works."

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Museum 2.0

JULY 16, 2007

There have been some fun semantic jousting matches recently on the ASTC listserv about the difference between science museums and science centers. And earlier last month, the Museum of Television and Radio announced a name change to the Paley Center for Media. The word Museum is not powerful enough, alone, to attract or repel visitors.

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Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 26, 2009

This exhibition uses RFID tags to allow visitors to save their work throughout the space--something that many institutions have been experimenting with for almost ten years now. The personal webpage has many adherents, and some institutions, like The Tech Museum in San Jose, have been offering them for almost a decade.

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Personal Museum Pledge San Jose 34

Museum 2.0

JUNE 2, 2010

This year, the American Association of Museums annual conference was in Los Angeles (my hometown). I hosted two sessions, one on design for participation and the other on mission-driven museum technology development. He started with museums as a "place to go"--to see things, consume experiences. In this case, a heck of a lot.

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Slides Museum Los Angeles San Jose 22

Museum 2.0

MARCH 11, 2007

On Musematic , Holly Witchey has rigorously recorded her recent experience at WebWise, a " IMLS/RLG/OCLC/Getty sponsored conference" on Libraries and Museums in the Digital World that was held March 1-2. Broun talked about SAAM's initiatives both in the museum and on the web to open up their content base for visitors to use in their own ways.

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Library Museum Arts Aggregator 20

Museum 2.0

MAY 8, 2009

I've wondered for a long time about the potential for museums (especially interactive science centers) to operate on a "pay to play" model where visitors choose specific content of interest to invest their time and money into. So why haven't we seen museums that operate like arcades? I'm skeptical of these arguments.

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Content Ideas Museum Model 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 3, 2008

I used that instruction recently to kick off a meeting at a museum planning a participatory education space. We spend most of our time studiously ignoring strangers, and it takes extraordinary situations to overcome those cultural mores and fears. Interestingly, at the City Museum in St. What conditions did I miss?

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Participatory St. Louis Museum Game 20

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.

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Museum Alternative Education University 29

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

As many of you know, I’m writing a book about participatory design for museums. The book is intended to be a practical guide to participatory museum experiences focused on design strategies, case studies, and activities. I’m using a wiki to do so, and a few intrepid generous folks have signed up to give feedback on the evolving draft.

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Participatory Design Museum Wiki 26

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.

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Place Discussion Library Museum 30

Museum 2.0

MAY 21, 2007

It's late at night at the Museum Curator smackdown. The preliminary bouts on cultural interpretation are over, and the crowds are roaring for blood. Museum folks often talk about the time decades ago when museums began to shift from places for objects to places for visitors. Is the fix in? They're like banks.

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Museum Donor Arts Artist 20

Bloomerang

APRIL 2, 2021

And I wrote two books which are also like my other two children. Now, type in the chat if you know this reference, if you know this pop culture reference. Same with Instagram Stories, just to kind of learn the culture and learn what works and see what you like and what you don’t. Okay, so AI and chatbots. Learn more.

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