Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 7, 2011

I have a confession to make: I've never cared much about museums on the Web. When smart people talk about digital museums and virtual experiences, I nod and compartmentalize it as someone else's bailiwick. And it breaks a lot of conventional rules about museum homepages. Is this the future of all museum websites?

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Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

APRIL 4, 2010

He is Deputy Director for the Contemporary Jewish Museum , and an expert in using social media in a museum setting. We were lucky enough to have a fabulous space for the workshop in the Contemporary Jewish Museum. Here are some reflections on the instructional design: 1. I said yes.

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Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

AUGUST 11, 2009

Photo by American Art Museum Note from Beth: This week I'm trying to understand crowdsourcing and nonprofits, hopefully with a crowd of other folks. It is an open study/storage facility displaying about thirty-three hundred objects from the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. We are storage, after all.

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Museum 2.0

MAY 9, 2012

Last week, I was in Minneapolis for the American Association of Museums annual meeting. Kathleen McLean led a terrific session called "Dangerous Ridiculous" about risk-taking in museums. Interestingly, at my museum, our team is naturally better at ridiculous than we are at dangerous. I found this idea really powerful.

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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 2.0

JULY 23, 2019

Me with a friend As I keep saying, I’ve been to a few museums of late. In reflecting on the sample, I’ve made some broad reflections on museum workers and visitors. Our visitors often see museums as a genre, not unlike hospitals or libraries. People go to museums for leisure.)

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Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

OCTOBER 26, 2010

I’ve been finding RowFeeder useful to do a quick and dirty content analysis and grab all the tweets into a google spreadsheet. The content analysis gives you some insights into what lines were Tweeted most.

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Museum 2.0

MAY 22, 2012

Imagine you've just been tasked with developing an innovative, future-thinking national museum for your country's history. Blueprint is the story of a group of people who tried to create a Dutch Museum of National History (INNL). The Museum directors released Blueprint as a showcase for these plans. Where would you start?

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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. The museum itself was well-integrated into the event. Or that visitors form a spontaneous "laugh circle" on the floor. Online to onsite migration isn't always easy.

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Reflection Community Museum Participatory 43

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 9, 2010

Recently, I was giving a presentation about participatory techniques at an art museum, when a staff member raised her hand and asked, "Did you have to look really hard to find examples from art museums? Aren't art museums less open to participation than other kinds of museums?" I was surprised by her question.

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Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 2, 2013

George Scheer is the director and co-founder of Elsewhere Collective, a fascinating "living museum" in a former thrift store in Greensboro, NC. In this post, George grapples with the challenges of balancing the care for a museum collection with that of contemporary artists-in-residence who are constantly reinterpreting it.

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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?," Download our slides here.

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Reflection Research Question Museum 20

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

FEBRUARY 18, 2016

Genuine: It reflects their character, behavior, values, and vision. One of the best personal brands that I’ve seen on Instagram from a nonprofit leader is Thomas P Campbell the CEO of the Metropolitan Museum. He shares photos and reflections from business trips. Here’s what I discovered: Genuine. Visibility.

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Personal Create Photography Museum 50

Museum 2.0

JULY 1, 2011

I've now been the Director of The Museum of Art & History in Santa Cruz for two months. It really reflects what we're trying to do here to transform our institution into as relevant, dynamic, and successful an organization as possible. Simon is a remarkable "get" for the museum.

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Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 6, 2009

This post was written by Jaime Kopke , the founder/director of the Denver Community Museum , a pop-up community-generated institution that ran from Oct 2008-April 2009. This post shares her reflections on the project, its design, and its impact. The Denver Community Museum (DCM) was a grassroots operation in almost every sense.

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Denver Museum Community Participatory 29

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 18, 2009

I often think museums are like church--passionately loved by staff and devout audiences, irrelevant or off-putting to lapsed or uninterested adults, alien and overwhelming to newcomers. Not excited generally or about the institutional content, but sincerely pleased that that person in particular has arrived.

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Forum One

FEBRUARY 7, 2023

Google undoubtedly grew tired of updating and developing two tools that couldn’t accurately reflect the type of complex user journeys we see today, where people switch between apps, mobile browsers, and desktops frequently. This kind of information can help organizations develop meaningful content. Why is Google making this change?

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Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

When you find a bar with your favorite song on the jukebox, or a museum room that feels like your grandmother's living room, you suddenly feel a strong affinity and are able to see yourself reflected in the space. It may be great for a natural refuge to remain hidden, but that sounds like a disaster for a restaurant or museum.

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Museum 2.0

JULY 31, 2013

I spent the weekend queuing up posts for my forthcoming blog-cation--nine weeks of guest posts and reruns from the Museum 2.0 It feels like a real gift to myself (and hopefully, to you) to schedule all this content now and not have to worry about it when my baby is born. It is this community--you--that I want to reflect a bit more on.

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Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 7, 2010

I'm a huge fan of work and the way she thinks - especially after she road the Scare House ride on the Santa Cruz boardwalk with me and did a brilliant reflection on its design. Nina has written a fantastic book engagement called The Participatory Museum. I've purchase a two copies, one for me and one to give away.

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Museum 2.0

APRIL 20, 2009

I just got home from the Museums and the Web conference in Indianapolis. I’d never attended before and was impressed by many very smart, international people doing radical projects to make museum collections and experiences accessible and participatory online. Instead, I found a standard art museum. Impersonal guards.

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Museum 2.0

JULY 9, 2009

Seb Chan has a lovely, long interview up at Fresh+New with Helen Whitty about the Powerhouse Museum's new mini-exhibition, the Odditoreum. The Odditoreum is another wrinkle in the study of visitors' understanding and interpretation of authenticity in museums. I enjoyed listening to it (virtually, not at the museum).

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Museum 2.0

JUNE 25, 2014

A man walks into a museum. Two years ago, we mounted one of our most successful participatory exhibits ever at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History: Memory Jars. Two years later, this project is still one of the most fondly remembered participatory experiences at the museum--by visitors and staff. He shares a story.

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Tech Soup

JULY 13, 2015

The Mary Ball Washington Museum and Library (MBWML) was established in 1958 and named to honor the mother of America's first president. The museum and library preserves the rich history of the Northern Neck through its collections, exhibits, tours, and educational programs. Images: Mary Ball Washington Museum and Library.

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Museum 2.0

JANUARY 10, 2008

In the final installment of Museum 2.0’s s four part series on comfort in museums, we get down to the basics: creature comfort. When it comes to content , programs , and interactives (parts 1-3 of the series), the challenge is to push the barrier towards less comfort, not more. Why are museums so darn uncomfortable?

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Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 28, 2010

Every once in a while I come across a project I wish I could have included in The Participatory Museum. For one year, a group of twelve schoolchildren age 9-11 were invited to work with staff at the Wallace Collection to develop a family-focused exhibition using the museum's artifacts. it's a Secret! , What made Shh. it's a Secret!

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Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 5, 2008

I was fascinated by our discussion, and Bob came to mind last month, when I was asked to write an article for the Association of Children's Museums quarterly journal, Hand to Hand , about children's museums and Web 2.0. To understand more, I turned to Elaine Gurian's article The Molting of Children's Museums? Why the uniformity?

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Museum 2.0

AUGUST 18, 2008

I've long believed that museums have a special opportunity to support the community spirit of Web 2.0 This month brings three examples of museums hosting meetups for online communities: On 8.6.08, the Computer History Museum (Silicon Valley, CA) hosted a Yelp! Me: Have you ever been to this museum? meetup for Elite Yelp!

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Museum 2.0

APRIL 11, 2008

For some truly great coverage of the Museums and the Web conference currently taking place in Montreal, check out the New Media Initiatives blog from the Walker. And next week, come here for a guest post by Bryan Kennedy from the Science Museum of Minnesota reflecting on his experiences at the conference.

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Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JANUARY 6, 2014

I did a scan of the several hundred organizations registered for the webinar, many from Jewish education organizations, looking at their social media engagement practices as well as a literature scan of alumni network engagement with social mediaHere’s some reflections: Alumni Networks: Benefits, Challenges, and Strategy.

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Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 18, 2011

We’ve been doing a little experiment at our museum with labels. The Santa Cruz Surfing Museum recently loaned us some fabulous surfboards that tell the co-mingled history of surfing and redwood trees in Santa Cruz. We decided to approach the label-writing for these boards in a participatory way. who were the surfers who used them?” “how

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Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 26, 2012

Way better than that video at Museum X where the director drones on about the new initiatives of the year. I have felt in the past that some of the MCA's holiday videos were a bit too pretentious, but this year's edition is full of joy and a message that really reflects what they do in Denver. How should (and do) we treat them?

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Denver Museum Arts Participatory 33

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 11, 2012

For years, I'd give talks about community participation in museums and cultural institutions, and I'd always get the inevitable question: "but what value does this really have when it comes to dollars and cents?" We're hearing on a daily basis that the museum has a new role in peoples' lives and in the identity of the county.

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Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 20, 2010

This post summarizes the content I shared in my presentation and offers some reflection on the conversational keynote. Examples: Wildlife Direct and Brooklyn Museum. Use an excel spreadsheet to look at events, fundraisers, programs, web site content, performances, and other activities to socialize.

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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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Bloomerang

APRIL 12, 2022

When my sister first started working with a nonprofit museum, she had a lot to learn about the fundraising process for the organization. The museum had notes saved in their donor management software about the seating preferences for their major donors and that particular donor preferred their regular seat toward the front.

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Museum 2.0

MAY 15, 2012

Last week, I sat down on a toilet in our museum and found myself looking at an interactive station intended to test a “Legends of the Stall” sign concept for the restrooms. Legends of the Stall was started by a visitor services staff member, Katie Chrivia, who collaborated with interns and volunteers to develop the content and the design.

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