Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

DECEMBER 23, 2010

During 2010, I been able to read, blurb, write reviews, do blog giveaways, or author guest posts and interviews for a lot of terrific books that would be useful to nonprofit professionals in the social media, marketing, and ICT areas. Hands-On Social Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide to Designing Change for Good by Nedra Kline Weinreich.

Amazon 116

Amazon Nonprofit Social Media Oregon 116

Museum 2.0

MAY 9, 2008

There's a tag applied to many Museum 2.0 Posts under that tag tend to examine non-museum things, from malls to games to ad campaigns , and draw some design lessons for museums from their foreignness. In my highly anecdotal research, the bus is a more social space than the train or subway. People talk.

Participatory 20

Participatory Design Museum Childhood 20

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

The Art of Participation provides a retrospective on participatory art as well as presenting opportunities for visitors to engage in contemporary (“now”) works. As the museum's website puts it, "this exhibition examines how artists have engaged members of the public as essential collaborators in the art-making process."

Participatory 20

Participatory Arts Design Museum 20

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 23, 2018

This project wove together many different participatory threads. The facilitation was as chaotic and fragile as a spiderweb. We're working now on the next one, on seniors and social isolation. Short story: we learned a lot. We wrote a toolkit about our process. You can download it for free right now. What did we learn?

Issue 45

Issue Childhood Community Create 45

Museum 2.0

MARCH 10, 2008

Thank you to Susan Spero and all the folks at JFKU and Left Coast Press for starting a highly stimulating conversation this weekend at the colloquium on Museums and Civic Discourse. There were, as we say in the museum business, some good aha moments. What role should museums play in promoting discourse?

Museum 20

Museum Site Facilitation Participatory 20

Museum 2.0

MAY 19, 2016

For example, when we held community meetings about the development of a new creative town square next to our museum, a group of middle/upper-class moms talked about not feeling safe downtown. Not surprisingly, a different focus group of social service providers and homeless adults had a very different set of concerns about downtown.

Build 35

Build Community Museum Participatory 35

Museum 2.0

JUNE 1, 2010

You can join the conversation in the blog comments, or on the Museum 2.0 Like many museum and library professionals, I am enamored of the idea of cultural institutions as “third places” – public venues for informal, peaceable, social engagement outside of home or work. This is the only post written by me, Nina Simon.

Place 41

Place Discussion Culture Museum 41

Museum 2.0

APRIL 15, 2015

But I couldn''t fully imagine how a museum or an arts center could embody it. In a city where parks are rare, streets can and should provide the social, recreational, and health functions that we expect from open space. Lots of social bridging, surprise encounters, and more than a few mystified moments.

San Francisco 20

San Francisco Arts Design Marketing 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 18, 2015

There are lots of great science museum resources, but not where these kids can walk after school. Part of this is practical: you can''t facilitate making and tinkering for 30 kids if you have to hand them everything they need. Any big museum has barriers and limitations to full community ownership. For example, kids and tools.

Green 20

Green Interview Share Community 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 21, 2011

This expresses itself most powerfully in museums when we talk about building relationships with visitors over time. But museums are one-night stand amnesiacs in the relationship department. This is terrible, both for the visitor and for the museum. Sometimes an extra seat can make the difference between solo and social.

Relationship 46

Relationship Museum Game Personal 46

Museum 2.0

MARCH 12, 2009

April 5 is the first day of a class I’m teaching called Social Technology, in which we are focusing on designing an exhibition that features social objects , that is, exhibits or artifacts that inspire interpersonal dialogue. Most social objects that mediate conversation among strangers are incidental.

Design 20

Design Experiment Seattle Social 20

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

MAY 3, 2010

Last week, I attended Structure Lab , a half-day workshop on legal and financial structures for ventures for social good. The rest of this post is separated into two sections--one about what I learned about how to think about business formation, and the other about hybrid structures for social entrepreneurship.

Structure 31

Structure Model Social Profit 31

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 20, 2008

Early in the life of this blog, I stumbled into a taxonomy of how social platforms work that I call the hierarchy of participation. The hierarchy comprises five levels, shown above, from passive consumption of content (level one) to collective social engagement (level five). Free2choose is powerful because it introduces social tension.

Poll 22

Poll Interaction Museum Social 22

Museum 2.0

JUNE 12, 2012

It was fascinating to see people--across social differences--responding to representations of love in the paintings, images, objects and narratives that were part of the installation. It is multi-disciplinary, incorporates diverse voices from our community, and provides interactive and participatory opportunities for visitor involvement.

Participatory 51

Participatory Museum Blackboard Game 51

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 24, 2019

This month we’ve been thinking about “What is a museum?” (I'm I’ve been visiting museums my whole life. Does that make me the best judge of museums? People are the defining characteristics of museums. I’ve worked with and at plenty of museums that can sometimes feel empty. I'm not alone there.

Museum 36

Museum Place Life Ohio 36

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 16, 2007

Last week, I wrote about the ways that dogs can be useful social objects --and you had lots of good comments and input. You see, I've found another object that's a successful stranger-to-stranger social enabler, but this one is harder to understand. It's not because the boardwalk is a social place. Why does this happen?

Museum 20

Museum Participatory Teen Game 20

Museum 2.0

MAY 16, 2007

Social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, even ExhibitFiles are tools that allows people--strangers and friends--to connect with one another. into the museum is the potential to encourage more positive in-museum interactions among strangers. What makes Web 2.0 The tools aren't inherently unsafe.

Museum 20

Museum Myspace Facilitation Social Network 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 9, 2007

The gym staff aren’t offering instruction or serving as users’ partners; instead, they facilitate connections among the users. I got thinking about this the other day with regard to museums. Floor staff are limited by time—they can’t possibly interact with all or even most of the people in the museum at any given time.

Museum 20

Museum Tools Participatory Discussion 20

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. At each table there will be an envelope with questions inside.

Studies 20

Studies Associations Houston Museum 20

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

Two weeks ago, my museum was featured in a Wall Street Journal article by Ellen Gamerman, Everybody''s a Curator. I''m thrilled that our small community museum is on the map with many big institutions around the country. I''m glad to see coverage about art museums involving visitors in exhibitions. Community is not a commodity.

Journal 54

Journal Participatory Museum Community 54

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 6, 2012

I'm thrilled to share this brilliant guest post by Marilyn Russell, Curator of Education at the Carnegie Museum of Art. In a straightforward way, Marilyn explains how her team developed a participatory project to improve engagement in a gallery with an awkward entry. It is great to feel more of a part of the museum!" "All

Museum 45

Museum Arts Problem Design 45

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

AUGUST 21, 2013

This August/September, I am "rerunning" popular Museum 2.0 I''ve been thinking recently about how I originally got interested in talking to strangers in museums. Working in museums as floor staff cracked open the social stranger door for me. blog posts from the past. This post was requested by a long-time reader.

Museum 35

Museum Tools Participatory Massachusetts 35

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 29, 2010

Now, after attending with museum friends from around the country, I'm hooked. It's the social experience. What makes the social experience at Artprize so special? Very few wrote in typical museum or even gallery-speak. Do I like this piece because it reminds me of the kinds of things I'm used to seeing in fancy museums?

Arts 52

Arts Experiment Artist Social 52

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 13, 2014

Last week, I focused on the 2014 theme (social impact assessment) and the many creative evaluation projects produced by campers. I first learned about this technique from Sam Kaner''s excellent book, Facilitator''s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making. Tag Team the Facilitation. Yes, it can be inefficient.

Facilitation 36

Facilitation Professional Learning Participatory 36

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 10, 2009

I've spent the last two weeks working on the third chapter of my book about network effects of social participation. And it's brought me back to a blog post I wrote a year ago about the Science Museum of Minnesota's Race: Are We So Different? But designing an entire museum that functions this way probably isn't your goal.

Social Network 22

Social Network Tech Network Museum 22

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 18, 2009

I've been thinking recently about how I originally got interested in talking to strangers in museums. Working in museums as floor staff cracked open the social stranger door for me. My first museum job was working on the floor at the Acton Science Discovery Museum in Massachusetts. It was blue. It was polyester.

Tools 34

Tools Museum Participatory Massachusetts 34

Museum 2.0

JUNE 15, 2009

Facilitated/Unfacilitated Blend When we started this course, I really pushed the students to think about ways to induce unfacilitated interactions among strangers. I love facilitated experiences, but I worry that they aren't scalable to every visitor. This is a good lesson for museum talk-back design.

Advice 31

Advice Museum Facilitation Student 31

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.

Slides 22

Slides Museum Los Angeles San Jose 22

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. The club members believe in the health benefits of laughter, and they engage socially in several laughter exercises: laughing at each other, laughing with tongues sticking out, laughing while shaking hands, and so on.

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

Non Profit Quarterly

NOVEMBER 17, 2021

Facilitating personal bonds between local producers, consumers, and suppliers can increase resiliency in periods of global supply chain disruption while cutting the carbon footprint of shipping. .); and Humanity Cash , a tech venture focused on alternative digital currencies.

Local 104

Local Digital Experiment Alternative 104

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. Suzanne: The kind of socializing that Oldenburg describes as happening in third places is deeply exclusive. Eric: Unapologetically so.

Place 30

Place Discussion Library Museum 30

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 25, 2010

For three years, I've been using a "hierarchy of participation" diagram to talk about the ways that cultural institutions and platforms can scaffold social experiences among users. I've finally completed a redesign of the five stages of social participation, as shown above. You don't start by designing "for the crowd."

Design 34

Design Museum Social Participatory 34