Forum One

FEBRUARY 7, 2023

Understanding the history of Google’s analytics suite is useful in better understanding GA4. In June 2007, Apple launched the iPhone, and in subsequent years we saw the rise of apps as a competing method to websites for how people interact with organizations. Here we’ll summarize those questions and answers. What is Google Analytics 4?

FAQ 59

FAQ Organization Analytics Google 59

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 16, 2010

I spent last week in the glorious country of Taiwan, hiking, eating, and working with museum professionals and graduate students at a conference hosted at the Taiwan National Museum of Fine Arts. It's not topic-specific; I've done these exercises with art, history, science, and children's museums to useful effect.

Museum 41

Museum Technique Taiwan Social 41

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MARCH 4, 2011

In early January, the American Museum of Natural History announced that it would hold a Brain Tweetup for 75 of its Twitter followers. En route, I caught myself making sideways glances at their name tags, perhaps wondering if we followed each other on Twitter. Notes from a Tweetup by Jay Geneske.

Brain 94

Brain Museum Culture Interaction 94

Museum 2.0

MAY 10, 2011

It's my second week as the Executive Director at The Museum of Art & History in Santa Cruz, CA, and boy is my everything tired. There's just too much involved in the first few months of taking over a struggling museum to realistically imagine that I can also make enough fun stuff happen to keep me satisfied. Let me be frank.

Museum 53

Museum History Participatory Arts 53

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?

Museum 30

Museum Denver Arts Design 30

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 25, 2007

We looked at the museum map on the wall. There was a recent post on the ASTC listserv from a museum planning to revamp their wayfinding system. The wayfinding question in museums—or any complex space—is multifaceted. At the Spy Museum, our content is separated into two sections, School for Spies and Secret History of History.

Map 21

Map Museum Experiment Aggregator 21

Museum 2.0

MARCH 27, 2009

This week, the Denver Art Museum (DAM) opened a new temporary exhibition called The Psychedelic Experience , featuring rock posters from San Francisco in the heyday of Bill Graham and electric kool-aid. It is an incredible museum experience. The interactive experiences in Side Trip are superlative.

Denver 21

Denver Museum Arts Remix 21

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.

Collaboration 36

Collaboration North Carolina Museum Artist 36

Museum 2.0

MARCH 12, 2008

One of the surprise benefits of Saturday's Museums and Civic Discourse session was the chance to sit down with Mitch Allen of Left Coast Press (formerly AltaMira press), publisher of the Museums and Social Discourse journal among many, many other museum publications. To his credit, Mitch didn't take offense. Are We There Yet?

Museum 20

Museum Design Hints Benchmark 20

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 26, 2009

This guest post was written by Ruben Huele and describes the scenario-based strategic process used at the Dutch Natural History Museum, Naturalis , to innovate the redevelopment of their permanent collection. The new building of Naturalis, the Dutch National Natural History Museum, opened in 1998. Following the Museum 2.0

Museum 20

Museum Process Wiki Netherlands 20

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? Many museums have been experimenting in these spaces by creating institutional profiles, museum affinity groups, and connecting with visitors and other museum professionals individually.

Museum 20

Museum Social Network Case Study Discussion 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 20, 2009

In my continuing quest to find elegant ways to integrate technology into the museum experience, we come to interpretative material and the simple question, "How can you create natural ways for visitors to retrieve the information of most interest to them relative to an artifact or exhibit?" Here's one lovely answer: Meta.L.Hyttan.

Environment 20

Environment Content Model Sweden 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 7, 2010

It requires trading a certain history for an uncertain future--a nerve-wracking prospect no matter the situation. Most museums that offer interactive exhibits, media elements, or participatory activities offer them alongside traditional labels and interpretative tools. Tags: programs visitors. This is incredibly scary.

Audience 40

Audience Museum Oakland Participatory 40

Museum 2.0

JUNE 9, 2009

Yesterday, I enjoyed three hours of graduate students' presentations of social media plans for museums in the Pacific Northwest. What rules or control issues may prevent certain kinds of interactions? Jill Hardy worked with a museum that is trying to attract a younger, more diverse adult audience. Tags: web2.0

Social Media 43

Social Media Develop Media Museum 43

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 5, 2010

A coupon goes up for half-price museum admission or spa treatments, and users have one day to buy. The Cleveland Museum of Natural History sold 1,318 half-price memberships last week. But for museums, which mostly have extra space to fill (and a low per-customer operating cost), this isn't a big issue.

Learning 39

Learning Museum San Francisco Cleveland 39

Museum 2.0

APRIL 10, 2008

On Monday, David Klevan (from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum) and I spoke at the MAAM Creating Exhibitions conference about Web 2.0 and museums. framework, and David shared lessons learned from the huge range of projects the Holocaust Museum has initiated. I provided the Web 2.0 and sniff around.

Web 44

Web Time Museum Audio 44

Museum 2.0

APRIL 23, 2009

Like many people who've worked in science centers and interactive experience museums, I've always been perplexed by the fact that hands-on workshop audiences top out around age 14. They are more than just workshop spaces--they are member institutions, like museums. Isn't this one of our dreams for museums?

Museum 24

Museum North Carolina San Francisco Structure 24

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 25, 2009

Rabinowitz commented that "as a 40-year veteran of history museum interpretation, I can say that I never learned so much from and about visitors." This is the opposite situation of the previous design goal, one typical in science and children's museums. A lone "What do you think?"

Design 31

Design Goal Difference Platform 31

Museum 2.0

MARCH 20, 2008

Ideum, the company that brought you ExhibitFiles (with ASTC), is conducting a survey on museums' needs in support of an NSF grant proposal (Open Exhibits) to build open source templates for simple interactive exhibits (timelines, digital collections, news kiosks). What does that mean in simple terms? Check them out here.

Survey 20

Survey NSF Open Source Museum 20

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 29, 2009

Last week, Jim Richardson and I hosted MuseumNext , a 24-hour workshop for museum professionals focused on bringing new, wild museum projects into the world. We also ended the entire event with one of my favorite exercises, the Exquisite Corpse game, in which participants co-created comics of their craziest museum dreams.

Facilitation 32

Facilitation Reflection Museum Participatory 32

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

DECEMBER 8, 2006

Elisa’s focus is interactive arts, media design, and cultural management, and she has been involved in many pertinent projects, such as MUVI (the Virtual Museum of the Collective Memory of Lombardia). Environmentalists, the Museum of Natural History at CU, they all responded very enthusiastically to this.

Interview 20

Interview Museum Culture Sound 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 4, 2007

On Tuesday, I reviewed Elaine Gurian’s essay, Choosing Among the Options , on museum archetypes and self-definition. Today, discussion with Elaine about ways museums choose their direction, how change is possible, and new museum types to be added to the list. What if you don’t want to be identified as one type of museum?

Museum 20

Museum Puerto Rico Change Boston 20

Museum 2.0

MAY 4, 2007

If anyone out there is considering creating an industry catch-all site for museum-related content, I highly recommend Gamasutra as a model. Can museums afford to indulge in this kind of fantasy? It drives me nuts when I’m in a museum that has made a half-hearted attempt to thematically connected galleries or exhibits.

Game 20

Game Storytelling Lesson 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. The design of media is for more activist and personal interaction. local time). They document their learning."

Digital 50

Digital Learning Media Avatar 50

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Earlier this year, I encountered a similar confusion while working with creative amateurs in virtual concept design of real-world interactives for The Tech Virtual Test Zone. Tags: exhibition design usercontent. But what staff thought of as "being open," the teens saw as "hiding" the real needs.

Teen 20

Teen Volunteer Create Design 20

Museum 2.0

MAY 7, 2007

What happens to the surprises designers encountered, the interactive that visitors loved, the bits that never seemed to work quite right? There was a need recognized and that need was that exhibits and exhibitions were being redesigned over and over again without that sense of history. What happens to an exhibit when it closes?

NSF 20

NSF Interview Case Study Museum 20

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 19, 2008

Name Voyager is a site that allows people to explore names through American history in an interesting way, whereas Nymbler provides an outcome-driven service. Too often, we go for the Nymbler model, both in terms of how we deal with content and the kind of interactions we provide. Tags: informatics design.

Data 20

Data Exercise Empowerment Comparison 20

Museum 2.0

MAY 14, 2009

I've become convinced that successful paths to participation in museums start with self-identification. The easiest way to do that is to acknowledge their uniqueness and validate their ability to connect with the museum on their own terms. Who is the "me" in the museum experience? Not so at museums.

Museum 20

Museum Personal Experiment Profile 20

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.

Museum 22

Museum Arts Library Listserv 22

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.

Personal 34

Personal Museum Pledge San Jose 34

Bloomerang

JUNE 25, 2021

Yeah, the Whaling Museum in New Bedford. I’ve been to the Whaling Museum in New Bedford. You may want to know things like their volunteer interest, their history. And you can record things like interactions. They’re so like history”? Steven: And it’s not 2:00 a.m. That’s right.

Database 69

Database Donor Video Mail 69

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 8, 2008

I have a lot of conversations with people that go like this: Other person: "So, you think that museums should let visitors control the museum experience?" Other person: "But doesn't that erode museums' authority?" If the museum isn't in control, how can it thrive? Me: "Sort of." and my emphatic response is YES.

Authoring 42

Authoring Platform Museum YouTube 42

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 13, 2009

Earlier this year, the New Museum and Creative Time commissioned a traveling piece by artist Jeremy Deller called "It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq." I saw It Is What It Is twice at the Hammer Museum. Why would I want to talk about Iraq on a visit to an art museum? Even for me, the barriers were too high.

Iraq 28

Iraq Challenge Museum Library 28

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

FEBRUARY 4, 2010

I want to share a few fabulous evaluation and research studies that have greatly informed my work (and specifically, the development of The Participatory Museum , which is going to the printer this weekend). The Catalyst for Change social impact study from the Glasgow Open Museum. Tags: evaluation Quick Hits.

Participatory 20

Participatory Evaluation Project Report 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 18, 2007

In honor of tomorrow’s book club post on Elaine Gurian’s essay, Free at Last, a preliminary post on the ecomonics of high quality interactive experiences. Live facilitation has a varied role in museums. In children’s and science museums, explainers are everywhere. Interactive exhibits are expensive to develop and maintain.

Facilitation 20

Facilitation Museum Interaction Denver 20