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. What aspects of that socialness are desirable in museums (and how might we mirror buses or trains to promote them)?

Participatory 20

Participatory Design Museum Childhood 20

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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Classroom Children Museum Model 22

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! To some people, these events may sound like losers.

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Museum Hosting Model Community 22

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 16, 2010

How do you find your way around a multi-faceted museum? I spent some time playing with this question last week at the Milwaukee Art Museum, a large general museum that is moving toward redesign of the permanent galleries. Tags: design participatory museum usercontent. Do you interrogate the map?

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Experiment Lesson Learning Museum 44

Museum 2.0

MAY 23, 2008

And now, the research group Forrester provides new insights about different kinds of participatory styles among users of social media sites. I've written before about three types of museum users: contributors, lurkers, and judges. In the same way, we shouldn't think of participatory experiences as being "just for creators."

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Profile Audience Participatory Tools 26

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

SEPTEMBER 20, 2010

Audience segmentation and research has become a hot topic in museums, especially when it comes to crafting appealing offerings that are customized to different kinds of visitors. I sat down with Kristen Denner, Director of Membership and Annual Fund, to learn more about the program's development and the museum's goals for its future.

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Interview Director Museum Arts 46

Museum 2.0

MAY 29, 2009

Two weeks ago, I conducted a participatory exhibit design workshop with staff at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Between the giant squid brainstorming and experimentation, I gave a talk to the larger Smithsonian Institution about multi-platform museum experiences. The slides are also available for download.

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Slides Process Video Open 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. OK, so gifting sounds good.

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Gift Participatory Museum Model 23

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.

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Facilitation Reflection Museum Participatory 32

Museum 2.0

APRIL 16, 2008

I've written before about the inspiring work that the Brooklyn Museum of Art is doing with their community-focused efforts. Click is an exhibition process in three parts: The Museum solicited photographs from artists via an open call on their website, Facebook group, Flickr groups, and outreach to Brooklyn-based arts organizations.

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Museum Participatory Artist Arts 24

Museum 2.0

MAY 20, 2008

This blog often analyzes how websites, designed spaces, even dogs promote participatory experiences among users. Today, we look inward for a how-to on one type of participatory design as applied to museum exhibits. But in the museum, the distribution method is more personal.

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Design Participatory Social Museum 21

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Unsurprisingly, some of my favorite museums are small, funky places run by iconoclasts—but that’s not useful to most professionals who work for organizations in which they have little control over size or leadership matters. This may sound obvious and natural, but it’s easy to underestimate the power of institutional culture.

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Project Museum Teen North Carolina 22

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.

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Design Goal Difference Platform 31

Museum 2.0

JULY 2, 2009

How would you design a recommendation system for a museum? When it comes to museums, recommendation systems are a natural solution for the problem of the customized tour. When it comes to museums, recommendation systems are a natural solution for the problem of the customized tour.

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System Design Movie Museum 22

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 3, 2009

Last month, the Christian Science Monitor published an article entitled, "Museums' new mantra: Connect with community." It took me a couple weeks (and various museum blog responses ) to realize what bugs me about this article--it treats "connecting with community" as a marketing ploy, a "mantra" rather than a mission.

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Community Museum San Diego San Francisco 22

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 16, 2007

Out on the boardwalk, or at the zoo or a museum, there's a common experience of the sights, sounds, smells, activities of the place. Ideas participatory museum Unusual Projects and Influences visitors. Tags: Core Museum 2.0 But the best reason I can imagine has to do with barriers and shared experience.

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Museum Participatory Teen Game 20

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Dial-A-Stranger is what it sounds like. They edit the conversations into radio shows, which are then made available as a podcast (you can listen to episode featuring me, #89: Museum Secrets, here ). And they made me appreciate them as superb facilitators as a particular kind of participatory experience: conversation with strangers.

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Reflection Museum Podcast Participatory 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 9, 2007

I'm gearing up for some conference talks next month, and one of these is part of a very cool session, Eye on Design, at the Western Museums Association conference. The coordinator asked several folks to pick a design trend from outside the museum world and discuss how they might be applied to museum design. But I rarely do.

Museum 20

Museum Participatory Interaction Captivate 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 17, 2010

This is the second in a four-part series about writing The Participatory Museum. Several hundred people contributed their opinions, stories, suggestions, and edits to The Participatory Museum as it was written. Other contributors were collegial and a valuable network of museum wonks has developed."

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Participatory Museum Process Experiment 32

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 16, 2009

Sounds good? The focus is on bringing in outside influencers--folks from the Burning Man festival to World Without Oil --to help museum experience designers recharge, connect, and explore new ways to do creative work in teams. Tags: Quick Hits professional development. Imagine making and playing together.

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Collaboration Registration Brain Participatory 20

Museum 2.0

JULY 27, 2009

I’ve long admired Improv Everywhere , the NYC-based participatory public art group. Steve has a deep, fake “god” voice, which makes him sound both benevolent and like someone you want to please. But it’s rare that museum exhibit designers or audio tour developers are willing to explicitly require certain kinds of actions by visitors.

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Instruction Instructional Nicaragua Experiment 21

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

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

Today, the Luce Center at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) is launching what they claim is the first ever alternate reality game (ARG) in a museum. Why would an art museum create an ARG? And the "stuff" of the game is real stuff, artifacts created by players and sent to the museum. To expand their audiences.

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Game Museum Arts Alternative 20

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 30, 2007

It's a worthwhile 30 minutes of discussion about the use of sound to provide an emotional context for stories--specifically, stories about science. They have arguments about consciousness without sounding pretentious. And that makes it feel much more participatory. Tags: storytelling design.

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Audio Storytelling Tutorial Participatory 20

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.

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Virtual Tech Lesson Develop 21

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 15, 2007

I've been thinking recently about the "why" behind encouraging social interactions among strangers in museums. After all, people visit museums in their own pods for a reason. There are two ways I think we can be using this in museums. First, I think we should support the proliferation of museum-based "I saw you's."

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Museum San Jose Participatory Social 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 10, 2009

This can be an incredibly technical topic, as it focuses on the ways that platforms (online, exhibits, museums) can harness the individual activities of many visitors and create meaningful experiential outputs that connect people to each other. But designing an entire museum that functions this way probably isn't your goal. exhibition.

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Social Network Tech Network Museum 22

Museum 2.0

JUNE 15, 2009

This might make Advice sound more like an educational program than an exhibit, or like a failure on the unfacilitated front. They reminded me of street vendors or great science museum cart educators, imparting an energy to the space without overwhelming it. This is a good lesson for museum talk-back design.

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Advice Museum Facilitation Student 31

Museum 2.0

JULY 14, 2008

What’s in the crystal ball for museums and libraries? The IMLS (Institute for Museum and Library Services) has commissioned a preliminary proposal for an NAS (National Academy of Sciences) report on museums and libraries in the 21st century. What are the essential differences and similarities between libraries and museums?

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Library Museum Reflection Alternative 20