Museum 2.0

MARCH 21, 2008

It's been awhile since I've shared the progress of The Tech Virtual , the web and Second Life-based virtual exhibit workshop that The Tech Museum of Innovation opened in December of 2007. You can read other posts about this project by clicking Tech Virtual in the "Past Posts By Topic" sidebar on the right.)

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Museum Virtual Tech Second Life 20

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 18, 2008

This week marks one month of live activity for the Tech Virtual Museum Workshop , a collaborative, online platform for exhibit development. What's it like to work in a virtual exhibit workshop? But museum folks, no matter how much we want to collaborate, don't move quickly. A month ago, I invited you to join this project.

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Museum Virtual Tech Second Life 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 16, 2008

I often talk about the idea of taking social technology out of the Web and putting it into physical museums as part of our exhibitions and programs. Recently, I learned about an innovative, super-low tech tagging pro ject in a library that does this beautifully. First, some background on tagging. Sounds complicated?

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Examples Design Folksonomy Virtual 40

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. The event promised an after-hours look at their special exhibition Brain: The Inside Story , a chat with its curators, a behind-the-scenes tour of the museum, and an opportunity to meet other fans of AMNH.

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Brain Museum Culture Interaction 94

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 Alternative Portland Artist 22

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MARCH 23, 2007

Also found in the NpTech tag stream and a good backdrop to this conversation is " When the best tool for the job. context: How are museums encouraging stickiness and user investment in their proposed and in some cases, already developed, post 2.0 situation unless museums can get the ???stickiness??? public information???

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Social Network Nptech Tag Summary 50

Museum 2.0

MAY 9, 2007

In January, I interviewed Sibley about the potential use of virtual worlds and Second Life by museums, but in the four months since then, the virtual world platform--and the hype around it--has exploded. It seems that Second Life is both the closest and farthest thing from many museum professionals' minds.

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Second Life Museum Life Virtual 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 2, 2008

The exhibition I'm curating for The Tech Museum of Innovation is opening and we are hosting a summit on June 4 (in real life and in Second Life ) for museum professionals to discuss the process by which it was created. In March, we selected the best of the virtual exhibits for translation into the real world.

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Virtual Tech San Jose Open 20

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 as physical analogs to virtual community platforms. 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!

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Museum Hosting Model Community 22

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 5, 2008

I kept sneaking glances at his screen, watching it fill with words like “Web 2.0,” “virtual worlds,” and pictures of kids tuning out teachers and tuning in their cellphones. But the more I learned, the more I wondered where the real threat is, and why children's museums have been so resistant to change.

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Classroom Children Museum Model 22

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 3, 2008

I’ve received a few inquiries over the last year about museums and geocaching. to ask him all the dumb questions about geocaching and museums you can imagine… and a few more. Sounds like there might be some overlap with your museum audience? Both geocaching and museums are fundamentally about exploration and discovery.

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Museum Teen Arts Project 20

Museum 2.0

MAY 1, 2008

My more complete thoughts and reactions to the AAM (American Association of Museums) conference are forthcoming in a longer post soon. We talked honestly and openly about a range of virtual worlds projects, ranging from the funded to the unfunded, the small (serving 20+ students) to large.

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Slides Virtual Design Content 20

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 4, 2007

Museum 2.0 and museums discussed at the “Hot Topics in Exhibit Design” session. As you know, Museum 2.0 And Museum 2.0 Second, there's the topic list on the right, which allows you to see posts tagged with a certain subject keyword, like design or virtual worlds. is celebrating one year in the blogosphere.

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Museum Tools Comment Tag 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 16, 2007

I’m working on a virtual museum project these days, and one question that often comes up is “What is the most fun thing we could let visitors do here that they can’t do in the real world?” After all, most of our ideas don’t require a virtual landscape; any museum could commission Kid Rock’s tour of the galleries.

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Museum Audio Storytelling Game 21

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. On many levels, The Tech Virtual experiment was a success.

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Virtual Tech Lesson Develop 21

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Imagine that your museum is ready to start creating content on a small-scale in Web 2.0. Imagine you are the Boston Museum of Science, and you are ready to make some videos to post on YouTube. When I search for "Boston Museum of Science" on YouTube, I find 83 videos. You're ready to make a few videos to post on YouTube.

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Museum Technorati Boston YouTube 22

Museum 2.0

MARCH 6, 2008

Which museums have experience creating collection tagging systems? The Museum Computer Network and Museum Software Foundation have teamed up to bring you MuseTech Central , a site where you can share your own technical projects and search through a growing resource list of others. Who's doing audio tours on iPods?

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Museum Project Resource Technology 20

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 5, 2007

Today, an interview with Sibley Verbeck (Hathor's his virtual name), founder/CEO of the Electric Sheep Company , which does experience design for real-world companies in virtual worlds including Second Life. Virtual worlds provide an opportunity for social engagement with content, and 2. How would you define virtual worlds?

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Virtual Game Second Life Museum 20

Museum 2.0

APRIL 1, 2009

On Monday, I gave the keynote at the Museums in Conversation conference in Tarrytown, NY. I learned to cultivate creative greed while working on Operation Spy at the International Spy Museum, where I was lucky to be working on a project that was so new to us that we didn't have any pre-established models or structures for doing it.

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Museum Conversation Columbus Local 20

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 12, 2009

The conventional wisdom on museum memberships is that they are "one size fits many" programs whose primary benefits are free entrance to the museum and insider access to exhibition openings. But what about all the other people who love your museum? Want to know how the Brooklyn Museum is answering this question?

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Museum Audience Program Artist 24

Museum 2.0

JULY 1, 2008

Dear Museum 2.0-ers, ers, Next week, I'll be going to DC for a meeting convened by the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Museum and Library Services on "Museums and Libraries in the 21st Century." Over the last 50 years, public-facing museums and libraries in the U.S.

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Museum Library Participatory Wikipedia 20

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 12, 2007

Wandering around, exploring, collecting experiences… sounds like a museum visit to me! I read the (long) article fascinated, wondering if such a resource might exist for museum exhibitions, charting the top 10 exhibitions that use play, or storytelling, or any other core museum design tenet. There are surprises in store.

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Museum Game Open Map 20

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MARCH 12, 2010

For example, just take a look at the explosion of mobile apps for museums. Tags: mobile. iPhone apps are not a build it and they will come project! I'm seeing more and more nonprofits add iPhone apps (or other mobile apps) to their marketing mix. and especially since the dramatic success of the Red Cross Haiti text fundraising.

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Texas Haiti Application Hunger 95

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JUNE 14, 2010

Please join me on June 21st from 1-2 PM PST for the virtual launch of The Networked Nonprofit where Allison Fine and I will talk about social media experimentation and other themes from the book. Contemporary Jewish Museum. Tags: Experimentation Training Design arts arts community artslabsf. Joe Goode Twitter Presentation.

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Social Media Media San Jose Social 99

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

NOVEMBER 2, 2010

James Leventhal facilitated a workshop in Portland last month along with Adam Rozan of the Oakland Museum of California and Stephanie Weaver of Experienceology. I met “ichi&# virtually when he let me know about a Netsquared Japan meet up featuring the Networked Nonprofit. Tags: Housekeeping.

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Network Japan San Antonio Portland 95

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 19, 2007

But what about the unique challenges and opportunities of museums? Here are some creative ways I could imagine museums using IM: Direct Line to the Info Desk. While this may not often be desirable, it is possible to offer guests "live chat" with a staff member via the museum website. Working with contractors and remote teams.

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Museum Tech Tools Info 22

Museum 2.0

APRIL 7, 2008

Now that there are over 200 posts on this blog, I'd like to start acting intelligently to organize the content--beyond the tags I assign to individual posts--so that you can most quickly find the posts you most want to read. Otherwise this becomes just another collection gathering (virtual) dust.

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Taxonomy Museum Folksonomy Rate 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 29, 2007

Thanks to Kyle Evans, who forwarded me the fascinating, lengthy master’s dissertation.art: Situating Internet Art in the Modern Museum by Karen Verschooren at the MIT Comparative Media Studies program. In it, Karen provides a survey of the evolving relationship of Internet art to art museums. Citizen science programs. On the website?

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Museum Web Arts Internet 20

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. It must be working for them--they have over 2000 virtual "friends."

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Web Time Museum Audio 44

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 1, 2008

means, ways museums are and can use Web 2.0 style design, The Tech Virtual open exhibit design project, and the challenges museums face as they try to grow into--or against--future technologies. interview Core Museum 2.0 Ideas Tech Virtual. Tags: web2.0 In 43 minutes, we discuss what Web 2.0

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Interview Podcast Museum Virtual 20

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

DECEMBER 24, 2005

" Mal Booth, Head of Research Centre, at the Australian War Memorial Museum comes word of museum podcasting from down under. These are designed to accompany a 'treasure trail' in our museum over summer (in the southern hemisphere). Technorati Tags: museums , podcasting , nptech , net2

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Podcast Museum Technorati Audio 50

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 29, 2008

In many ways, it's the IDEAL inspiration for museums seeking to create a pervasive, sticky visitor experience that extends beyond the visit and is not totally screen-bound. Better still, if you set goals for yourself, you even get awesome virtual trophies and ribbons, resplendent in their vector beauty. Your score ever-increases.

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Game Track Museum Ipod 20

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

OCTOBER 26, 2010

I learned that CEO of local Girls Scout Council, Jessica Lawrence was using Twitter as a clever networking tool. Her marketing staff person was tweeting, using the conference tag #ISCONF and offered anyone a free box of cookies if they found at the conference and asked, “Would you be my Caramel Delite?

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Blackbaud Conference Reflection Atlanta 93

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 22, 2009

I've added a fourth model to this citizen science typology, one may be more appropriate to facilities like museums than to scientific organizations: co-option. In this model, the public uses institutional facilities or resources to develop and manage projects of their own devising. Contribution, collaboration, co-creation, and co-option.

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Public Research Participatory Report 36

Museum 2.0

APRIL 7, 2009

Which of these descriptions exemplifies participatory museum practice? Museum invites community members to participate in the development and creation of an exhibit. Museum staff create an exhibit by a traditional internal design process, but the exhibit, once open, invites visitors to contribute their own stories and participation.

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Participatory Design Difference Museum 27

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

I visited two museums in which resources were devoted to experiences that only a tiny fraction of the visiting public would consume. As my husband said, that secret room with its mousy trappings was "the coolest part of the whole museum." Tags: design inclusion. Let me explain.

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Louisiana Audience Museum Denmark 31

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 27, 2008

If your museum has many voices in the real world, you will most powerfully and honestly convey yourself virtually if you can reflect the diversity of your institution. The marketing director for a mid-size science museum, Jeff, recently showed me a YouTube channel he’d discovered which was created by a camp staff member at the museum.

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Social Media Media Museum Develop 24