Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

FEBRUARY 24, 2009

Raymond raised some good reflective questions about backchannels that are still very relevant four years later as back channels goe more mainstream and search for best practices on how to incorporate them into our conferencing experience. One of the reflections. (Warning she says the F-word on the clip.)

Reflection 69

Reflection Conference Resource Arts 69

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 5, 2008

Institutions like the Boston Children's Museum (which she helped lead in the 1970s) drew heavily from and worked in partnership with the "open classroom" movement to develop informal educational models that are interactive, open-ended, and individualized. Why haven't children's museums pushed past the 1970s model?

Classroom 22

Classroom Children Museum Model 22

Museum 2.0

MAY 22, 2012

The majority of the book is a tour of the conceptualized physical institution, with smaller sections devoted to the political history of the project and the activities (mostly participatory, distributed, and digital) that the team undertook from 2009-2011 to start building their constituency. The early participatory projects are terrific.

Museum 36

Museum History Netherlands Create 36

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 11, 2012

I can't say that any one experience--working on a collage with other visitors, swinging on a hammock, discovering a participatory display for pocket artifacts in the bathroom--directly contributed to increased attendance and giving. This community was ready for a museum that reflected the unique creative identity of Santa Cruz.

Audience 47

Audience Museum Participatory History 47

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 5, 2008

This week, they hosted "Let Them Be Heard: Visitor Participation in the Museum Experience," featuring four presentations on incorporating visitors' content into museums. I was captivated by Chris Alexander 's story about participatory online/onsite efforts at the San Jose Museum of Art (SJMA). Was the Road Trip experiment successful?

Case Study 20

Case Study Participatory Studies Museum 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 18, 2008

Several libraries have started to offer gaming nights where you can drink soda and play Wii to your heart's content. The key to these benefits is not the volume of online content produced but its reach. Work with communities that relate to your content and reach desired audiences. Does this mean copping out on our core values?

Museum 22

Museum Hosting Model Community 22

Museum 2.0

MARCH 15, 2010

It's not the extent to which they are participatory. They reflect the soul of the community and can be responsive to its unique interests and needs. Funders and potential donors tend to look for particular benchmarks of professionalism (appropriately), and few are comfortable funding the most risky or content-specific institutions.

Support 41

Support Museum St. Louis NSF 41

Museum 2.0

JULY 9, 2009

The participatory element employs an accessible speculative question. The Odditoreum's "write your own label" program is very successful because visitors are being asked to author imaginative content. The participatory element is modeled well by the "official" content. The answer is given, but separately.

Museum 22

Museum Alternative Portland Artist 22

Museum 2.0

JULY 1, 2011

It really reflects what we're trying to do here to transform our institution into as relevant, dynamic, and successful an organization as possible. Ideas include combining Santa Cruz's famous love of yoga with life-drawing classes, having models incorporate yoga poses for the sake of the would-be artists.

Museum 31

Museum History Arts Work 31

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 7, 2010

I also learned that the best money in museums for someone who's starting out is in art modeling. I survived the first half of 2003 financially on art modeling and poetry gigs. We had only eight people doing everything related to content and programming at the museum. The Spy Museum was a dream place for me.

Museum 52

Museum Boston Participatory Job 52

Museum 2.0

MARCH 21, 2011

They model impersonal, businesslike relationships between the institution and the people who care about it the most. In contrast, organizations that feature staff or member walls celebrating people's diverse talents and interests reflect the idea that this is a community of people who care about each other.

Relationship 46

Relationship Museum Game Celebrate 46

Museum 2.0

JUNE 6, 2008

The resulting (real) exhibits are high-quality experiences that reflect a level of creativity that could not have resulted from our scant in-house exhibit development staff. Once we realized that virtual exhibits would not translate directly to the real world, we transitioned to a model where the real exhibits were "inspired by" the virtual.

Virtual 21

Virtual Tech Lesson Second Life 21

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 8, 2008

For hundreds of years, we've owned the content and the message. While we may grudgingly acknowledge the fact that visitors create their own versions of the message around subsets of the content, we don't consciously empower visitors to redistribute their own substandard, non-authoritative messages. Content expertise matters.

Authoring 42

Authoring Platform Museum YouTube 42

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

FEBRUARY 24, 2011

Their online network includes over 250,000 activists and they partner with hundreds of environmental and social justice organizations around the world to create and distribute the film, curricula, and other content. 2) Networks are participatory. They can get millions of people to help, not just paid staff. (3)

Story 100

Story Network Action Examples 100

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 24, 2008

Facebook has a diversified object model--for some people, friend updates are the essential object, for others, it's virtual gifts. Are there models out there for sharing physical objects that can't be moved? Gifting is a powerful participatory behavior. participatory museum. Not all Web 2.0

Museum 26

Museum Social Participatory Flickr 26

Museum 2.0

JUNE 15, 2009

You can explore the project wiki where we coordinated the exhibit, including the project overview , our six-week plan to get it all done, and individual sections for development of concept , content , interaction , graphics , marketing , fabrication , installation , and evaluation. The post-its and pens were right there.

Advice 31

Advice Museum Student Facilitation 31

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 4, 2008

This same process can also be applied to visitor-generated content. But if the content is laying fallow, reviewed by NO ONE, why not let visitors take up the mantle? I admit that I have often jumped directly to "embracing" in exploration of how museums can become more participatory.

Museum 20

Museum Participatory Evaluation Chapter 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 11, 2008

While there are some criticisms of its consensus-based model for information-vetting, there's no doubt of its success as a collaborative knowledge-creation project. I don't know if that was their original plan or a reaction to our poor use of the wiki, but it certainly didn't reflect our supposed digital chops. So when do wikis work?

Wiki 23

Wiki Wikipedia Museum Doc 23

Museum 2.0

MARCH 20, 2007

I believe that, as with basic human needs, experience design in museums (and for other content platforms) can occur on many levels, and that it is hard to achieve the highest level without satisfying, or at least understanding, those that come before it. The exhibit provides a opportunity for the user to play with the content.

Museum 32

Museum Social Interaction Movie 32

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 6, 2019

I spent 2007-2011 traveling the world, doing participatory projects and consulting gigs, and writing my first book. You gave me support as I struggled to lead a museum through a participatory rebirth. They want the content." As long as I was holding it - as long as I was pumping out content - I could soar. Museum 2.0

Museum 27

Museum Reflection Participatory Attitude 27

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 24, 2011

I was talking this week with Mark Allen, the founder of Machine Project (an alternative arts space in LA), about different models for community engagement in cultural institutions. The sensibility is the content and the style with which the engagement happens. It's hard to say which is more important--or challenging--to transform.

Voice 42

Voice Los Angeles Denver Museum 42

Museum 2.0

JULY 14, 2008

The NAS publishes one such report every business day, and apparently these reports are seen as a gold standard of objective, well-researched content on a range of industries and issues. One of the most promising models for doing so (and a potential way to structure the NAS report) is scenario-based planning.

Library 20

Library Museum Reflection Alternative 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 15, 2009

There are lots of museums (and organizations of all kinds) looking for ways to inspire users and visitors to produce their own content and share it with the institution online. The content does not live behind click after click; instead, you can access every submission from the world map. design participatory museum usercontent.

Project 38

Project Museum Artist Map 38

Museum 2.0

MARCH 6, 2019

While I originally wrote this post to advocate for more participatory practice (i.e. For hundreds of years, we've owned the content and the message. Content expertise matters. Content control shouldn't. Museums should feel protective of the expertise reflected in their staff, exhibits, programs, and collections.

Authoring 44

Authoring Share Museum YouTube 44