Amy Sample Ward

FEBRUARY 28, 2011

It sounded great, until her last comment: She told me that it was a really important program, because libraries are the heart of the community…well, in elementary schools at least. That may sound simple, like “my town, or my campus, or my organization.” This might sound silly, but I want to show you something.

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Library Model Adopt Community 241

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 30, 2008

Dear Museums on Twitter, Thanks for experimenting in a new and largely uncharted online environment. So here is a list of suggestions that hopefully will improve the way your museum thinks about using Twitter. Or it's rainy so you suggest I visit the museum? Give me a game, like the Smithsonian's name that artifact gambit.

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Museum Twitter Open San Francisco 46

Whole Whale

MARCH 10, 2021

NFTs are also called crypto collectibles, and are the digital assets that are used in the popular game CryptoKitties. For a little history here, the game CryptoKitties was the first major use case for NFTs and has been a huge success. In fact, the game was so popular that it slowed down the Ethereum network when it launched.

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Artist Fundraising Digital Arts 105

Nonprofit Tech for Good

JULY 22, 2024

An experienced not for profit fundraiser, and performer with unparalleled energy and charisma, Layne is a game-changer in the live fundraising landscape. Jude, Make A Wish, American Cancer Society, and The Museum of African American History. She is a veteran touring artist, songwriter, live sound engineer and music publisher.

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Fundraising Jordan Texas Los Angeles 222

Museum 2.0

JULY 17, 2013

Last week, my museum hosted Hack the Museum Camp , a 2.5 day adventure in which teams of adults--75 people, of whom about half are museum professionals, half creative folks of various stripes--developed an experimental exhibition around our permanent collection in our largest gallery.

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Museum Arts History Professional 49

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. And despite the fact that I've enjoyed being at the museum for 12 hours plus for ten days in a row, I'm quickly realizing that if I want to really get some fun participatory projects going, I need some help.

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Museum History Participatory Arts 53

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 7, 2006

"Putting Fun into Functional" is a really fabulous powerpoint presentation by Amy Jo Kim of shufflebrain , a unique game design company. Each one of these amplifies the extent to which the player/user feels connected to the game or experience offered. There have got to be some great ways to apply these mechanics to museums.

Museum 20

Museum Game PowerPoint Myspace 20

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 29, 2009

When you find a bar with your favorite song on the jukebox, or a museum room that feels like your grandmother's living room, you suddenly feel a strong affinity and are able to see yourself reflected in the space. Of course, the problem with all of this is that it sounds crazy from a business perspective.

Museum 34

Museum Los Angeles San Francisco Sound 34

Museum 2.0

JUNE 12, 2012

Helene Moglen, professor of literature, UCSC After a year of tinkering, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History is now showing an exhibition, All You Need is Love , that embodies our new direction as an institution. So many museum exhibitions relegate the participatory bits in at the end. The Love Lounge I LOVE. with sharpies.

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Participatory Museum Blackboard Game 51

Museum 2.0

MAY 22, 2012

Imagine you've just been tasked with developing an innovative, future-thinking national museum for your country's history. Blueprint is the story of a group of people who tried to create a Dutch Museum of National History (INNL). The Museum directors released Blueprint as a showcase for these plans. Where would you start?

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Museum History Netherlands Create 36

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 18, 2013

This August/September, I am "rerunning" popular Museum 2.0 Originally posted in April of 2011, just before I hung up my consulting hat for my current job at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. I''ve spent much of the past three years on the road giving workshops and talks about audience participation in museums.

Museum 45

Museum Question Participatory Vietnam 45

Museum 2.0

JUNE 8, 2007

Yesterday, I turned in my keys and said goodbye to the Spy Museum and to Operation Spy, the narrative, immersive game experience I've been developing/building over the last two years. Adventure is a slice of a large museum, and it's been closed to the public for the last few years (only available to be rented for special events).

Museum 20

Museum Game Indiana Facilitation 20

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 18, 2012

When talking about active audience engagement with friends in the museum field, I often hear one frustrated question: how can we get adults to participate? In children's museums and science centers, this relationship is at its most extreme. They're playing video games. But I don't think that theory holds up.

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Interaction Design Museum Participatory 47

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 9, 2009

Between high-altitude hijinks, run-ins with wildlife, and very long days of hiking, I finished John Falk's new book, Identity and the Museum Visitor Experience. In other words, if you are a curious person, you will go to museums to learn new things.

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Museum Maslow Facilitation Photography 28

Museum 2.0

APRIL 26, 2007

In the spirit of this sentiment, this week we look at games for lurkers, that is, games people watch. Games people watch? Isn’t the point to play games? I’d guess, in this country at least, more people watch games than play them. In museums, we always assume that everyone wants to get their hands dirty and “do it.”

Game 20

Game Museum Contest Interaction 20

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 17, 2007

I visited the Exploratorium a few weeks ago and saw their new exhibition Listen: Making Sense of Sound. It's summer; the museum and the exhibition were hopping. The hot exhibit in question is an interactive in which you play a simple game. Just a simple feedback mechanism that turns casual play into a game.

Game 20

Game Museum Phase Skills 20

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? Get deliciously lost?

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Experiment Lesson Museum Learning 44

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 15, 2006

Games often get a bad rap in the museum world. But recently, I've been exploring the world of casual Flash games on the web, and I've been amazed. There are thousands of game developers out there creating unusual, beautiful, fascinating games that have changed the way I think about museum exhibits and game/play spaces.

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Game Museum Flash Hints 20

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 19, 2007

Earlier this week, I found myself wondering if these Game Fridays are worthwhile. Then I went to a museum exhibition yesterday featuring a computer interactive component with a lousy interface, and thought, Yes. There is still plenty for us to learn about content delivery and engagement from the gaming world.

Game 20

Game Audio Music Sound 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 8, 2011

Last month, artist and game designer Nikki Pugh led an utterly charming, often hilarious community residency at the City Gallery in Leicester, UK. I spoke with Nikki this week to learn more about the Ministry and their fun and games. How did the museum staff respond to this experience? How did this project come about?

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Interview Museum Badge Game 37

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? All motivation to play comes from the players themselves, since it's not clear where the game is going or what the point is.

Game 20

Game Museum Arts Alternative 20

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). It's fine to drop in and out of the game.

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Museum Lecture Denver San Francisco 22

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 28, 2006

First released in 1995 by an educational films company, the game has grown into the Obama of the trivia world. has gone on to build other games and tutorials, but their bread and butter is the crafting of honest, successful "interactive conversation interfaces." Everyone who walks up to a museum kiosk knows it isn't "alive".

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Interaction Game Conversation Guidelines 20

Museum 2.0

MARCH 9, 2007

At the risk of sounding like the biggest dork on the East Coast, a few weeks ago I sat down with some friends to play the new Lord of the Rings board game. It’s a cooperative game, which means that all six of us worked together to defeat Sauron and destroy the Ring. She believes that people’s interest in gaming and in 2.0-style

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Game Museum Alternative Storytelling 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

APRIL 25, 2011

I've spent much of the past three years on the road giving workshops and talks about audience participation in museums. The Museum 2.0 In 2008 and 2009, there were many conference sessions and and documents presenting participatory case studies, most notably Wendy Pollock and Kathy McLean's book Visitor Voices in Museum Exhibitions.

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Question Participatory Museum Vietnam 49

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 21, 2007

I read a description this week of a new hidden object game that is based in a Mayan archeological dig. Most games grant players a certain amount of starter skill. Rare is the game that forces new players to truly enter as total novices. But those are skill-based games. Oh, really? What does this statement really mean?

Game 20

Game Knowledge Museum Skills 20

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

sgEngage

NOVEMBER 30, 2010

and “On Sunday, are you most likely to be: at brunch, at church, at a museum, or watching the big game?&# Sounds like it has great possibilities; time will tell. Two of the questions were “Which of these places would you most like to visit? Argentina, France, India, or Kenya?&# ford Thanks, Steve.

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Trend New York Blackbaud Argentina 82

Museum 2.0

JULY 23, 2019

Me with a friend As I keep saying, I’ve been to a few museums of late. In reflecting on the sample, I’ve made some broad reflections on museum workers and visitors. Our visitors often see museums as a genre, not unlike hospitals or libraries. But, while adjacent, museums differ from formal classrooms in numerous ways.

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Museum Participatory Interaction Classroom 35

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.

Museum 20

Museum Teen Arts Project 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 18, 2014

People at work with the games running in the background on their computers. If you are reading this outside the United States, this sounds ridiculously basic. I got into museum work because learning happens in many places and many ways. And all of that led to more audience--at all levels of the game.

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Arts Build United States Audience 47

Museum 2.0

JUNE 1, 2007

Thanks to Paul Orselli for the link to this week's game, "game, game, game, and again game" by Jason Nelson , self-described new media artist and poet. The game is an odd collection of chicken-scratch drawings, Mario-esque navigation, surprising flurries of poetry and sound, and strange home videos.

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Game Artist Influence Arts 20

Museum 2.0

JUNE 17, 2010

This morning, I gave the keynote address for the Washington Museums Association annual conference. It features lots of museum-based examples. But in this post, I wanted to highlight a goofy little (non-museum) project that inspires me in its simplicity and openness to mass collaboration. It's called One Million Giraffes.

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Collaboration Museum Minneapolis Oakland 34

Connection Cafe

SEPTEMBER 18, 2019

The following post was originally published on the Center for the Future of Museums blog. On Wednesday, August 8, over 300 museum professionals joined CFM director Elizabeth Merritt and Seema Rao, principal of Brilliant Idea Studio , to explore self-care in the museum workplace. But effort and efficacy are not the same.

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Museum Culture Professional Train 21

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

SEPTEMBER 12, 2012

In the spirit of a popular post written earlier this year , I want to share the behind the scenes on our current almost-museumwide exhibition at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, Santa Cruz Collects. We made a giant mobile for the center of the museum out of origami birds folded from visitor comments received in the past year.

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Participatory Museum History International 44