Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

FEBRUARY 13, 2007

Photo from my flickr stream View the Tagging Screencast Presented by NTEN. I'm pleased to announce that my screencast about tagging has been released and showcased by NTEN ! I created it for the screencast to illustrate the definition of tagging. If you have questions about tagging or want to share your organization???s

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Screencast Tag Instructional Instruction 50

Museum 2.0

APRIL 20, 2009

I just got home from the Museums and the Web conference in Indianapolis. I’d never attended before and was impressed by many very smart, international people doing radical projects to make museum collections and experiences accessible and participatory online. Instead, I found a standard art museum. Is this a problem?

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Participatory Museum Web Indianapolis 35

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JANUARY 30, 2010

After all, funding for the arts (theater, dance, music, museums etc.) Those of us active in the nonprofit arts community know that our organizations are a critical part of building the kind of society that can deal more effectively with intransigent problems like economic disparities, poverty and other social inequalities.

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Social Media Arts Organization Support 93

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

NOVEMBER 13, 2009

This conversation came about after Seth's provoking post " The Problem with Non " took a swing at nonprofits for lack of adoption of social media, saying it was all due to fear. Our patience with the lack of innovation that is the problem. Tags: nten.

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NTEN NPO Social Media Indiana 88

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

Speakers included Chicagoans like Rayid Ghani , founder of the Data Science for Social Good Summer fellowship; Mark Mathyer of the Museum of Science & Industry; and Lauren Haynes of GiveForward. Eric Stowe, from Splash, reinforced this point in the final keynote.

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Conference Attention Data Report 113

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 15, 2019

The Western Museum Association was kind enough to invite me to speak on a panel about engagement at their annual meeting in Boise. Phillip’s early remark about museums was an invocation for everyone. As an outsider, he immediately saw that museums were operating “under a business model that doesn’t work.” We need to change.

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Museum Audience Conversation Associations 30

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.

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Museum Los Angeles San Francisco Design 34

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

Collection-tagging projects (in which visitors assign keywords to items in a collection) have always left me cold. Tagging is such a functional activity, and if you don't see direct benefit from doing it, the interest in it as a fun afternoon activity is pretty low. But here's the problem: visitors don't see the same opportunity.

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Tag Project Museum Game 23

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. So for this last piece, we look at going the other way: making museums more physically comfortable. And on the walls, my friend explained, was art from the museum itself. There was funky music.

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Museum Arts Denver Design 30

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 5, 2010

I think identification of problems could be a very exciting opportunity, to build up a detailed list of requirements that could inspire developers and problem solvers. Tags: accessibility X-Prize NPII awards Obama TRACE clearinghouse Vanderheiden FCC. Specific comments on the proposed Chairman’s Awards.

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Accessibility Award Proposal Student 100

Museum 2.0

MAY 13, 2008

I once asked Elaine Gurian how museums can change. Here's the problem with both of these ways: they require circumstances that are outside of most museum employees' control. Here's the problem with both of these ways: they require circumstances that are outside of most museum employees' control.

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Museum Place Project Model 31

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 Virtual Folksonomy 40

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. There’s the “I can’t read the map” problem. The “Where was that thing I liked” problem.

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Museum Map Experiment Aggregator 21

Museum 2.0

NOVEMBER 23, 2007

Museum membership is not nearly as healthy as that of Weight Watchers. Museum members aren't ideological, like members of a political party or a movement. Today's museum members are mostly "value" members, people who join based on a calculation of savings in admissions fees over a number of yearly visits.

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Museum Group Program Benefit 27

Museum 2.0

MARCH 24, 2010

This is the third in a four-part series about writing The Participatory Museum. This post covers my personal process of encouraging--and harnessing--participation in the creation of The Participatory Museum. I blogged about the opportunity in September 2009, and then faced a new problem: 92 people expressed their interest in helping.

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Participatory Museum Process Experiment 33

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.

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Authoring Platform Museum Content 42

Tech Soup

FEBRUARY 26, 2010

If you know someone who deserves that break, there's a great competition going on to select Tech Awards Laureates, presented by The Tech Museum of Innovation. The Tech is looking for people who respond to humanity's most pressing problems by applying a technological solution. Tags: Online Activism.

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Award Tech Open Museum 43

Museum 2.0

DECEMBER 3, 2019

I was thinking I’d do a few alternative histories of museums for the first post of the last month of the decade. As I imagined a world without the many museum tech projects of the decade, I felt inherently sad about the imagining away the successes that friends and colleagues have enjoying. But I couldn’t get there.

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Museum Work Social Media Audience 21

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

JULY 1, 2009

Submitted by Nina Simon, publisher of Museum 2.0. I’ve had it with museums’ obsession with open-ended self-expression. And yet many museums are fixated on creators. Museums see open-ended self-expression as the be-all of participatory experiences. This is a problem for two reasons.

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Participatory Experiment Museum Teen 50

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 7, 2009

Every time a colleague tells me her museum has just hired a "community person," a part of me cringes. When community managers are the sole masters of their own dominions, two problems arise. When community managers are the sole masters of their own dominions, two problems arise. This is a problem.

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Community Management Museum Project 40

Museum 2.0

MARCH 30, 2010

Let's say you're a young person eager to break into museums. Over my first year in museums, I worked at five different institutions as an educator, exhibit builder, exhibit cleaner, art model, and whatever else I could find. Now, several years of full-time museum work later, I'm consulting.

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Work Museum Professional Education 46

Museum 2.0

MARCH 16, 2009

I’ve had it with museums’ obsession with open-ended self-expression. And yet many museums are fixated on creators. Museums see open-ended self-expression as the be-all of participatory experiences. This is a problem for two reasons. These are all active social endeavors that contribute positive value to the social Web.

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Participatory Experiment Museum Teen 44

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MARCH 19, 2009

With unemployment and cutback, for many a trip to the art museum can appear to be a luxury. Allison suggests in her post that there is definitely a business model problem. Tags: Art Sector. The article includes a link to a google map where you can look at the economic impact in each state. What do you think?

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Arts Model Organization Nonprofit 60

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 22, 2007

Louis City Museum's amateur video contest. And therein lies an essential problem with this and other similar museum forays into Web 2.0: For those who haven't visited, the City Museum is part obstacle course, part art city, part shoelace factory. second video shot entirely within the City Museum. follow-through.

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Museum Contest St. Louis Video 22

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 6, 2008

Consider the problem that Scholastic is trying to solve with The 39 Clues. This problem is analagous to the repeat visit problem for museums. Museum visits, like book reading, can be an intense and wonderful experience. But is one museum visit enough to compel a second visit? But the approach is valuable.

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Museum Platform Game Relationship 23

Mashable Tech

MARCH 3, 2025

It packs over 2,000 pieces of museum-quality images to choose from. Get Deal "The Bose SoundLink Micro isn't exactly the cheapest Bluetooth speaker, but its portability, good sound, and durability almost justify the price tag," Mashable's reviewer writes. It's unfazed by water immersion and will pump out heavy bass no problem.

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Amazon Google Sound Life 71

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? What would you do?

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Experiment Lesson Learning Museum 44

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 15, 2010

Faced with this problem, I hit the web and found a tool that's fast, easy to use, and gave me exactly what I needed: Floorplanner. You can even print out your design as a 3D model if you want a paperweight version of your future museum. Tags: Technology Tools Worth Checking Out Quick Hits. What might you use it for?

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Tools Los Angeles Free Museum 37

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

AUGUST 12, 2009

A group of individuals has more knowledge to solve a problem than a single individual. Jerry Michalski use the metaphor of the global brain to describe this. Now wonder some arts organizations - museums, orchestras, and now operas - have embraced crowdsourcing as a creative technique. Tags: crowdsourcing.

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Analysis Music San Francisco Mashup 88

Museum 2.0

SEPTEMBER 29, 2010

Now, after attending with museum friends from around the country, I'm hooked. Unlike most museum experiences, where people quietly absorb the work in a room, people were very comfortable pulling each other to specific pieces and extolling their merits or less inspiring qualities. Very few wrote in typical museum or even gallery-speak.

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Arts Experiment Social Museum 52

Museum 2.0

MARCH 6, 2019

letting museum visitors contribute and collaborate in museums), I now see this as a crucial issue also for more democratic and inclusive practice (i.e. 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 44

Authoring Share Museum Content 44

Twenty Hats

SEPTEMBER 20, 2020

One of the participants had to take an onsite museum role, where volunteers staff educational carts and engage with visitors, and transform it info a remote position. There’s a price tag attached for creating the replicas and mailing the boxes, and it may be sizable. There’s more potential to engage the viewer with a live demo.

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Roles Volunteer Virtual Demonstration 70

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

AUGUST 19, 2007

IM shares this problem; if you don't have an IM client, I can't IM you. However, fortunately, the secondary problem associated with this (you use AIM, I use Gchat) is ameliorated if you use a global IM client like Trillian or Adium. But what about the unique challenges and opportunities of museums? Do you use IM at work?

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Museum Tools Tech Info 22

Museum 2.0

JANUARY 8, 2018

You run a regional museum. This is the plan that plunged the Berkshire Museum into hot water. In July, the Berkshire Museum released its $60,000,000 New Vision , along with a funding mechanism: selling 40 of its most valuable artworks. It states that museums can only sell objects to purchase or care for other objects.

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Public Museum Build Detroit 40

Museum 2.0

JULY 11, 2008

No, these are neither the words of a self-important curator nor a well-spoken museum director. the crowd-curated photo exhibition now open at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. It is a substantive research contribution by the museum to the social technology field at large. As with any good museum exhibition, Click!

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Museum Artist Arts Podcast 20

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 Professional Culture Training 21