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David Porter Presentation about #wma09 at #mcn2009

November 14, 2009 · 5 Comments

By James G. Leventhal and David Porter

Click here to viewDavid Porter at #MCN2009 Talking about #wma09David Porter’s presentation to the Museum Computer Network annual meeting in Portland this past Friday. THANK YOU, MCN for inviting WMA to be a part!  The following questions were asked:

PorterPreso

Slide from Porter's Presentation ot the Museum Computer Network Conference Attendees in Portland 2009

  • Describe the purpose, size, and topical scope of the conference.
  • Describe the attendees, making an attempt to capture their occupations, roles, ages, experience level, interests, and the extent to which they engage with each other.
  • What were some of the highlights of the conference for you? Best sessions? Best conversations? Most interesting person you met? Feel free to describe the top sessions in as much detail as you’d like.
  • What were some of the takeaways from the conference? Did you resolve to act on something you heard there? Did you share information about the conference with colleagues (either inside or outside of your institution)?
  • What would you change about the conference, if you could? (Keep this positive. One or two ideas only: we don’t want to alienate conference organizers from other meetings!)
  • Was there a conference backchannel? Can you describe it? Did you participate in it?
  • Would you attend again? How frequently?
  • What was the cost of the conference (and of travel/lodging). Would you consider the conference good value for money?

And the other participants on the panel included:

TED – Nik Honeysett
CAA – Beth Harris and Steven Zucker
WebWise – Diane Zorich
SxSW – Paco Link
MW – Bruce Wyman
SI2.0 – Nancy Proctor
AAM – Douglas Hegley
AFTA – David Green
THATCamp – Beth Harris and Steven Zucker

Thanks for the invite, Susan Chun and MCN!  This is such a great way for us all to keep up evaluative process as we maintain a rolling assessment of the value of “carbon-based conferences.”


Categories: San Diego 2009 · Technology
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WMA Unplugged

October 28, 2009 · 2 Comments

Img20050912_0026By Stephanie Almeida

This morning I took some time to unplug completely (no blackberry, laptop or iPod) and take a walk along the beach here in San Diego at the WMA Conference.  As I listened intently to the world around me, suddenly bereft of the continual beeps, pings and whirring that I usually have clouding my senses, the world around me became clearer.

There were surfers paddling against the ocean current fighting to catch the next wave.  I watched as some surfers let the waves carry them lazily – no desire to fight for the small incoming waves – instead, the floated in a group with their friends for the perfect BIG wave to leap upon their boards and ride it as far as it would take them.   Some surfers were alone in the ocean apart from the others.  I watched them fight for both the large and small waves – looking at each wave as a chance to rise and ride and travel back to the beach again and again.

I was walking in the sand very close to the water and I immediately became more conscious of my own steps.  Here the sand was packed tight and secure beneath my feet; every now and then I felt the dips and divots as the tiniest of waves gently touched the sand beneath my toes and left impressions and crevices behind me as I walked.  I moved back to the deep, shifting sand and trudged on – looking up in the direction of road alongside the ridge separating the traffic and noise from the sand and sea.  There were people scattered about up high along the ridge sitting on park benches watching everything from above.

I thought about all of the people in my life and who they were and how they would react to these surroundings and where they would “fit in” among these vignettes.  Some would be the surfers…trying to ride waves of success…fighting hard for each accomplishment or working together to succeed with big ideas.  I thought about the others who would be most comfortable walking on the secure sand leaving little impressions of them on the beach.  I thought about some who would be trudging slowly and methodically through the dense and heaping sand.  Of course there were others who would be content watching it all from high above – hands off, eyes on.

I thought about who I was and how I react to things and I realized I am truly a mixture of all of the above.  When it comes to the future of Museums – where we are now and where we are going – I am out there looking to catch the next wave, watching and hoping to give the big and small waves a shot and working with groups to catch the big ones too.  I am walking along the safe sand too, leaving my impression as I go.  I am trudging through the deep sand sometimes; feeling like I am using muscles I didn’t know I had with each step and moving forward even though sometimes I find it difficult to go on.  And lastly, I’m observing.  I am observing where everyone else is going and contemplating how I can go there too – maybe even going there faster and better and stronger then the people I see in front of me.

Where are you going?  How do you fit into this mix?  Are you watching?  Are you walking?  Are you wading?    Take some time to unplug soon and ask yourself the same question.  I hope you find this as enlightening as I did.  The best news of course is that wherever you are and however you are interacting with the places and people around you, you’re not alone.  I am continually surprised, impressed and amazed with the Museum professionals I meet at these conferences.  I know we are all pieces that make up the bigger picture of the future with WMA.

Categories: Administration · San Diego 2009
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Crossposting: It’s a Hi an’ a Ho, Green Ranger!

October 23, 2009 · Leave a Comment

CFMlogo SMLElizabeth Ellen Merritt has blogged about the ecological cost of conferences at the Center for the Future of Museums blog.  Her latest post on one of the projects that she has inspired at #wma09 San Diego follows, “…speculating that in the future our consciences (not to mention our pocketbooks) will make us think three or four times before winging or wheeling our way across the country or the world for professional development. What are the unique, irreplaceable aspects of face-to-face training that webinars and other virtual training will never replace? When we do choose to travel, how can we reduce the environmental impact, while making the most of the unique benefits of such opportunities?

To explore this theme, Stephanie Almeida, an independent consultant specializing in establishing museums in virtual worlds, is preparing to don the cape and mask of the Green Ranger to attend the Western Museums Association meeting next week in San Diego.

Trailing her bag of recyclables behind her, Stephanie will explore questions such as: what’s the best way to reduce your energy use in a hotel room? How do you hustle a low-impact cup o’ Joe? How do you choose a restaurant that contributes to the “greenness” of your trip?

Elizabeth Ellen Merritt, Director, Center for the Future of Museums

Elizabeth Ellen Merritt, Director, Center for the Future of Museums

I [Elizabeth Ellen Merritt, Director of the Center for the Future of Museums] will help chronicle the Green Ranger’s adventures—look for updates on this blog and on WestMuse. Join the conversation as we explore the pros/cons, myths and hype surrounding carbon offsets, “locavore” culture and green hotel practices.

If you are coming to the conference, you can join the experiment! Bring a coffee mug to personalize with a “Proud Greenie” sticker, and use it for the duration. (The sticker, and other Green Ranger products, are available at Café Press.) Estimate and share with us your own carbon cost for your trip. Whether or not you are coming, comment on this post for suggestions for Stephanie on what she should track or try—what are your tips for green travel? What do you think is the best use of her time in San Diego?

Originally posted by Center for the Future of Museums at 10:17 AM on Oct 22, 2009

Categories: San Diego 2009
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Joining Forces for Sustainability: Balboa Park Cultural Partnership (#WMA09, Monday at 1:35 pm)

October 20, 2009 · Leave a Comment

PrintHow do we make it through these challenging times with museums and historical societies closing their doors or implementing hiring freezes after a sustained period of expansion?  One approach is to join forces.

To quote from one of the underlying themes of the work occurring in the San Francisco Bay Area as part of the National Arts Marketing Program:

As more and more advertisements try to capture your prospective patron’s attention, it‘s becoming clear that it is no longer enough to just do more. We have to start marketing smarter because, honestly, there’s only so much that an arts organization can do by itself to gain a foothold. We have to collaborate.

On Monday, October 26, 2009 the afternoon session of the first full day on the Western Museums Association meeting in San Diego will include a session to discuss the formation and strategic planning of the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership (BPCP) and describe its activities including the Balboa Park Learning Institute, business services, advocacy, sustainability, marketing, public relations, governance, parking and on-line collaborative.

Gail Anderson

Gail Anderson

Presenters: David A. Lang, Executive Director, Balboa Park Cultural Partnership; Paige Simpson, Director, Balboa Park Learning Institute; and Rory Ruppert, Collective Business Operations Manager and Director of the Balboa Park Sustainability Program will be joined by Gail Anderson, President, Gail Anderson and Associates as moderator.

Foundational work in the creation of the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership has occurred with two studies:

David A. Lang, Executive Director, Balboa Park Cultural Partnership

David A. Lang, Executive Director, Balboa Park Cultural Partnership

As an overview Executive Director David A. Lang summarizes BPCP’s history:

Established as a nonprofit organization in 2003, the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership is the collaborative body and collective voice for 24 diverse arts, science and cultural institutions in Balboa Park whose 500 trustees, 7,000 volunteers, and 3,500 staff serve more than 6.5 million members and visitors annually. Our mission is to enrich the cultural life in and beyond San Diego by facilitating collaboration among Balboa Park’s cultural institutions and with the community; to enable the cultural institutions to achieve their full individual and collective potential; and, to preserve, enhance, and make accessible the arts, science, and cultural assets of Balboa Park for present and future generations. The Partnership facilitates collaboration in areas such as education, operations, governance and advocacy, marketing and PR, and sharing and communication.

While neither part of the session, nor really a part of the Western Museums Association, per se, another amazing aspect of the collaborative work at play in San Diego, Rich Cherry heads up the Balboa Park Online Collaborative (BPOC).

Cherry is more focused on the Museum Computer Network (MCN), amongst other professional organizations.  In fact the upcoming 37th Annnual MCN conference later this year has the working theme of “Museum Information, Museum Efficiency: Doing More with Less!”  And Rich Cherry and the Balboa Park Online Collaborative helped bring together the #sfmetrix session WMA co presented last August at the SFMOMA.

Legler Benbough, Philanthropist (1909-1998)

Legler Benbough, Philanthropist (1909-1998)

The Balboa Park Online Collaborative is made possible in large part by the The Legler Benbough Foundation.  For many decades, the Benbough family helped shape the City of San Diego. Legler Benbough’s father, Percy Benbough, founded the Benbough Mortuary and was mayor of San Diego from 1935 until his death in 1942.  Legler Benbough, as a businessman, civic leader, philanthropist and rancher was an important contributor to the civic and cultural life of the City throughout his lifetime. He expanded the mortuary business after his father’s death to become owner of the largest group of mortuaries in the United States.  With no direct heirs, Mr. Benbough made a decision in 1985 to establish a charitable Foundation that would promote his interest in helping improve the quality of life for San Diegans.

The Foundation was initially funded with proceeds of business operations. In 1987, the Benbough ranch in Rancho Santa Fe was transferred to the Foundation and sold. In 1999, the principal funding of the Foundation occurred on the settlement of Mr. Benbough’s estate.  As of December 31, 2008, the grants from the Foundation to date totalled Twenty Million Eight Hundred one Thousand three Hundred thirteen Dollars ($20,801,313) and the assets on hand net of liabilities were Twenty Nine Million Eight Hundred Fifty Four Thousand Three Hundred and Forty Eight Dollars ($29,854,348). (source: The Legler Benbough Foundation)

San Diego is lucky.  And as many of us know, the best way to cultivate, engage and encourage extraordinary support is to keep friends and donors informed.  But what do you do if there are limited resources?  An extremely important part of the ongoing collaborative experiment is underway in San Francisco — the Bay Area Big List.

According to those who are running the Big List:

In many cities across the country, arts groups have started new experiments in collaborative marketing designed to harness the collective energy of the community. These have helped increase both first-time and return attendance levels for the community at large — essentially raising the tide by working together instead of working against each other.

Later this week in the San Francisco Bay Area there will be free workshops that will focus on how 112 arts organizations of all types have collaborated to form one of the largest “Big List” list cooperatives in the country. The Bay Area Big List, which currently holds information for over 430,000 unique arts-going households, is fast becoming one of the largest list co-op programs in the country.

This collaborative model, in which companies gather their mailing lists together in a centralized pool to be cross-referenced, checked for accuracy and tagged with demographic information, allows arts organizations to market smarter, reach new arts-hungry patrons and get a higher return on investment.

Each convening will feature a panel of local arts organizations and Big List administrative staff discussing the impetus of the Big List, the other collaborative efforts that have emerged in conjunction with that program, and the future of collaborative marketing in the Bay Area.  Panelists will include representatives from SFMOMA, ACT, Berkeley Rep, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, Oakland East Bay Symphony, and more.  A full description and the RSVP form (required) can be found at www.theatrebayarea.org/tide.

The free sessions will be

  • Thursday, October 22 (San Francisco), 10AM-12PM (SFMOMA, Wattis Theatre)
  • Thursday, October 22 (South Bay), 3PM-5PM (San Jose Repertory Theatre)
  • Friday, October 23 (East Bay), 10AM-12PM (Aurora Theatre, Berkeley)
  • Friday, October 23 (North Bay), 2PM-4PM (Cinnabar Theatre, Petaluma)

It is programs such as these above that help the big arts organizatiosn equal as much as they do the small ones.  Everybody benefits.  And what’s this year’s theme for #WMA09?  “A Rising Tide,” right.  All boats, people.  All boats.

And these sessions in the San Francisco Bay Area about the Bay Area Big List?  Their theme/title?  Raising the Tide.  All boats, people.  All boats.

See you in San Diego!

(Raising the Tide is part of the NAMP/Wallace Marketing Workshops series. The National Arts Marketing Project (NAMP) is a program of Americans for the Arts and is sponsored nationally by American Express. In the Bay Area, these free workshops are further supported and developed with a grant from The Wallace Foundation in partnership with The San Francisco Foundation, Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund and Theatre Bay Area.)

Categories: Administration · Advertising · Fundraising · San Diego 2009 · Technology
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Elida’s Choice: Director’s Favorites pt. I

October 6, 2009 · 3 Comments

Elida Zelaya, Executive Director

Elida Zelaya, Executive Director

A recent contact called some of the planners at WMA “the Funky Bunch” LOL.  I love the name, it does fit, BUT we are still professionals designing a professional program for you. When asked what I am most looking forward to offering at this year’s conference in San Diego, I have to say the hands-on Resource Clinics first.

On Tuesday October 27 from 5:45 pm – 7:45 pm, the Resource Clinics offer delegates an opportunity for brainstorming, immersion learning, or direct advice from industry experts in one-on-one, small group, or hands-on formats.

In each of these amazing sessions, not only will you get to work with experts, but also to brainstorm with your peers and to learn form those around you.  It’s these kind of meet-up groups that can really make all the difference at the conference.

  • H1 Resource Clinic: Career Planning & Resume Review, Facilitator: Rancy Breece, Transition Consultant, DBM
  • H2 Resource Clinic: New Directors, Facilitator: Heather Ferrell,  Executive Director, Salt Lake Art Center
  • H3 Resource Clinic: Evaluation, Facilitator: Wendy Meluch, Evaluation Consultant, Visitor Studies Services
  • H4 Resource Clinic: Creative Education, Facilitator: Melanie Fales, Executive Director, Boise Art Museum
  • H5 Resource Clinic: Grant Writing, Facilitator: Norma Gurba, AV Grantwriting and Consulting

I encourage you to sign up for one or more of these clinics (sign-up sheets will be at the registration desk). Looking forward to sharing a few more highlights as the dates for San Diego near…

Categories: Administration · Education · Fundraising · San Diego 2009 · Visitor Experience
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SFMOMA Social Media Happenin’: Who’s Doin’ It?

August 27, 2009 · 1 Comment

Sebastian Chan, Manager of the Web Services Unit at the Powerhouse Museum

Sebastian Chan, Manager of the Web Services Unit at the Powerhouse Museum

Tomorrow there’s the free strategic social media seminar for the cultural sector, feat. Sebastian Chan @ SFMOMA.  It all came together, beautifully, pretty quickly and through a small social network.  The twitter hashtag’ll be #sfmetrix.

Who is doing it?

Sebastian Chan leads the Digital, Social and Emerging Technologies department at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. His teams include the museum’s web unit, audio visual and photography, rights & permission and the photo library, the research library and Thinkspace, the Powerhouse’s digital media teaching laboratories. He is a researcher in several Australian Research Council Linkage projects researching social media, museums, and technology; and speaks internationally about the use of cutting edge technology in the cultural sector. He is on the international programme committees of Museums and the Web (USA), Digital Strategies for Heritage (Eu), the Horizon.Au New Media Consortium, and is an International Steering Committee member of Culturemondo, an international group of representatives of cultural portal strategists. Seb is also a member of the Australian Government’s Government 2.0 Taskforce examining ways of improving citizen engagement with government and opening access to public sector information.

RichAndtheKidzRich Cherry is the Director of the Balboa Park Online Collaborative, whose mission is to facilitate and execute a fundamentally change the way museums, cultural arts and science institutions in Balboa Park San Diego use of online technology.  Formerly he was the director of Operations at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, where he oversaw Information Technology, Operations, Admissions, Facilities, Security, capital projects and more than $70 million in ongoing construction.  His has also held positions as the CIO and Director of Facilities at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the CIO of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. He has also taught New Media theory, web design and animation in the Media Studies department at the State University of New York at Buffalo.  He is a board member of the Museum Computer Network serving on the finance committee and as chair for vendor relations, serves on the advisory panel of Fluid Engage, a Mellon Foundation funded project involving an international group of designers, developers, volunteers, and advisers who focus improving the user experience of community and open source web applications with an emphasis on addressing some of the challenges faced by museums and cultural institutions as they work to incorporate new technology into their web, mobile, and physical spaces and he is a founding member of Steve.Museum.

jamesLaughingJames G. Leventhal is the Director of Development and Marketing for the Judah L. Magnes Museum (Berkeley, CA) and is responsible for all fundraising, public relations and marketing for the Magnes. He worked for eight years at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, first as a Research Intern in the Museum’s Department of European Paintings, then as a manager in the development of the Ratti Center, and the Museum’s first consolidated, digital inventory and image management system that was the springboard for one of the now museum-industry standard software solutions TMS.  James went on to spend six years as a lead technologist and Senior Development Officer in the Museum’s Executive Offices at the time when the Metropolitan was first embracing web strategies and the development of the Museum’s first site.  Before joining the team at the Magnes, James worked most recently as a fundraising consultant for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco to help the Museums wrap up the Campaign for the New de Young. He completed his undergraduate studies in Art History, Anthropology and Studio Art at NYU. James has done Master’s work in Art History and Museology at the City College of New York and has an M.B.A. from John F. Kennedy University, with a specialization in Museum Studies. James has also worked as an educator at the Baltimore Museum of Art and at The Phillips Collection.  Since joining the Magnes, James has served on grant making panels for the San Francisco Arts Commission and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Museum Loan Network. He has also presented nationally on the use of technology for audience development and engagement in museums. As a member of the Western Museums Associations (WMA) Programs Committee, James helped WMA launch a digital presence through Facebook, LinkedIn and its blog http://westmuse.wordpress.com.

dmitroff_twitter_lg_biggerDana Mitroff Silvers is the Head of Online Services at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. For over twelve years, she has worked on the design, development, and production of large-scale educational websites, including sites for the UC Berkeley Interactive University project and Computer Curriculum Corporation. She recently led the multi-year redesign of sfmoma.org, and oversees all aspects of the public-facing SFMOMA website.  Dana is on the international program committee of Museums and the Web, and is a frequent presenter and moderator at the annual Museums and the Web conference.  She has also presented at the annual conferences of the Museum Computer Network, IMLS Web Wise, and the American Association of Museums. She is a past board member of the Museum Computer Network, where she directed the redesign of the MCN website.  She has taught and lectured at both the undergraduate and graduate-level for numerous local institutions, including the University of San Francisco, JFK University, Cal State Monterey Bay, and San Francisco City College. Dana holds an MA in art history from the University of Chicago and a BA from the University of Southern California.

greenhair120Perian Sully is the Collections Information Manager and Web Program Strategist for the Judah L. Magnes Museum (Berkeley, CA).  She holds a Master’s Degree in Museum Studies, Interdisciplinary concentration (Collection Management and Technology) from John F. Kennedy University. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art (sculpture) at University of California, Davis and began her museum career at the Richard L. Nelson Gallery at Davis. Perian has a deep interest in the intersection of technology, culture, and the arts, particularly as they relate to museum collections and emerging technologies. She is a contributor to the Musematic blog (http://www.musematic.org), a joint venture between the American Association of Museums Media and Technology Standing Professional Committee and the Museum Computer Network, and she is on the board of the Media and Technology SPC as Programs Chair. In addition, she is an active member of the American Association of Museums Registrar’s Committee. In her free time, she researches and recreates 18th- and 19th-century costumes and makes her own modern clothing designs.

THANK YOU, National Arts Marketing Program! The National Arts Marketing Project (NAMP) is a program of Americans for the Arts and is sponsored nationally by American Express. In the Bay Area, these free workshops are further supported and developed with a grant from The Wallace Foundation in partnership with The San Francisco Foundation, Grants for the Arts/ San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund and Theatre Bay Area.

Categories: Technology
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New Kid on the Block

August 25, 2009 · 20 Comments

By Katie Williams

I would like to share my experiences as a young professional, in my first full-time museum job.  It has been a wild ride to get to where I am now – an Education Assistant at the Northwest African American Museum (NAAM) in Seattle. I will attempt to tell you a little bit about the journey at my new job and what I have learned so far.

What does it mean to be African American in the Pacific Northwest? It is a beautiful range of colors and hues --  a diversity of experiences and locations.  African Americans come from a variety of countries of origin, both known and unknown representing an assortment of religions,  a staggering array of occupations,  a multitude of co-workers, neighbors, friends and families, and an ever evolving community that continues to shape and reshape the human experience in the Pacific Northwest region. The Northwest African American Museum invites you to explore this continually changing story, for it is yours, it is mine, it is all of ours.

What does it mean to be African American in the Pacific Northwest? It is a beautiful range of colors and hues -- a diversity of experiences and locations. African Americans come from a variety of countries of origin, both known and unknown representing an assortment of religions, a staggering array of occupations, a multitude of co-workers, neighbors, friends and families, and an ever evolving community that continues to shape and reshape the human experience in the Pacific Northwest region. The Northwest African American Museum invites you to explore this continually changing story, for it is yours, it is mine, it is all of ours. (source: http://www.naamnw.org/)

After eight months of solid job searching and near misses with three different jobs, I finally found this position. One critical factor that helped me land this job is my previous volunteer and intern experience. I encourage everyone who is now looking for employment or will be in the future, to keep volunteering; anywhere and everywhere. Many of the staff members here at NAAM got their jobs by volunteering first.  Both of the museums I volunteered at in Seattle, the Wing Luke Asian Museum and the Nordic Heritage Museum, are models for the newly opened NAAM.  There was no way I could have known this, but it made me a much more attractive job candidate.  I added it up recently, and I have worked at eight different museums since I decided to go down this career path.  Another important factor for this job is my graduate degree. The classes I took, the internships to earn the degree, as well as the confidence and “can-do-it-ness” my grad program gave me, prepared me well for this position. I can say without a doubt I have drawn on all my previous experience in my new position. 

NAAM is a brand new museum, being open only been open a year when I started in March.  I came in at an exciting time when they had both the funding, and now the staff, to do many of projects they would like to.  This was the opportunity I had hoped for, the chance to put my skills into practice and help create something meaningful for the community.

Much has been expected of me from my very first day in this position.  When I first started I heard the phrase, “you have a master’s, what would do you think?”  I have never been in a position where I felt respected for the skills I have and it is very encouraging. It is also challenging.  My co-workers expect more from me, and I feel pressure to live up to these invisible standards. Whenever I heard someone say that, I wanted to say, “You have been working here much longer than I have, what do you think?” I want to be seen as a colleague, and part of the team.  I also want everyone to feel that their opinion is respected, which it should be.

Since beginning, it has been a balancing act to prioritize the projects I am given and the ones I take on.  My big project -creating educational outreach trunks- seems to get pushed back each time a new and more demanding deadline appears.  This has been a source of frustration, but also in recognizing this, I do not feel as bad when I have to say no to other projects that come along.  In the beginning I said yes to everything.  And I wanted to. Now I realize for self-preservation, it is OK to say no sometimes.

I still am finding a balance between helping everyone, doing my work, and staying sane.  I am able to work on some great projects, and since we are a small museum, those projects are very diverse.  In addition to my duties in education, I have been pulled in to work an upcoming exhibit, handle object donations, and work with our Board of Directors. Though all of the projects put together can sometimes be overwhelming, I love the variety. Outside of work, I find it is essential to take care of myself. Yoga, vegetables, and spending time with friends are essentials; weekends are sacred. I will of course come in when I am needed, and I do. But a big lesson in my career has been the importance of professional and personal balance. It took time for me to realize that it is just as important to take time for myself too.

I enjoy my position.  Each day is different and each day comes with a new set of challenges to overcome.  This is a great place to be, even if it can be overwhelming sometimes.  I work with a great staff and feel supported and encouraged in everything I do.  Just today my boss said thank you for coming in each day, staying late for meetings and coming in the next day with no complaints.  I said it was no problem, it’s my job.  But it felt great to be recognized for the work I do each day.

Categories: Administration · Education

Categories: Administration · Education
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More Thoughtful Learning: How Professional Development Through Social Media Can Strengthen Cultural Institutions

August 12, 2009 · 18 Comments

By Leslie Madsen-Brooks

In recent days, an old argument over whether museums are recruiting professionals from the appropriate pools (e.g. museum studies programs or community colleges) and at the right stages of their lives.  In the comments thread following that post at the Center for the Future of Museums, it becomes clear that many museum workers feel they haven’t had the best opportunities for professional development.  It’s time (again) for museums to ask what kinds of professional development plans they have in place for their staff; too often the onus for such development is placed on individual staff members instead of offered (or even encouraged) by their institutions.

Do your staff members have a clear path for professional development? (Photo by Gwenael Piaser, and used under a Creative Commons license.)

As the blog posts at Design in Museum Studies–as well as countless career and business blogs–suggest, we are in an era where career paths are no longer a single, continuous narrative.  Instead, professionals acquire their knowledge and expertise in a much more piecemeal fashion, and their careers may zigzag across industries and job functions.  Take, as but one example, my own career (I was born in 1975): B.A. in English, creative writing M.A., development communications, K-8 educational publishing, community journalism, university teaching (literature and writing), arts marketing, science center outreach to schools, freelance writing, exhibition development, outdoor ed program development, program evaluation, more university teaching (American Studies), Ph.D. in cultural studies, instructional technology, teaching consultant, university teaching (museum studies), and professional development consulting.  I held many of these jobs concurrently–and still do.  I’m being furloughed for three weeks this year from my job at the UC Davis teaching center, and I can’t know if the university will choose to keep my position (or even the teaching center) in the longer term, so my choices are born of not just intellectual curiosity and vocational restlessness, but also necessity. My generation, and those that follow mine, are neither satisfied with, nor realistically expect employers to provide, the kinds of stability that our parents may have enjoyed.  Nor do we necessarily plan to grant our employers the depth of loyalty our parents and grandparents may have shown their employers.

Such confidence in ourselves (some have called it instead “a sense of entitlement,” and in many cases I’m inclined to agree) doesn’t mean, however, that we’re necessarily savvy about our own professional development.  In fact, we need institutional help in forecasting what shape the field will take, and which proficiencies and varieties of expertise we should cultivate.

Again, the institutional role is key, and many institutions–be they strapped for funds or able to afford to send multiple employees to each major conference–leave their staff’s professional development in a much too ambiguous state.  Recently I wrote at Museum Blogging about the seven best practices in professional development.  The practices range from having specific learning and behavioral objectives to finding (or starting) engaging conversations at conferences, in the workplace, and online, and they emphasize creativity and connection.

You might find these practices all well and good, but still wonder how you can afford professional development for yourself or your staff.  After all, the costs of association memberships, travel to conferences, and seminars can add up very quickly.  If you don’t have the resources for these kinds of investments, there is a less expensive, and decidedly 21st-century, way to advance professional development: social media. Consider this post a brief introduction, and feel free to contact me to talk about how you might apply social media to professional development at your institution.

Using social media in professional development

Conversations, networks, creativity, connection, virality: 21st-century professional development clearly calls for engagement with social media, as such platforms make it easier to achieve all these goals.

Social media is an excellent medium for professional development because

  • It allows for both synchronous and asynchronous participation.
  • Participants are active learners—that is, they are actively engaged in the construction of knowledge, not just passive receivers of it.
  • Social media usually can be captured, thus providing not only an archive of the learning experience, but content that can be repurposed for future symposia, seminars, or courses.
  • In learning to use social media within the context of professional development, staff learn new ways of engaging with audiences for their institutions.
  • Engagement with social media involves multiple learning modalities and intelligences—visual, aural, textual, and more.

Briefly, here are some recent examples of individuals and institutions using social media to achieve learning objectives.

Dave Lester (@digitalhumanist) used Twitter to learn about mobile media and share what he learned:

If you follow the right people on Twitter, you’ll learn a ton and make some terrific, and mind-expanding, new connections.  To find interesting Twitterfolk (or “Tweeps”), go to Twitter Search and enter a search term.  Once you locate some interesting tweets, “follow” their authors and check to see whom these authors are following.  Wash, rinse,  repeat.

There are also some really strong museum blogs out there on which really enriching conversations are taking place.  Off the top of my head, I’d say definitely check out the Center for the Future of Museums blog, Nina Simon’s Museum 2.0, Kristen Olson’s I am almost always on time, New Curator, bloggers@brooklynmuseum, and fresh + new(er) from the Powerhouse Museum.  You can see a huge list of museum bloggers at Museum Blogs.

Museum folk in the know are making excellent use of forums in their own learning.  The threads at Museum 3.0 are particularly thoughtful and thought-provoking.  Here’s a screenshot of recent threads in the Museum 3.0 forum:

museum3screenshot
(View full size.)

As I write this blog post, active threads address such topics as funding and managing design festivals, a seminar by John Falk and Lynn Dierking in Canberra, social media and social history, and concerns about museum and gallery closures.  While the site is ostensibly about imagining the future of museums, the more than 1,400 members of the site clearly are using it to address current issues and to advance their own learning as museum professionals.  The site’s sidebar displays RSS feeds from popular blogs by museum folks; at the moment are displayed links, for example, to a post by Seb Chan of the Powerhouse museum on the return on investment in social media, a post on what crowdsourcing design will mean for museums, and Nina Simon’s musings on innovative punch-card systems that motivate deep engagement.  Such blog posts might inspire threads within the Museum 3.0 forums, or conversation may continue within the comments sections of the individual posts.

It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the hundreds of blogs written by museum professionals or the tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of pages about museums published in books, journals, reports, and white papers each year.  Consider, then, part of the professional development process the ability to locate aggregators of information (like Museum 3.0) and to curate for oneself or others those resources that are worth revisiting.

Once you have figured out this particular variety of curation, learning through social media is powerful because it draws on networks that are both broad and deep.  Social media allows us to discover and connect with new colleages and forge new friendships as we learn, as well as be inspired by our new contacts.  See, for example, @injenuity’s response to a question from Alex Couros (@courosa):

One advantage of working among museum people is that we really enjoy building things, and we’re generally good at collaborating, both because we enjoy it and because we’re used to scrounging a bit for resources.  Such inclinations make wikis an excellent platform for collaborating–they’re frequently free and easy to use, and often the more contributors, the stronger the end product.  Such wikis can benefit a single institution or multiple institutions.  The Smithsonian, for example, has created a wiki called Re-Imagining the Smithsonian in the Digital Age.  Its goal is to collect the thoughts and ideas of those who attended, or who watched the webcasts of, a Smithsonian 2.0 event in January 2009.  It is open, therefore, to the public.  Such openness is one hallmark of the social media age—witness the Flickr Commons, for example, where museums make available photos on which there are no known copyright restrictions, and where visitors can tag, label, and share their knowledge about the photographs’ subjects—and can only benefit the quality of professional development in the museum field as a whole.

Planning for social media–and capturing content

Institutions, or consortia of institutions, looking to set up a more formal professional development program for staff should definitely consider using digital media, and particularly social media, in their plans.  Social media not only promotes interactive learning and collaboration, but also can be captured for future viewing or reading by people who could not participate in an event or conversation.  Such recordings and other captured content might become an additional source of revenue for museums as they can be repackaged into short courses for consumption by those outside the museum or consortium.  These courses might be entirely virtual and self-paced, or hybrid courses where participants check in with an instructor weekly. (I’m happy to help set up such a course or any other individual or communal professional development plan; please contact me at Leslie@EagerMondays.com.)

To better illustrate this process, here’s a sketch of a sample professional development workflow incorporating social media:

socmediaworkflow

(View full size.)

This workflow diagram reminds us to be both deliberate in our planning for learning and in our capture of professional development events and programs so that they can be enjoyed by future staff members or employees of far-flung museums.  Institutions that “get” the digital aspects of this workflow are in a particularly advantageous place, as they can provide, for a fee or merely for gratitude, other institutions’ staff access to programs initiated at the museum.  (Of course, an individual could also develop a much more modest social media workflow for herself; this one thinks big.)

Benefits to institutions

Those who learn to use social media well in their own professional development can then use it to the advantage of their institutions.  Witness this tweet from the National Museum of Natural History (@NMNH):

. . .or this blog post that merges social media, museum collections, and pop culture at the Brooklyn Museum’s blog:

brookylynhbobirdlady

Social media allows for rich intertextuality, which means more interdisciplinary learning and likely more web search traffic as well.

Professional development can be messy

When I was an undergraduate at Grinnell College, the college was an expanse of brick buildings and manicured lawns. When I returned
for a visit in the fall of 2007, I saw that the college had seeded the area along the railroad tracks that cut through campus with prairie grasses. At first, I found the autumn prairie grasses to be tangled, weedy, and unattractive. But upon closer inspection, I discovered a wonderful diversity of plants thriving in close quarters, providing one another, perhaps, with mutual support and protection from pests.

prairie

Prairie photo by Tim Lindenbaum, and used under a Creative Commons license

“Training” workshops that seek only to convey content, to promote a uniform philosophy among staff without recognizing the existing expertise and creativity of individuals by encouraging them to contribute, are more like carefully tended suburban lawns, monotone and polluting. For successful and
high-impact professional development, be willing to tear up those metaphorical institutional lawns and replace them with native grasses or a vegetable garden. Professional development can at first seem messy, but there are tremendous benefits in showcasing a diversity of experience and perspective across a variety of platforms.

What are your thoughts?  How is social media helping your professional development or that of your staff?

If you like this post, you can get more resources coming your way by signing up for this free, low-volume e-mail newsletter.

Leslie Madsen-Brooks is the founder of Eager Mondays, a consulting practice that cultivates unconventional professional development across a broad spectrum of organizations–but museums are her favorite.  She is also an adjunct professor of museum studies at John F. Kennedy University and a teaching consultant at the University of California, Davis.  You can find her at EagerMondays.com or MuseumBlogging.com, and contact her at Leslie@EagerMondays.com.

Categories: Administration · Technology
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The Hits Keep Coming!

July 31, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo

Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo

[Note: The folks in San Diego just keep sending along notes about favorites in their town!  Whatta great place to be.  The latest is from Tim Murray, Director, Exhibits Department at San Diego Natural History Museum]

by Tim Murray

As a long-time resident of San Diego, I thought I would share some of my favorite places in San Diego with you.

View – Cabrillo National Monument (http://www.nps.gov/cabr/)

The view looking east from the visitors observation deck is truly inspiring. The whole county and a chunk of Baja California (Mexico) is laid out before you. It’s a great place for orientation to San Diego.

 Nature & Cultural –  Mission Trails Regional Park (http://www.mtrp.org/)

A very large city park with great examples of coastal sage scrub and riparian habitats.

 Nature & Cultural – Crestridge Ecological Reserve (http://www.earthdiscovery.org/crestridge-ecological-reserve

A large piece of “foothills” habitat that has been saved from development. This is a really cool spot – lots of cultural history, natural history, enthusiastic staff and volunteers, restoration, and preservation can be found here.

 Mexican Restaurant – Valentines (844 Market St between 8th Ave & 9th Ave) San Diego, CA 92101 (619) 234-8256)

There are a LOT of mexican restaurants and many are very good, but Valentines does not offer much decor, just really good and pretty inexspensive food.  The crowd is very “downtown” – a great mix of young professionals, working class, and a few savvy tourists

 Cultural (night) - Santee drive-in theater (10990 Woodside Ave N, Santee, CA 92071 (619) 448-7447)

Because of the favorable weather, the drive-ins are open year-round. The Southbay Drive-in and the Santee Drive-in offer multiple screens and recent movies. The audio is via your FM radio (no speakers hanging on your window). So grab some donuts and coffee (or ?) and head on out to da movies. Who cares what’s showing.

 Beach - Most scenic and beautiful beach for me is the Coronado beach, especially the dunes on the “west” end.

There are a lot of incredible places in Baja really worth seeing, but I might not recommend going down there at this time for a number of reasons: 

- there is a high incidence of drug-related crimes in the Tijuana area.

- a passport is required to get back into this country.

Categories: San Diego 2009
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Free Strategic Social Media Seminar for the Cultural Sector featuring Sebastian Chan @ SFMOMA

July 30, 2009 · 1 Comment

Social Collections, New Metrics, Maps and Other Australian Oddities

A Free Strategic Social Media Seminar for the Cultural Sector featuring SEBASTIAN CHAN

August 28th, 2009 – 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM PHYLLIS WATTIS THEATER at SF MOMA, San Francisco

Sebastian Chan, Manager of the Web Services Unit at the Powerhouse Museum

Sebastian Chan, Manager of the Web Services Unit at the Powerhouse Museum

In a free flowing day of provocative presentation and Q&As, Sebastian Chan will take participants through a range of proven projects and experimental prototypes. These will raise questions about the role of collections and collection data in the digital age; new ways of engaging with communities; and experiments for using mobile technologies in galleries and out in the world around us. It will also address issues around how to better measure digital initiatives and also address philosophies of open access and emerging business models around open content.

RSVP (required) at www.theatrebayarea.org/digital

Categories: Collections · Technology · Visitor Experience
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