President’s Message: San Diego Sun, Sustainability and Seriousness

By Aldona Jonaitis

Aldona Jonaitis, President

First, I want to thank everyone involved for making the annual WMA Conference in San Diego such a successful event.  Special thanks go to Elida Zelaya and Valerie Huaco who worked tirelessly to welcome our arrival in San Diego.  I also want to thank the Program Committee and the Host Committee, both of whom corralled the collective wit and experience of colleagues and volunteers to present an excellent series of sessions, workshops and social events – many of which concentrated on issues of sustainability – a topic that is on everyone’s mind.   Finally, I would like to thank the vendors and sponsors who supported the Conference, including our lead sponsor, the Barona Cultural Center and Museum.

WMA San Diego 2009

As you may have heard at the Conference, the Western Museum Association is undergoing a restructuring process to ensure that our 74 year old organization continues to thrive.  Despite careful monitoring of the budget by the Board of Directors, WMA revenue is far below target, an unfortunate result of the strain felt by all not-for-profits during the current recession.

The goals of the restructure are to create a business model that cuts overhead costs and thus streamlines administrative activities.  The new model includes eliminating  the positions of Executive Director and Publications and Media Manager, closing the physical office located in Berkeley, CA, and investing in digital communications vs. printed materials, among other administrative cost reductions.

In the next few weeks, the Executive Committee and Task Force will create various business models that will consider 1.) maintaining the organization at a base level 2.) estimating costs and overhead associated with the 2010 Annual Meeting in Portland and 3.)possibly suspending the 2010 Annual Conference in Portland to invest resources in the 2011 Annual Meeting in Hawaii.  Each of these business models will take the best interests of the membership as our first priority.

We will also investigate  innovative ways to keep the membership involved and networking throughout the next three years.  We have discussed developing a series of regional events, sessions, webinars and partnerships with like professional organizations in an effort to serve you better. We welcome your ideas as we explore more ways to network throughout the region.

Each of our institutions have been faced with making difficult decisions in the last year and no decision is harder than that which involves talented  and devoted employees.  Please join me in thanking Elida Zelaya and Valerie Huaco for their hard work and dedication in serving the WMA.  On behalf of the Board and membership, I would like to thank each of them for their valued professional service and their heartfelt commitment to the organization.

We will continue to keep our members up to date on the progress of the objectives mentioned here.  Together with the Board, I am committed to the health and well being of this spectacular organization.  I am gratified that so many members and friends have already stepped forward to volunteer their help and I look forward to many more doing so.  Together we will thrive and celebrate happily the 75th anniversary of WMA in 2010!

I welcome your comments and invite you to contact me with any questions, concerns or ideas you would like to share.  My direct e-mail address and phone number are aldona@jonaitis.net and (907) 978-1903.

Museums, New Media and the Triple Bottom Line

by James G. Leventhal

This post may not have a beginning or an end.  Really, it’s just a stroll through some discussions I’ve been hearing about museums and technology.  And it is about how greater outreach by museums is important in challenging times, and how the nonprofit model is taking hold in the 21st century.

Marjorie Schwarzer recently reminded us of the impact that museums can have in difficult economic times, and with their use of technological outreach in her piece on Depression-era outreach in Museum magazine:

The Buffalo Museum of Science in 1932 conceived a radical new program: roto-radio, which was then adopted across the nation. On roto-radio day, the local daily newspaper published a photo spread from the local museum. That same evening, the museum broadcast a talk by a curator that was linked to the pictures. As families huddled around their radio, they learned about many strange and wonderful things: mastodons, natural gas, Australian topography.

Now, technology firms are bringing the lessons of the nonprofit world – missions that matter and meaning beyond profit – to the for-profit world, even creating profits for nonprofit technology firms.  Wait, nonprofit technology firms?!

Wikipedia’s a nonprofit and technology, outreach and nonprofits all came together this past spring for Wikipedia Loves Art:

Wikipedia Loves Art, the name being a play off Valentine’s Day, is a scavenger hunt and free content photography contest among museums and cultural institutions worldwide, and aimed at illustrating Wikipedia articles. The event is planned to run for the whole month of February 2009.

And before you think positive-thinking, nonprofit technology firms ain’t got no legs, please take note that the Wikimedia Foundation bagged Orange — the major international telecommunications firm — as a “client”:

On Wednesday, the Wikimedia Foundation — the organization that runs online community-edited encyclopedia Wikipedia — announced its first large content partnership with a major company, Orange, the European telecom brand of France Telecom….The deal will allow Orange to develop co-branded Wiki channels on its mobile and Web portals. The two will also begin working together to develop new services and features around content from Wikipedia….For Orange, the motivation is simple: Wikipedia is popular with Web users, more so in Europe than any other part of the world. …But for the nonprofit Wikimedia, partnering up is more complex. Orange will share some revenue out of the deal with the foundation, but Ms. Owen declined to reveal the specific terms. Wikimedia currently raises most of its money — $6.2 million last year — through donations from users. But it will need more resources if its traffic continues to soar.

At the Vancouver Police Museum they just won a kind of “Pimp my Ride” competition put out by Zero One Design called “Sponsor a Museum”:

After evaluating 31 applications from museums across Canada, Zero One Design of Victoria BC congratulates the Vancouver Police Museum on being selected in the Sponsor a Museum program which will upgrade their online presence, collection management system, and website.

To begin with the Vancouver Police Museum’s work is none to shabby (not like “Pimp my Ride)…you’d have to figure that Zero One Design can learn a thing or two from the Museum!

And the museum where I work – the Magnes – will be showcased at a Creative Commons salon in San Francisco next Wednesday, June 24th in San Francisco.

Recognize this logo? It's how Creative Commons it's helping orgs for free all over the internet.

Don’t know Creative Commons?  It’s a very serious and focused organization that dedicates itself to “saving the world from failed sharing.”:

Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright.  We provide free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof.

So to come back around to this theme of sustainability.  What are they calling it in the for-profit world – it’s the “triple bottom line.” A term coined by John Elkington of Volans Ventures.

The triple bottom line (…also known as “people, planet, profit“) captures an expanded spectrum of values and criteria for measuring organizational (and societal) success: economic, ecological and social.

And technology and the use of open source are having a big impact at museums of all sizes.  It’s big boon to smaller museums. Click here to view an excellent presentation by Kaia Landon called “Technology for Small Museums.”

And one of the things she focuses on is Omeka.

Omeka is a free and open source collections based web-based publishing platform for scholars, librarians, archivists, museum professionals, educators, and cultural enthusiasts. Its “five-minute setup” makes launching an online exhibition as easy as launching a blog. Omeka is designed with non-IT specialists in mind, allowing users to focus on content and interpretation rather than programming. It brings Web 2.0 technologies and approaches to academic and cultural websites to foster user interaction and participation. It makes top-shelf design easy with a simple and flexible templating system. Its robust open-source developer and user communities underwrite Omeka’s stability and sustainability.

Open source?  Media Foundations?  Has this thread sparked off any thoughts or comments?  What struck a chord?  There’s gotta be some fresh fodder out there for WMA’s New and Notable…

Sustain, Sustaining, Sustainable, Sustainability…Sustenance

by Rosalind Bedell, Program Co-Chair
Judging from recent comments it seems that while many of you may love social networking and find it useful (and who am I to disagree – I’m already excited about the eateries in San Diego), that nothing quite replaces the face to face experience of a conference. I’m sure you have taken a glimpse at the preliminary program for the WMA conference in October – see www.westmuse.org/san diego preliminary program.pdf – but I wanted to draw your attention to some aspects of the conference that the program committee hoped would make it a must-attend event.
This year the theme is sustainability, a word that appeared as a noun or adjective no fewer than 34 times in the session proposals the committee reviewed. But this is not just sustainable in terms of being green (although this is covered too) but in all other ways affecting museums in this difficult economic climate: sustaining exhibitions, sustaining programs, sustaining audiences, membership and staff. Benefits from the recession are hard to find but slim pickings and skinny budgets can stretch minds and produce creative ideas that do not surface in more abundant times. Exciting and innovative ideas can be found in sessions, such as the New and Notable session, in the sessions relating to collaboration between museums crossing the boundaries between their specialties or from the grantees of the Innovation Fund. Hear about the opportunities that a major capital campaign may bring or about a regional cooperative response to disasters, or the race in the Gulf to build the biggest and best museum in the world.
The conference planners hope, more than ever, to send you home with practical help and advice so that with reduced staff or hours you can still put solutions into effect: help with foundation funding, with negotiating small grants, with IMLS, with understanding your board, with the basics of evaluation or insurance claims, with your staff’s texting habit, with website creation and online tools, and some tried and true education programs and projects so that you are not reinventing the wheel.
New this year is the TechLab where you can find out how to blog better or FaceBook faster as well the answers to a host of other computer-related questions afflicting those of us who are less tech-savvy. Another new feature is the Resource Clinics, where experts will provide answers to questions on your resume, the challenge of being a new director, evaluation, creative education or grant writing.
Finally of course – where this article began – there is the face to face contact, the networking. Enjoy an affinity lunch with a fellow curator, educator, registrar or director, the free lunch in the exhibit hall on day one or the afternoon in Balboa Park seeing how the museums in this museum-rich city are coping with present stresses and strains.
The Program Committee spent many hours reading the proposals submitted for the conference, and met together for 3 ½ days over two meetings. Proposals were examined, sometimes tweaked and mostly approved for the conference. Ideas flew around the table as this dedicated and enthusiastic group worked to make the conference as accessible and relevant as possible, well aware that it would be difficult for many to attend this year. We hope we can entice you to come and to persuade your director or department head of the value of attending. WMA has always had a reputation for being a good conference. We hope by giving you tools to take back with you to use in lean times and some new ideas based on sustaining our museums and our profession that we can induce you to come. Think of all the hours you spend on the web or on a social network site, take a few of those hours, put them in a block to attend the conference, and meet some of the professionals you most admire for what they are doing and the faces behind the blogs. And come up with as many alternatives as you can for the word sustainable and let us know – on the blog or, better still, at the conference!