Morning Coffee and On-Line Metrics

By Susan Spero

Susan Spero

As I sit with my cup of coffee this morning and think through yesterday’s tour de force by Seb Chan,  I too realize that like a tweet on #sfmetrix stating that a tornado of ideas was spinning through the tweeter’s mind, mine too feels like it has been hit by a storm.

Tremendous kudos are in order for the organizers for sponsoring a great day:  the National Arts Marketing Project, Theatre Bay Area, American Express, The San Francisco Foundation, the Wallace Foundation,  SFMOMA, AAM Museum and Technology, Museum Computer Network, WMA, along with other organizations and certain individuals.

The star of the day was Seb Chan who literally held the podium for the entire day showing how the team at Powerhouse Museum (http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/) have, through time, built a smart online system.

Their considered online philosophy and care has given them results:  the Powerhouse collection has been pushed to the forefront of their visitor’s online experience. A larger percentage of visitors spend time on pages that have to do with the collection more than with any other offerings.  Their visitors engage and use the collections information available: from the fabric swatches for creating a new issue of the designs or even as insights into objects for an ebay transaction (buying or selling, who knows).  The Powerhouses’s willingness to share incomplete material from their collections data base has even triggered new knowledge about the collection based on interested visitors sharing what they know.

Seb walked us through the choices their producers and in-house developers make as they consider open options for looking at the collection. Simple things like visitor language tags, and statements of significance as to why and object is important help make the objects relevant for an online visitor (scroll down on the link and browse through these amazing book dresses).

Over and over Seb implied that the Powerhouse philosophy is to listen, learn and seek ways to understand how their audience uses and/or wants to use their collection.  The team constantly wonders: What is the relevance of the collection and how can digital tools let us serve that need?

Go to where the audience is already living, is a key phrase for those who promote social software, and the Powerhouse museum understood this idea from the get-go.  They were the first museum on the Flickr Commons, and by putting their Tyrell Collection of  historic photographs of Sydney on board early, they increased awareness of the Powerhouse museum with the community that cares about photography.  What intrigued me is that this intense audience-interest in photography online has had an impact on the curatorial choices the Powerhouse Museum is making; they are going to (or have) hired a curator that can support the photographic collection.

Additionally, Seb noted that, at least in his mind, curators now and in the future need the skill sets to be able to work in the digital realm. In fact as part of their official curatorial responsibilities all  Powerhouse curators blog.  The web is a communication platform and everyone on staff needs to know how to use it to help audiences connect with museum resources.

The afternoon session was a geek’s dream in that it focused on the many metric systems that can be used to analyze just who uses your website and how they use it.  What was most telling though was how Seb admitted up front that many of the numbers tell you nothing when thrown out as just numbers.

Seb Chan, Head of Digital, Social & Emerging Technologies, Powerhouse Museum at the podium at SFMOMA

The key, as with all statistics, is that you know how to read them so they can influence future actions.  Find patterns over time.    So, for example, is there an upward trend when you open an exhibition or open up registrations for summer camps?  Is there a downward trend on holidays (usually, weekends are evidently down for all internet users: guess what we read while we are at work).  And look at how others in your area are doing:  if a competing institution has a sudden spike in their numbers and yours are flat, can you figure out why and how that happens.

You want to know how many people touched your content.  Let the analytics help you understand this.   If not already known, concepts like dwell time, bounce rate, and ISP logs are now a part of the mindset of every listener in the Friday’s room .  Dwell time measures how long visitors stay at your site, but even then those numbers have issues since you can only measure how long someone was at the second to last page they were on while visiting your site as there is no way  (yet?) to account for how long a person is on the last landed page of a session.  So you could discover that the average time spent on your site is four minutes, but who knows what amount of time passed when visitors finally found that great educational video you produced. Bounce rate is how quickly someone is in or out of your site; you want bounce rate to be low on education pages, but high if you are buying tickets for an event (get in and get the sale done quickly).

And ISP logs help you gain a finer grain view of your visitors, although the privacy invasion is real and alive on the web;  you can be tracked for where you’ve been browsing, and while I have always understood this, Seb’s reminder made me pause.

One of the most solid pieces of advice Seb offered is for institutions to use freeware for online analytics, but PAY someone to help you customize your specific number crunching.  You need to understand what the numbers mean, and HOW they will impact your future behavior   The twitter #sfmetrix site notes that there were tons of free “Kewl Tools” out there for the using (search twitter for #sfmetrix and you can read through the tweets of the day).

There were many big take-away thoughts:

1. Beta Test:  Don’t hesitate to beta test your site putting it online sooner than later: it doesn’t have to be finished before you go live.  In fact some of the things you learn that are most valuable are when you go live and real visitors are using it. Seb thinks we should also try to work the same beta testing for some exhibition efforts.

2. Be Adept Enough to be Relevant:  Web thinking, with its open, speed driven approach needs to work backwards into how our institutions function. Remember the photography curator story developing from increased interest built in Flickr commons.

3. And finally: Note to self.  Scour the Powerhouse’s web site.  I mean really look at it very carefully.  There is much to learn about collections access and smart web design.

Lastly, Seb has a blog that presents many of the ideas and projects seen yesterday: it is a great resource.

Others of you were there. What are some of your biggest take-aways? And those of you who were not, any thoughts on collections access or museum metrics? Great examples or challenges in practice?

SFMOMA Social Media Happenin’: Who’s Doin’ It?

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.

Rich 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.

James 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.

Dana 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.

Perian 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.

MASSIVE “RT”

Sebastian Chan, Manager of the Web Services Unit at the Powerhouse MuseumSome clarifications on our experience with ‘free’ content

[This Friday Seb Chan will speak at SFMOMA at a sold out symposium that WMA has helped to arrange, with thanks to Rich Cherry and others.  As a bit of a preview of what's to come, we have taken one, big-ol', whole post from Seb's professional blog as one massive "retweet."  I started to pull out highlights, then realized the whole thing shimmered.

Seb's fresh + new(er) is a "must read" add it to your feeder!  It is a "sector resource."

*respect* - Editors]

Some clarifications on our experience with ‘free’ content

August 14th, 2009 by Seb Chan

Over on the Gov2 blog a comment was posted that asked for more information about our experience at the Powerhouse with ‘giving away content’ for free.

I’d be interested to know more about your experience with Flickr and your resulting sales increase. Are these print sales or licensing sales? And are they sales, through your in-house service, of the identical images you have on Flickr, or are you using a set of images on Flickr as a ‘teaser’ to a premium set of images you hold in reserve? How open is this open access? I am trying to understand the mindset of users in an open access environment who will migrate from ‘free use’ to ‘pay-for use’ for identical content, as this makes no sense, either commercially or psychologically, unless there is additional service or other value-add.

Whilst I communicated privately a lengthy response I think some of it is valuable to post here to clarify and build upon the initial findings published by my colleague Paula Bray earlier this year.

Here’s what I wrote. Some of this will be familiar to regular readers, some of it is new.

(Please also bear in mind that I am focussing here on predominantly economic/cost-related issues. Regular readers will know that our involvement in the Commons on Flickr has been largely driven by community and mission-related reasons – don’t take this post as a rebuff of those primary aims)

First a couple of things that are crucial for understanding the nuances of our situation (and how it differs, say from that of other institutions, galleries, museums)

1. The Powerhouse is, more or less, a science museum in its ’style’ (although not by our collection). Our exhibitions have traditionally, since our re-launch/re-naming in 1988, been heavy on ‘interactivity’ (in an 80s kind of way), and ‘hands on’. We aren’t known for our photographic or image collections and we haven’t done pure photographic exhibitions (at least for the last 15 years).
2. Consequently we have a small income target for image sales. This target doesn’t even attempt to cover the salaries of the two staff in our Photo Library.
3. In 2007/8 around 72% of our income was from State government funding.
4. The Powerhouse has an entry charge for adults, and children aged 4 and over. In 2007/8 this made up 65% of the remainder of our income. Museum membership (which entitles free entry) added a further 8%.

(You can find these figures in our annual reports)

So what have we found by releasing images into the Commons on Flickr?

Firstly we’ve been able to connect with the community that inhabits Flickr to help us better document and locate the images that we have put there. This has revealed to us a huge amount about the images in our collection – especially as these images weren’t particularly well documented in the first place. This has incurred a resource cost to us of course in terms of sifting responses and then fact checking by curatorial staff. But this resource cost is outweighed by the value of the information we are getting back from the community.

Secondly we’ve been able to reach much wider audiences and better deliver on our mission. The first 4 weeks of these images being in Flickr eclipsed an entire year’s worth of views coming from the same images on our own website. Our images were already readily Google-able and were also available through Picture Australia which is the National Library of Australia’s federated image and picture search.

(I’ve written about this quite a bit on the blog previously.)

Thirdly, we’ve found that as very few people knew we had these images in the first place, we’ve been able to grow the size of the market for them whilst simultaneously reducing the costs of supplying images.

How has this ‘reduced the costs’?

What Flickr has done is reduce the internal cost of delivering these images to “low economic/high mission value” clients such as teachers, school kids and private citizens. Rather than come through us to request ‘permission’ these clients can now directly download a 1024px version for use in their school projects or private work. The reduction in staff time and resource as a result of this is not to be underestimated, nor is the increased ease o use for clients.

At the same time, Flickr’s reach has opened up new “high economic/low mission value” client groups. Here I am talking about commercial publishers, broadcasters, and businesses. Commercial publishers and publishers want a specific resolution, crop or format and we can now charge for the supply in these formats. At the same time we are finding that we are now getting orders and requests from businesses that had never considered us as a source of such material. We are actively expanding our capacity to deliver art prints to meet the growing needs of businesses as a result.

It is about relationships and mission!

At the same time, we can now build other relationships with those clients – rather than seeing them only in the context of image sales. This might be through physical visitation, corporate venue hire, membership, or donations.

Likewise, we know that the exposure of our public domain images is leading to significant offers of other photographic collections to the Museum alongside other commercial opportunities around digitisation and preservation services. Notably we have also been trying to collapse and flatten the organisation so that business units and silos aren’t in negative competition internally – so we can actually see a 360 degree view of a visitor/patron/consumer/citizen.

[NOW GO READ MORE SEB!]

Make something happen

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

By Richard Cherry

Innovating in a museum or in the museum field is a team sport.  None of us have all the resources, the knowledge or the connections to do it by ourselves.  How many people does it take to bring Sebastian Chan to San Francisco to do a couple of free workshops on August 28^th?… it takes a quite a few(save the date/more details to come).  But it takes just a few dedicated people to getting it rolling.. so a big shout out James Leventhal, Leo Ballate, and Perian Sully for their fantastic effort in making this possible.  There is no reason that you cant start something great for your museum or the field… in fact right now is the best time to do it.  Make somthing happen.

[Note: Richard Cherry is Director of the Balboa Park Online Consortium, what are they NOT doing in San Diego?!...]

YBCA Inside Out & Art Babble

Hello folks,

My name is Isaías D. Rodríguez, Interactive Media Producer, at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, YBCA in San Francisco, CA. I’ve been with YBCA for over 4 years  and in the last year transitioned into my new role as an in-house media producer. I produce media on our exhibitions, performances, film/video screenings, and events.

I’m really excited about our new web-based video series, YBCA Inside Out, that gives you a behind-the-scenes look at what happens at a contemporary art center. YBCA was just added to Art Babble, a great site that features media content from several arts orgs from around the country. I welcome you to view our videos and leave your comments. I love the feedback! I take the good, the bad, and the ugly. My audience is you, so hit me up with your thoughts.

I look forward to providing you with some juciey content and invite you to visit us at ybca.org.

Have a great day and thank you for your time.

Isaías D. Rodríguez
Interactive Media Producer
irodriguez@ybca.org

http://twitter.com/irodriguezybca

Web 2.0 and organisational change: the Australian Museum’s new website

By Lynda Kelly

It has long been recognised that choice and control are important facets of learning (Hein, 1998; Paris, 1998) and that learning experiences need to be learner-centred (Dewey, 1938). Recent audience research projects found that audiences want to have more control over their museum learning experiences (Kelly, 2007). Work on museums and controversial subjects found that visitors wanted to not only engage with these topics, but they wanted to make comment and have conversations about them, both with the museum and with other visitors (Kelly, 2006). At the time of these studies the internet was still emerging as a force to be reckoned with … until the arrival of Web 2.0.

What is Web 2.0?

Web 2.0 (sometimes referred to as social media/social networking) is all about connections, such as through:

• Sharing content: blogs, wikis, podcasts, vlogs, Twitter
• Self-publishing content: YouTube, Flickr, blogs, Wikipedia
• Adding to established content: user-tagging, Wikipedia
• Discussing issues: forums, blogs, chat
• Tailoring information: RSS feeds, email alerts
• Bringing people together: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, SecondLife, platforms such as ning

Web 2.0 is also “associated with the idea of the Internet as platform” (see the website Short version of key terms in social media and networking for more definitions).

Web 2.0 means that museums will have increasingly complex relationships with their users as it “… puts users and not the organisation at the centre of the equation. This is threatening, but also exciting in that it has the potential to lead to richer content, a more personal experience.’ (Ellis and Kelly, 2007).

The Australian Museum’s new website

On Sunday 7 June 2009, the Australian Museum launched its new website. After four long years of planning and preparation we finally have a site that enables staff to manage their own online material and which enables us to engage in two-way interaction and community building. For the past two years we have been actively working on organisational change, using the staff mantra of working 20% differently, not 20% more. We have also been using the Engaging with Social Media in Museums research project to conduct online experiments which resulted in an added benefit of inspiring staff into wanting to engage further in the online world and become proactive – we have been blogging about that project here on Museum 3.0.

I invite you to visit our site, sign up to our community and please give us feedback either via the commenting function or the email form.

References

• Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and Education. New York: Kappa Delta Pi.
• Ellis, M., & Kelly, B. (2007). Web 2.0: How to Stop Thinking and Start Doing: Addressing Organisational Barriers. In J. Trant & D. Bearman (Eds.), Museums and the Web 2007: Proceedings. Toronto: Archives & Museum Informatics.
• Hein, G. (1998). Learning in the Museum. London: Routledge.
• Kelly, L. (2006). Museums as Sources of Information and Learning: The Decision-Making Process. Open Museum Journal, 8.
• Kelly, L. (2007). Visitors and Learners: Adult Museum Visitors’ Learning Identities. University of Technology, Sydney.
• Paris, S. (1997). Situated Motivation and Informal Learning. Journal of Museum Education, 22, 22-27.

[Editor's note: The Western Museums Association's blog WestMuse is open to submissions from all over the world for topics relevant to museums in the western United States.  This author was invited to submit the Australian Museum's brand new web site, because if has some interesting modules where the web 2.0 tools to which she refers are "built right in." Be sure to sign up for "My museum" and give it a test drive.]

Sins of the City: Vancouver Police Museum

It ain’t no sin if you crack a few laws now and then, just so long as you don’t break any.” – Mae West (Sins Tweetup on Thursday!)

by Chris Mathieson

 

Learn about vice in the early days of Vancouver by participating in the Vancouver Police Museum’s unique new walking tour – Sins of the City. While leading you through the oldest parts of Vancouver, your guide will regale you with stories about:

• Bootleggers, prohibition, and the often quirky evolution of liquor laws (and their enforcement) in the city
• The development of the early drug trade and the surprising Vancouver origins of Canada’s narcotic laws
• Racial and labour tension boiling over into demonstrations, riots and murder
• The evolution of the sex trade, from brothels to streetwalkers
• The city’s considerable predilection for gambling

Participants are also invited to visit the Police Museum on the day of their walking tour at no additional charge.

$15 adults / $12 students and seniors.

Group Bookings

Want a tour at a more convenient time? Contact the museum to book your own tour for a group of ten or more at a discounted rate.

Please contact the museum for more information or to book a space on this tour.

[Editors:  This is an AMAZING program done up in Vancouver, B.C. at the Police Museum there.  Please check out the video! This is a lesson for ALL museums big and small! Rock on, Chris Mathieson!  They "tweet" here and you have to check out how they do it!]

O.M.G.

Connecting with a Global Community

One of the author's own spaces within Discover Nikkei

By Vicky K. Murakami-Tsuda

Greetings from Southern California! I’m the Web Manager at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. For those who aren’t familiar with our museum, our mission is to promote understanding and appreciation of America’s ethnic and cultural diversity by sharing the Japanese American experience.

I’m responsible for managing all of our websites (janm.org, DiscoverNikkei.org, janmstore.com, and ncdemocracy.org), and mass email outreach (we use Constant Contact). Recently, we’ve also started Facebook groups and Twitter accounts for our museum in general and also specifically to support the Discover Nikkei project.

I’ve been working there for 14 years now—the first 10 years in the Museum Store where I set up our online store. Most of what I know I’ve learned on the job through research and trial and error. I really love what I do. Every day it seems I learn something new, and the fact that I get to use the internet to share our community’s stories with a global audience is so exhilarating and rewarding. I feel like, in my own way, I’m doing my little part to creating a better understanding of cultural diversity.

That’s why my favorite project (and obsession) is our Discover Nikkei project. I don’t mean just the website, but the entire project. The project’s real strength is in the global network we’ve built that includes organizations and individuals locally, nationally, and internationally. The real heart of the project though are the community stories and voices that are being documented and shared. The approach we take is rather than us, as an institution, saying this is what it means to be Nikkei (people of Japanese descent and their descendants living around the world), we provide a platform where people can share what it means to be Nikkei from their own perspectives. It’s through the amassing of these individual stories and resources that people can gain an understanding of the diversity and similarities within the Nikkei experience.

Discover Nikkei is in English, Japanese, Spanish and Portuguese

It’s not an easy project. The site is in four languages—the interfaces and top-level text are translated, but most of the content is available in just the original languages. I’m completely fluent in English only. Our project coordinator is fluent in Japanese, fairly fluent in English, and knows enough Spanish to get by in most cases. Neither of us know Portuguese. With the help of our global network though, we’ve been able to keep the site going and growing for four years now.

Partnerships, like any relationships, require a lot of work to develop and nurture over time. It’s an exciting time for the project. We’re in the process of a major redesign and upgrades to the site. The work we’ve put in to developing community connections these past four years are really starting to bear fruit. At the same time, we face enormous challenges. Our major project funding is ending, so we’re doing all that we can to ensure that the project is sustainable, including changing the way we work with our institutional partners, looking for new funding sources, learning how to work more effectively with volunteers, and making the site as engaging as we can, because without that we can’t accomplish anything else.

The feedback that we’ve been receiving for the project and the site-in-progess has been very encouraging. If you’re in the Los Angeles area, let me know if you’re interested in giving us feedback on our new site.

Twitter: Would You Prefer Sweet or Dill?

By Jeremy Clark

Roughly 84 years ago, I worked as a personal trainer at a YMCA. After hours one summer evening, the entire staff gathered mandatorily to watch a customer service training video (apparently management felt we needed some inspiration). We viewed a heavy-handed but heartfelt instructional film produced by motivational speaker and ice cream magnate Bob Farrell entitled “Give ‘em the Pickle.” (I provide the link for reference only; the video is somewhat outdated, obvious and overstated. Essentially, Bob wants you to make your customers happy.)

Bob likes to talk about going the extra mile, symbolized by his giving patrons free pickles at his burger joints; it’s a small way to humanize the company and make a genuine connection to customers. As I was considering Lydia Johnson’s recent post concerning authenticity, for some reason Bob and his message sprang to mind. From there, it’s not hard for me to imagine how Twitter just might be one of the best pickle identification and delivery systems available for museums.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: not another post about Twitter. Well, yes. And it’s not just because of the massive growth it’s enjoyed (a trend that should be taken with a grain of salt). It’s because I’ve had recent conversations with multiple museum executives who replied to my questions about their institutions’ use of Twitter with a pitch perfect Lisa Simpson “meh,” or worse. This worries me.

Hundreds of self-styled “gurus” will tell you that Twitter is the ultimate marketing tool. But even when you discard hyperbole, the potential of Twitter is, at the very least, substantial. One seasoned user experience designer believes that “Twitter is the best way for visible brands and companies to get feedback on their products, services, campaigns and decisions.” And she’s not alone. I believe this could be a huge boon to museums, organizations that–in theory–seek to serve audiences composed of actual people.

Even though it’s several years old, many people are still figuring it out. Some profess there is no right or wrong way to use it; others see some museums missing the mark in their attempts to connect. My own experience on Twitter indicates that some museums are treating Twitter like websites circa 1999: “tweeting” is the role of the intern or junior associate. While this certainly isn’t the case across the board, I would encourage more executives (especially those leading small museums) to consider Twitter, its reach and potential. What other tool permits and even encourages similar levels of immediate, authentic engagement? I’m sure they’re out there, but why not learn more about this one?

I understand times are hard and resources are, as always, limited. And, no, Twitter is no educational, marketing, or public relations cure-all. Maybe most of your present audience isn’t using it. Maybe it still just seems like a waste of time. But doesn’t it behoove administrators to consider all options? I encourage you to listen to what people are saying about your museum and go from there.

As Bob Farrell would say, you are only doing what you’re doing because of your customers. They are everything. So why not make it easier to give them the proverbial pickle?

And if you want more food for thought, listen in on the conversation over at Museum 3.0.