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Museums and the Web 2012 stands out as one of the best conferences I have attended -- for digital media, or for any topic. I've summarized some of the top take-aways. First of all, thank you again to the organizers, sponsors, volunteers and participants. It was a pleasure to meet so many folks who are fired up about what the future holds for galleries and museums using digital technology.

Wow! I just returned from MW2012 and I'm still buzzing. I'm a museum educator, and not particularly savvy about things digital (thus do I post this here, not having a blog myself...). But I knew about Museums and the Web from colleagues, and because San Diego is close-by (I'm at the Getty in LA), this year seemed a good time to finally go. I'm glad I did. Not only did I discover much about things beyond my field, I learned a lot about things inside it. Issues of interpretation and experience, visitor engagement, the broader social role of museums, and other topics close to the heart of museum educators were explored in ways wonderfully refreshing, vital, and new.

Intellect is pleased to announce that one of our visual arts authors will be attending the Museums and the Web conference in San Diego to launch his latest book, Virtuality and the Art of Exhibition, a fascinating volume which explores the ways in which digital technologies are playing an increasingly instrumental role in guiding the curatorial strategies of contemporary art museums.

What is #musesocial? As social media practitioners at various museums, we wanted to advance professional discussion beyond the capabilities of specific platforms and tools and the ideal number of followers. We wanted to ask bigger questions about what drove museums to participate in social media, why that matters, and what followers/audiences/communities actually wanted from us.

A couple of folks asked about the local karaoke scene here in San Diego, so I checked in with some of my hip pals here in the BPOC offices and came up with the following recommendations:

Redwing (North Park district) - a favorite of drag queens, which is both awesome and intimidating

Sure, we’re hard-working geeks at BPOC but every now and then we get to venture out and we’ve been known to enjoy a beer or two. With over 25 local breweries, San Diego is known for its amazing craft beer scene and in particular IPAs; we’re a town full of hopheads.

While following the #MW2012 tweets, I’ve noticed messages from people who are going to visit San Diego for the first time. You’ll probably find that everything people say is true: the weather is perfect, the beaches are gorgeous, and the public transportation could use a bit of work. But while you may have heard tips about SeaWorld and the Zoo, you might not know too much about the city’s food and nightlife. Following are some of my suggestions for places to go after the conference days end. 

Dear MW friends and colleagues

(Apologies for any cross-posting)

As Brian Kelly has noted on his blog post about alternatives, January 6, 2012 is the last day Twapperkeeper will be online and freely available. Since there were Twapperkeeper archives set up for both the #museweb and #mw2011 hashtags, I've grabbed the stats for 'posterity'.

23rd International Sculpture Conference: Process, Patron and Public

The International Sculpture Center (ISC), is seeking papers for the 23rd International Sculpture Conference: Process, Patron and Public, in Chicago, IL from October 4-6, 2012. This two-track conference will feature 3 keynote speakers and 14 panels.

Panel topics will include:

We would like to share with you one of our main participative projects this year: Global Screen. It consists of a physical exhibition that will take place at the CCCB from January to May 2012. And it is also a virtual platform (http://pantallaglobal.cccb.org/en_GB) that we launched last October to build the exhibition with the audience creativity.

The University of Virginia Art Museum has recently produced an iPad app that showcases several sculptures from its collection. Each sculpture is presented as a "360" that the user can spin, zoom, and pan to inspect. You can see a short video about the app here: http://www.arqball.com/uvam

For those of you researching the state of mobile in museums for MW2012, CHIN has saved you the trouble of finding out what is happening in the Canadian scene by compiling a list of available apps ~ http://bit.ly/rs3zr6 (en français : http://bit.ly/qXbCVf). Best ~ Dave

The Antonio Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest annually awards a $10,000 cash grant to one individual who has created or led an effort to create an open source software product of significant value to the nonprofit sector and movements for social change.