museumsandtheweb.com - Comments for "Interloper Report"

concrete steps

rainermack — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 19:54:28 +0000

I've been thinking about Nancy's invitation to suggest concrete steps toward involving other museum practitioners in MW. I know others are thinking about this as well (it's so great to see how much interest the idea has generated - I can see that the MW community is truly "open source"!). Anyway, here is one thought...

I came to MW2012 on my own initiative and out of my own interest (as did my colleague, Getty curator Peter Bjorn Kerber, and I'm sure others). Maybe a place to start is for MW regulars to seek out such "digital allies" in curatorial, education, design, etc. departments and invite them to attend MW2013 as their partner. Kind of a Sadie Hawkins approach. There could be a forum at the conference for partners to meet and share what they are learning/discovering and how it might or might not translate back at their home institutions. This could generate networks of digital allies in various museum roles who could continue the conversation post-conference, and support each other in advancing digital media work in their particular outposts. If your partner can't make it to the conference because of money/schedule/theirowndepartment'swarpedpriorities, they could follow from afar via twitter (#digitalally), live stream, or...? (Actually this would probably be the majority given how tight budgets are these days...so maybe this part of the idea needs bolstering.)

This approach focuses mostly on building relationships, extending networks, and bridging (intertwining) different disciplinary conversations.

Rainer

An idea to consider!

angeleta — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 04:48:46 +0000

What an interesting discussion, I was also new tho the MW and I would mlike to propose for the next one to have sessions where same issues, like vistor experience or design of content generated sites, or educational games all thatbdigital or not were evaluated by the Museums themselves and whether the different proffessions were involved in that and how. Evaluation is a tool to be shared by all since it serves the interest of all and measures success on different levels. i thought the last seesion of the failed projects could be a way to go!
Thakns again for a very inspiring conference to all.

digital evangelist

gramirez — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 15:58:45 +0000

Thank you for your post Rainer. I too was new to the MW conference and am also in Education – I knew I couldn’t be the only one. I completely share your feelings. I’ve never had so much to share with colleagues after a conference. There were so many parallels to what museum educators struggle with when designing engaging programs I can’t stop thinking about it. My position as Digital Media Manager in the Education Department is very new for our museum, and you are not alone, the term Digital Evangelist also resonated with me. On the flight home I was trying to guess how long it would take our museum to get past the internal hurdles of a Digital Media Strategy presented by a tireless Digital Evangelist to finally begin to focus on the needs and expectations of our visitors.

the unconference

jikpeter — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:03:53 +0000

Thanks for this fantastic post. It was my first MW, and I think I'm hooked, just as you have been!

I wanted to mention that I also sat in the digital strategy unconference session and it just keeps popping up in the post-conference conversation. It was the highlight of my conference experience, and it seemed to be a quite an "aha" moment for others as well. I hope we can continue to discuss digital strategy holistically, as we no longer have to prove to others at our organizations that technology is worthwhile. We now have to figure out how to organize and integrate our efforts, since everyone wants a piece of it. We're the cool kids now!

Thanks again.

Thank you for your post!

NancyProctor — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 02:12:37 +0000

What a moving and insightful testimonial to the value of MW! I know I'm not exactly objective, but as an attendee for the past decade or so, I found my response resonated with your experience of the conference and community.

I'd really like to work on your final challenge: bring the educators, curators, designers and others to the table who may otherwise feel excluded from MW - or, more to the point, that digital media in general is irrelevant to their work. Let's stay in touch, and please let me know if you envision any concrete steps that could help make our dream come true!

All the best,
Nancy