MW2011 Unconference: From session on real-world ways of engaging co-workers

Jeff Gates proposed the session as an extension of a talk he gave last year in which he wondered how social media is changing our jobs.

Some of the other participants wanted to know:

• what are differences in how large and small museums engage in social media
• what are the learning curves within the organization
• how can we help colleagues to see that social media is a way of extending an internal value of community and engagement
• what are new models for interacting with others and how to get scholarly content out
• how to encourage staff to find time and engage senior staff
• how to get social media added to a strategic plan
• how to help institutions see that they can sustain a plan
• how to help the web team work with curators to get more material on the the web that could be linked
• how to get content producers to work with us

There’s no magic bullet. Social media is still engaging one-on-one, a continuation of what we do anyway, but others don’t necessarily see it that way.  Social media is the conduit, not the content itself. Face to face is the best way to explain this and the trick it to talk to people in ways that they will hear you.

Are social media roles  foisted on education or curatorial staff? Members of the group noted that sometimes these roles are presented as duties and accepted. He then followed up by asking whether they were given power to create projects or to ask for help.

Buy-in from the top is important. 

Some ways of getting that buy-in is to demonstrate how the information gets out there and how wonderful it is to lose control of that information.

One way to engage colleagues is to help them find their entry point into social media. Some platforms hook people more than others.

Institutionalize a sense of competition or awareness of other staff members activities/successes on social media. Make the link that presenting our work in that realm is not all that different from what we do all the time.

It helps to be an opportunist, to look for material that is easily repurposed.  Note the importance of extending social circles and then bringing online relationships face to face.

There was some discussion on ways to make what might be unfamiliar more familiar to colleagues by putting tweets on the museum’s home page, the feed on the institution’s intranet, or projecting whatever social media project that is active on to an office wall so that colleagues can see what’s happening.

Team approaches to developing content and keeping senior staff involved.

While the media informs the content, the content needs to be appropriate to the medium, and there’s going to be a platform that fits the content.

Does social media affect your content. It is relatively easy to get material from curators that’s connected to exhibition PR; what’s harder is to extract day-to-day discoveries. Help colleagues see that there’s freedom in posting these discoveries in an informal manner and even asking the public for input or ideas. Ensure that those nuggets get tied back to the website.

Members of the public are more inclined to engage if material is presented informally, not with an organizational voice. Behind-the-scenes stories are compelling.

Creating a strategic plan and guidelines is one way to foster a conversation with higher ups and a good way to talk about issues.

SMAA blog team uses a Basecamp whiteboard to develop blog posts. Evergreen posts reduce stress of scheduling.

Advocate for loss of control, help others understand what this means. The idea that there’s multiple points of entry into appreciating art and artifacts. Suggest baby steps, pilot projects. Report findings.

Some of these battles have already been fought before. Help them latch on to the buzz of new and find opportunities for layered interpretation and the power of choice. It isn’t every visitor who will engage with mobile content.

Having a tool dictated to a purpose is problematic in the way that bad content is bad and sending out content on a poorly executed tool is also bad. That’s not what anybody’s after. 

There’s lots of things that art museum curators can learn from history and science curators. Observation that the study of art history tends to be a solitary experience while science is typically collaborative and those working modes continue into museum work.