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I would like to repeat our offer made on my blog.. Now that you have learned about Wikipedia we would like to have one picture that could use a bit of digital restoration work in order to make it a better illustration.

22nd International Sculpture Conference: CALL FOR PAPERS

London, UK – April 2010

Okay, so there's something trying to emerge from the discussion in a couple of the sessions I've been to: the unconference session yesterday on talking with strangers, and then the all-too-brief-and-a-little-baffling-but-interesting session with Nina Simon talking about how can museums be more like the web (I think?).

It should be noted that the unconference session and Nina's workshop were linked: the unconference topic was proposed by Jason, a grad student of Nina's in Washington. So the central premise of each discussion was more or less the same:

we were tagged by the IMA a while back, in the 25 random things 'chain letter' that's been haunting the web in its various incarnations. from the better-late-than-never school of thought comes our 25:

deep in the midst of production deadlines for MW2009, i'm celebrating Ada Lovelace day by remembering Muriel Cooper, co-founder of MIT's Visible Language Workshop. a pioneer in thinking about – and visually representing – information space, Cooper's insistence that information had characteristics beyond the linear was of significant influence on me as i worked with the Art Information Task Force, structuring the Categories for the Description of Works of Art in the early 1990s.

IDEA, the Institute for Dynamic Educational Advancement, just released “Finding Information: Factors that improve online experiences,” which reports the findings of a study that the California-based nonprofit organization conducted recently.

I flew into Houston, Texas yesterday for the 21st Annual Visitor Studies Association conference. This is my first time in Space City, as well as the Lone Star State, for that matter. This morning, I presented a workshop with Jes Koepfler, a fellow Museum Studies grad and my “partner in crime” on the Mischief & Malice: Crime in the Museum online exhibition project (we co-managed this project put together by the University of Toronto’s Master of Museum Studies Class of 2008 using a wiki). Appropriately, we presented Using Wikis for Project Management.

Jennifer mentioned in her blog entry last week that I'll be helping out with managing Archives & Museum Informatics' 1275+ member on-line community at http://conference.archimuse.com, as part of my position with the company. Well, in case you didn't know, we use Drupal, an amazing open source content management platform, to run this site. However, considering how powerful Drupal is, it is admittedly rather complex to a non-techie Museum Studies grad like myself.

I was sitting at lunch today talking with new friends from the Museum World about why I, an "Orchestra" person was at a conference for Museums and the Web.   

I've just arrived at the Delta hotel in Montreal. It must be close to 25 years since I was here before.... as part of a music festival - sang with the Harmonic Choir on a barge or maybe it was a little island.  The Harmonic choir was (is) a group of 5-6 singers singing multiphonics - overtones...

  It's great to be back and I'm really looking forward to the conference.  After attending or helping to run something like 15 orchestra conferences, it will be so interesting to make a foray into the museum world. 

I'm particularly interested in how cultural groups use the web and social media, so its going to be a busy time.  Now to pour over the schedule. 

Just 24 hours to go before heading out of freezing London and jetting to the beautiful tropical beaches of Montreal. Having survived the post-Easter "ooh it wasn't meant to snow at this time of year" blizzard and the anti-Olympics protest police van traffic snarlups, all I need to do is find a plane that's actually operating from our Proud to be British, state-of-the-art, "we told you it would work better if we didn't let any passengers in" Terminal 5 Heathrow. If not, have a lovely conference and I'll see y'all next year ... !

So I've done some work on figuring out what's the best way to keep in touch while I'm in Montreal. I'm attaching my research below, and feel free to add comments to this post about your own carriers.

i'm slowly moving all my various blog postings here; it's time to develop a center of gravity...  /jt

It's the time of year when we have to think about retreating to the city ... with temperatures on the way to zero (that's freezing in Celsius) the evenings see us (or tonight just me) moving closer and closer to the fire.