Look outside your field! What’s going on in the world around you?

One thing I’m always on the lookout for are people outside of the museum field who are doing what I think is interesting work, defined broadly. There are lots of people who think and study and write about how people learn in free choice environments – work that can be easily transferred to museum work if you squint a little.
Over the past decade or so, there has been an explosion of interest in learning in social networks, game design, user experience design. etc… Where do you find your inspirations outside of the field? Here’s a random sampling from my Google Reader and Twitter lists of non-museum types I find interesting.

• Cory Doctorow @doctorow

Writer, blogger, activist. If you want a reply, use email. Blog suggestions here: http://boingboing.net/submit/

• Karl Long @karllong

Nokia games group, now working on social/mobile games.

• Ken Eklund @writerguygames

Game designr, writr, evangelst, instigatr. World Without Oil, anyone? Yeah, him…

• Shaun Usher @LettersOfNote

Shaun runs the Letters of Note website, which is my absolute favorite collection of primary source documents on the web.

• Dirk vom Lehn @dirkvl

Sociologist, Lecturer in Marketing and dad. Tweets on technology, marketing, politics, the arts, museums and life.

• danah boyd @zephoria

social media scholar, youth researcher & advocate | Microsoft Research, Harvard Berkman Center |

• Jane McGonigal @avantgame

I make games, I play games. My book is Reality is Broken: Why Game Make Us Better and How They Change the World http://amzn.to/hjrYlA

• Asking Audiences blog http://www.sloverlinett.com/blog

Slover Linett is an audience research firm. Asking Audiences explores the fast-changing landscape in which cultural and educational organizations meet their publics.

• xkcd http://xkcd.com/

A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language. Nuff said.

Who are your favorite outsiders and hat do they do for your thinking?