Things I loved about MCN 2013

Nov 24th, YUL-> BOS

I am strangely energized and exhausted, yawning and unable to stop writing. I’ve got just enough money left to get home and hopefully enough juice in the iPad and phone to keep writing this. It seems my resources and energy were just enough to get me through five incredibly fruitful days. Such are the perils of attending the Museum Computer Network conference. If you’re looking for the place where museums, innovation and creativity collide, it seems to be the place to go.

I have been trying to tie up the third part of a series of posts on “issues” that are not the real issue. Part One dealt with “immersion” and Part Two with “experience” and “participation”. The last part of Tilting at Windmills is gonig to deal with picture taking in museums, selfies as likes, and photos as signs of affection and affiliation. But I’m all MCN right now, and there’s a lot to digest and share, so the selfies will have to wait.

The coming year
My first order of business was the annual meeting of the MCN Board of Dircetors, which welcomed aboard a crop of new faces that’s a veritable Who’s Who of digital museum pros. Heady company to keep and a dynamite group of thinkers and doers. Generally I think it’s next to impossible to get anything creative done in groups of more than six, but this bunch of seventeen is an exception. The strategy for the coming year was laid out, issues identified, and volunteers recruited to tackle them with remarkable ease and real thoughtful debate. It was grueling work, but boy was I proud to see how much we got done in our half day together.

Stay tuned for details in the next few months of MCN’s plans for the year, like the next incarnation of our MCNPro professional development series. Also, I seem to have volunteered to become the conference co-chair for next year in Dallas, with Morgan Holzer. Eep!

Having overcomitted myself (again), I didn’t attend any of the workshops and spent the day polishing my talks, and having long, intense conversations. My first conference event was getting to the Ignite talks, an innovation introudced last year which has quickly become an anchor of the whole conference. If you’re not familiar with the format, look here. It’s short, it requires precision, and you can’t screw up and go back – in short you’re presenting without a net. It’s a sign of how supportive the community is that this kind of event would

Not taking yourself too seriously
One thing I love about the MCN community and the museum digital tribe in general is their ability to ability to take the work seriously without taking themselves seriously. It’s a subtle, but crucial distinction to maintaining a positive, creative output, and it’s often easy to confuse the two. Not here, though. The opening night of Ignite talks, The Herbie Hancock Layer of Chaos, and the official MCN Karaoke night all contribute to a loose, irreverent vibe that makes MCN unlike other conferences.

Ignite talks
Once again, the conference got off to roaring start, thanks to Koven Smith’s work assembling a disparate group of Ignite talks that ranged from farcical to poignant. Watch them all, but particularly Tim Svenonius’s “Hunting, Gathering and Recollecting”, Douglas Hegley’s “Technology: WTF!” and Simone Wicha’s “Does Performance Matter?”. I’m particularly glad to see more senior museum leaders like Simone attending MCN and sharing their insights on our shared endeavor. It gives me hope for our future as a profession. The rock and roll atmosphere, the performative aspect of watching your colleagues, and obvious passion and hard work that speakers put into their presentations is a perfect appetizer for the coming days.

Keynote
Tina Roth Eisenberg, graphic designer and the person behind the Swiss Miss design blog, delivered an amazingly inspiring, funny keynote that was a great opening paean to the power of not being stuck doing one thing. The noted graphic designer spent no time talking about her “main” business, instead telling us about the co-working space she started, her designer temporary tattoo shop, and the importance of having confetti drawers and dress up clothes at work. I totally wanted to quit my job, move to New York and work for Tina by the time she was done.

Video, video, video
After the experience of videoing select sessions last year, we decided to record every session this year, and the results are impressive, I think. MCN’s YouTube video channel is turning into a meaty repository of good thinking. Another great addition to the archive was addition of Museopunks to the mix.  This podcast series, started by Suse Cairns and Jeffrey Inscho, has quickly become a great place to eavesdrop on fascinating discussions about current issues in museums. Check it out. They ran a series of special episodes throughout the conference and these were videoed as well.

Inclusion, engagement, openness
The Board has spent a lot of time over the past year talking about inclusion, and broadening participation in the organization. It was gratifying to see all the ways that played out at the conference.  We were able to offer more scholarships than ever, thanks to sponsorship from Google. Twelve professionals who wouldn’t have made it otherwise were able to attend and that’s worth celebrating. The speed networking event, sort like of like speed dating for professionals, was great fun and a chance to meet people you might not otherwise talk to. Next year, I think it should move to earlier in the conference so you can benefit more from it. I also spent some great time with the chairs of the Special Interest Groups (SIGs), who for years have quietly nurtured their own smaller MCN communities. The Board and the SIG chairs have been working more closely together and the fruits of that could be seen in the creation of three new SIGs right there at the conference.

The power of asking people
Last year I convened a Directors’ Roundtable at MCN as a way to bring new voices into our conversations.  When I proposed it, I was fearful of how much work it was going to be to get busy museum directors to come. It was a bit of shock to find out that it wasn’t really all that hard.  Most of the directors I asked, said either, “I can’t make it at that time, but thanks!” or “Hmm, sounds interesting! OK.” The reason they weren’t at the conference was that they’d never been asked and nobody had ever explained the value proposition to them.  This year, one of the sessions I organized was on immersion, and Robin White Owen and I tried the same tack.  We asked filmmakers, game designers, theatre people, and curators to come talk about what they thought of immersion in their medium.  And again, most of the people we talked to said yes, or no because they couldn’t afford the trip. Despite a couple of last-minute surprises with people not being able to come, it was a great session and a fascinating discussion I wouldn’t get to have at work.  Here’s the video. 

Conferences as classrooms
One practice I’ve developed over the years is to treat conference sessions like classes I want to take that don’t (yet) exist. I identify the topic I’m interested in, and the people I’d like to learn from, and try to figure out how to get them to teach me about their subject.  This year, I was particularly interested in issues of openness and authority around museum digital content, so I put together a session with people who’d already been through successful open projects. I got to take advantage of the combined wisdom of Ryan Dodge, Heidi Quicksilver, and Merete Sanderhoff in one fell swoop. And, as so often happens, Merete taught me a lesson in being the kind of professional I aspire to be. After tentatively agreeing to come, she realized she couldn’t make it. Too many deadlines, too little money. So, she offered to record a video presentation of what she would’ve talked about, and even agreed to be available via Skype during the session if I wanted. In other words, all of the work of presenting, and almost none of the benefit of being at the conference. And her presentation was a high-quality, real video production, not just her sitting at her computer. Generosity is a hallmark of this community , but even for us, this was humbling. Thanks, Merete!

Being present at the birth of something good
Keeping with the “open” theme, I also emceed a session on “Defining Open Authority” put together by the inimitable Lori Phillips. It was a great of theory and practice, both big picture and very detailed. Lori continues to refine her ideas around “Open Authority” and has put enough of a framework around it to make it a useful tool for anyone considering issues around intellectual access to museum content. Porchia Moore problematized the very definition of authority as it pertains to minorities, and Elizabeth Bollwerk and Jeffrey Inscho added a pile of great case studies of how these concepts actually play out in real museums with real people. It felt a lot like the beginning of something bigger than a conference presentation, and judging from the Q&A afterwards, the audience felt similarly.  I look froward to seeing what happens next. Here’s Lori’s slides. When I find the video, I’ll post that, too.

Looking forward:
Dallas 2014 is going to have it’s work cut out for it, and Morgan and I already started the discussions about the program before the conference even ended.  I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback on how we might improve the conference next year!

BTW, that’s Jeffry Inscho behind me.  Have you read his reflection on MCN2013? “On Professional Spirit Animals” speaks my mind when it comes to how MCN feels to me.