Part One of this post dealt with some of the kinds of people movement in the field this year. This post will deal with one of the most exciting developments I’ve seen in years, the proliferation of grassroots efforts to educate, connect, and energize the field.
I gave a brown bag talk at Baltimore Museum of Art before the conference on “What skills will it take to survive in the 21st century museum and the how the heck is one supposed to get them while holding down a day job?”. What it really turned into was a long, roundtable discussion on how BMA works, what needs staff had for tools and processes and their hope that the perfect tools existed out there somewhere. I raised a few eyebrows, given my title, when I advocated that they refrain from email when a phone call or just walking over to a colleague’s desk would suffice. Ditto for suggesting a good project manager is more cost effective in the long run than any project managment package out there (Forgive me, Basecamp! I love you to bits and use you daily, but…).
You might think the talk was a bummer, but it was a lively talk, folks were engaged, and despite my inability to recommend any magic bullets, I think it was a valuable event, because they got to hear each other in ways that they mightn’t in their day-to-day work lives. They taught each other all kinds of things I couldn’t have, and together as a group they surfaced a lot of issues that are good to work on. I look forward to hearing how they fare.
The Computer Club model
I have these kinds of discusions a lot nowadays, which is odd. If you’d asked me three years what I saw myself doing, “Talking about informal professional development” wouldn’t have been a top answer. Yet, in my current role at PEM, it has come to occupy a lot my energy and thought. With the prolifereation of tools and platforms, it’s not surprising that most museum staff don’t feel able to make informed chices about how they might use them, or even whether to use them at all. For those us charged with using those platforms and tools to reach our museums’ audiences, and engage new ones, it makes for a neat dilemma. And one of the best ways I’ve seen to address it comes from the Imperial War Museum in London, where Carolyn Royston and Co. have started a low barrier-to-entry professional development program they call Computer Club. Read all about it here or check out this interview Suse Cairns did with Carolyn all about Computer Club.
Here at PEM, we’ve taken that model and adapted it to fit our particular needs. We started with a specific social media emphasis, because we’d just launched a blog and there was an institutional imperiative to increase staff participation in PEM’s social media efforts. Since then, we’ve hosted a half dozen or so on topics like:
- Social Media 101: What are social media and why does PEM care?
- Our blog and blogging: What makes a good PEM blog post?
- Twitter for Professionals
- Facebook: How to interact with PEM on Facebook and spread the love
- Digital Imaging: How to take better pictures with your phone
To say that there’s pent-up demand wouldbe a bit of an unerstatement. We routinely get 20-25 people from across the institution. And just like I saw in Baltimore, they came from across the museum, from entry-level to senior folks. Why isn’t everybody doing this? Developing and normalizing this kind of highly targeted peer-to-peer learning has great potential both to spread skills and energize staff. Microcredentialing or badging systems are hot stuff these days, and I’ve always been a bit of skeptic until now because I couldn’t see how you make the value case for it. In this case, though, it’s dead easy to see. Want to build a culture of learning? Here’s a way that’s low-overhead, staff-driven, and responsive to your needs. With just a little bit of input from your HR department, you could make a program where learners get recognized for attending, and those microcredentials figure into the annual review process. Must work on that…
The Drinking Continues
When I suggested having a Drinking About Museums: MW edition, some wag replied “Isn’t a conference just one big #drinkingaboutmuseums? Well, yes. Certainly, DAM started off as a desire to capture some of that “late night at the conference bar” magic. But it has also become more than that. It’s a bona fide international phenomenon, with chapters popping up all over, getting together, and sharing their passion for museums, meeting new colleagues and joining a larger, global community. Whether you’re a student thinknig about a museum career, someone working in a GLAM, or just a museum lover, it’s a great way to connect, learn, and grow.
So, we had an event at MW and got a bunch of about 30 DAM movers and shakers together. It was enormously gratifying to see all these folks who had started their own groups all in one place. The Godfather of DAM, Mr. Koven J. Smith, came up to me in the middle of it and said his typically understated way, “Look at this. We made something good.” And I have to agree.
If you haven’t been to one, go. And if there isn’t one in your town, start one. And if you’re going to AAM2014, there’ll be *two* DAMs, so be warned!
The Italian Jobs – Sveglia Museo and Invasioni Digitali
Innovation happens all over, and this year, Italy is a hotbed of grassroots efforts to increase Italian museums’ connections to audiences using social media. Sveglia Museo is “an experimental project to help Italian museums achieve a better communication with their audience: the goal is to get them talking and tweeting with each other. The idea is to ask for advice from digital communication managers of foreign museums in order to “wake up” Italian museums, online and on social networks.” They’ve already generated a tremendous amount of buzz online, both for their ambition (getting government agencies with no budgets to take on more work is no mean feat!) and for their clever appeal to a global community of practice to help them. I wish them well, and so should you. It’s a worthy model.
The other Italian initiative is Invasioni Digitali or “Digital Invasions” Digital Invasions “are mobs of people who support museums and cultural heritage by ‘invading’ them and then documenting the experience on blogs and social media. Each ‘invasion’ is meant to create new forms of conversation about arts and culture, and to transform the cultural heritage into something that is ‘open, welcoming and innovative.'” It’s like Flash Mobs meet Drinking About Museums, with a service component. Genius stuff… If you know a museum or heritage site that’s laboring in obscurity, or could benefit from an injection of interest from a digitally savvy audience, then this model is for you. At our last Museums Showoff, one of the speakers gave an impassioned defense of her museum nd ended with an open invitation to come visit. Maybe instead of a visit, an invasion is needed!
And while I’m (profesionally) crushing on the Italian initiatives, they are by no means the only ones out there. Mar Dixon has launched an impressive number of Twitter campaigns around museum themes like #MuseumWeek and #MuseumSelfie. In fact, some enterprising soul could probably compile a Tumblr of these kinds of grassroots inititives and win the undying affection of museum social media managers the world over, myself included. Hint, hint…
The last part of this series will touch on issues that came up in my sessions around evaluation and access, and the maturation of the field.
Thinking about Museums 
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