Anniversaries

I am madly preparing to depart for Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia at the end of the week. The kind folks at the National Digital Forum asked me to be a keynote speaker at their first in-person conference since the pandemic and never have I been so quick to “Yes!” to a speaking engagement. And since I’m traveling all that way, when Seb suggested I should come to Melbourne, I said yes to that, too. Now I’m doing something like six different talks in two weeks in three cities in two countries. I might have a tendency to overcommit.

The thought of really long, long plane flights reminded me that it was almost exactly five years ago that I took my last really long, long flight; a sleepless redeye from Athens, Greece to Boston at the conclusion of a workshop for the EMOTIVE project. I wrote a trip report about the workshop itself, but the plane ride home was memorable in itself, because it was there that I first started scribbling down the notes about how the same concepts kept coming up at all the events I went to: immersion, emotion, narrative, and games and play. And as I sketched out a blog post, it turned into four blog posts, and then each of those seemed to warrant multiple posts. And there in my little puddle of light in Seat 29D was born the first glimmers of what would become “The Book”.

2019-2020 was an incredibly productive time in my career. Trying to understand what would be most useful to the field that I could write was really illuminating, and having a bulletproof excuse (“Hi, I’m writing a book…) to do all the research, reading, and conversing with people all over the world was an honor. My Twitter was on fire with all the back and forth over what the book should be, and designing an open, community-based writing approach like the one Nina Simon (back when she was just a museum person and not a New York Times bestselling author) had so effectively employed for The Participatory Museum was something I was looking forward to very much.

And then came the layoffs.

In the midst of all the other life changes, I tried to keep the book going, but it was slow going. Fast forward a couple years, and now I’m one of the Principals of a small experience design firm, and hustling more than I ever did when I worked in museums. It’s all very exciting and I am enjoying my latest career ridiculously much! But “the book” is still there on my computer, still being noodled on, still being talked about, and honestly, being worried about. Ideas have lifespans and I could feel the clock ticking.

I didn’t want to be one of those people who has a half-finished book they drag around for years. So, almost exactly a year ago, I sent off a proposal to Routledge to publish the book, and in June of this year, they accepted the book, now called “Designing for Playful Engagement in Museums” for publication. I’ll have to employ a more traditional writing and publishing approach than I’d originally planned for, but I’ve gained so much in terms of editorial muscle and external pressure to finish that I think I’ve come out ahead. And knowing that the book should see the light of day next year (knock on wood) makes me very, very happy.

So, here’s to anniversaries, and to seeing what the next few really long, long flights have in store!