Posted: November 9th, 2011 | Author: Jasper Visser | Filed under: Inspiration, Thoughts about museums | Tags: audience, community, engagement, participation, relations, science centres, workshop, wrap-up | 3 Comments »
Science centres are all about participation and the joy of discovery. Science centre NEMO in Amsterdam is no exception. Even on a school-week Tuesday the building is buzzing with energy and the sounds of excitement bouncing against the roof. I was positively surprised, therefore, that I was asked by Diana of NEMO to host a creative workshop on specifically the topic of participation and innovative ways of engaging with audiences.
NEMO is looking for ways to have visitors participate and engage with their content in a more sustainable and relevant way. In my own words, they want to build enduring relationships with their audience that go beyond the one-off event a visit to their building nowadays is. The main focus of the workshop, therefore, was how to embed participation in a meaningful way in the activities of NEMO, so that it builds connections between the institution and people, and fosters enthusiasm.
With over 500,000 visitors a year, NEMO has about reached its limits in the number of physical visitors it can welcome. So, not surprisingly, when asked about their future vision for NEMO, most participants drew an image of a science centre leaving its building, and using modern technology and media to take control of the public space.
Most of the installations in NEMO are participatory in a playful, but unconnected way. Often it’s not clear why people should participate other than because they can, and little is done with the effort visitors put into their contributions. Also, NEMO is almost entirely focused on children, with the immediate effect that when I visited them on a school holiday, the place was filled with bored-looking parents. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: October 25th, 2011 | Author: Jasper Visser | Filed under: Thoughts about museums | Tags: data, googol, information, myriad, numbers, overload | No Comments »
Photo by Éole Wind on Flickr.
Sorry for being quite quiet lately; I’ve been busy writing, preparing and giving workshops and lectures, closing down projects and experimenting with business models and gamestorming. All this, for the future, which I will tell you all about, in that same future. Also, I’ve been reading.
In ancient Greek the highest number with a beautiful name was a myriad, or μύριος, in their script. Myriad represented (and in some forms, still represents) the number ten thousand. Apparently, apart from Archimedes who used the myriad myriad, there was no need for larger numbers. In this advanced society, there wasn’t that much stuff.
When I was young, in the 80s, the highest imaginable number was a billion. After that, everybody but a handful of mathematicians confused the number of zeros. A really big number therefore became a million billion as in, “My father is a million billion times stronger than yours.” Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: October 13th, 2011 | Author: Jasper Visser | Filed under: Inspiration, Thoughts about museums | Tags: change, innovation, jim collins, moore's law, organisation, strategy, structure | 4 Comments »
Photo by John Ryan on Flickr.
Ten years ago Jim Collins published a book that would change the way many organisations would do business: Good to Great. You’ve heard about it, maybe you even read it. The book gives a recipe for sustainable success, businesswise, based on a number of companies that outperformed their competitors over a long period of time. Jim Collins told millions how to be Great, as opposed to simply Good.
Quickly, a prequel for startups (Built to Last) and a special edition for the social sectors were published. For many consultants, Jim Collins was God.
The ten years since
Unfortunately, the years since 2001 brought trouble: The web 2.0 revolution, financial crises and the never-diminishing effect of Moore’s Law. The world changed, and not all of Jim Collins’s great companies managed to stay on top of things.
This week I spent some time with Anders Sorman-Nilsson, an expert on the disruptive nature of change for business. In a recent video on his blog, he explains how the years since 2001 have made some of the great companies become obsolete, or even go bust.
It very much seems that although you were brilliant the entire 20th century, it can be a matter of months in the 21st to have your organisation disappear into oblivion. What made you great in yesteryear might make you obsolete today.
And I don’t think this is limited to the moneymakers of the world. Museums, theatres and even social causes can become obsolete just as easily if they’re not designed to deal with the menacing effects of Moore’s Law and the like.
Read the rest of this entry »
