Born in the early 1980s, Richard Branson, his bold endeavours and the iconic brand Virgin have been a constant source of amazement in my life. Everything Sir Richard touches seems to turn into gold (just look at the ad above!). So, what would happen if he said goodbye to galactic and bought himself a museum?
1. He’d cut a lot of the red tape
The amount of bureaucracy in an average museum is appalling. “The world is full of red tape, created by committees with too much time and an overbearing desire for control” Richard would make sure decisions were made fast and using the qualities of the people involved. Not hastily, but with determination, tackling problems when they arise and taking responsibility. If you can build an airline from scratch in three months, everything is possible.
2. He’d embrace change, challenge and innovation
“You’ve got to stretch to grow.” Nothing is sacred, especially not because it has been done so for years. If something were broken, Mr. Branson would fix it. “To win, you have to break the rules.” Innovation, not for the sake of change, but to improve the product. How often do you see museums repeating the same old trick that – honestly – doesn’t really work that well? It doesn’t cost much more energy to try something new. You might discover something great. Read the rest of this entry »
Amidst the Twitter updates, questions about opening hours and praise for the website, sometimes there’s an email in our webmaster@ addresses that makes us frown, forward the message to colleagues and wonder what to respond. Good-natured visitors send us well-intentioned emails with the strangest comments or requests. We, webmasters of 2010, know we’re the face of our organisation ever more often. Yet, that doesn’t always make it easier to respond to these emails.
After having talked about this with some colleagues from other museums, I decided to get together some examples. Not to laugh about them, but to create awareness of these important messages and the importance to respond to them correctly. Below are some examples received from different museums. Anonymous, so nobody might feel offended or laughed at.
A son not worthy of working at a Nobel Prize-winning desk?
A lucky man finds himself to have inherited the desk of a Nobel Prize laureate, maybe. His uncle has saved it over 50 years ago from the landfill and given it to the writer. Not sure what to do with the desk, and whether it’s the real thing and thus might be valuable to a museum, he asks a science museum for advice. Especially, because his own son doesn’t seem to be enough of a student to deserve such a special desk for his studies. Maybe it’s better off in a museum?
Years ago I read the book Made to Stick by Dan and Chip Heath. Basically it’s about why some stories and ideas disappear and others stick with the receiver forever. What makes a successful story that is retold over and over again?
The book applied its own rules and stayed with me. Reading through a pile of unremarkable blog posts and museum brochures this week its lessons came to mind again. Here’s the slightly edited summary I wrote for internal use in 2007. I believe this message is worth sharing, even after some years. Useful for when you pitch your next innovative idea, give a presentation or simply write copy for an exhibition.
What makes a story or idea stick?
Successful communication alone is not enough to make ideas stick. An idea sticks when:
You can easily understand it,
You can remember it,
It’s effectively changing thoughts or behaviour.
To make sure your idea, story, pitch or presentation fits the above description, Dan and Chip propose the SUCCES criteria. Fulfilling these criteria will make your ideas powerful and successful. Read the rest of this entry »
Last Wednesday the Museum of National History organised its second annual New Technology Conference. This year’s topic: innovation and oral history. Five speakers gave their shared their views on oral history from a variety of backgrounds. From each of them I learned (at least) one valuable lesson about oral history projects for museums. Read the rest of this entry »
Update 09/17/2010: Added 4 new things to do contributed by readers of this blog. Thanks!
Last week some of my colleagues and I hosted a new media afternoon with workshops for participants in the Week van de Geschiedenis (“Week of the History”). During this annual event hundreds of cultural institutions in the Netherlands organise activities related to history. Over 250,000 people all over the Netherlands visit debates, tours, lectures, special exhibitions… I believe this week has an enormous new media potential.
Quite some of the participating institutions have zero budgets, work with volunteers and have limited or no experience with new media. Some of the visitors of the new media afternoon asked me what they could do with new media – taking into account their limitations. I composed this list of 28 simple things to do with new media for small cultural institutions to help them.
If you know of other low-budget, easy-to-do new media activities, please add them. It’s highly appreciated by the many small cultural institutions taking their first steps in new media.
