Critical mass

Photo by maniwa_pa on Flickr.com

Recently someone used the term critical mass to mean you need a certain amount of followers/friends/fans to be successful in social media. Strength is in numbers, etc. “Of course MoMA can do that, with its gazillion followers.” I dare to disagree.

In primary school they taught me to address specific people when asking for help in a crowded place. An undirected ‘help’ would certainly go unattended. Later I learned this is called the bystander effect. People don’t help when there’re other people around.

A hundred thousand, or even a millions followers/friends/fans is a lot of people. If you tweet a question or Facebook a funding request or e-mail a petition, certainly some small percentage will respond. And maybe a small percentage of many is enough to do the trick. On the other hand, many, many more will not feel any need to respond. Bystanders.

I believe that if you know your audience, are creative and dare to specifically address your questions, you don’t need a lot of followers/friends/fans. Over the last months, every single campaign I did where I specifically asked some outdid those where I generally asked many. Even if “specifically asking some” was semi-automated. Even if the ties between the addressed individual and our institution were weak.

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DOK Delft, inspirational library concepts

Photo by Henk Kosters on Flickr.com (CC BY-NC-SA)

Libraries can be inspiring places, and not only because of their books. I’ve written about the public library of Amsterdam and its astounding interior design before. This week I’ve visited the public library of Delft, DOK. In 2008 the shifted librarian called it the world’s most modern library. Three years later, the “library concept center” still made a tremendous impression on me.

Five great things about DOK I took home:

1. A good understanding of a library’s future role in society

Libraries are about making information accessible to people. Libraries that are not used by the people, fail their task. Books have become increasingly cheaper and information more easily accessible. To the greater audience there’s hardly a need for the traditional library. There is, however, a need to be guided in the quest for information, to detach from the busy society, to discover new things, to meet people and learn from each other. DOK is more an “information community centre” than a library. They have an art library in the building, organize debates about literature but also finace, … This might very well be the future of more cultural institutions than just libraries.

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What is a museum (as well)?

Photo by kberberi on Flickr.com (CC BY-NC-ND)

Ask anyone what a museum is and most people will come up with an answer including a building and paintings on the wall. Or old stuff in displays. A somewhat older post by New Curator on the function of museums stresses education, inspiration, conservation…

A museum can be so much more, especially for its visitors. The following list gives some of the many things I’ve seen museum be and used museums for over the last year. It’s by no means conclusive. Please add.

A museum is,

• A flex work spot with Wi-Fi and good coffee.
• The perfect spot to finally read James Joyce or any other challenging book.
• A place to go on a first date. Read the rest of this entry »

“Dear webmaster” – Uncommon emails sent to museum web teams

Image by Andrea Joseph on Flickr (CC-BY-NC-ND).

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?

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Museums, kids and new media – The Continuous Exploded Museum Fun Experience

Photography by Ramon Mosterd.

Last week I hosted a workshop on museums, kids and new media together with SETUP Utrecht and the Utrecht Museums Foundation (SUM). Some of my dear friends of the Innovators Network Heritage (INE) also added their good thoughts. The challenge: How to use new media to get more young kids (0-12 years old) and their parents to the museums in Utrecht.

I know little about kids. I know even less about kids in combination with new media. The Powerhouse Museum (who else?) recently launched WaterWox, which to me looks like a great new media application for (a.o.) kids. That’s about how much I know about it, so I was happy to have 45 talented people from different backgrounds look into the issue.

During the workshop participants globally came up with 3 strategies to use new media in order to get more kids to the museum in Utrecht: Read the rest of this entry »