My twenty-ten in museums and culture – 642 words, flywheels and making change happen

Photo by RightBrainPhotography on Flickr (CC SA-NC-ND)

I think you’re great! Let me explain why.

There’s about a 50% change you’ve visited this blog before, so I think it’s safe to assume this is not the first post you read. That means you’re one of the people who helped to make this blog go from a couple of hundreds of visits a month to – recently – over 2,500. Cool! Over 7,000 unique visitors from more than 100 countries came to this blog in twenty-ten. Among you are quite some of the people whose work on innovation in the cultural sector I greatly admire. Thanks for joining.

The discussion about the future of culture and museums is happening on many blogs, forums and conferences. Mine is just a small one. The past year has given us many moments where the international community for cultural innovators came together. I think about the ash cloud unconference sessions after Museum and the Web, the comment section of Nina Simon’s ever great blog and events such as #followamuseum and #askacurator (thanks Jim!).

Jim Collins wrote one of the books that have shaped my vision on life and work, Good to Great. If you haven’t done so before, pick up a copy and memorize it. It’s gold. One of his points is ‘first who, then what’, another the flywheel.

What Mr. Collins proves is that if you get the right people together, and you make sure you work on something you really like, can be the best of the world in and earn a sustainable living while doing so, a flywheel will start turning. When you are persistent in doing that thing, the flywheel will get momentum. This momentum makes the impossible possible and will turn whatever you do from merely good, to great. Read the rest of this entry »

What would Lady Gaga do if she were a museum?

Inspired by the thought-provoking presentation below and the fact Lady Gaga has almost 80 million scrobbles on last.fm, all-time second after only the Beatles, I wondered: What would Lady Gaga do if she were a museum?

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10 things I learned about new media, technology and innovation in museums in the last year

Photo from the Flickr Commons (Field Museum Library)

I’m relatively new to museums. Apart from a short intermezzo in an ecomuseum, the last year has been my only year within the walls of a museum. I do new media and technology. We do a lot of innovation. This is what I learned last year.

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Building a community in 11 steps – Stranded Europeans

Everybody’s talking about community building these days. Often we forget how easy it is (can be) and how frequently it happens. A volcano, some stranded Europeans and Denver. This is how you build a community:

1. Get a bunch of people together with more or less similar values.
   E.g. museum professionals working on participation.
2. Urge them to do something, change their status quo.
   E.g. by having a volcano erupt and cause huge ash clouds.
3. Make them understand that they’re involved in the new situation.
   E.g. by cancelling their flights home.
4. Have a community leader/manager take the lead in collaborative action.
   E.g. Jennifer Trant who starts a system to find those stranded lodging and something to do.
5. Find some early adopters and encourage them to participate and take group action.
   E.g. by setting the example yourself and offering your lodging.
6. Give the community the freedom to develop by offering tools, not rules.
   E.g. pen and paper, a common media channel and enthusiasm.
7. Put emphasis on the positive behaviour of individuals in the community.
   E.g. by talking to them or retweeting their initiatives.
8. Think beyond social media.
   E.g. by hosting unconference sessions, meetups and drinks. Or by putting up a pen and paper registration system (see photos).
9. Have an open attitude to newcomers.
   E.g. by stressing how everybody is in the same situation.
10. Ensure and celebrate tangible outcomes within the community.
    E.g. by blogging about their events and applauding the success of individuals reaching home.
11. Take action over time to reinforce the community.
    E.g. by hosting a little event at next year’s conference for those affected by the volcano.

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The exothermic museum; making energetic connections

If you put two molecules together, they sometimes undergo a chemical reaction that gives us some energy. For instance:

C + O2 -> CO2 + energy

This is called an exothermic reaction and it’s the basis of combustion, most electricity, climate change and polar bears going extinct.

It doesn’t always work this way. Some molecules do nothing when put together:

H20 + O2 -> nothing

And sometimes you’ll have to add energy for something to happen (endothermic reactions):

N2 + O2 + energy -> 2 NO

The trick is to find to molecules that combined give extra energy. You win. It’s a thing of nature, a universal law. So, obviously, it applies to more than chemistry.

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