Posted: March 4th, 2011 | Author: Jasper Visser | Filed under: Expositions, Technology | Tags: community, development, future, ideas, innovation, national vending machine, participation | No Comments »
Good news for all fans of our National Vending Machine: this week we received confirmation of a significant subsidy to further develop the project. The great people at the DOEN Foundation will invest in improved visitor participation, a better website and information structure and activities to involve new audiences. Thanks!
These new funds allow us to work on some of our own recommendations for improvement. For instance, it allows us to put in practice the lessons about participation and crowdsourcing we detail in our Museums and the Web paper. Also, we can professionalize our outreach activities. Here’s some of the things we’re hoping to do with the help of DOEN: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: February 21st, 2011 | Author: Jasper Visser | Filed under: Expositions | Tags: collection, lessons, list, national vending machine, objects, practice, results | 1 Comment »
One of the objectives of the National Vending Machine is to provide us and partners insight in popular historical objects. Stuff that gets people enthusiastic. In a way, we’re doing an extremely fancy kind of market research. The other day I received a provisional overview of Holland’s hottest historical objects (read: top-selling items in the machine). Here they are:
- Volkswagen camper van: By far the most popular object in sales, comments and enthusiasm of buyers, probably due to its everlasting hipness and important place in the youth memories of the Culturally Engaged.
- Cow: A replica of the famous Dutch grazer in Delftware, popular to more than just the tourists. Maybe owing to its cute smile or maybe because it’s a colourful object which boosts sales (we found when testing the objects).
- Cheese slicer: The representation of being Dutch (in all its meanings) and a Norwegian invention. I’ve heard the tiny slicer actually works, especially with French cheese. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: August 30th, 2010 | Author: Jasper Visser | Filed under: Expositions, People | Tags: amsterdam, audience, community, conversation, Interaction, national vending machine, participation, pilots | 6 Comments »
Update 09/09/2010: Nina Simon posted this post as a guest post on her (amazing) Museum 2.0 blog. Thanks!
Last weekend my museum presented itself at the Uitmarkt in Amsterdam. The Uitmarkt is an annual festival that opens the new cultural year. Instead of handing out flyers about our upcoming expositions, we decided to ask the visitors to contribute to our ongoing project the National Vending Machine. The National Vending Machine is a travelling exposition that tells the historical and personal story behind everyday objects. All these objects and stories together we call our ‘community of objects’.
I thought it was a perfect chance to put one of the ideas in Nina Simon’s book The Participatory Museum to the test. Her case study about Structured Dialogue in the Signtific Game in chapter 3 describes a project where people engaged in conversation online about wild ideas. For me the beauty of the Signtific Game lies in the way people are guided by a select number of possible responses to a wild idea. This structures dialogue and makes it more productive.
We translated this online game to an offline activity around everyday objects. I believe it worked brilliantly. Over the course of the weekend a small team (three people each day) engaged in conversation with hundreds of people, individually or in groups and encouraged them to contribute to our community of objects with personal stories and new objects.
Read the rest of this entry »
