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 »

Stop talking, start sending – The information food chain and how museums should use Twitter

Photo by Pieter Pietserse on Flickr.

I read a newspaper. I read a newspaper because I believe a bunch of highly educated people are better at sorting through the myriad pieces of news the world produces daily than I am. My newspaper even prints the best tweet out of 90 million sent every day, that’s how good they are.

Newspapers don’t converse. Newspapers send information. And it’s good they do so, because they’re high up in the information food chain.

By now thousands of museums are on Twitter cs. There they sit and chat and retweet each other and make good initiatives trending worldwide. They’ve been told Twitter (and Facebook, blogs, etc.) is a conversation channel, not a publicity channel. They’ve been told to listen, not to send. So they desperately try to engage in conversation and mostly chat with each other.

Museums on Twitter shouldn’t converse. They should send information. That’s because museums, like newspapers, are high up in the information food chain. Maybe even higher up than newspapers.

I don’t say museums should use Twitter to shamelessly publicise their events and opening hours. I mean they should sort through the millions of tweets, status updates, blogposts, etc. to pick the best things and share these in a meaningful way with their audience. They should respect their position in the information food chain.

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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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