My name is Ned Prutzer and I am an intern for the Museum who is majoring in English and American Studies at the University of Maryland – College Park. I have worked with social media in prior internships, and I anticipate a productive discussion regarding the manner in which the Museum can extend its current use of social media while maintaining the professional nature of its mission.
What I would like to pose as a topic for discussion is how the Museum can implement its use of social networking into the visitor’s experience of its exhibits – that is, how it can provide a more interactive experience on each end of the spectrum, to those who are coming to the Museum and those who are active on our pages. How can we use varying mediums of social media to replicate the experience of visiting the Museum as best as possible? How could we go about making an exclusively on-line experience of the Museum for those who are unable to come to DC and visit interactive without making it seem inauthentic?
It is clear that other prominent institutions are facing similar questions as they enter the realm of social networking. The Brooklyn Museum of Art, for instance, has digitized some of its collections through ArtShare, consolidated its web pages through the SimplyRSS application on Facebook, and utilized Electronic Comment Kiosks in their exhibits, for which they gather user-generated comments and post them on the walls of the exhibits.
Likewise, over the summer, the Museum hosted an innovative tour focused its architecture that encouraged participants to Twitter on their thoughts and post pictures as the tour was going on. There’s an interesting blog on the event by Robert Michael Murray of boxednoise that I think is very pertinent to the issues being raised in the un-conference. Could we extend such an initiative into Twitter-based tours where groups can ask questions for guides to respond to and leave comments for each other to see? This is a great example of the issues that arise from the questions I proposed earlier, and though the issues I am raising may not be enough to sustain an entire session, I think that these are questions we should keep in mind and address during the un-conference.
Tags: authenticity, hybrid experience, interaction, mobile, proposal, Twitter
Hi Ned. I like your questions, you are doing the right thing to ask them. I don’t however, know that this belongs at #conconf. I think that your proposal is extremely @USHMM specific and I don’t know that it would benefit anyone except @USHMM. While I think that most Museums struggle with similar questions, I believe the MCN and Museums and the Web – through their respective conferences – do a fabulous job of addressing these types of questions and bringing people together to discuss this. I’d get involved with MCN if you aren’t already – you can join their mailing list for free at mcn.edu. My recommendation: apply for a grant to get funding to create the asnwers to your questions. Then, when you get the funding, send an RFP to selected vendors (like Sandbox Studios, Len Steinbach, me, there are many!). Decide what vendor you think is best, and then engage the vendor to help you think through these issues. In the end, you’ll get great, best practice results, get a good implementation, and it can all be funded by a grant. I know, it sounds easy when I write it – but I’ve seen it happen again and again and it really can happen this way. I’d be happy to talk to you more about this on Saturday. Julie