So, the time has come to wish a fond farewell to our series of articles on Museum Transparency and Dashboards!  We’ve spent the previous 4 weeks covering a range of topics dealing with issues of transparency and performance metrics.  I hope that the posts have been valuable and that they might be a touchstone for conversations within your own organazation about being more transparent.

If you’re just joining us, you can find links to the previous articles here (tag: transparency)

To leave you with a bit more to chew on before we head off, this last article provides some suggestions for how to implement your organization’s own dashboard.  Feel free to add your own suggestions / questions to the comment stream after the jump!

7 Guidelines for Implementing Dashboards

For museums that would like to take the plunge into revealing and tracking their performance metrics online, the software used in the creation of the IMA’s Dashboard tool has been made freely available to the community under an open source license. (http://code.google.com/p/museum-dashboard/) Regardless of the tools used to embrace practices of Transparency, the following are some pragmatic suggestions to consider during your planning processes.

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Filed under: Musings, Technology

I’m a number geek. Give me a calculator and a list of digits, and I’ll be happy for hours. If using the calculator was an Olympic sport, I might be a contender for the gold. I’ve got lightening fast fingers and my addition button is wearing out from all the use it gets. From attendance to web stats, revenue to ROI, I’ve been crunching numbers like Michael Phelps breaks world records.

As numbers twirl around my head like 10-year old Chinese gymnasts (they are definitely NOT 16 that’s for sure), I thought I’d share with you some of my favorites. You can find a lot of these stats on the IMA’s dashboard, but some of the numbers are not accessible to the public…until now. In the Museum’s ongoing dedication to full transparency, here’s IMA by the numbers: Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Musings

Today we are pleased to welcome Anne Laker, our newest IMA blogger, representing the Education department. She is also known for her compassion for all things green, so please enjoy her inaugural post on this most appropriate occasion.

Never underestimate the potential of a bruised banana. Around the office at the IMA, my desk is known as repository for fruit that’s past its prime. Colleagues know—as an obsessive recycler—that I will repurpose their bananas by taking them home, tossing them in the freezer and using them in a smoothie.

The re-use ethic is the foundation of freeganism, the practice of strategic food salvaging. Freegans use their wits to rescue perfectly good food out of the back doors of grocery stores and other venues. Freegans and freecyclers can imagine other uses for other people’s garbage. [If you are an Indy-based freegan, please respond to this post!]

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Filed under: Local, Musings

We have a bit of celebratory news today! The IMA has recently picked up several distinctions worth mentioning.

A group of IMA staff (myself not included) attended the Museums and the Web conference in Montreal last week. This conference is an annual gathering for the ever-growing crowd of technology-focused staff in museums around the world. They also host the “Best of the Web” Awards. IMA’s project, Roman Art Webisodes, was picked last week as “Best Podcast.” IMA’s Dashboard picked up an Honourable Mention in the “Professional” category. We are excited that our work has been so well received by our peers.

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Filed under: Exhibitions, New Media

Don’t take my word for it. I thought I would share what other folks are saying about our dashboard. Here are some reviews from the blogosphere:

Stateside…
Cincinnati.com
Ideum
Museumlab

And one in Dutch… (I love the Dutch!)

http://www.museum-wereld.nl/museum-geeft-zichzelf-prijs/ Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: New Media