I’ve developed a pretty thick skin over the years and have a real appreciation for a diversity of opinions.  I have always worked hard in my role at the IMA to encourage and draw out folks who think differently than I do.  That’s why I was not very bothered by Nina Simon’s initial comments about the IMA during last year’s plenary session of the Museums and the Web conference held here in Indianapolis.  Nor was I particularly inclined to answer what seemed to be a rather snarky blog article that Nina wrote entitled Avoiding the Participatory Ghetto which was featured on her Museum 2.0 blog. I was glad that Linda Duke, our Director of Education, answered some of the charges in the comments to that post, but again decided to hold my tongue.  With essentially a reprint of that blog article appearing in the most recent issue of AAM’s Museum Magazine under the title “Bait and Switch”, I feel that not responding at this point would communicate that I don’t care about what Nina is saying when in fact, I really do.

What most disturbs me about Nina’s argument is the clear lack of background work she put into crafting what amounts to a pretty scathing opinion of the IMA.  It seems from Nina’s comments that she is basing her views on a single visit to our galleries during a conference reception. I have no way of knowing how many of those 3 hours Nina spent in our exhibitions and galleries, but it seems that she didn’t bother to ask any staff members of the IMA about efforts we might be making to engage our visitors on-site and around the city.  Aside from a brief two minute encounter in the conference hall after her comments, Nina failed to probe in any depth about what (if any) strategy their might be behind our efforts on-site.

Experience and Engagement

In case you haven’t noticed, Art Museums are frequently considered to be the “stuffier”, less “engaging” older brothers to our sibling science, technology, and “experience” museums.  Nina draws at least some of her professional experience from this field, so perhaps we should cut her a little slack for missing a crucial challenge faced by art museums.

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Filed under: Education, New Media, Technology

Another Bloggers Anonymous is happening this Friday at the IMA, and we couldn’t be more excited!

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Filed under: Current Events, Film, New Media, Technology

Phil’s post yesterday got me thinking.  At Museums and the Web a couple of weeks ago (check out Charlie’s post), Rob and I presented our paper about online video.  At the end of our talk, I was asked if the IMA ever created viral video content.  My response was immediate and along the lines of this:  I’m not sure a museum could create a successful viral video.  It would have to come from someone outside the museum and break lots of rules. But then Phil wrote about viral videos and I started thinking.

The IMA is not immune to the viral video idea.  Our first ever YouTube video was conceived as a marketing, viral video in support of an exhibition.  That was almost three years ago.

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Filed under: Marketing, New Media

I thought I would follow up Ed’s MW2009 preview with an after the fact look at the online remnants of the conference.

Brooklyn Museum flat out swept the Best of the Web awards and their main website won the overall award.  A huge congratulations from all of us at the IMA for a well-deserved recognition. (Be sure to watch their virtual thank you.)  As if that weren’t enough, I totally missed the news that Brooklyn released an API for their collection.  Even better, someone has already created an iPhone app for them using it.  Open developer access to the IMA’s collection just got a huge bump in priority for me.

We had a great meetup with some of the tech staff of NYPL.  Their group is of a scale and quality that we are quite envious of.  We are greatly looking forward to future collaborations with them. (They’re an ArtBabble partner.)

In the presentation realm the IMA had a cloud computing talk, an evaluation of online video for museums, a solicitation for feedback for the Steve in Action IMLS grant, and an ArtBabble demo.  Other favorites from outside the IMA include alternate reality games, a galaxy of pop stars, and a massive update coming soon to ArtsConnectEd.

Our own Melvin & Bren Simon Director and CEO gave the opening keynote which you can watch in full on ArtBabble or at the bottom of this post.  It even inspired a great series on transparency for the Museums and the Web conference itself.

Filed under: Current Events, Technology

The Museums and the Web 2009 conference was here in Indianapolis last week and I came out of it with a bunch of web related scripts for my patient Monday patients. Here’s a few…

boxee.tv – This is the most incredible 10-foot HTPC interface I’ve ever seen. Windows Media Center and Front Row don’t hold a candle. If it had a PVR feature it would be perfect. And since it already lets you watch Hulu and YouTube as if they are just a normal television channel, MW2009 chats thinks there should be a channel for ArtBabble.

blurb.com – Free book making software. Best part is, you can print as few or as many as you want and the prices are super reasonable. There was a session at the conference where I got to actually check out a sample of their product and it looked just like something you would buy off the shelf at Borders. Oh, they make little flip books too that are super cute. I’m thinking limited edition ArtBabble something.

Mega Menus – In a website critique session at MW2009, I suggested that this slick new interface techniqe was about to be “hot right now.” Funny thing is, nobody had ever heard of a Mega Menu and thus my avant-garde status was confirmed. Oddly, my favorite implementation is on the State Farm Insurance website.

Twitterfall – Thanks to Twitterfall and a video projector, all the Twitter activity tagged with #MW2009 could be seen streaming by as the IMA’s Director, Max Anderson, gave the conference’s opening plenary address. A few months ago a display like this may have been distracting; however, during Max’s speech it was really interesting and helpful to see what people were thinking about as words were hitting their brains.

Monday Music – “Once We Were Strangers” by Peggy Sue. Third rainy Monday in a row.

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Filed under: Current Events, Local, Marketing, New Media