There are all sorts of things going on in the world o’ new media these days. I thought I would tell you about a few of them. Tomorrow, I will spend the day with a few other IMA staffers, likely holed up in the IMA Cafe taking advantage of the free wi-fi in there to drink coffee and upload the majority of the content to our newly developed website for To Live Forever: Egyptian Treasures from the Brooklyn Museum. If you look at it now, you will only find a taste of the design, but by this time next week, it will rock your world.

I received an e-mail from Shelley Bernstein giving a shout out to a project the Walker Art Center has going on right now called, My Yard Our Message. This project is a really cool and interesting one, inviting any artist to submit designs to this non-partisan competition and the winning submissions (selected by on-line viewers) will be made available for order as political yard signs. Want to submit? Get to it. You have until June 30th. Want to vote? Mark your calendars, voting begins July 1st.

Other IMA Nugget Factory news? Daniel and I need to get to work on our ISEA presentation for the upcoming conference. I think we have both forgotten this part after completing and submitting the paper a few weeks(or maybe months) back. The editing nuggets have really put together an amazing exhibition trailer for To Live Forever that you will get to see when the site launches. We are all very proud of this entire project and are so glad to have had such tremendous support from the Brooklyn Museum as we are creating it. I am sure you will hear more about that collaboration.

Well, that is all the news that is fit to print today. It has been a relatively slow weekend, but is shaping up to be a fast and furious week. So don’t forget to check back in!

While in NYC, Daniel and I worked on many projects, and one of them landed us in a meeting with IMA’s own, Lisa Freiman and the artist-duo Type A. You will definitely be seeing more from those guys, and from us, featuring those guys. Keep an eye out for more on that later this spring.

The Nugget Factory: Danny Beyer, Despi Mayes, Daniel Incandela and Dan Dark (left to right)

In other Nugget News, Daniel and I have been invited to present a paper at the 2008 International Symposium on Electronic Arts in Singapore. So, we will be busy in the coming months writing a paper about Nature Holds My Camera: The Video Art of Sam Easterson that reveals our creative secrets (at least some of them). Then in July, we will make our way to Singapore to present that paper to artists and colleagues. Making the most of our travel to Asia, we plan to make stops in Beijing and Shanghai to develop video content for the upcoming exhibition, Power and Glory: Court Arts of China’s Ming Dynasty, which will open at IMA this fall.

Another nugget, Dan Dark is presenting at this year’s Museums and the Web conference in Montreal, on a panel with representatives from other museums. Similarly, I am working with a couple of other museums to put together a discussion about audio content for this year’s Association of American Museums (AAM) conference in Denver. That one will be another in and out for me…only about 18 hours outside of Indy!

So as you can see, we will be busy spreading the IMA word and soaking in new stuff that will make its way to you through the blog, new videos on YouTube, and no doubt, much more! And in between all of that stuff we will be working on web projects, bringing you IMA event video, working with visiting artists, blogging, updating iTunes U, labeling new photos on Flickr and a hundred other awesome things. With all of this work and excitement we are no doubt going to need a “Nugget Appreciation Day.” Any votes for the date?

P.S. – Keep your eye out for Daniel’s post this week featuring more jaw-dropping, show-stopping Nugget Factory action.

It’s been a good year for meeting colleagues from other museums around the US. I’ve been lucky to spend quality time with technology staff from the Seattle Art Museum, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, MoMA and most recently, the Brooklyn Museum. This is separate from conferences – these have been actual site visits to some of the best art museums around. It’s an added bonus that all of these museums are doing great things for visitors and technology.

In preparation for an Egyptian exhibition, To Live Forever, arriving in Indianapolis next July, a small entourage of IMA staff traveled to the Brooklyn Museum to meet with some of their staff. We spent an entire afternoon shooting in-gallery video interviews with the curator and several conservators in their lab. It was an odd but incredible experience shooting video inches away from the mummy of Demetris and the painted shroud of Neferhotep (that’s text I stole from curator, Edward Bleiberg’s blog entry). It’s an amazing opportunity to gain this type of access because ultimately, this is content we will deliver to our visitors. How many get to see a behind-the-scenes look at a mummy getting a facelift? Well, you will.

Part of our preparation for the Brooklyn visit, involved a call to Shelley Bernstein, the Manager of Information Systems at the museum. Hopefully some of you have seen the Brooklyn site, or are aware of some of their innovative work. If you’re not, let me quickly share a few of their impressive projects: their museum-wide blog, the Brooklyn Museum group on flickr, ArtShare on Facebook, video competitions held at the museum, as well their involvement in Twitter and YouTube….you get the picture. Sometimes you get so caught up in your own work and projects, you forget to stop and appreciate what’s happening around you. This is certainly the case with Brooklyn, and I was pleasantly surprised when Shelley answered the phone and responded, “The IMA? I know you guys!” Well, we certainly already knew what they had done and we were excited to meet with her face to face.

Unfortunately I did not spend as much time with Shelley and her team as anticipated, but I still left feeling inspired by what they have accomplished. I think this is a culmination of what has been a busy year at IMA and exposure to so many creative, innovative individuals and organizations around the country. As the IMA continues its own exploration with technology, it will always be intriguing to discover what other museums are producing.

What are some of the IMA technology projects being considered next? Find out in the next blog. How’s that for a cliffhanger?