Real social networking! 2007 was the year of networking with other museum colleagues. We got to visit museums and meet, inperson, brilliant staff from the Seattle Art Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Walker Art Center, MoMA, Minneapolis Institute of Arts – and this doesn’t include any of the conferences we attended.

Presenting “Starting a Digital Revolution” at Museums and the Web. It’s one of the most important conferences for museums and technology and we represented the IMA well. Interested in reading it? Click here.

The new IMA website launched. It was the end of a long, long process that signaled the beginning of a never ending process of creating new content, rethinking the design of the website, creating surveys, usability studies…..(you get the picture).

An artist named Sam Easterson and the exhibition Nature Holds My Camera.

An opening in the exhibition schedule presented IMA’s Education Division the opportunity to organize a summer exhibition with very little time and money. Working with quite possibly one of the nicest, most thoughtful and genuine people ever (Sam Easterson), and a team representing every area of the museum, the IMA produced a creative, engaging, thought provoking experience that made visitors laugh, think, sit in giant bean bags and trek out to the Art and Nature Park for a glimpse of an eastern mole on a modified baby monitor. I really can’t make this stuff up. http://www.natureholdsmycamera.com/

IMA got all Web 2.0 Well we already had YouTube and MySpace, but we added flickr, facebook and started blogging. Hey, we even added some audio files to our website to complement some of the videos. Speaking of the website, the IMA continued its involvement in the steve project and launched something called a dashboard, not to mention various online components for exhibitions. We’re doing our best.

The Nugget Factory moved to HD New Media’s editing and recording studio is called The Nugget Factory and we were lucky enough to switch to HD video this past year. We’re fortunate to have these types of resources and we did not hesitate in making the most of our Canon XL-H1’s – shooting hundreds of hours of video footage which was converted into countless digital video projects for exhibitions, YouTube and our new site. Now that’s a lot of floppy disks.

Our YouTube account:

We started the year with a handful of pieces on our YouTube page and ended with over 50 IMA produced videos and 60,000 plus views. Okay, okay, I realize we’re not lonelygirl15 – but hey, we’re trying. For more on this, you should read my colleague Despi’s entry. And to break up this top-10 list, here’s my current favorite YouTube video:

The Roman Art Webisode Project (and of course, the actual exhibition)

A project that began in April of 2006 and utilized a team of 5 IMA staffers to write eleven original videos to be used for education/promotion/interpretation in support of the exhibition Roman Art from the Louvre – then travel to Rome, Paris and all over Indiana to capture enough footage based on the pages and pages of shot lists and scripts and amass nearly 20 hours of video. It was an incredible experience and we’re thrilled that the Seattle Art Museum is using some of our content. As for the exhibition, over 100,000 visitors and people waiting in huge lines! The museum was buzzing. Is there a connection between the webisodes and attendance? Of course!

Another year, the same beautiful campus When I’m having a bad day at the office I walk 2 minutes outside to the beautiful Formal Gardens. Planning a picnic? There are acres upon acres of incredible grounds. Want to toss a Frisbee, walk a dog, jog or experience the beauty of nature – that’s covered too. The grounds at the IMA are one of the best spots in Indianapolis.

The year to come New Media ended 2007 with some exciting and hard work ahead in 2008. Already under way, in one form or another, are projects involving Indianapolis Public Schools, iTunes U and musicians from the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, as well as collaborations with other museums, a new initiative called IMA TV, and much, much more. Stay tuned.

And what do you think of the new blog?