I love MuseWeb. When I started work in 2012 at AMNH, it was the only conference everyone asked me about. Are you going? Are you going? So eventually I went, and I found my people. Educators were still a small subset, but overall this was a crowd passionate about digital engagement who thought deeply about the future of museums and were not afraid of disruptive innovation. I left many a MW (at the time, called Museums and the Web) with new colleagues and friends, new idea, and new inspiration.
This year we can’t gather in person in D.C. as originally intended, but I look forward to contributing to MW this year, in a number of ways.
WHO WANTS TO BE A MWILLIONAIRE?
Many nights of MW will have a social activity, and I volunteered to help lead one. On Tuesday night, April 6, from 8:30 – 9:30 EST, I’ll be MCing the first MW gameshow: Who Wants to Be a MWillioniare? Developed with James Sims Jr. (National Museum of African American History and Culture) and Katherine Behnke (International Women’s Air & Space Museum), this is going to be a super fun evening and I can’t wait. I look forward to helping attendees have fun playing, laughing, and learning something new. And a few lucky individuals will leave with some conference swag and some serious bragging rights.
A SESSION ON MY UPCOMING BOOK: THE REVOLUTION HAS BEEN DIGITIZED
On April 6, from 3:00 – 4:30pm EST, I will be leading a Birds of a Feather session to explore the development of my upcoming book: The Revolution Has Been Digitized – a Toolkit for the Future of Museums.
Being published next year by AAM/Rowman & Littlefield, I am still in the early phases. I am hoping museums educators will attend to provide feedback and insure it will be an effective tool to advance their work and support those around them.
In brief, the book takes the readers behind the scenes to learn how the American Museum of Natural History innovated visitor digital engagement through a public-facing iterative design process while highlighting design techniques used both there and at museums around the world. Based on the bleeding-edge work I was fortunate enough to lead, readers will learn how to apply my Five Tools of Digital Design and take inspiration from rich and engaging case studies that span both subject matter (like constellations, microbial life, and dinosaur fossils) and digital engagement (through tools like mobile apps, augmented reality, and telepresence robots). Each case study will be enhanced with and contextualized by readings on related work from museums around the world.
SOCIAL MEDIA TEAM
I love backchannels at conferences and try to contribute where I can. In February I wrote about my experience using ClubHouse for MusuemNext. This time around I joined the social media team, where I will be live tweeting the virtual sessions. So get ready for my stream of oh-so informative Tweets which, if you’re not already there, might make you feel like you were.
