Link Dump Sunday: There is a Small Mailbox Here

I discovered yesterday, via Fresh & New(er), that Inform7 is out. Inform is a language for writing text adventure games (think Zork). A few years ago, I experimented with Inform6 and created a mostly functional game, complete with storyline and puzzles and all. (Including a surprisingly lethal version of the theater warm-up Zip Zap Zop.) It was not overly difficult–I managed it with no more programming experience than a year of Java.

According to the blog, Inform7 is a few steps simpler. Fresh & New(er) author Seb Chan whipped up a quick game set at WebWise, with the idea that a similar game might be well adaptable to a museum setting. I’m interested to try, and this morning the beginnings of a game set at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum‘s butterfly haven came into my head. No doubt I’ll have some time to tackle that project Real Soon Now.

Some other cool stuff I saw this week:

The Smithsonian is building an archive of printable 3D scans of its collection. At least, starting to. While there are no plans yet to make them available to the public, it’s a neat start. (Via BoingBoing).

Rejection Therapy, a game with the goal of getting over the fear of rejection by trying to be rejected daily. An interesting idea, at least.

More interesting thoughts, these ones about how to succeed at making stuff in new media, from Transom.org.

And from LibraryGamer, a neat infographic about how education is adapting gaming concepts.

Pinterest for Museums, Part 3: The Potential

Part 1 of this post covers the basics of Pinterest. Part 2 examines how museums are currently using the site.

And this part, for all intents and purposes, will analyze some issues related to whether a museum should get on Pinterest. Spoiler: The answer is it depends, and we don’t know yet, but read on for some analysis that can hopefully guide you to the right answer for your institution.

First: It doesn’t matter that Pinterest is currently blowing up. Lots of things on the internet have gotten big, only to get small again once people tried them out and realized that the sites didn’t do much for them. (Second Life, I’m looking in your general vicinity.)

Second: There will be a backlash against Pinterest, because it’s a thing on the internet that’s getting big. That also doesn’t matter. Facebook gets backlashes about once a week and people still use it. A lot.

Third: Predicting the future, particularly for something like this, is naturally a fool’s task. I don’t think anyone outside of the creators know how Pinterest intends to evolve, and no one knows how the site’s users will ultimately use the site. But those are what will ultimately determine if Pinterest remains a Big Thing or fades away.

With those provisos out of the way, here’s what I would be asking if I were responsible for evaluating whether my institution should use Pinterest.

1. Can I use it for something worthwhile?In many instances, this is a clear yes. Sharing artifacts and ideas related to the museum’s mission online should, I think, be a part of most museums’ missions. Promoting the museum as an event location and promoting the items the museum sells in its store are perhaps not directly part of the mission, but they do provide funding for the mission in a way that certainly does not impede it.
2. Will the site use my time effectively? A qualified yes here as well. The site is really pretty simple to use; creating an online exhibit or a gallery of products is probably a sub-1-hour task. One would, of course, need to consider whether this would become a living initiative of the museum, and therefore require an ongoing time commitment. Also there’s the simple fact that even one hour is too much time to spend if the answer to:
3. Can it attract an audience?is “No.” And this is the sticky question. While I’ve been using the site, I can’t say that I’ve incorporated it into my daily routine, nor do I think I will. Will Pinterest become something as widespread and as integral to online lives as Facebook? My hunch is no. But it probably doesn’t have to.Browsing Pinterest feels to me a lot like browsing a book of stock photography. (Possibly more universal examples include browsing a stack of wedding magazines or upholstery sample book.) None of those activities are among my hobbies, but I can understand the situations where each would be valuable.

Pinterest’s target seems to be people who are seeking practical ideas, rather than facts. So I think that museum usages that align with that goal–boards that showcase museum wedding possibilities, children’s craft projects, and the like–have the strongest chance of success.

It will (hopefully) be interesting to watch.

Pinterest for Museums, Part 2: Museums Currently on Pinterest

See part 1 of this series for Pinterest basics.

While Pinterest has gotten plenty of buzz lately, it’s still relatively new in the consciousness of the vast majority of people. The majority of museums aren’t there, at least not yet.

But there are a decent selection of museums using the site, and from them we can categorize museum usage in several broad categories, as well as a few more unique projects.

Probably the most obvious usage is to share artifacts. See the Columbus Museum of Art or the Indianapolis Museum of Art for examples. Closely related to this would be using Pinterest as a virtual storefront, sharing items that are sold in museum stores. The Field Museum gets a bonus grin from me for including a board dedicated to its Mold-a-Rama offerings alongside its other stores.

Some museums use Pinterest to promote the museum and its grounds as a destination, particularly as a wedding venue. This is particularly in line with the site’s stated purpose — “planning weddings” is the very first suggested usage in Pinterest’s own help files. The Florence Griswold Museum’s “In Our Gardens” board doesn’t explicitly suggest weddings, although a couple of the photos present scenes tailor-made for such an event. The Chicago History Museum does, although many of the pictures come from outside sources, and many of the pictures fill an idea-sharing role, rather than simply being self-promotion.

Children’s museums in particular seem fond of taking a mission-based approach, sharing ideas for craft projects, fun foods, or other activities. The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art offers art, food, clothing, and party ideas based on children’s literature. The Zimmer Children’s Museum has a number of creative play activities for kids, and the Iowa Children’s Museum hits a bunch of different activity-related topics, and the American Museum of Science and Energy offers home science experiments. Suitable for both children and adults, the National Museum of Natural History has a (thus far small) listing of citizen science projects.

The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology takes a curatorial approach: Most if not all of its pins come from other sources, but they’re well-organized by era to form a true online exhibit of fashion history.

A few museums use Pinterest to give behind-the-scenes views of the operation. These include the Field Museum’s Meet the Buyers board and the Chicago History Museum’s Behind the Scenes board.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is targeting teens with its Pinterest site, and it seems to be looking to use its boards as at least part of an online teen community. Its boards also do a very good job of telling a story about some topic.

Finally, a few museums use their Pinterest site to promote some ancillary museum projects. The Columbus Museum of Art promotes its blogs by pinning images from them, thus creating a link. The National Museum of Natural History does the same with its podcasts, and the UNLV Museum gives a shout-out to Las Vegas landmarks and artists.

Coming next will be a look at Pinterest’s potential. I’ll also be linking to a bunch of resources later on, but this post requires credit to Jenni Fuchs, who has created and maintains a Google spreadsheet of museums on Pinterest. While that wasn’t where I started my hunt for museums using the site, it is where I finished it.

Pinterest for Museums, Part 1: The Basics

Having noticed Pinterest making a dent in my social media streams, I’ve been exploring the site over the past couple of weeks. Is it something of value for museums? There’s certainly some potential. So this is the first in a series of posts about the site. Part 2 will cover what museums are currently doing, Part 3 will examine the potential future of Pinterest for museums, and Part 4 will be some link love to what others have written.

Pinterest is an online pinboard. That’s all well and good, as far as it goes, but to me it doesn’t really get to what the site is. So to get a bit deeper, it’s a sharing mechanism that’s heavily graphics-focused. Everything posted to the site is a picture or video, albeit with descriptions attached.

Those who post pins can and do organize them into boards by topic or concept. (Mine are “Museums” “Funny Stuff,” and “Butterflies and other Animals“, at least to start.) It is possible to follow boards that you’re interested in, or all of a user’s boards. You can also repin someone else’s pin onto one of your boards; doing so makes the picture and info show up on your board, but it links back to the original pinner as well as the original source.

Letter vs. Spirit
And there we reach one bit of site culture that’s worth being aware of. It’s possible to load a photo from your computer to one of your boards, but it’s also easy to pin a photo from a website. The latter seems to be somewhat encouraged–as the “What is Pinterest?” page says, “Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web.” The site’s etiquette guidelines also ask users not to make it a tool purely for self-promotion.

On the other hand, the site also welcomes business accounts, and there’s even a function where stores can pin one of their products and add a price to it. So Pinterest obviously doesn’t intend to exist completely outside the world of commerce.

So while the letter of the rules discourages self-promotion, the spirit allows it under certain circumstances–most of which museums would fall under. The site’s spirit really seems to be about shared interests and visualizations of ideas for them. So while sharing a museum artifact or a product from the museum’s store might have the ultimate goal of promoting the museum, it also probably meets the site’s mission because of the inherent interestingness of that item.

Using the site
What’s it like using Pinterest? It’s a bit overwhelming, really. The site is a bit more meanderable than searchable. Searching “museum exhibits,” for example, gives a few exhibits, some museum logos, and a bunch of pictures of museums. Some very specific searches that I’ve tried are better, although they don’t capture everything. There are also some categories for boards, but they’re quite broad and have the same issues as the search function.

But is it that big an issue? Pinterest’s format makes it pretty easy to scroll through a bunch of content and quickly find what you want and skip over what you don’t want. A search for “butterflies” brings up models with butterflies, butterfly art, butterfly shapes on cake, pinned butterfly specimens, and not a whole lot of the pictures of actual live butterflies that I actually wanted. But when I do find one–which takes under a minute, even though it’s a full 12 scrolls down the page, the real finding starts.

That’s because the board that has one pin of an item you’re looking for is pretty commonly devoted to that item. And if that’s the case, people who repin from the board usually have more of what you want on their boards. And so on and so on.

The site gets repinning right. It’s easy (a total of four clicks: one to bring up the repinning menu, one to bring up the menu of which board you want to repin to, one to select the board, and one to actually repin) and encouraged. My first batch of uploaded butterfly photos had 17 repins before I had even finished loading, and that’s without having followers yet.

So it’s a place where it’s possible to reach people. The next installment in this series will examine how museums are doing so.

Link Dump Sunday: Maybe a Quiet Week This Time Edition

It’s been a lengthy month. And while I thought that this week would be easier, this happened. Oh well; perhaps next week will get less tumultuous.

But until that, here’s some cool stuff I saw in the past week.

From PSFK, a photography exhibition in Portugal using augmented reality and QR codes to enhance the experience, creating changing soundscapes for each piece with an algorithm that factors in variables like time of day and ambient noise levels.

Pinterest has seemed to explode in the past week. Here are my recently begun boards. I’ll be examining it for potential museum usage in the near future.

From Starts with a Bang, more about the retesting of those faster-than-light neutrinos, which are more likely not faster than light and actually experimental error.

From the Atlanta History Center, the “Stuff Museum People Say” video:

And, Talking about Talking, a newish blog that’s actually a record of a mentorship in public relations and marketing. Should be worth reading.

Reflections on a Robbery

Forgive the indulgence of an almost completely personal post. But, you know, something happened, and writing is a good way to deal with it.

The something: two days ago, at the gym, my bag was stolen. It had my phone, wallet, and keys.

First reflection: Getting robbed sucks. I don’t recommend it.

After 36 hours, though, things are a lot better. First off, the bag was recovered–the guy stole my phone and my (small amount of) cash, but left my keys, cards, and clothes in a bag that he chucked somewhere on the property. So the whole event is a lot more finite now: I canceled all of the cards last night (before the bag was found) and changed all of my passwords, so I think the damage will be constrained to the property loss–basically, the couple hundred bucks to replace the phone.

There’s also some perspective: A few other people had things stolen, including one person who lost their car. So my victimhood, while real, is relatively minor.

I’m not going to claim that all is wonderful and perfect in my head after this incident. It’s a violation, and that has an effect on your mental state.

But…

The fact that this happened doesn’t mean that we’re living in a crapsack world. It just means that something bad happened.

I think there’s a tendency to assume that since something bad happened it justifies any action that you might take, no matter how bad. That idea has dominated some of my personal dealings in the past few years, and it’s dominated the national political discourse for at least a decade.

It’s lazy and it’s wrong.

I’m not saying that I plan to go through life pretending that this didn’t happen or couldn’t happen again. I’ve pieced together how the thief did it, so I know the loopholes that he exploited, and I can make sure that in the future they don’t still exist. I’m also not saying that I have renounced anger in general. I’m mad at this guy. If someone offered me him tied up and a large stick, I doubt I could resist taking a few whacks.

(I’ve heard that some teach that

But there is a line. I’m not going to assume that everyone I meet is bad like this guy. From there, it’s not even a step to thinking that since everyone is bad, there aren’t any rules of decency or humanity that apply. I think it would be easy to justify stealing, or much worse, if you first convince yourself that the person you’re doing it to deserves it. And if you convince yourself that all people deserve it, that step is already done.

And it’s factually untrue. The business where this happened, for example, has been behaving in a very human way, rather than endless referrals to a ‘customer service’ line. Or to bring this somewhat on topic: In my volunteer gig at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, I see a lot of the good side of humans. The annual Bugapalooza event is especially great–it brings in huge crowds, many kids, who are incredibly enthusiastic. They come in with some knowledge, but they’re eager to absorb more. Some of the most in-depth and intriguing questions I get throughout the year come during that day.

I guess what it comes down to is this: There is bad and good in life. The bad will find you on its own, while the good you have to seek out. Don’t do the bad a favor by seeking it out as well.

A Note to Any Potential Employers

This is a massive longshot, but it’s the only likely option. My phone (and some other things) was stolen today. So, if you got my resume, Googled me and got here, and have reached the conclusion that you want to talk to me more… try e-mailing, instead of calling, because the phone is in the hands of a thief.

Edited to add: I’ve re-acquired the use of my phone number. So if you need to reach me, call away.

Innovation and Conversations About Status

One bit of professional reading for my current position has stuck with me for a few weeks. It was a couple of blog posts about change, and specifically, about the notion that people who resist change can have genuine concerns that need to be addressed.

Which is, of course, objectively true. And yet, unsettling as well; it came from someone who I’ve long considered a strong proponent of innovation and change and all that. But that’s not the real issue.

The real issue (and it took several days of mulling for me to realize it) is that the post start from the supposition that this type of conversation is about what the conversation’s words are about.

In short: A lot of conversations about new stuff are not so much about the new stuff, but about the relative status of the participants in the conversation.

It’s hard to know how extensive this phenomenon is. I only know about it from observation in my own experiences. And I can’t offer much evidence apart from those experiences. But looking back at those experiences with the perspective of several years… It’s the only explanation that I can imagine, for example, for debating in 2005 about whether the internet is something worthwhile for a magazine to tap.

It is, incidentally. I think that was evident well before 2005. But plenty of arguments against it were made, and they wound up successful. It took 4 more years before we had a functioning web site. And none of those arguments proved remotely legitimate.

Another examplette, one that’s even wobblier: A few years ago, my employer had a president who made quite a bad stir by making some rather disparaging comments about the “blog people.” Fast forward to the present day, and said president was spotted commenting away on one of those blog people’s blogs.

Now, the president is a senior member of the profession, and the blog he was haunting is also written by a senior member. So I suspect (admittedly, completely without evidence to back this up) that there are generational factors at work: When the president was attacking the blog people, was he actually attacking the existence of blogs, or was he just declaring how valuable and relevant he was? And when he granted his seal of approval to his contemporary’s blog, was he recognizing the value of blogs, or just saying “You’re a person I consider valid.”

It’s unfair, of course, to claim to know the thoughts of others. And yet, I’m convinced that this type of thing happens in the workplace.

So how do you determine what’s about work and what’s about social status? That’s a tricky question, and I don’t have an answer. Some of it involves the work environment; some places catalyze status-based discussions in a way that others don’t. But I don’t have a foolproof plan for identifying specific instances.

What do you think? Share your ideas in the comments.

Link Dump Sunday: Pre-President’s Edition

Ah, President’s Day. What passions dost thou inflame?

OK, not much, although I do get the day off, which is quite nice. So here’s the link dump:

Center for the Future of Museums has a well-done essay on science museums having to face the choice of tackling topics that can be politically radioactive like evolution and climate change. Should museums potentially alienate their audiences with those topics, at the threat to their futures?

I wasn’t able to comment due to the captcha system on the blog, so here is my reaction: I’m not thrilled to admit it, but I’d fall more on the pragmatist side than the idealist. While not in a museum setting, I have experienced a few audience revolts against things that were and are correct, and the results can be devastating for an institution and especially the people who are doing the work.

That said, I don’t think that “Our community won’t accept this” should be a final assessment for a museum. Instead, “Our community won’t accept this now” would be a more positive approach, followed by asking what we can do to create an environment that is more accepting of information about those views.

Evolution and climate change are especially tough; public discourse about them has almost nothing to do with science and everything to do with culture wars. So, in a community that is culturally hostile to those topics, how can a museum create a space where they can be discussed on their scientific basis? Does it require going back to the basics of science–what is a theory, how are they tested, and so on? Or perhaps focusing on scientists as people, rather than an abstract group that’s so much easier to demonize?

I’m not sure what the answer is, but I think that’s a worthwhile place to start.

The rest of the link dump:

At Know Your Own Bone, some very worthwhile research: People go to museums for the experience, and more importantly, the experience of going with people they care about. Sell appropriately.

From The Awl, some good advice on dealing with ungood people at work.

From Beth’s Blog, a report on a panel about reporting the impact of social media to stakeholders.

From Treehugger: Bees have long been known to dance to communicate with each other. Turns out they also use it as a warning to other animals. Or as Treehugger puts it: “Giving the finger” to hornets.

Scenes from a Volunteer Mixer

This is the Laflin Building.

It’s a fairly prominent facility–it’s in Lincoln Park, facing one of the major roads that boarders the park, and pretty much alone. The building once held the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum; in the late 1990s, the museum traded it with Lincoln Park Zoo for the museum’s current location, and the zoo now uses the Laflin Building for offices. I’ve seen it plenty of times, but never been inside until yesterday.

The occasion? A mixer for volunteers at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, the Zoo, and the Chicago History Museum.

It was a great time, organized by the Nature Museum’s fabulous volunteer coordinator Jill, as well as the volunteer coordinators at the other two institutions. (Who I’m sure are also fabulous, although I really didn’t meet them.) Nothing too complicated; a bit of food, a bit of conversation, some very cool historical photos from the three institutions, and a surprisingly cutthroat trivia game. (Which my group, ahem, won.)

It also gave an opportunity to learn about some of the other institutions — one of the zoo volunteers talked and shared photos from the enrichment activities they create for their animals. Also, my co-volunteer Claire won a stuffed panda.

There was talk of naming it after me, although that may have just been party chat.

Obviously, this event didn’t have anything to do with marketing. But there are a couple of applicable lessons that, while not shockingly original, are worth repeating. One is the value of meeting new people. The other, the value of showing–rather than just telling, or claiming–people you appreciate them.