Informal learning session

I have Tim's ppt slides and hopefully will upload them when i can figureb out how to! The film shifthappens is here.
A reminder that my paper is on my wiki.
Glad it's over - i think i need this!

Social media conference special presentation: Kevin von Appen and Caroline Payson

Today we were fortunate to have Kevin von Appen, Ontario Science Centre, and Caroline Payson, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, talk to a group of staff about what they do. These are my very rough notes.

Some points from Kevin’s talk:
• Social nature of Australians makes us prime candidates to uptake social media
• 1 in 6 teens in Australia has their own blog (I suggest this figure is higher give that MySpace and Bebo have their own blog function)online experiences are rooted in the physical (i.e. the stuff we have – I found this strongly when talking to students at e-kids’ college)
• Museums – we’re all in this together
• Web allows museums to react quickly to big issues (and invite others to collaborate I would suggest)
• One way to get content out there is to colonise virtual communities (e.g. YouTube and Facebook)
• Video is an increasingly popular tool (more downloads of videos from their site than everything else put together)
• Operated in a skunkworks kind of approach – created sites outside of the corporate site in order to experiment – challenge now is to bring these all together
• Rapid idea generator (RIG): process to generate lot of ideas around a specific topic, challenge or opportunity and to physically manifest ideas in unexpected ways to create unexpected dialogue
Websites presented:
• SFMOMA podcasting and Vox Pops
• steve.museum
• Ilikemuseums
• Science buzz (Science Museum of Minnesota)
• Redshift Now

Caroline’s points:
• Had to think about conjunction between physical presence and web presence – how to make the best of both?? Used a problem-solving approach to come up with ideas and approaches
• They do have access to great people
• Can’t be all things to all people all the time – this is unachievable
• They decide to focus on one group and branch out from there
• 9 online visitors to 1 physical visitor – mostly clicking on the educational aspect
• Teach teachers how to think like designers to take back into classroom to go through processes of design – design as a process is a great way to work together and create knowledge and is relevant across other disciplines apart from just design
• Site focusses on process not objects – they consciously made this decision
• Design for the other 99% exhibition had a bigger life after the physical exhibition closed
• Emphasised the casual nature of the blog – it’s not an academic treatise
• Their Director made them work differently – you won’t have three specialist meetings each week, you’ll have two and spend the other time on your blog
• There’s’ a community out there no matter what you’re interested in (even knitters who watch Law and Order and have cats ... umm, I tried to find this blog but got led on an merry adventure by Google, can’t say any more than that!)
• Caroline’s “butt rule”: should be able to get everything you need (i.e. resources) without moving your butt
• The Educator Resource Centre site is well worth a good look and play
• Conversation strand – has become the place for design teachers across US to talk about design education, also searchable and can upload fotos and video
• Did a lot of user-testing with teachers
• Have paid teachers to post, write materials and moderate (in future)
• Online visitation has increased 9-1, more visitors than the museum shop
Web philosophy – embrace collection and get more online, everything online supports the mission, reach other audiences, one site will meet the needs of all areas of the museum.

Overall an exhausting, yet highly productive and stimulating day. Kinda looking forward to another full day tomorrow!

Social Media and Cultural Communication Conference 2007

Registration is now open for the Social Media and Cultural Communication Conference 2007. The conference brings together a range of great industry speakers from Australia, Canada, USA and UK. It promises to be a provocative day and is aimed at the needs of those institutions small and large who are yet to start fully exploring the communication opportunities afforded by social media. The conference is a single day event on February 29 at the Museum of Sydney. There will be two related masterclasses on February 28 at the Australian Museum. Find out more at http://nlablog.wordpress.com/conference-2008/
Earlybird registration closes on 17 December - you can download a registration form at
http://www.mgnsw.org.au/files/resources/Social%20Media%20and%20Cultural%20Comm.pdf

Lifelong Learning Symposium

What a full day of fascinating papers delivered by passionate people! I took a wad of notes, so will report here on the main points as I saw them.
David's paper was (as always) a broad sweep of the intellectual and the practical. He suggested that we need to tackle barriers of poverty, education disadvantage, disabilities and other issues facing older peole. He reminded us that museums can still be seen as elitist places and that we need to cater for all audiences and not spend too much time always segmenting.
The thing I enjoyed abut Marie's talk was the emphasis on learning as pleasure, fun and enjoyment - words we often forget to relate to musuems! The NGI is running some amazing programs, not just for older audiences - one I think is really innovative is the young mothers tours.
Des's talk ranged widely, reminding us that often with ageing we focus on the negative rather than the positive. The ageing population shouldn't be seen as a problem to be solved but as a "demographic bounty" to be used. He cited many, many examples of creativity in older life - apart from artists and classical composers we also saw images of Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney! The three aspects regarding ageing he mentioned were:

• the positives - the creativity, wisdom and life experience of older people
  
• inter-individual variability and the need to have a wide palette - all older people are not the same and there is more variation between two 80 year olds as between two 40 year olds
• reduced reserve - therefore providing spaces to relax, recharge and contemplate are required
  

He reminded us that the majority of older people are fit, heatlty and contributing, however those that are sick do tend to have more complex health issues. He also gave us a nice quote (didn't get the author but worth reproducing): "If you design for the old you include the young, if you design for the young you exclude the old". The overall message I got was to have a complex palette on offer and design for all.
Catherine's talk on vounteering was full of information. The remarks she made about the 21st century volunteer were very salient - that they are looking for an experience and added-value and that there are so many more opportunities to volunteer now (I have seen the increase of volunteer tourism for example). She challenged us to remember that volunteers are changing so are we trying to fit them into a 20th century volunteer model or are we trying to change?
There were other papers and a great discussion at the end - too much to digest now, but overall a great success I feel.
Just a reminder that my paper is here