Post-Conference Musings
As the AAM and ACM conferences pack up their tents and roll out of Philadelphia, I'm thinking about the types of conversations that happen (or don't happen) at professional museum conferences.
It would be interesting to think of ways to: 1) Capture the types of meaty conversations that happen in hallways, restaurants, and bars outside of the confines of formal sessions. Or perhaps make sessions a little more conversational. 2) Give people a (anonymous?) forum to comment on conference topics and happenings in a truthful and professional way without feeling like they were committing professional suicide.
Suggestions and ideas welcome in the Comments Section below.
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We tried an interesting experiment at the Friday session "A Glimpse of the Future" (reviewing the Center for the Future of Museums "Museums and Society 2034" report.) We invited the audience to "physical twitter"--passing note cards around the room with thoughts and questions as they listened to the speakers, so it did not all have to stay bottled up in their heads until Q&A. It ended up being more like a chat room than like twitter--long notes with responses written on the bottom, back, sides. It added another interesting layer to the conversation. (I should note, a few people found it very irritating.)
ReplyDelete"Give people a (anonymous?) forum to comment on conference topics and happenings in a truthful and professional way without feeling like they were committing professional suicide."
ReplyDeleteWell, if anyone wants to write something anonymously, newcurator.com will happy publish it.
I promise not to reveal who you are because, well, I'm pretty anonymous myself.
What I'm far more interested in is the fringe/controversial/outbreak thoughts and ideas people are having about museums.
Email pete(at)newcurator.com with your article or have a chat about what you want to do.
You are really on to something here. I think the critiques and reflections about conferences that really matter are not the ones that end up on questionaires (and that may not be witholding, per se, but just the stingy format and the notion of What One Writes on "feedback" cue).
ReplyDeleteAlso, I'd say by far the most valuable prefessional development session for me at ACM took place on the bus from the pre-conference in Brooklyn to Philly. Bus rides seem to be exponentially more conducive to swapping ideas than conference rooms and "break-out sessions"!