"Have To" Conferences vs. "Want To" Conferences

I've recently returned from the Museum Association of New York (MANY) annual conference.  It was a fun and fulfilling event, filled with interesting people, strong session content and keynotes, and a solar eclipse!

It made me think of how often I hear colleagues grudgingly describing some other museum conferences as ones they "have" to attend, as opposed to conferences they "want" to attend.

So what are some of the qualities of conferences (like ACM's InterActivity or ECSITE) that I enjoy, learn from, and WANT to attend?

Size Matters

In my opinion, there is such a thing as a conference that is TOO big. I don't like the feeling of constantly being engulfed in a sea of attendees madly rushing around.  Also, it's often hard to find people in a big mob. I prefer the much less overwhelming regional conferences or the smaller national/international events.

"My" People

Does it feel like the people you meet during a conference have similar interests and concerns?  Or does it feel like you might have wandered into an event where everyone is in a different business than you are?  Some conferences are geared more toward directors, while other gatherings feel more diverse.  I relish reconnecting with trusted colleagues, but I also want to attend an event to expand my network and meet new like-minded folks.

Content is King

In addition to the social aspects of conferences, I want to learn new things and expand my professional knowledge. Are the sessions filled with new and challenging ideas presented by a range of practitioners?  One nice feature of the MANY Conference is that they convert the highest-rated sessions to online presentations so people who couldn't attend the physical conference can still access high-quality content.

Who Cares?

Last but not least, are you left with the feeling that the event organizers actually care about you and your conference experiences?  I've stopped attending some professional gatherings <cough> AAM <cough> where I've felt like the interests of directors and large museums take precedence over exhibit folks and independent museum professionals.

What do you think?  What are the things that make you WANT to attend a conference?  Let us know by leaving a comment below!

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Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

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Back on the Museum Conference Circuit!

Since 2019, Museum Conferences have been a little different.

Fortunately, in-person conferences are coming back and I'm hoping to see old friends and meet new colleagues out on the road!

I'll be attending InterActivity in St. Louis put on by the Association of Children's Museums from May 16 to 18.

I'll also be in Heilbronn, Germany, for the ECSITE Conference, convened by the European Network of Science Centres & Museums from June 2 to 4.

If you are at either conference, please say hello!  (We might even take a picture like the one at the top of this post from a past conference in Pittsburgh!)

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Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!

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4 Things I Learned from Attending 4 Museum Conferences in 4 Weeks

You might think my first answer to the title of this post would be: "DON'T go to 4 Museum Conferences in 4 weeks!" but you'd be mistaken.  My experiences in Denver, New York City, New Orleans, and Copenhagen (by way of Helsinki!) were certainly a bit taxing at times, but ultimately extremely rewarding professionally and personally.

So where did I go?  In order, the organizations whose Conferences I attended were: Association of Children's Museums (ACM) in Denver; New York City Museum Educator's Roundtable (NYCMER) in NYC; American Alliance of Museums (AAM) in New Orleans; and the European Network of Science Centres and Museums (ECSITE) in Copenhagen.

And what did I learn (or re-learn) during my conference travels?  Four main things that could be applied to any conference experience really:

1) Content is King

2) Social Interaction is Queen

3) Location, Location, Location

4) Size Matters

CONTENT: Ostensibly as life-long learners we should be excited about the content offered at conferences.  But that works both ways -- conferences should be interested in providing interesting and exciting formats that engage participants with meaningful content also.  (As a related sidebar, does anyone really remember or care about the Conference "Themes"?)

I give high points to ACM, NYCMER, and ECSITE for having excellent keynote speakers.  I really enjoyed Temple Grandin and Gever Tulley extolling the virtues of self-directed learning and "making stuff" during their talks in Denver.

The keynote speakers at the ECSITE conference completely enthralled me with presentations on two unlikely topics -- Hyperbolic Space and Slime Molds!  I'd recommend clicking over to the ECSITE YouTube page to see the videos of each of those keynotes.

Of course, the other essential part of the content equation is how the sessions are framed and presented. I think ECSITE did the best job of this by presenting truly thought-provoking content through formats that left the traditional "A moderator and 3 talking heads with PowerPoints" framework in the dust.

Two examples from Copenhagen were a "House of Commons" session where the room was literally divided in half with a tape-line down the middle and all the chairs set on one side of the room or the other. Speakers each presented a short, provocative statement about science centers, then participants "voted with their feet" by choosing the "FOR" or "AGAINST" side of the room, followed by a discussion with audience members about why they voted the way the did.

My other favorite session was one that I presented in that followed a "Yes, and ..." format.  In this case, each presenter had one minute to present a wild exhibit idea that they really would like to see implemented, followed by one minute of audience members adding positive ideas (Yes, and ...) to the original ideas, but no BUTS or naysaying allowed!  Then the original presenter summarized (and added a title) to their original idea based on the audience input.  A great fast-paced session that left everyone (audience and presenters) with a whole set of cool exhibit ideas!

You can often find out more about conference sessions (including digital copies of handouts and session materials) by going to the respective Conference webpages (like ACM's here, or ECSITE's here.)

SOCIAL INTERACTION: In many ways going to a conference is like attending a reunion.  You look forward to seeing folks you haven't seen in a while and meeting new folks as well.  So how are conference organizers creating opportunities for socializing and networking outside the formal sessions?  Dear colleagues in the United States museum community, I am here to report that the ECSITE Conference stands head-and-shoulders above every U.S. museum Conference in that regard.

So what does ECSITE do, that others don't?  For starters, every lunch is a communal hot lunch at big tables. Rather than everyone scattering for an hour or two, all ECSITE attendees receive these large group lunches every day included in their registration.  For reference, there are about 1200 people or so who attend the ECSITE Conference, so just about every other Museum Conference in the U.S. (except AAM which is really too big, to begin with, but more about that below) could create these communal social gatherings if they really wanted to.

Maybe my European colleagues are just cooler, but the evening events at ECSITE were better too! Our first ECSITE evening event (again, for everyone) was held in a historic Copenhagen Circus building with dinner and a show!  If you really believe that at least half the value of attending a conference comes from the social interactions outside of sessions, then what are the conference organizers doing to really foster those interactions?

Although I always award extra points to the National Association for Museum Exhibitions (NAME) for the best social event at AAM, and the 2019 party at the Southern Food and Beverage Museum was no exception.  I mean, at what other AAM party could you wear a bean jacket?

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION: This isn't just about the city where a particular conference meets (although Denver, New York City, New Orleans, and Copenhagen were all awesome) but also the logistics of getting around to different conference events and the quality of the host institution(s) as well.  ACM, NYCMER, and ECSITE all handled this aspect pretty well.  AAM's handling of logistics in New Orleans, on the other hand, was a BIG fail.  Events in "conference hotels" were far away from the main Conference Center and even with shuttle buses, many people were late for events they paid for.


SIZE MATTERS: Bigger is NOT always better when it comes to Museum Conferences. Once the number of conference attendees exceeds 2000, the quality of the overall conference experience decreases exponentially.  I really believe there is such a thing as a museum being too big, and similarly, a museum conference being too big as well.

I'm afraid the AAM Conference is just too enormous to be able to handle content, social interactions, and even location logistics in a way I find personally and professionally satisfying.  I'm going to be taking a break from AAM for a while, and instead focusing my conference time on smaller regional, national, and even international museum conferences to continue to hone my professional practice.

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Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul is an instigator, in the best sense of that word. He likes to mix up interesting people, ideas, and materials to make both individual museum exhibits and entire museums with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.)

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Creative Collisions: Impressions of the 2018 Ecsite Conference

A record-breaking 1,182 professionals from 58 countries gathered in Geneva, Switzerland recently for the 29th edition of the Ecsite Conference. Well, that's your headline.  But the real nitty-gritty of this year's gathering of the European network of science centers and museums was exemplified by the conference theme of "Creative Collisions."

I encountered many creative collisions at my first Ecsite Conference, and here are some of my impressions of the three days I spent there:

Thursday started well with a "Newcomers Breakfast" event.  Small tables allowed for interaction between groups of "newbie" conference attendees. Each table also included members of the Conference Planning Committee or more "seasoned" attendees to provide tips to get the maximum benefit out of the Ecsite gathering.  

The "official" start of the day began with a (mostly boring!) Opening Ceremony. Honestly, all museum conferences would do well to trim the shopworn notion of an opening event by 1/3 or 1/2, since it usually consists of an endless stream of officials offering a canned welcome speech extolling the virtues of either the host city/region or the great impact museums have on society. We all know this -- please start the conference!  (Each day has a closing evening event as well, but, to be frank, most of this year's Ecsite evening events were fairly lackluster so I won't describe them here.)

Then the "Business Bistro" (what is normally called the exhibit hall or similar in the U.S.) opened to conference attendees.  At Ecsite the exhibition hall is a true "bistro" combined with coffee break stations and regularly scheduled opportunities to socialize and meet and network (Creative Collisions!) I was surprised at the good number of vendors from outside the European Union, including a booth from the Museum of Science in Boston advertising the "Science of Pixar" exhibition. There were also numerous coffee breaks and dessert breaks after lunch held at stations in different parts of the Business Bistro, which added to the sociable feeling evident throughout the entire Ecsite Conference. The Bistro was a natural spot for conversations and "creative collisions." Well done!

Bistro Beast!

The first session I attended was called "Challenging our brains to come up with new ideas." Each panelist shared a short presentation about their own creative process. It was interesting to see the different approaches each panelist used to inform their own creative practice.

On each day there was a communal lunch break that was included in the conference registration. Attendees sat at shared tables and ate and chatted together.  This is very different from other museum conferences I have attended, where participants usually scatter in a hundred different directions during meal breaks. I think more North American conferences should adopt this shared mealtime (and networking!) practice.

My last session on Thursday was an off-site tour of CERN, the massive scientific complex a short bus ride away from the center of Geneva.  We received a wonderful tour from a volunteer guide, Jose originally from Portugal, who is an engineer with the ATLAS project. Jose was enthusiastic and really knew his stuff! Our tour lasted for several hours, and we visited four different spots --- two areas more akin to museums/visitor centers, but also two areas with "real" stuff --- the control room for the ATLAS project, and the facility where they test the many, many superconducting magnet assemblies inside the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).  As one of my Facebook friends said, commenting on pictures of the tour, "It looks like nerd nirvana!"

CERN Visitor Center

Friday started out for me with a session called, "Small and big sins of science communication." This was a fun session filled with audience participation.  As we entered the session room we noticed a long yellow line (made of Post-It notes!) dividing the space in half.  The format allowed one person to "confess" something that they or their museum had done, and then session participants could stand on the "Yes, I have done that" or "No, not me" side of the room, responding to the original confession.  It was agreed that whatever was shared inside the workshop room would be kept in confidence, so attendees shared some difficult and emotional things. I liked the session very much, and the fun format really lets you see in a strong visual way the shared concerns that all museum professionals have.

Friday's keynote talk by James Beacham, a physicist at CERN, was AMAZING! And a truly creative collision -- perhaps one of the best conference keynotes I've ever seen.  In addition to sharing thoughts about his scientific work ("look where nobody else is looking") James also talked about the interaction of science and society ("what are our REAL priorities?")  Rather than trying to summarize the talk, let me point you to the YouTube recording that Ecsite has provided.  (I wish more museum conferences did this!)

James Beacham at Ecsite 2018

Everyone was energized and excited after James Beacham's presentation as we moved to the late morning sessions.  I participated in a two-part session on either side of the communal lunch break, "The exponential potential of narrative."  In Part One, speakers shared concrete examples of the power of narrative in their work.  One of my favorites was the unlikely use of a video production using Santa Claus, Princess Elsa (from Disney's Frozen) and Jon Snow (from Game of Thrones) to share concerns about climate change!  In Part Two, we divided into small groups (one of which I facilitated) to develop narratives on a specific topic.  It was great fun, and a great format.  My biggest takeaway was that narrative can be part of the content, design, and even the physical environment in museums.

Facilitating at the Narrative Workshop

Friday finished with a "Business Bistro Happy Hour" where each vendor's booth served drinks and snacks (usually from the exhibitor's home region or country --- so Franconian whiskey from Germany or Cheetos from the USA!) During an event like this, it is important to remember that many small drinks = several large drinks.  I left the event very happy, and I imagine the number of signed contracts increases during this particular event as well!

Saturday provided a strong finish to Ecsite 2018, with my first session called "Designing tinkering activities" that happened in the Conference's Maker Space.  It was fun to tinker, tape, and solder in a session of course, but my real takeaway was that the Ecsite 2018 Conference had both a dedicated Maker Space (filled with materials and volunteer staff for both drop-in and scheduled sessions) as well as a "GameLab" (a volunteer-staffed space filled with both digital and analogue gaming/game materials, also for drop-in or scheduled sessions.)  I saw several folks from ASTC in Geneva, so I hope they were taking notes about the possibility of having similar spaces at the ASTC Conference.

The Saturday keynote speakers had a difficult task, given the success of James Beacham's Friday talk, but the endlessly charming Enders sisters (Giulia, the author, and Jill, the illustrator) creators of the worldwide bestselling book "Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body's Most Underrated Organ" were completely up to the task!  Appropriate for the "Creative Collisions" conference theme, Jill and Giulia gave their talk on stage together and spoke about their shared creative process -- both good and bad.  At all times, their love for each other as siblings as well as creative partners shone through.  Plus they were funny!  A definite A+ for this talk, which Ecsite has also kindly provided on YouTube.

Giulia and Jill Enders at Ecsite 2018

Saturday finished in a blur with a trip to the "Grand Bazaar" session, a series of hands-on opportunities at different tables with different presenters in a large room where conference attendees could wander at will.  The session and activities were great, and what a pleasure (and small world!) to see Peeranut Kanhadilok from the National Science Museum in Thailand again, after meeting her a few years ago at an ASTC Conference.

Peeranut demonstration traditional Thai sound toys

The session I attended in the very last slot of the conference was called "Delicious Science"!  Each presenter discussed food-related programming at their museums, and then each presenter made some food or presented a food experiment that workshop participants could sample. The session was well-attended, perhaps because of the tasty topic, but also because the last day of the Ecsite was a FULL day, not a HALF day, as in most North American conferences. I'm sure this cut down on people leaving early on the day before -- definitely something North American museum conference planners should consider.

I enjoyed all the "creative collisions" during my first Ecsite Conference very much.  I'm sure it won't be my last!

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London (Exhibits) Calling

A recent report of a mention of the Exhibit Cheapbooks by Ian Russell during the recent ECSITE Conference in Lisbon, Portugal got me thinking about the differences between museums and exhibit development, here in the US, and "across the pond" in the UK.

"Boffins" are greatly appreciated in the UK. Museum and exhibits people, like the chaps at Science Projects in London, really love to tinker and prototype, and it shows in their exhibitions. Here in the US, many museum folks talk about prototyping, but I'm not sure how much of it actually occurs.

Exhibit meetings, just for the sake of having a meeting, seem to be disdained in the UK. Unlike the US Exhibit Development process, which seems to thrive on meetings. In the UK, BIG, The British Interactive Group, runs regular Fabricators' Weeks where exhibit folks crash around with each other in workshops filled with materials to create as many working prototypes as they can before a big public showing on Friday. Sort of like a Science Fair for adults. (Except with pubs and pints thrown in.)

Many museums in the UK tend to approach things in a simpler, more playful way than US Museums. (except the Science Museum, with its bridges made of glass, looking like the NYC Apple Store. Although even there, the older exhibits like Tim Hunkin's exhibition called "The Secret Life of the Home" are excellent. I guess they have more twee designers in charge, and less boffins, there now.)

Perhaps museum visitors are more "polite" in the UK than their US counterparts. There seems to be a less obvious presence of guards and protective barriers in all types of museums in the UK, even surrounding "valuable" objects. It makes me wonder if environmental cues in museums don't help reinforce expectations of visitor behavior. (It is always comical to see how visitors delight in "foiling" the protective barriers around exhibits by shoving bits of trash, oft-times printed material provided by the museum, inside. It's almost as if each piece shoved inside is saying "HA! you tried to keep me out, but I got in anyway!" Unfortunately, the protective barriers are often such a pain to remove that the poor museum staff must leave the junk inside for long periods at a time, detracting from the exhibit objects.)

The UK Interactive Museum Community has had the advantage of learning from the triumphs (and failures!) of the older US Interactive Museum Community. Rather than trying to recreate models formed in the US, museum folks in the UK have put their own distinctive twist on things, gathering things to use from colleagues around the world, and creating their own distinctively UK museum and exhibit models. One example in the Science Center field is Techniquest , located in Cardiff. For a US visitor familiar with Science Centers, poking around TQ is a strange and wonderful experience, both like and unlike a US Science Center at the same time.

So I say "Cheers!" to our museum colleagues in the UK. You all have a reason to be "chuffed" about your work.