Museumhive

Museumhive is a new Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) funded project spearheaded by Brad Larson and the New England Museum Association (NEMA) that I'm extremely proud to be an advisor for.

Museumhive will promote informal gatherings of people connected with museums to explore new community-centered visions for cultural institutions. Museumhive will also host social events and create content via Google Hangouts and additional social media platforms in the process. Real-life meetups + virtual followup = fun & effective thought leadership!

The Museumhive project will start out by supporting six in-person meetups featuring presentations by national thought leaders.  Join us in Boston on the evening of Wednesday October 26, 2016 at District Hall in Boston as we host special virtual guest Nina Simon via Google Hangout!  You can sign-up to attend the FREE event via Eventbrite.  I'll also be posting via my Facebook and Twitter feeds about ways to plug into the event if you can't join us in Boston.

Some of our aims for  Museumhive (and we're just getting started!) include:

• Creating a series of meetups in innovative environments where museum staff and emerging professionals can socialize and explore new visions.

• Using live Google Hangouts with national thought leaders to serve as the hub for each meetup.

• Indexing and archiving the Hangout videos, summarizing the events on the museumhive.org website, drawing participants further into an exploring a vision of the community-centered museum.

• Preparing short e-publication summaries designed to help museum and other cultural institution professionals connect the meetup topics to their own experiences.

I'm buzzing with excitement over Museumhive!  I'll continue to post here on ExhibiTricks and on my Facebook and Twitter feeds to spread the word and encourage IRL or electronic participation by both seasoned museum workers and emerging museum professionals.

Click on over to the Museumhive website to find out more about the project.

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From Facebook To Fairbanks!

I'm on my way to Alaska (for the very first time!) to work with the fine folks at the newly opened Fairbanks Children's Museum.  I don't tell you that just to share my travel itinerary (but if you want to check in on my exploits, feel free to follow me on Twitter (@museum_exhibits) or on Facebook.)

The main reason I'm writing about this at all is that one Facebook post about the Northern Lights (below) got picked up by my museum network, and that one post led directly to my trip to Fairbanks.

So what does this have to do with you? Two things:  

1) Make sure what you are putting out on Social Media is interesting and/or useful to to other folks. 

2) Keep track of the folks in your network often, not just when you need and/or want something from them.


There's a reason it's called SOCIAL media after all.  It should be more like talking to a friend, not making a sales call with every Tweet or LinkedIn entry.  Really, do you want to be that person who turns every conversation into an annoying sales pitch?

Ideally people in your Social Network(s) should be providing you interesting information, advice, news, and yes even the occasional goofy video or article that they liked --- and you should do the same.

I've met Brenda Riley, the Executive Director of the Fairbanks Children's Museum, at several museum conferences, and I've always thought,  "this is a fun and smart person who is working on an awesome project.  I need to keep track of her and her museum, so I should friend her on Facebook, and tell her about my blog, so that when the opportunity to work together comes up, we'll be on each other's radar screens."

And really at this point, that's my business plan: work with fun and smart people who are making awesome things.  Social media (for me at least) is a way to stay in touch with all those future creative partners.

Maybe Social Media won't bring you to Alaska, but who knows where it could lead you?



Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Free ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)