Social Media Matters: An Interview with Jamie Glavic

Jamie Glavic is a museum professional and enthusiast. She serves on the board of the Ohio Museums Association, is a proud graduate of Developing History Leaders @SHA, Class of 2011, Chair of the SHA Alumni Committee, and a founding member, and current President, of the Emerging Museum Professionals Columbus Chapter. Jamie also blogs on current issues and trends affecting the museum field and history organizations at museumminute.wordpress.com and tweets at @MuseumMinute. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Cincinnati with a degree in history and has a particular affinity for dinosaurs and strategic planning literature. 



What’s your educational background?
I have a BA in History from the University of Cincinnati (GO BEARCATS!). While I don’t have a graduate degree (gasp, I know, I know), it is on my list of things to do – after I finish paying off my “first round” of student loan debt (I’m trying to be fiscally responsible – and have a life where I can order pizza from time to time).

I also have a certificate in Museum Leadership & Management from Developing History Leaders @SHA. What’s SHA you ask? SHA, or the Seminar for Historical Administration, is a program that combines depth (three weeks of engagement in deep discussion about issues facing our field) with breadth (discussions led by nationally recognized leaders in the history/museum field). It brings together current and future leaders in the public history field to learn in an intimate, collegial atmosphere. In short, it is awesome and I think is one of the best professional development experiences offered in the field.



What got you interested in Museums?
Dinosaurs. I’m convinced that dinosaurs are the gateway drug to all things awesome, especially science and history-based museum-ey things. The first time I saw a dinosaur, at the Anniston Museum of Natural History in Anniston, Alabama, it changed my life. I didn’t know what to do or how to do it exactly – but I knew I wanted to hang out in museums. I actually get goose bumps thinking about that moment. I did not study paleontology or attend a field school for a dig (because I’m just not that into dirt), but knowing I could always find dinosaurs in museums helped stoke an interest in both things, and my love of dinosaurs continues to this day; it’s exciting for me to see that same kind of appreciation from my nephews who are five, seven, and eight – they think dinosaurs are the coolest. That makes this history geek aunt, who drags them to museums every chance she gets, smile.



How does using social media inform your museum work?
Social media is a fabulous tool and has been a great catalyst in my museum career. I use social media to ask questions (and sometimes I find answers), make connections, join conversations, and share information that I find interesting or that is beneficial for the work that I do. Social media has allowed me to become a part of a much larger museum community and I look for ways to expand its use in my work every chance I get.



Tell us a little bit about how your “non-museum” skills/activities inform your museum work?
Before I entered the museum field I was a history student – and I will be one of the first people to tell you I am thankful for my humanities education. I do not regret my decision to study history (or pursue a career in humanities) because it has given me an edge when it comes to research and writing. I don’t write exhibit labels but I do enjoy writing pithy blog posts and using other creative outlets for connecting with our museum audiences. I do a lot of online reading – blogs, articles, twitter, Facebook – and at the end of the day I have to unplug with a good book. However, as a recovering history major –I don’t read nearly as much now as I did as an undergrad.



What are some of your favorite online (or offline!) resources for people interested in finding out more about the use of social media and museums?
As a social media enthusiast, I work hard to keep up with the latest information on its use in the museum field and am always finding new and interesting sources.  Some of my current favorite go-tos include:

Digital Engagement Framework
The NMC Horizon Report: Museum Edition
Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project
Mashable
Museums and the Web
Museum Computer Network



What advice would you have for fellow museum professionals, especially those from smaller museums, in thinking about the best ways to leverage social media in their work?
The reality is that social media matters whether you want it to or not. It can no longer be a matter of “if” you do it – it’s become a matter of “how” you do it – and being sure that you make time for social media, because it has become necessary.  So, for the uninitiated, timid or overwhelmed, I would say start small. Pick one, maybe two  platforms to experiment with and inform this decision based on who your current audience is and who you would like for your audience to include/be in the (hopefully near) future (check out Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project if you need help defining audiences online). Give yourself at least six months. These tools take time. Your museum wasn’t built in a day. Be patient. Be genuine. Ask questions. And be flexible.

Also, and so important, play nice. Social media, and digital strategy, is a team sport. Content is generated from each department across any organization: education, programming, archives, etc. Their thoughts and feedback matter. Your colleagues are your champions/partners/allies. Don’t pretend to know everything, be a good listener, and be a team player.  



What do you think is the “next frontier” for museums?
The next frontier for museums is two-fold: one, I believe every museum will have a digital experience director on their exec team. This person will advocate that digital isn’t something additional that we do – rather, it’s embedded in our structure and has become a part of everything that we do. In the same vein, this person’s great responsibility will be to protect digital assets from become bastardized – i.e. using technology for technology sake, instead of integrating it strategically, so as to have the greatest impact possible for the organization  – strategy is key. We serve communities, and technology serves us.

The second big change will need to take place in the workplace structure itself. Cubicles will be a thing of the past. These silos everyone complains about between finance, marketing, programs, education and collections will become a faint memory when we all have to look at each other every day. We can’t have open and effective communication with the public without having open communication internally – building a team environment (a successful one) means tearing down walls, literally and physically, and getting your curators out of the collections facility.



What are some of your favorite museums or exhibitions?

Some of my favorite museums are:

Natural History Museum of Utah
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles
Philadelphia Museum of Art
The National WWII Museum


Some of my favorite exhibitions are:

Titian and the Golden Age of Venetian Painting: Masterpieces from the National Galleries of Scotland

I was lucky and saw the first showing of this exhibition in the U.S. at MFAH. It was so beautiful. I was completely engrossed in the paintings.



Wedded Perfection: Two Centuries of Wedding Gowns

My husband and I toured this exhibition a few days after we got married in Cincinnati. Wedded Perfection will always hold a special place in my heart.



Mark Rothko: The Decisive Decade 1940-1950

I love Rothko.



Your Body: The Inside Story

I toured this exhibition while in Baltimore for AAM. It was fun. I laughed. I played. And yes, I played a “symphony” of digestion noises.



The Star Spangled Banner

It’s so big! I saw this when my husband and I were last in D.C. I was a little overwhelmed when I walked into the space – I’ll never forget that moment of, “whoa…”



Can you talk a little about some of your current projects?
In my role as the Strategic Projects Coordinator I get thrown into a lot of projects – and gladly. I love the variety! My job requires me to constantly think outside of the box. I get to work with a phenomenal team of content specialists and general experts (library, archives, archaeology, civil war, photography, material culture, etc.). How they know what they know – and how MUCH they know – never ceases to astound me.

Also, I'm always adding to my "Meet a Museum Blogger" series on my Museum Minute blog !



If money were no object, what would your “dream” museum project be?
My dream museum project would be to host a museum-focused Travel Channel-type show, with my best friend and fellow museum professional, Dina Bailey. I imagine it being part Dirty Jobs, part How It’s Made, part Mysteries at the Museum. The show would highlight off the beaten path, interesting destinations/hidden gems around the world/the untold stories behind collections. The show could be titled, "It Belongs in a Museum!" It could also highlight the many museum jobs that exist outside the realm of curator, docent, and director. Hmmm...maybe "You Belong in a Museum" would be better. I'll let the execs at Travel Channel decide - they're reading this, right?



Thanks Jamie!   You can find out more about Jamie and her work at museumminute.wordpress.com or by following her on Twitter at @MuseumMinute.




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The Museum Life Radio Show

The Museum Life is an Internet radio show hosted by Carol Bossert that's well worth a listen!  (You can also download episodes as MP3s or via iTunes.)

A recent episode that caught my attention featured Polly Mckenna-Cress speaking about the book, Creating Exhibitions, that she co-authored with Janet Kamien. (Here's a post about the symposium that marked the publication of Creating Exhibitions.)

The Museum Life is a great addition to the available mix of information about museums and museum practitioners. And given the ubiquity of digital devices in our lives, it's nice to have a long-format audio show to listen to as well.

You can get more information, including access to past episodes, by clicking over to the The Museum Life website.



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Some People Just Don't Like Museums. Is That A Problem?

I've been thinking a lot about museum visitors lately, and how to shift them from being passive viewers and to turn them into museum fans.  (I've written about this before in previous posts here and here.)

It's hard for some museum workers to accept, but there are some people who just don't like museums. Is that a problem?  And if it is, what are the best solutions?

Even if they could get in for free, some folks just don't seem to click with museums.  Just like some people don't like football or opera or amusement parks. 

The difference between museums and those other things, though, is that often museum workers really, really think that there should be ways (if we only try hard enough!) to get those museophobes to change their attitudes about visiting museums.  Maybe so.  But should we change to create museum converts, or better spend our time trying to build on our existing strengths?

It seems that places like The City Museum or The American Visionary Art Museum (to name two of my favorite examples) just keep trying to forge unique paths with a strong institutional ethos rather than getting tangled up in parsing different demographic groups.  And as a result, they develop a wide range of fans who are so excited about those institutions that they make a point of telling other people to visit, too.

What does it mean to be truly welcoming to the widest possible audience for museums without merely pandering to different communities by dumping a bunch of free passes on them?

Maybe the best way to attract a wider audience is to start on the inside and take a hard look at ways to become truly fan-worthy, instead of trying to wheedle or cajole people to step in from the outside.



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Making Your Ideas Real: The Art Of Tinkering

The crazy winter weather where I live on Long Island has not been very conducive to the sorts of slightly frenetic spurts of creativity that I love.  The whole world seems encased in ice and snow and one gets the feeling of being both trapped and sluggish.

So I couldn't have asked for better timing for the arrival of the new(ish) book called "The Art of Tinkering" the other day.

The Art of Tinkering is billed as a way to "meet 150+ makers at the intersection of art, science & technology."  It's a colorful book bursting with photos, ideas, and even simple DIY projects.  The cover of the book (shown above) is printed with conductive ink --- so you can even experiment with and hack your copy!

Karen Wilkinson and Mike Petrich, the folks who spearheaded The Tinkering Studio at The Exploratorium, have put together a fantastic book that captures the spirit of The Tinkering Studio while also giving you a sense of the inspirations and working styles of the makers featured inside.

Here's one of my favorite suggestions from inside the book:  Put yourself in messy, noisy & sometimes dangerous situations!

But enough talk --- grab a copy of The Art of Tinkering and warm up your own creative impulses! 




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Slowing Down And Noticing The World: An Interview with Beck Tench

Beck Tench is a simplifier, illustrator, story teller and technologist. Formally trained as a graphics designer at the University of North Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication, she has spent her career elbow deep in web work of all sorts – from the knowledge work of information architecture and design to the hands dirty work of writing code and testing user experiences.

Currently, she serves as Director for Innovation and Digital Engagement at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, NC where she studies and experiments with how visitors and staff use technology to experience risk-taking, community-making and science in their everyday lives.

Since a new round of Beck's awesome Experimonth project just launched, I thought now would be a great time for an ExhibiTricks interview!




What's your educational background?
I was formally trained as a journalist and visual communicator. I also minored in creative writing.  My boss, Troy Livingston, pretty much summed up my entire educational and career pursuits one day when he said to me, "You've spent your entire career working to better communicate through speaking, writing and drawing. You must've at some point in your life felt misunderstood."

Pretty much, yep. :)



What got you interested in Museums?
Two things: 1) Freedom; 2) Purpose.

When I joined the Museum of Life and Science, I'd been working at other web pursuits in the corporate, non-profit and higher ed worlds.  I wanted freedom to take risks and have autonomy over my projects more than anything else. The museum offered that, and also wanted someone to help change the culture of our institution so that we were more risk-tolerant overall.

The purpose of most museums — slowing down and noticing the world —  sealed the deal.  It's feel good work and never gets boring.



How does working with local and/or online communities to create museum experiences inform your creative process or vice versa?
Digital engagement requires innovation and novelty to be interesting enough to get folks to loan their attention your way.  To create innovative things, you need to create space.  My creative process has changed significantly in that it requires lots of open space in order for me to create new ideas. 

I make space in the morning for writing, in the evening by turning off my internet via a light timer. I make space for getting outside. I work from home instead of at the museum to get a daily dose of solitude. All of these practices give me space to think up, vet and refine new ideas that appeal to online communities (and/or adults goofing off at work).



Why did you originally start Experimonth?
I have a love/hate relationship with New Years Resolutions, and I started Experimonth in 2009 to play with the concept a little bit. I invited friends and family to suggest things I could do, and then vote on them. I mapped the top twelve across the span of the year and invited folks to try them out with me one month at a time. 

The idea didn't turn into a museum project until April of 2011, when we worked with a local researcher, Frances Ulman, to create an Experimonth that collected mood data (we texted participants five times a day for a month and asked the same question everytime: "Rate your mood (1) low to (10) high.")  The project resulted in over 18,000 mood data points for the researcher and impressively high retention (96%) and compliance (82%) rates.  In addition, we learned that the project allowed her to play with data in a way she wasn't afforded in her lab. 

We decided to do more of them at the museum and have hosted several since. The ones we're launching this February are a part of NSF grant in partnership with the Exploratorium called "Science of Sharing."



What are some of your favorite online (or offline!) resources for people interested in finding out more about community engagement?
I'd be remiss not to mention that one of the best sites out there for community engagement is from an IMLS grant project we did in partnership with the Science Museum of Minnesota and Michigan State University.  It's called the Facilitation Toolbox and has some great techniques and a framework for facilitating learning using social media.

In doing that work, we realized that sometimes you don't have to create community in order to have a successful group interaction that results in learning.  We call it "groupness." Groupness occurs when participants in a digital experience exhibit behaviors that indicate learning is happening.  Groupness is more attainable than "community" and in some ways may be just as or more meaningful.



What advice would you have for fellow museum professionals, especially those from smaller museums, in bringing more community input into their exhibitions and programs?

• Ask a lot of your participants. Think the best of them and expect them to be decent and open. Be that way, too. Participate alongside them.

• You don't need to be a content expert to explore expert-level content with an online community. You just need to be curious, ask questions and most of all listen.

• Turn everything into an experiment. Put time-boundaries around it. And give yourself a question to answer in the end.

• Let things die. Each year kill some of what you do online even if it's going well. You have to make space to create new things.



What do you think is the "next frontier" for museums?
The next frontier for museums (and libraries and journalism and healthcare and so on) is experiences for and by the visitor and community your mission situates you (locally or globally or somewhere in between, depending).  We have to let go of fetishizing our objects, stories, phenonmena, and information.  We've all got to be about changing the lives of individuals by understanding how the things we know best are relevant to their lives (and letting go of the things that aren't).    



What are some of your favorite museums or exhibitions?
I'm not much of a museum person and I hold onto that as tightly as possible to make my work better.  That said, I've had three remarkable experiences in museums, in this order:

• The Power of Children exhibit at the Indianapolis Children's Museum moved me and my friends to tears and has stuck with each of us for years.

• I think regularly of the movie I watched in the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore that showed clips of people losing their smiles in the seconds right after their photograph was taken.

• The big NASA telescope mirror at the Exploratorium that allows you to see yourself with uncanny clarity, upside down, face-to-face, blew my mind.



Can you talk a little about the current incarnation of Experimonth?
Right now, we're working with a handful of scientists from all around the world on four experimonths about cooperation, competition, negotiation and trust as a part of that NSF-funded "Science of Sharing" project I mentioned earlier.  The first of the four is called "Frenemy" and it starts on Saturday, Feburary 1st. 

Participants will play a prisoner's dilemma-style game with an anonymous stranger everyday.  We beta-tested this in 2012 and it was super interesting to watch how the games unfold across the day and also read what folks wrote about their participation in the online, also anonymous, confessional.  We'll be launching three other Experimonths after Frenemy. You can read about all of them on the website.




If money were no object, what would your dream museum project be?
I'd give anyone who wanted one, a heart rate monitor to wear for a month. I'd build technology that would autostream the data to a website where they could see their heart rate in the context of everyone else participating.  I'd also build in the ability to geo-locate where people's heart rate rises and falls.  And we'd ping folks with questions about their mood and whether or not they feel they belong. We'd assign them random tasks like doing good deeds or taking small risks.  We'd ping them when rates spiked to find out what was happening.  I'd also buy a big laser projector and project a visualization of the heart rates of the participants across the sky on a cloudy night or on the side of a tall building.

I wore a heart rate monitor for a few days in a row once and was surprised to learn that mine lowers when I'm in a stressful confrontation. I also discovered a crush I didn't know I had!  I think the participants would learn a lot about themselves and the researchers would have more data than they knew what to do with (a personal mission of mine currently).




Thanks again to Beck Tench for sharing her thoughts with ExhibiTricks readers!  You can find out more about Beck and her work via her website.  You can also find out more (and join!) experimonths at the Experimonth website.



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Museum People's Tattoos

Funny small museum world.  When I saw my friend Beth Redmond-Jones' awesome Manta Ray tattoo (pictured above) on Facebook, I jokingly suggested that we start a blog called "Museum People's Tattoos."

We did it!  You can now check out the new Museum People's Tattoos blog for yourself.

As the blog intro states: "Many museum folks have a love for tattoos—their cultural significance, their artistic quality, their documentation of the natural world, and some, just for their own personal meaning. For years, we have talked about tattoos, the ones we want, the design, the stories behind them, and the artists who create them ... "

I really love reading about the tattoos and the stories behind them on the blog.  And isn't that what museums are about --- stories and stuff?

If you'd like to contribute your own tattoo images and stories to the Museum People's Tattoos blog, feel free to send me an email.


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