Exploring the Future of Museums with NMC

Posted on Jul 10, 2014

Q: how can you take a quick trip to the future, hear from thought leaders in museum technology and hobnob with colleagues all from the comfort of your own desk? (Bonus: also without the carbon-guilt, time and expense of travel.)

A: On-line, that’s how.

On July 23 and 24 you have the opportunity to participate in two back-to-back, virtual conferences about the future of museums. Today I’ll give you a preview of the first event, and next Thursday I’ll tell you more about the second (a free conferenceorganized by Learning Revolution).

On Wednesday, July 23 the New Media Consortium is offering the NMC Virtual Symposium on the Future of Museums: Thought Leaders Explore Disruptive Technology. (11am-6pm ET/ 10am-5pm CT/ 8am-3pm PT). This day-long event explores four of the major themes from the NMC Horizon Report > 2013 Museum Edition (an annual forecast to which I have the pleasure of contributing).

Jasper Visser of Inspired by Coffee will kick off the day by telling us “These 18 Facts About The Museum Of The Future Will Change Your Life.” I follow Jasper via Twitter and on his excellent blog The Museum of the Future. He’s helped me explore a number of future-shaping trends, (including blogging for CFM on the wildly popular exhibit in Amsterdam that consisted entirely of reproductions of Van Goghs and how that reflects the way people d, or don’t, value authenticity.) I look forward to hearing Jasper’s take on BYOD (Bring your Own Devices), crowdfunding, foodie-ism and other trends shaping our world and our field.

At 1 pm ET, Nik Honeysett, the new CEO of the Balboa Park Online Collaborative, will share his vision for a digital strategy designed to last a whole generation—30 years rather than our more typical 3 year time frame. How can we ignore specific technologies (that will be inevitably be disrupted at short intervals by the next innovation), focus on trends and identify core philosophies and practices to ensure ongoing institutional relevance and sustainability?

The closing keynote will be by Nancy Procter, newly relocated to the Baltimore Museum of Art where she is deputy director for digital experience and communications. (You may know Nancy through the Museums and the Web annual conference, which she co-chairs.) Embedded throughout the day are featured sessions on location-based services, crowdsourcing, Makerspaces (I’m on the panel for that one) and a deeper dive into BYOD.

If you register today (July 10) you can save $10 off the registration fee, so it is $59 non-members and $49 for members.

Come back next Thursday to hear about the free Learning Revolution event (at which point I’ll be putting the finishing touches on my opening keynote).