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Introducing TrendsWatch: Your Digest of the Future
At a recent conference I was challenged to come up with an image representing my role in the universe. I had a sudden image of myself as a Whale Shark trawling the vast digital sea of information and filtering out bits that museums will … -
Prodding Sacred Cows: The Mission Statement
When I was pulling together the book National Standards & Best Practices for U.S. Museums, I found myself increasingly uneasy with the way that the standards use mission statement as the ultimate touchstone for determining what a given … -
Drawn Together: Drawing Club convenes at AAM Annual Meeting
Scott Stulen is the project director for mnartists.org, one of the programmers of the Walker Open Field Program, creators of Drawing Club and a visual artist. Here he gives us a sneak peek of something to look forward to at the AAM Annual … -
Forecasting the Future of History Organizations and Their Leaders
For three weeks every November leaders and practitioners from the field of the public history meet at the Seminar for Historical Administration to discuss challenges and future directions for history organizations. This week’s blog post … -
Navigating Conservation Futures
I’m often bemused when I compare the answers to two questions I frequently ask museums: One of the key functions identified in your mission is preserving collections. What’s your goal? How long do you want them to be around? What timeframe … -
Questioning Assumptions: The Ideal Employee:Volunteer Ratio
Today’s thought experiment: what if, in the future, museums asked not “how many volunteers do we need” but rather “how can we structure our operations to engage as many volunteers as possible in meaningful work?” Volunteers are already … -
Futures Studies 101: Implications Wheel
What would happen if a space craft full of weak, disoriented insectoid aliens parked itself in orbit over South Africa? The implications of that (highly) improbable event are explored the 2009 film District 9. The director posits humans … -
Futures Studies 101: How to Read the Newspaper
I joke that the biggest change in my life since becoming director of CFM is that now I read the financial section of the New York Times. Except it isn’t a joke. Once future studies gave me a framework for my reading, I started reading more … -
Futurist Friday: Exploring the Cone of Plausibility
Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. —Arthur C. Clarke, “Profiles of The Future”, 1961 Today’s recommendation: read this interview for Big Think in which Dr. Michio Kaku … -
Musarians: The bastard children of museums and libraries.
In today’s guest post, AAM staffer Lauren Silberman, continues her exploration of the entwined futures of libraries and museums. Her first, massively popular post, speculated on what museums can learn from librarians of the future. What …
Future Forecasting
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