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Crowdsourcing the Future of Museums
Crowdsourcing (n): the process of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor and outsourcing it to a large group of people or community in the form of an open call for input. Earlier this month I enlisted the help … -
The Future of Carbon-based Conferences
As the AAM staff races to get ready for our annual meeting in Philadelphia at the end of the month, I am thinking a lot about the carbon footprint of such conferences and, more broadly, the environmental impact of the museum field. I think … -
The Lost Generation
I am contemplating two trends that, taken together, are pretty grim. The first is our aging population. This trend by itself is not alarming. In fact, as a member of the baby boom expecting a welcome letter from the AARP within the year, I … -
Questioning Assumptions
Earlier this month I participated in a very interesting scenario planning exercise at the Smithsonian. The session was led by Peter Schwartz, a board member from the Long Now Foundation, an organization whose mission is “to creatively … -
Killing Buddha
The Accreditation Commission is meeting this week here at the AAM offices in Washington, D.C. Each time I walk past the big glass walls of the board room I see the huge binders scattered across the conference table, and the long, long list … -
Will it Play in Peoria?
This article appeared recently in PJStar.com: “There’s No Plan ‘B’ for Peoria Museum”. It reports on a town hall meeting about the proposed Downtown Peoria Riverfront Museum and Caterpillar Visitors Center. Being blissfully ignorant of … -
Forecasting the Financial Future of Museums Pt II: What are our Options?
Last week I wrote about “The New Borgias”—the uber-wealthy who may, in the future, be the most promising source of funding for museums. This week I share some thoughts on other funding models and explore how they, in turn, might influence … -
The New Borgias
In Superstruct, the Alternate Reality Game from the Institute for the Future that ran last fall, player Phil Deely wrote a story titled “The New Borgias.” Deely posited that, in the game’s fictional future of 2019, the wealthy few dominate … -
The Post-educational Museum
The recent kerfluffle about whether museums should be included in the federal stimulus bill was a depressing reminder of the narrow stereotypes into which museums force themselves in order to protect their access to public funding. For …
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