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  • Revisiting the Intelligent City

    This is the first in a series of “Throwback Thursdays,” revisiting content from the Blog that continues to resonate with recent news. A story from last week’s edition of Dispatches from the Future of Museums on how …
  • Small Museums in an Age of Scale

     In November, the Smithsonian’s Michael Edson threw down the gauntlet here on the Blog, with Museums in an Age of Scale. Michael challenged museums to dream big, especially when it comes to education. He concluded: “Museums accomplish …
  • Monday Musings: Personalized Learning

    I love seeing signals that optimistic scenarios of the future are coming true. One of my favorite bright stories of the future is the “Vibrant Learning Grid” in the KnowledgeWorks 2020 Forecast on education. In that scenario, developed in …
  • A Month of Blogging

    February will be a month of experimentation here on the Blog. I’m going to try a “Blog a day” format Monday thru Friday, to find out if that schedule is a) useful to you, the readers and b) sustainable (as in, can I keep up that pace?) …
  • Spend Some Time Daydreaming the Future

    Humans are natural storytellers. That should make my work easy, because the apex of strategic foresight is using storytelling to plan for the future. Futurists call these stories “scenarios,” and while they have a very serious purpose, …
  • Why You Don’t Want To Be Nice

    I’ve been using this graphic in talks lately when talking about successful financial models for museums. The point being that if your organization provides experiences or services that are addictive or essential, or better yet, both, you …
  • Interpreting the Future of Art Museums

    I’ve blogged about the emergence of new kinds of positions in museums over the last decade. This week, four leaders in interpretive planning from the Nelson-Atkins, Denver, and High art museums as well as the Detroit Institute of Arts …
  • Futurist Friday: Robots for Humanity

    Yah, I know, I know. The last “Futurist Friday” was about robots, too. But this is too interesting to pass up. I’ve written about instances in which robots are replacing human labor. But as I read more, it seems like the …
  • Another Way to Split Nonprofits

    Last Thursday I blogged about a potential “dark future” in which the nonprofit field fragments, as society and policy makers come to view “social service” and “cultural” nonprofits as fundamentally …
  • Too Fast to Go Slow

    Jane Addams Hull-House Museum is one of three museums enrolled in the third round of Innovation Lab for Museums—a MetLife funded program offered by EmcArts in partnership with CFM. Hull-House has long been a hotbed of experimentation, a …

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