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  • Your Guide to the Future at the 2013 Alliance Annual Meeting

    Once again, I’m sharing a selection of futurist picks for the upcoming Alliance annual meeting. The advance registration deadline is April 26, so if you are not signed up yet, jump online! First, an overview of what CFM is up to in …
  • 2014 TrendsWatch Contenders

    With TrendsWatch 2013 hot off the digital presses, Phil and I are already scanning for early signals of the trends we will feature next year. When it comes to scanning, more eyes = better results! We are fortunate to have a growing cadre …
  • Museums are the Future of Education

    Earlier this year, I shared some thoughts regarding the future of education with face-to-face and on-line attendees at Museums Advocacy Day. My thesis, which I’ve advanced on this blog before, is that we are on the cusp of transformative …
  • Reports of Losing Your Museum Job to a Robot have been Greatly Exaggerated.

    Forecasting is about exploring “fringe futures” as well as more probable outcomes. Part of the art of futures studies is casting your imagination out to the edges of the Cone ofPlausibility, but also knowing when to reel it back in. This …
  • Keeping up with the 2013 Trends

    I hope you’ve had a chance to download TrendsWatch 2013, which we released last month. Phil Katz and I did a Town Hall webcast last week, presenting a brief overview of the report–you can access a recording of that event here.I …
  • Museo-Mindfulness

    CFM’s newly released TrendsWatch 2013 highlights the growing desire of people to disconnect from our perpetual tether to technology in general and the Internet in particular. This led to a Twitter exchange with Andrea Michelbach, a Masters …
  • Another Round of Technology and the Future of Education

    Today’s guest post comes from Phil Katz, the Alliance’s assistant director for research and co-conspirator on many CFM research projects. Tomorrow andBeyond There’s nothing new about the prediction that technology is going to remake …
  • A Museum in Every Community?

    Accreditation Commissioner Bill Eiland recently stopped by my office to share his concerns about the hundreds of small communities in the South struggling to maintain their culture, identity and population in the face of economic and …
  • Dreaming Big

    When CFM launched in 2008, we were tasked by the Alliance board with being a “skunk works,” idea lab and an incubator of possibilities. For someone such as myself, trained as a collections manager, schooled in the careful …
  • Curation, Community and Cat Videos

    Last year, as I travelled the country talking about museum innovation, pop-up culture and other trends, the most popular story I told was about a project launched by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. I received so many follow-up …

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