Marketing & Public Relations

Throwback Thursday: Revisiting the Ransolm

By Elizabeth Merritt

CFM’s latest forecasting report, TrendsWatch 2014, has been out a month now, and I have been getting great feedback. The magic chip reports the paper has been opened over 1,700 times. Carol Stapp, director of the museum education …
Throwback Thursday: Respite, Retreat…and Privacy

By Elizabeth Merritt

In TrendsWatch 2013, we covered the rising dissatisfaction with our always-connected, hyper-digital world, giving birth to a movement dubbed “digital detox.” Now, as documented in TrendsWatch 2013, this desire for respite and …
Futurist Friday: Visitor Analytics

By Elizabeth Merritt

Your Futurist Friday assignment is this very brief (1.58 min) video from Cisco about using Connected Mobile Experiences (CMX) analytics to locate and track every wireless device in a venue. While the commentary in this piece is about …
The Watchful Museum

By Elizabeth Merritt

I had the pleasure of contributing to a symposium at the National Museum of American History’s Lemelson Center last Friday. Inventing the Surveillance Society looked at the evolving balance between privacy and security in a world …
Inventing the Surveillance Society

By Elizabeth Merritt

When Eric Hintz called to ask if I would speak on a symposium about “surveillance,” I thought at first he had my number confused with the NSA. Eric is an historian with the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and …
Museum Jobs That Didn’t Exist in 2003

By Elizabeth Merritt

(& what that says about the evolution of our field.) A couple weeks ago, I read a post on Coexist called “Eight New Jobs People will have in 2025,” projecting openings for Digital Death Managers, Un-Schooling Counselors, Digital Detox …
Make Art, Meet Strangers

By Elizabeth Merritt

Here’s a story that demonstrates the power of social media to create community: I met Jeff Greenspan via Twitter after I retweeted Michelle DelCarlo (@popupmuseum) when she wrote “Creating communal rather than ‘in tandem’ …
Micro-vlogging: Keeking Up with Social Media Trends

By Elizabeth Merritt

Remember when you though Twitter was just a silly fad? (Heck, maybe you still do.) Many people were skeptical about Twitter when it launched in 2006, but that microblog platform took off in 2009 and has turned out to be a popular way for …
Report from #FutrChat

By Elizabeth Merritt

Last Thursday eighty-three futurists and museumers participated in #futrchat on Twitter, co-hosted by the Association of Professional Futurists (APF) and CFM. The tweets flew fast and furious (over 600 of them!) as our sectors exchanged …
Planning A Phenomenon: The Benefits of Consistency

By Elizabeth Merritt

Readers of this blog may already be familiar with the Philbrook Museum of Art and its savvy use of social media, via this popular poston their Cat Cam. Today Jeff Martin, online communities manager for PMA, gives us an update on their …