Personalization – American Alliance of Museums

Magical Machinery? What AI can do for museums

By Kristen Summers

When people hear I work with artificial intelligence, they often imagine that I create software that does magical things. Their minds go to humanistic androids or programs that predict distant future events. But the reality of AI is much …
What Museums Can Learn from Amanda Palmer

By Elizabeth Merritt

On the way to New Zealand in the spring of 2016, I started reading Amanda Palmer’s The Art of Asking. I thought of it as “me time” reading, and as such it was relegated to snippets of time before bed. When I finished the book, though, I …
Museums & Personalized Learning: Hey Vermont, Wassup?!?!

By Elizabeth Merritt

School started last week for Vermont students, and incoming high school freshmen are going to be exploring a fragment of the future. The class of 2020 will be the first students covered by Vermont Act 77, which mandates personalized …
Futurist Friday: Empathetic AI

By Elizabeth Merritt

Whenever a new technology starts to take off (drones, 3D printing, Virtual Reality), the initial breathless coverage in the press is inevitably followed by articles deriding the trivial applications of these advances. We’re deluged …
Futurist Friday: Telepathic Theater

By Elizabeth Merritt

What if you could hear what characters in a play were thinking, as well as what they were saying? How would that change how playwrights create and audiences experience performance?While my main futurist focus is museums, I keep my eye on …
Museums and Personalized Learning

By Elizabeth Merritt

Technology is fueling personalization of products, services, communications and experiences. We explored some of the implications of this trend in TrendsWatch 2015, but the impact and potential of “personal” continues to grow, …
It’s Personal: one size does not fit all

By Elizabeth Merritt

“At the forefront of these revolutionary possibilities is personalized medicine, which is the idea of precisely tailoring each person’s medical care to his or her own unique genetic makeup. In fact, if all goes as we envision, today’s …
Toward a Creative Ecosystem: Relationship Management, Access and a Culture of Invitation

By Elizabeth Merritt

In TrendsWatch 2015 I cite YBCA:You as an example of personalized museum services, one which integrates individualized curricula into a membership-based community engagement program. But (as with so many great museum programs) most of …
Monday Musing: TrendsWatch Watch

By Elizabeth Merritt

Here’s a quick roundup of recent stories related to the themes in TrendsWatch 2015 (Haven’t got your copy yet? Download the free PDF here. Print copies will be available in the AAM Bookstore soon.) Open Data Here’s a story I featured in …