TrendsWatch – Page 4 – American Alliance of Museums

Ethical Everything: managing the moral marketplace

By Elizabeth Merritt

“To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.”—Douglas Adams Increasingly the press and our peers remind us that each purchase we make and each bite we …
Wearable Tech: when “bring your own device” means shirt and shoes*

By Elizabeth Merritt

“When the Internet first emerged, no one could have conceived of the multiplicity of ways it would change our lives; solve function problems, yes, but also radically change our worldview. Wearables have this kind of potential because our …
A Rising Tide: the changing landscape of risk

By Elizabeth Merritt

“How do we plan for a future in which change, and water, are the new normal?” —Urban Land Institute Boston While politicians and pundits continue to argue about climate change, nearly everyone else—including oil companies, the insurance …
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 …
The “Open” Economy: filling the data pipeline

By Elizabeth Merritt

“‘Open’ is already on track to supplant ‘participatory’ as buzzword of the year, with good reason. The proliferation of groups supporting and encouraging openness in the cultural/creative sector is impressive. Wikimedia, Creative Commons, …
Slooow: better a tortoise than a hare

By Elizabeth Merritt

“Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly.”—Mae West In the past few decades, there’s been a growing awareness that while “fast” may look efficient, in the end it may not be effective. The Slow Movement, composed of distributed, …
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 …
The Limits of Neutrality: A Message From The Natural History Museum

By Elizabeth Merritt

Today’s guest post, from the team at The Natural History Museum (including director Beka Economopoulos), illustrates one of the trends I discuss in TrendsWatch 2015, and touches upon another. In the chapter on “Ethical Everything,” on the …
Monday Musing: On Small Dead Things

By Elizabeth Merritt

15 minutes of top-of-my-head thoughts on a story featured in last week’s Dispatches from theFuture of Museums e-newsletter. One of the things that drove me out of graduate school (besides the dismal ROI of remaining for a PhD.) was the …
Crowdsourced Resources on Open Data

By Elizabeth Merritt

A lot of great folks joined me for last Friday’s Tweet chat on open data. Here’s a compilation of the resources, recommendations and questions shared by participants, to help you Find me on Twitter@futureofmuseums with your exploration of …