Museum Director Blog - Opportunity and Liability

The Director of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore is blogging. As far as I am aware, Mr. Vikan’s blog is the first and only effort being written by a museum director.

Checking out the couple of entries there, I was amazed at how engaged I felt by his writings and the experience he lent to various topics. Though it is only being contributed to once a week (which is still an amazing feet), the depth on each of the blog’s topics is remarkable. Unlike journalist or critics that tackle museum issues like curatorial structure, antiquities or accessioning from the outside (where most readers already are), a director’s thoughts on these topics were enlightening, relevant and crisp. It just underlined the power of blogs as a medium.

When done well, a blog can enable specialists to create dialogue in a volume and scope previously unimagined. Yet, while engaging, I cannot help but think that a directorial blog represents a huge liability as it offers museum detractors even greater ammunition and text from which to build criticism. Especially since the museum director has come to personally embody many institutions...

This is part of the downside to blogs in the Museum realm. The information posted can just as easily serve against the institution. For example, another item that I ran across recently is this art blog from Cincinnati.com. This entry struck me as exemplary of how blogs also represent a communications challenge to cultural institutions. In her blog, Ms. Pearce attempts to extend controversy over an Associate Curator’s firing via the employment section of the Museum’s website. While her initial post and controversy were interesting and helped further dialogue about the institution, this additional writing represented nothing but noise. Note that even the most banal information on the CAM website can be discussed and taken out of context. In this situation, the blogger believed that the Museum’s employment section was meaningful, but as one commenter pointed out, “The job ad means nothing.”

Another example, recently, I had applauded the use of kiosks at the Nelson-Atkins Museum. Having mistaken their blog entry for a press release, I received a comment from a member of the NA staff. Ironically, the marketing department produces the blog. The lesson here is that if blogging just looks like marketing and PR, the audience will know it. Authenticity in subject matter, content and tone are crucial.

These two cases, the Nelson-Atkins and the Cincinnati, make clear the liabilities of Museum blogs. This new medium, like any other public-facing communication device, can be used to delight or annoy potential visitors. The increase in public content is not inherently good or bad. This is perhaps the greatest cause for anxiety if a director decides to start a blog. To be successful, blogs must be approached strategically and not as just another website.

It is essential to see where a Museum blog can increase the message, dialogue and transparency of an institution with its public. The Walters is a good case study in how this can be accomplished. In the future, I hope that it does not also come to embody the downside of this medium.

Museums: To Flickr or Not To Flickr

The Brooklyn Museum has done a fantastic job of late leveraging some of their internal images while also enabling users' to upload and tag images of the Museum. They have leveraged the Flickr platform to give an inside look both into the creation and experience of their exhibitions - most recently the critically acclaimed Ron Mueck show. Though this feature has now been taken off the Museum's home page (it still lives on here, along with their other blogs) - the exploration into image serving and tagging provides a great insight into how Museums might serve cultural content on Web 2.0 platforms.

This is a topic worth discussing. Below is a short review of two image tagging sites. One commercial, (Flickr) the other, a joint museum research project called Steve.

Flickr

Flickr is a fully integrated platform whose primary purpose is not a folksonomy or image catalog, but the more basic storage and sharing of images amongst a diverse community of users. Social tagging is a by-product in all this. Tagging, from a functional perspective, is one of many ways in which friends and guests can comment on an image – tagging here is analogous to “comments-light” – a deprecated form of user feedback and dialogue.

What I find most intriguing about Flickr is that it points to a velvet revolution for the semantic web. The emergence of a descriptive, meta-data driven web will emerge not through killer app’s but ‘smart platforms’ that allow people to choose, create, share, comment and interact with content. Clearly, with 5.5 Million registered users and 20 Million monthly visitors - the sheer size of the network insures the platform's relevancy - but its power lies in replicating users' "natural" interactions on the web.

This is exactly the model that Museums need. Though the platform may be proprietary, the social content model leaves plenty of room for the cultural sector to define its own space and requirements.


Steve

Steve is a joint research project of technology practicioners of SFMoMA, the Met, Indianapolis Museum of Art, LACMA and Guggenheim. It is an interactive tool designed for Museum researchers, curators, technology practitioners and librarians. Steve is based on the concept of folksonomy. According to Wikipedia, a folksonomy– antithetical to taxonomy – is a labeling system created and maintained by the end-users, not a class of outside experts. In theory, a folksonomy creates more natural and user-centric search and aggregation systems.

I recently had a great discussion with a technology developer at a major art Museum regarding the life of information in peoples' actual lives. He pointed out that tagging, bookmarking and information storage is personal. With sites like Del.icio.us , part of the user's value is the
ability to choose and create networks of personally relevant resources and references - remarkably similar to the personal value of Museums. Yet, the experience of Steve is far from personal. I greatly admire the goal but the execution leaves something to be desired.

2/7/2007 UPDATE: I recently caught up with a contributor to Steve and he mentioned that the project has received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences and would soon be unveiling a site update. This is a great development and demonstrates the sheer possibility of this project. It is certainly worth following. I'll check back on Steve after that redesign has gone live with some further thoughts, perhaps even an interview (fingers-crossed).

Museum Software Merger

It was with the great surprise that I stumbled upon the announcement of the merger of Convio and GetActive companies this week. Though mergers may be commonplace in the general technology sector – especially after the Internet bubble – in the cultural sector, corporate mergers and acquisitions amongst companies that serve Museums (and non-profits generally) is a note-worth occurrence that has an immediate impact.

The topic of interactive marketing software may seem trite, but the companies that produce software and systems that serve the Museum-world are important and merit critical consideration. There are no Museums in the United States that have the luxury of full application-development and support departments. Museums are fully reliant on third-party administrative and collection software in order to perform their public mission. Further, for public-facing systems, these email and web marketing platforms (with their own delivery models and technical limitations) define how the public is introduced to exhibitions and culture. In effect, the available platforms define how institutions announce exhibitions, garner support, steward to Members, reach out to the community and market themselves globally.

Though this acquisition cannot be considered anti-competitive (PatronMail remains the top software firm in this market vertical and Blackbaud is the unchallenged heavy-weight in the non-profit sector as a whole), the consolidation in the software market bodes ill for the Museum sector.

Convio and GetActive are two of the top service providers for integrated content management, email marketing and hosted CRM systems in the nonprofit sector. For institutions looking to integrate systems, reduce overhead/administration and remove the communication barriers between programming staff and constituents, both these platforms were well positioned. In the long-term, the loss of either of these forward-looking companies (at least in relation to the sector as a whole) can only be considered a loss of choice, innovation and competition for Museums and cultural institutions.

Further, there are always the practicalities arising from any loss of competition in a service industry; the leverage these companies will gain in terms of controlling pricing, system customization and upgrade flexibility. These too are important issues for Museum technology managers as they impact total resources, budgeting, staffing and strategic planning.

So, given that context and the newly shifting technology landscape, I thought it might be useful to outline a list of email and web marketing companies that serve the Museum sector (with some of their respective clients). This list is by no means exhausitve, so if anyone has additions and/or experiences to add, I'd love to hear from you.

• PatronMail
  Clients: LACMA, Brooklyn Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Jewish Museum, Denver Art Museum
  


• Convio / GetActive
  Clients: Smithsonian Institute, Carnegie Museums of Art, Natural History Museum
  


• Constant Contact
  Clients: High Museum of Art, Walker Art Center, Aperture Foundation, Museum of Science
  


• Exact Target
  Clients: Indianapolis Museum of Art, Cincinnati Museum of Art
  


• Institutions Using Other/Commercial Products
  The Metropolitan Museum of Art: CheetahMail (Commercial Software)
  MoMA: SilverPop Solutions (Commercial Software)
  Corcoran Gallery of Art: Blackbaud Net Community (Non-Profit Software)
  

On Innovation (I)

An Imagined Letter to the CEO of a Nonprofit Technology Company

Dear Sir,

I just wanted to follow-up on your presentation last night. It was very nice to meet you and I think the discussion was a fruitful one for the wide range of experience levels present. Personally, it was certainly interesting to hear the perspective of someone such as yourself, a thought leader in the field, who has seen the growing tide of ePhilanthropy since its infancy.

One thought that struck me is the importance of continued innovation for nonprofits. Technology in the non-profit world, unlike government or corporate, has a tough time mitigating the pressures to fulfill their missions while also exploring new mediums, outlets and constituencies to direct their message. It occurred to me that it is incredibly important for vendors in your field to be warrior-poets in a sense. It is critical to the health of the third sector that technology vendors not only fight to bring new products and innovations to market, but also power an informed, forward-looking and critical discourse on what the ethical and operative terms for managing nonprofit technology are. The fact that you study, advocate and have built ethical fundraising foundations into your product is critical. As web technology powers ever greater portions of the cultural and transactional lives of individuals, the importance of individual such as yourself will only increase.

As such, I greatly appreciated your closing remarks touching on web 2.0 trends. I believe it is important for both today's and tommorow's nonprofit leaders to understand that donor/consumer expectations surrounding organizational transparency, approachability and usability (via technology) will only increase. The bar will be raised, neither by vendors nor the tech marketplace, but by those that are looking for information and services in new, previously unforeseen mediums. Expanded expectations will be driven by constituents continuously. Whether the nonprofit sector wants it or not, online communication and service strategies will have to keep pace.

I look forward to hearing your response on these topics.

Sincerely,

The Nonprofit Community

Welcome!

This is the first of many installments of what I hope will become a staple of analysis on technology issues from a cultural sector perspective. It is my hope, that this blog will benefit a range of technology employees from entry-level to managers.

Some may ask why another perspective on technology is necessary in the already over saturated blogsphere. (And only in reference to Museums? What a tiny niche!) Futher, I can anticipate the protests that cultural technology's concerns are really no different than those in the business world. If there is a difference, it is just one of scale. I can understand how such perspective could arise, but I could not disagree more strongly. On a plethora of issues, from salaries to development resources, from professional growth opportunities to the relationship with the software market, Museum and cultural technology operates in a de facto different world than its counterparts in the corporate world. The discrepancy between these two worlds often leaves nonprofit technology professionals afloat on a sea of ideas, perspectives, products and advice that are never entirely applicable to their organizations.

It is my opinion that amongst all nonprofit technology professionals there are few reliable sources for technology news and analysis. Further, the level of professional discourse surrounding nonprofit technology management, ethics, horizons and impact is relatively low. This state is not reflective of the quality of workers in the nonprofit technology field, but rather parallels the lack of communication and analytic mediums. Without a platform for a more pervasive and professional dialogue of what delineation and meaning are derived from nonprofit technology as a profession (opposed to its current self-understanding as an extension/reduction of corporate and government technology), its management and execution will be continually under informed as to accountability, direction and opportunities.

As a counterpoint, consider the field of fundraising. Nonprofit fundraising, as a profession, has grown by leaps and bounds in the last three decades. The professionalization of fundraising has arisen in no small part because of the need of nonprofit organizations to identify a core skill and knowledge base when making hiring and promotion decisions. Throughout the 70's and 80's it became clear to nonprofit boards that the skills needed to successfully manage and operate a fundraising program differ significantly from those in related corporate and even nonprofit realms. Even those staff members within organizations with experience in nonprofit administration often did not have requisite knowledge and perspective to move into the fundraising world.

In the last decade, to help serve this need, professional trainining and accredidation programs, certificates, and now Master's Degrees are offered in support of the professional fundraiser. Parallel to these educational opportunities, a wealth of information resources have also arisen to identify industry trends, changes in fundraising cultures, as well as, outlets for self-analysis and critique. The Chronicle of Philanthropy has been published since 1997, both defining a community of fundraisers and simultaneously defining the terms of that community; its applications, issues and opportunities.

It is my hope that in some small way, this blog will help to extend and deepen the community and conversations of technology professionals in the cultural world.