One of the most exciting developments in ‘business’ at the moment, if you ask me, is the renewed attention to the idea of ‘social business’. Running a museum in this context is most definitely a business. For the sake of clarity I call a museum run as a social business a social museum, although there are many possible other names.

A social museum is a museum that has the strategies, processes and technologies in place to maximise the value created by all individual involved, from directors and curators to visitors and passers-by and everyone in between. Recently I wrote an essay with some early thoughts about the social museum and how to get there using social media thinking, which gives some more background.

The social museum was the idea lingering throughout many sessions and conversations at this week’s MuseumNext. The conference traditionally focuses on new media and technology, but has grown to look beyond the digital teams at education, overall strategy and even recruiting and training. “We should have invited our director,” one colleague said, “because this [digital strategy] is something that will change the entire organisation.” I cannot agree more.

As a consultant, speaker, facilitator and recently in a couple of projects for larger organisations I’ve worked on creating the conditions and early beginnings of social business in museums and other organisations. This is great and rewarding work, especially because it has the power to profoundly improve organisations and the well-being of people working in them as well as the general public that is their audience. Also, it is complex and challenging exactly because it has so much potential and because it involves the entire organisation.

Work we’ve done with the Digital Engagement Framework over the past year often was also strongly related with ideas about social business and involving all stakeholders to make a museum better, have more impact and be more sustainable. The adjusted version 2 of the framework, based on these experiences, will be launched later this year.

Which brings me to the second part of the title of this post and something I’ve never done before on this blog: ask for more than your attention.

I would love to commit to helping a museum or cultural organisation become a more social business. Not from the outside, as a consultant, but from within, as part of the team. I love to travel the world and work with many different organisations and cultures, but I would also love to implement the ideas and experience I gather in that way, get my hands dirty and take responsibility for their outcomes over the long run.

So yes, this is an open call for any organisation that left MuseumNext feeling that you need to take this to the next level, or any other great team in the world feeling social can be more than media, to connect with me. I don’t know where that might take us, but I do know that it might be something really worthwhile for both of us. And email is free anyway.

At the last MuseumNext I saw a glimpse of the future of museums, the discussions we’ll be having in 10 years time. These are discussions about the overall strategies, processes and technologies that help museums and others maximise their value to society, their employees and the organisation itself. Digital and social media are part of this discussion, but no more or less than education, HR, management, exhibition design, programming, customer support, finance or any of the myriad other activities that all work together to make an organisation great. Let’s work towards that future.

At the Learning Museum Conference in Riga in April 2012 I was introduced to the work of Cultural Heritage Without Borders and especially of Diana Walters in using culture and heritage as a binding and empowering force in post-conflict areas. CHWB’s motto ‘we restore and build communities’ appeals to my background in international development work as well as to my work building relationships between people, and people and culture. You can imagine how thrilled I was when earlier this year I received an invitation from Diana to participate in a conference of CHWB and the Balkan Museum Network in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The conference was last week and it was a convincing display of the strengths and opportunities of culture and heritage under even the harshest conditions. From all over the (western) Balkans culture and heritage professionals had come together to see, meet, do (the title of the conference) and learn from each other’s projects and ideas. I was part of an international team of consultants who facilitated hands-on sessions and worked with the participants to design better projects and exchange knowledge and experiences.

It was enlightening to see how small institutions in countries like Albania, Kosovo and Serbia worked on incredibly powerful projects with shoestring budgets. The ambition and creativity of most participants easily matched that of the world’s largest institutions, while their ingenuity and willingness to cooperate I only remember from working with really professional NGOs. So much can be done with so little.

Unforgettable was the reception in the Historical Museum of BiH. The traces of the war are still overly visible in this museum that struggles for survival. After drinks, music and moving speeches I visited the museum’s exhibition on surrounded Sarajevo, about the siege of the early 1990s, where I was given a tour by enthusiastic people my age who lived through the event. The simple and straightforward exhibition shows everyday objects and photography, some of them quite horrific, others really unexpected. The stories of my peers brought the static displays to life with the typical directness and humour of people from the Balkans. On the makeshift stoves, they told me for instance, you could make a meal and a coffee with one shoe as fuel. After telling me about the experience of eating EU food support (everything but the beef it claimed to be) I felt ashamed about being part of the nations that ignored these wonderful people for years.

It was an honour and a pleasure to work with all these wonderful people on meaningful projects for a couple of days. I hope to be back soon. Sarajevo reaffirmed to me the strong transformative power of culture and heritage and – especially – conversations. Our work can build relationships that go well beyond Facebook likes, even when conditions are tough and budgets non existent. A big thanks to the people of the Balkan Museum Network, Cultural Heritage Without Borders, the team and magnificent professionals participating in the conference last week. I feel reenergised and changed myself.

Some tweets spark more than retweets and replies and some questions deserve more than 140-character answers. Over email a leader in a cultural institution asked me if I knew inspirational, forward-thinking young women working in or with museums and culture, a question I forwarded to Twitter. The response was overwhelming and inspiring.

Museum people: What are the most inspiring (young) women working on museum innovation (not just media & tech)? #mw2013 #museumnext #thanks

— Jasper Visser (@jaspervisser) April 17, 2013

After frantically clicking through 100+ replies and e-meeting some of the most inspirational people I’ve met in years, I’ve decided to attempt to list some really great people and the work they’re doing. There is no order, no intention to be conclusive and definitely no good reason why you are not yet on the list, so please please please add your favourites (or yourself) to the comments.

Apart from being the response to the original question, maybe this list can serve to conference organisers around the world, organisations seeking extra hands or locations seeking projects as a source of inspiration. I’ve tried to give credits where possible for future reference.

List of inspirational young women innovating museums & culture (curated by you):

• Olga Crapels (Leiden, the Netherlands) is building a new platform for art and science in Leiden together with partners from culture, science, business and elsewhere. (thanks @photologix!)
• Briana Pobiner (United States) is the education and outreach specialist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and has a fascinating travel and research resume. (thanks @SaritaAmy and @DarrenMilligan!)
• Faye Nicole Ellis (London, UK) is a busy bee in the field of (digital) learning. Previously at the British Museum, now at Dulwich Prep London and on the BAFTA Youth Board. (thanks @sharnajackson!)
• Hannah Kemp-Welch (London, UK) keeps a wonderful blog/Tumblr about sound art, the way more blogs should be. Plus, she’s an intern at Tate (isn’t that the best school for new museum talent in the world? Thanks again, @sharnajackson).
• Leanne Griffin (London, UK) cycles through London and works as assistant digital marketing officer at Tate. (yes, thanks, @sharnajackson!)
• Too humble to recommend herself, Sharna Jackson (London, UK) did not only recommend many people, but as star of Tate Kids and museum & gaming expert should star here as well.
• Michelle Ball runs reminiscence programmes at the Beamish Museum to improve well-being among the elderly. (thanks @HeatherRose1102!)
• Emily Graslie (Missoula, MT) does not only keep the wonderful blog the Brain Scoop (with videos!) but seems to have a knack to inform and entertain huge audiences in a 21st century proof manner. (thanks @brianwolly!)
• Colleen Dilenschneider (Chicago/London) writes the incredible blog Know Your Own Bone. Nonprofit strategist, marketer and trend watcher/analyser in museums & cultural institutions. (thanks Lori!)
• Lori also recommended someone readers of this blog will know well and who definitely deserves a place here: Suse Cairns (Australia), museum geek and researcher.
• Lori Phillips (Indianapolis) works at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, is an enthusiastic Wikipedian and international advisor.
• Sarah Stierch (Oakland) is museumist, community organiser and open culture advocate. She’s Wikipedian in residence at the World Digital Library and US OpenGLAM Coordinator for the Open Knowledge Foundation. (thanks @alli_burnie and @DerangeDescribe!)
• Rebecca Goldman (Philadelphia) is media and digital services librarian at the Connelly Library and keeps the blog Derangement and Description. (thanks @alli_burnie!)
• Paula Bray (Sydney) is behind many of the great digital stuff happening at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. Plus, she’s a great host and one of the smartest people I’ve met when it comes to understanding (digital) audiences.
• Adrianne Russell (USA) is a writer, museum wonk and consultant. Also Coordinator for Public Programs and Events at Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art. (Thanks Elizabeth!)
• Erika Kiessner (Canada) is senior exhibit developer at Aesthetec Studio. She has fresh ideas about creating exhibitions and experimenting. (Thanks Elizabeth!)
• Erin Blasco (Washington) is education specialist at the National Museum of American History. She uses social and new media to connect with the public and do outreach. (Thanks Elizabeth!)
• Jamie Glavic (Columbus) writes the diverse and very valuable blog Museum Minutes. She’s very busy in and around museums at a more strategic level and has a broad look at the future of museums and culture. (Thanks Elizabeth!)
• Shauna Edson (Washington) is an educator at the Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian, and – curiously – an unschooler (meaning: self made woman?). (Thanks Elizabeth!)
• Michelle DelCarlo (USA) is founder of The Pop-Up Museum, where she writes about participation and engagement in the arts.
• Beck Tench is Beck Tench and many other things besides. Currently Director for Innovation and Digital Engagement at the Museum of Life and Science. (Thanks Nina!)
• Stacey Marie Garcia (Santa Cruz) is director of community programs at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, which means she’s involved in many of the great projects described on the Museum 2.0 blog. Wow! (Thanks Nina!)
• Shelley Bernstein (Brooklyn) is well known for her fantastic work at the Brooklyn Museum, including classic participatory work such as Click, Go and many, many others.
• Nina Simon (Santa Cruz) is probably best known for her wonderful blog Museum 2.0 as well as her book The Participatory Museum. Currently she is reshaping the Santa Cruz MAH into an ambitious 21st century institution.
• Mia Ridge (Oxford) is a cultural heritage technologist, best known for her research on crowdsourcing, digitisation and gamification. Previously lead of web development at the Science Museum in London.
• Rebecca Bray manager of Interaction Design and Strategy at National Museum of National History at the Smithsonian. Sarah Banks is her colleague and the audience engagement specialist at the same institution. (thanks Briana Pobiner!)
• Dana Allen-Griel (Washington DC) works on digital technologies for education at the National Gallery of Art and holds and has held a number of interesting positions in the world of technology, engagement and museums. (Thanks @gretchjenn!)
• Stephanie Pau (New York) works on gallery interpretation and digital learning at the MoMA and collects exhibit labels. (Thanks Peter!)
• Shelley Mannion (London) ‘has transformed family programs at the British Museum through empowering kids and families to use digital tools to connect with art’. (Thanks Peter!)
• Rosanna Flouty has done the same thing with teens at the Guggenheim and ICA Boston. She now runs education at Art21. (Thanks Peter!)
• Willa Koerner (San Francisco) is ‘the genie behind SFMOMA‘s Twitter, Tumblr, and FB presences’ (Thanks Peter!)
• Erica Gangsei (San Francisco) has been cooking up collaborative games analog and digital in the art space and manages interpretive media at the SFMOMA. (Thank Peter!)

I’ll update the list as more recommendations come in (via the comments, Twitter or elsewhere). Please feel free to give feedback and add missing information or maybe even attempt to categorise/organise the list. And a big sorry if I missed you.

If you sent in a suggestion and I didn’t post it, it’s because I missed it. Please send your suggestion again!

One of the primary trends for museums I’ve been researching and discussing lately is their potential renewed role as curators of information in the digital age. The amount of online information approximately doubles every two years and when the 4+ billion people without internet access will start contributing, it will become ever harder to find the stuff that is worth your while online.

Google and Facebook are designed to tell you mostly what you or your friends already know, not to help you discover new things you didn’t even know existed. Museums often play this role in the real world and could do so in the digital world as well.

This means rather than digitise millions of objects for the rare geek googling his obscure interest, museums should use their unique knowledge about the collection to curate highly engaging stories that appeal to larger numbers of people. (Compare the excitement of the Wikipedia article about the Big Bang with a 60-second video.) Their curatorial function unbiased by commercial interests (such as Amazon, Booking.com and most blogs/online magazines) could fill an important void in the current web landscape.

I like how the Rijksstudio of the Rijksmuseum enables such behaviour (Holland’s best moustaches!) although it’s still too passive, too noncommittal. It’s still a collection, not a story. Another good example is the Facebook page of the Saatchi Gallery in London.

At the moment I’m engaged in several projects and experiments to use curation as a means to make art and culture accessible to the larger audience. Earlier this month a team of entrepreneurs, designers and other creatives launched De gulle ekster (‘The generous magpie’), one of these initiatives. De gulle ekster makes art and design more accessible to ordinary people, without making it extraordinarily expensive by carefully curating all that is on offer. Although it’s still too early to say anything definitive, the first public response was overwhelmingly enthusiastic. People really seem to appreciate someone to guide them through the curious but at times inaccessible world of art and culture.

Of course I’ll keep you posted on successes and lessons learned. For now, feel free to follow De gulle ekster on Facebook or Twitter (Dutchies only for now, I fear) and let me know if you are working on similar projects!

Full disclaimer: I work for and with the founders of De gulle ekster as their ‘ambassador-at-large’ (a title I kind of like). Of course this means I’m biased.

1. Yesterday I hosted the return day of a DEF workshop at the Danish Museum Association in Copenhagen. After enjoying an insightful presentation about the digital strategy of SMK and a thoughtful presentation about digital at the National Museum, we discussed some of the most pressing issues that hindered the digital potential of Danish museums. Number one among these issues: the digital mindset (or lack thereof) with colleagues in the museums.

We carefully broke the idea of a ‘digital mindset’ down to its core behaviours: what does a person do when he or she has a digital mindset? The answers varied widely between people and institutions: A colleague with a digital mindset shares ideas, uses the right tools for the right challenges, is present on social networks, asks and answers questions, etc. etc. For most participants, a digital mindset had little to do with digital tools and much more with a 21st century way of working: open, collaborative, lean, proactive…

Breaking down a complex idea like ‘digital mindset’ into simple behaviour you can observe helps to find opportunities towards this idea that address understandable things, rather than abstract concepts. One of the things we figured out in Copenhagen was that talking about a ‘digital mindset’ might be the wrong way to get your colleagues to develop the desired mindset. ‘Digital’ causes resistance, while the ideas behind it may be easier accepted.

2. Which brings me to an important question I need your help with (which is why I emphasised it so outrageously):

I’ve been invited to take part in a capacity building project in South-Eastern Europe where a team will help small and mid-sized museums to develop and implement sustainable projects. I have an hour to work with professionals from these museums on new technologies in museums. I cannot assume the participants will have much prior knowledge, funds available for ambitious projects or even an internet connection.

What is the most accessible and most powerful ‘new technology’ or core digital mindset that I can really make progress on in under an hour?

How would you spend this hour? Just listing the possibilities takes me more than an hour, and I really want to make every second count. What is the number 1 thing that helped you or your institution move forward when it came to new technology? Tough questions, I know, but I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments. Should I work on ‘blogging’ and the use of free platforms, social media, getting a website up for near to nothing, learn how to raise funds online…?

Your help is greatly appreciated and – of course – I will blog about what happens with your recommendations. Thanks in advance!

Occasionally, it’s good to take a step back from all the insiders’ discussions about the future of museum and their role in society and look at what ordinary people have to say about that. I feel at times there’s a disconnect between the museum discourse and my everyday experience with ordinary people about what they want from museums.

Museums

Take for instance the ordinary people who write the great series ‘Authors on museums’ in my favourite magazine Intelligent Life. Almost every one of these authors reflects in their essay on the intrinsic value of the collection of the museum. Plus, most of them see the museum they describe as a place to escape to (Sanctum in the City). It is a place that defines them as individuals and a place full of memories of family and friendship, love and life (Palais of the Dolls). It is a place for private memories (The Odessaphiles).

Through the eyes of the authors, museums are a dream world. A museum is not reality. A museum is a place that appeals to the imagination with (self)discovery, beautiful collections, peace and quite…

The aspirational 14%

Given, these authors aren’t as ordinary people as John Doe is ordinary people. Nevertheless, they represent and write for an audience that is very much a museum audience. Intelligent Life is written for a group of society I’ve recently read being referred to as ‘the aspirational 14%’. In context, the 14% of people aspiring to one day own a Patek Philippe (as opposed to the 1% that actually will). These are the people that look up, hope, dream. In the words of Oscar Wilde, those in the gutter looking at the stars.

The size and makeup of the aspirational 14% differs per country. What they have in common however, I believe, is that they are a much better target demographic than the ubiquitous “everybody”. Especially, as aspiration is not necessarily bound to other demographics. An elderly white male doesn’t have to be more aspirational than a young immigrant girl. In fact, when I look around me in the Netherlands, the opposite might be more true.

With a little twist of focus museums can easily appeal to the aspirational 14%. The luxury of the collections, the educational value of the expositions, the glamour of culture and art, the rich network of other visitors.

 
Contrasting two contemporary advertisements in Amsterdam. Left: The poster for the new Peter the Great exhibition in the Hermitage at best triggers the intellect of the chosen few. Right: The poster of the National Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet clearly aims at other emotions.

And brand identity

Aspiration is a convincing promise. Magazines such as Intelligent Life and most department stores understand this: they try to appeal to the people that aspire to know more, to travel more, to wear nicer clothes. This is not you, but we promise this could be you.

Compare the two posters above. Unlike Romeo and Juliet, Peter the Great lived in Amsterdam and his presence can still be felt in street names, buildings, etc. The tsar had many highly-desirable qualities that you can strive for yourself, and he did do things that appeal to the imagination. Knowing the Hermitage, I’m sure even the exhibition is worth going to. Unfortunately, aspiration is lacking from the advertisement.

Romeo and Juliet, by the National Ballet, is a completely different story. Gold! Love! Skill! Dance! Beauty! Cycling through the city you can see people look at the poster and dream. I wish I was the guy/girl! (And I’m sure the disappointment when trying to buy a ticket, 50+ euros! Aspiration doesn’t come cheap…)

Recently one of my favourite designers Robin Stam (full disclosure: I have worked and will work with him) presented the new brand identity for Museum de Lakenhal in Leiden. It looks like a very simple identity, which means it’s probably very good. What I like is that it is modern without trying to be the popular kid. It’s centred on the collection and the glossy logo on the stationary and business cards gives it an almost royal feel. It’s a pleasant change away from the bold sans-serif logos that seem rampant nowadays. One might even call it traditional.

It’s not. It’s aspirational. When I read authors about museums I want to visit the almost mythical places they describe, full of dreams and wonder and objects that tell a story. It’s the closest I can be to being an explorer and inventor (my foremost aspiration). Museums are not about selling to the masses, they’re about selling dreams.

MuseumNext, Europe’s biggest conference on innovation in museums, is just over 2 months away (12-14 May, Amsterdam). This year you’ll have the opportunity to join the many great speakers on stage in a high-energy and inspirational Ignite session! I’ll be curating the session (with some help) and would love to start collecting your suggestions.

If you’re coming to Amsterdam, please take this opportunity to share your story with an audience of enthusiastic peers. Sign up using the Google form.

Rules of the game

• You’ll need a MuseumNext badge to get in. Register now!
• An Ignite talk is 20 slides, 15 seconds per slide, auto advance. That’s 5 minutes to share your story. Watch some examples to see how this goes.
• I will reserve some spots for different format presentations (video, personal story) as long as they are under 5 minutes long.
• Selling from the stage is OK, as long as you sell fresh ideas, new insights, funny anecdotes, indecent proposals or anything else that is of genuine value to the audience. Project or product presentations preferably zoom in on a noteworthy detail.
• Your presentation will be run from a central computer that has Powerpoint and keynote installed.
• Deadline for submissions: 14 April, 2013.
• I’ll let you know before 21 April, 2013 if you’re in.

I have fond memories of every Ignite session I’ve been part of and made many friends because of them. If you want, we can do a test run prior to the conference (as long as it’s in Amsterdam:-) ).

Please share this message with your friends. See you in May!

Some great Museum Ignite Talks (share your favs in the comments):

Virgin Atlantic has created an in-flight gallery for its business class passengers. And why not? Buildings are expensive, often have at best a local reach and need to be cleaned and painted all the time. There are better options. Following up on a popular posts from lightyears ago* about what a museum could be as well, today I’d like to reflect on where a museum could be.

(By the way, I do hope the magnificent Air and Space Museum near the airport in Washington opens an in-flight gallery soon, which would be the coolest Droste trick ever.)

1. Hotel rooms. (Good people at MuseumNext last year thought of an app to do so.)
2. The central train station in Utrecht, the Netherlands, which is probably the world’s worst place to be, full of empty space and stuff put there by the municipality to enlighten the lives of travellers which it utterly fails to do.
3. Any airport, not just Amsterdam Airport (where you can visit the Rijksmuseum and until recently science centre Nemo, now replaced by a juice bar).
4. Malls and shopping centres.
5. My living room with its enormous white walls I will one day fill with art but haven’t yet had the money for.
6. Supermarkets (as long as you can sell parts of your collection).
7. Empty shop displays as is being done in many places around the world. (My favourite at the moment, and I’m completely biased because I worked on the project: Van Gogh in Amsterdam.)
8. The walls and windows of unused buildings, as Candy Chang does with many of her installations.
9. Forgotten, unused railway tunnels. (R.I.P. Old Vic Tunnels.)
10. Anywhere people queue.
11. Mars.

What about you? What is the most extraordinary place you have seen (or can imagine) a museum?

* I know a lightyear is a measure for distance, not time, I really do.

Update: Do you feel you fit into the profile below (and are you fluent in Dutch)? You might want to check out this internship/job opportunity at a new startup I’m involved in.

We’re looking for: People that help museums stay relevant in the 21st century. Job title: community manager, digital engagement officer, online marketeer, audience curator, hands-on project manager, educator (etc. etc.). Your profile: hmm…

In general, the debate on ‘21st century skills’ or – put differently – what we expect in terms of skills, attitudes, behaviour and knowledge from future colleagues is diverse and inspiring. In the museum-context, it might even be more complicated. Studying various reports of such skills (etc.), such as the excellent Museums, Libraries and 21st Century Skills (PDF) and a Dutch one by Kennisnet, most of the focus is on skills that help people design the future. Museums, obviously, and museum professionals also play an important role in maintaining the past. This duality is obvious in the ICOM definition:

A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development (‘future’), open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches (‘past’), communicates and exhibits (‘future’) the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education (‘future’), study (‘past’) and enjoyment (‘future’).

Note that I use ‘future’ and ‘past’ to make a distinction between the internal, traditional role of a museum and the outgoing, also-traditional-but-now-key-to-receiving-funds role that can be considered to focus on the future of the institution.

As museums realise they need to evolve in order to stay relevant, within them a continuous debate begins between the ‘past’ and the ‘future’. And, as much as the ‘traditional’ museum professionals need to be comfortable with the 21st century, the future professionals need to be comfortable with the traditional role of museums in society, which is probably why maybe the number 1 question I get from clients and at conferences is to help define a profile for the future museum professional.

Looking at jobs at the ‘future’ end of the continuum in the ICOM definition, based on the reports above and many discussions, I think the ideal future museum professional is:

• A practical communicator who can (help) uncover stories hidden in the collection, exhibitions, etc. and can make them resonate with a wide variety of audiences.
• A team player not only in her own team (communication, online, etc.) but especially in teams that contain people from all over the organisation.
• A creative, pro-active problem solver who always looks with fresh eyes at the organisation and the things it does to generate ideas for experiment and improvement even where none are (desperately) needed.
• Absolutely passionate about and undoubtedly loyal to the vision of the organisation.
• Well aware of the wider societal, cultural, economic and political environment in which the organisation operates.
• Responsible and willing to take responsibility beyond the scope of the job description and organisation.
• Curious (proven).

Add to that some basic job specific skills (but not necessarily more than basic) and – if you can find them – your organisation will have a team that, together with skilled curators, leaders and support staff, can take on the world.

Which brings me to the next and a tricky point of the job description:

Your experience: Not necessary. In a great post on LinkedIn Lou Adler makes a compelling and thought-provoking case for hiring Mary, a girl (woman?) with limited skills and experience, but a proven track record of outperforming herself. Rather than filtering people based on the number of years they’ve managed to stay in one job, Adler advises to filter on exceptional performance:

[A]sk them to describe the biggest thing they’ve accomplished with the least amount of skills and experience. Then don’t be surprised how many talented people emerge from the shadows.

Some of the best professionals I know never managed to stick to one job long before wanting another challenge. Others never finished their degree. Of course, it’s tricky, but in an organisation that is at least part made up of stable and experienced curators (cs.) such a gamble isn’t necessarily risky.

Finally, what do you offer these people? Apart from reasonable pay (everybody working for real, even in an internship scheme, deserves to be paid for real), give people what you hire them for: room for development, an ear for their ideas, real responsibilities. In the end, that might be much more valuable to both you and them than their paycheck.

What do you think? What is missing from this job description? Please add your ideas and thoughts to the comments, so we can build a full job description together.

A recent Pew Report (thanks for the link, Marco Derksen) about arts organisations and digital technologies among 1,244 organisations says ‘77% of respondents agree with the statement that the internet has “played a major role in broadening the boundaries of what is considered art.”’ 78% believes these technologies are “very important” for increasing audience engagement. 97% has a social media presence (and the stats go on). At the same time the Economist in an article on the online art market says, “It is hard to imagine that the internet could dislodge art galleries and institutions from their exalted status, sustained, to some extent, by exclusivity and elitism.”

To me, this sort of contradiction is a pretty good summary of the state of museum AD 2013. We’ve understood we need to change, we’ve changed (some more successfully than others) and we’re still a bit at loss about the bigger picture.

2012 has in many ways been a good year. Around the world (and also in my own little country) museums have launched smart websites and fun apps. My favourite development were those brave souls who put objects online to be 3D printed at home. I can’t back this up, but I’m sure never before have our collections been as accessible as they are right now. Plus, I’m noticing more and more organisations working together on innovative projects, sharing experiences and knowledge. My hopes for 2013 are high.

As I looked through my RSS subscriptions, I found at least 20 high-quality regular blogs where people write about innovation in museums. This blog had as much traffic in the past year as in all previous years combined. This year’s MuseumNext will be bigger than ever before. Undeniably, the discussion we’ve been asking for all this time is being had, right now, all over the world.

Heritage, art and culture are more accessible (digitally) than ever and its hard not to drown in the billions of objects put online under open licences in high quality. At the same time the notion that our strengths are not quantity, but quality gets more traction with every conference I attend. There’s an almost desperate need for more curatorial input, better storytelling, more content based on authority rather than the masses.

While reading Intelligent Life (the snobbish cultural supplement of the Economist, and my favourite magazine in the world, something I look forward to for weeks) I thought about the museum as a magazine. Accessible (everyone can flip through it on the bus, even if you only have 5 minutes), sharable, remixable (scissors!), based on content and stories and – also – highly curated, edited, ‘top-down’. Intelligent Life definitely has an “exalted status, sustained, to some extent, by [its] exclusivity and elitism.” Of its content, that is, not its container (which just as easily houses gossip and weight-loss schemes).

This year, among many other projects I’m currently starting, this contradiction will be key in much of my work, I guess: using digital media to create intense and exclusive experiences for the (right) masses. Also, considering the sector’s track record, I’m expecting many projects that do exactly this from you, dear reader. Please share them with me, as I’d love to start adding your stories to this blog as well in 2013. Thanks in advance!