Flickr was an economical and easy way to reach this broader and morediverse audience; additionally, it allowed for both user tagging andcommenting, which served to engage the user community and couldpotentially provide us with more information about our collections.
7 Ways FriendFeed Could Better Engage the Flickr Community
Peter, Great comment. You really articulate the core underlying issues here.I'm ok with museums that want to tell their own stories. I assume that those museums will continue to exist and thrive. I am narrowly focused on museums that claim (however disingenuously) that they want to be a "town square" for social engagement. At the Science Center World Congress in June, representatives from science centers worldwide pledged to make science centers "safe spaces for difficult conversations." If they indeed want to do that, and if museums want to engage with visitors in "community"--two huge ifs--we have to find some genuine ways to do so. I see the platform model as one that can allow some museums to transition from paying lip service to the "town square" to really living it.Whether a storyteller or a platform, every good museum needs vision. My fear is that some of these community initiatives will be branded as failures because, as you point out, they are often used as excuses to avoid strong visionary leadership. If we just "put it out there" for visitors as a new fad, we fail, and museums might start to think that being safe spaces for any kind of conversations was just a load of hooey.So I think all kinds of museums need vision--those that are becoming participatory platforms and those that are storytellers. Because even in the traditional world, the idiosyncratic shining stars are few and far between. They are almost as fringe as I am, and they don't have a big Web hype machine helping push their ideas out there. I feel more allied with those kinds of museum leaders (Adam Lerner of the Belmar Lab of Art and Ideas comes to mind) than with those who are half-heartedly doing "2.0". And I think those visionaries do exist in participatory platform design--the creators of the Living Library come to mind as a prime example.To quote Ian Rogers, the goal hasn't changed: we all want to make something great. Whether we do that by designing great experiences or great platforms, we succeed. I just happen to be more interested in the platform side of things. 2ff7e9595c
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