Beth's Blog: Nonprofits and Social Media

Revenue Decline in Art Museums

Many art museums saw their revenue decline as a result of last year's tough economic climate, a new report says.

Seventy-four of the 128 museums that provided data to the Association of Art Museum Directors brought in less money in 2002 than in 2001 -- another year marked by a downturn in revenue, mostly as a result of the September 11 terrorist attacks. This is only the second year that the association has reported on its members' revenue levels.

The summary of the survey can be found :
here

Enterprise Blogging

I need an excuse to obsess about blogging. I just came across this interesting white paper on use of blogs as KM tools. Enterprise blogging

E-Museum Shop: $50 a month

While many museums use Yahoo Store for their online shops as my previous entry indicated, some like LA County Art Museum are using other vendors. After experimenting with the Yahoo store, their technology staff discovered that the software wasn't malleable enough to suit the many and varied requests for design and content that were being brought to the table. After some research, they discovered Earthstores, a online storefront asp.

Earthstores offers a 30-day trial period and also provides great tech support - a human can be reached by phone. The museum staff was able to customize the Earthstore's templates to fit the look and feel of the rest of the lacma site. The initial pilot was a store that included 35 or so items. The staff person recommends allowing plenty of time for a pilot and testing as the number of people who need to be involved and responsible for signing off on the final look and content of each item, can make setting up shop on the Internet a slow process.

After a few months, the museum had a working model and a contract with Earthstores on their Silver plan which accommodates up to 50 items @ $50/month. The museum tested the shop extensively using museum staff, and modified the shipping and cart features as well as the site navigation buttons, privacy policies, etc... in order for the site to work for the general public and especially museum members.

The work was not done entirely in-house. The museum worked with a site designer/cart builder who provided the additional technical and asethetic expertise needed. He optimized images, ironed out a compromise between the shop departments wishes and the capabilities of Earthstores (Earthstores was not able to meet all the shop departments requests, given the low prices of Earthstores packages, but many issues were rectified.), developed shipping formulas, checkout forms, etc...

E-Museum Shops

On the list where museum technology folks hang out, there has been a recent thread on best practices and lessons learned on how to set up a successful store component of a museum web site.

A number of museums are using Yahoo Stores. For example, the Brooklyn Museum Shop. Some museums are working with e-commerce/design consultants to further customize the look and feel. For example, Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum's online shop..

The software for the Yahoo! store it was
developed by Paul Graham. According to some museum techies on the list, Yahoo stores are easy to set up without the help of a technology/design professional, although the shop may not look good as one that is. According to some museum technies the maintenance can be handled by non-technical folks and can take less than a few hours a week depending on the amount of merchandize and orders.

The story of the development of the Yahoo! Store is really interesting.

Selling Art Online: US

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world ...
ArtistsRegister.ComArtistsRegister.com showcases visual art by artists who are US residents represented through many disciplines. The Web site serves to connect the artists and their work with private collectors, gallery owners, interior designers, corporate art buyers, public art administrators, and art enthusiasts in general!

E-Shop Africa

Traditional African craftsmen are starting to sell their crafts to collectors on the other side of the globe thanks to E-Shop Africa
Here is a stunning example of how technology can bridge the digital divide and benefit traditional African artisans, struggling to exist. The site features, amongst other things, designer-made coffins in the shape of fish, aeroplanes or beer bottles, which are for sale at $1,000. But, unlikely as online coffin sales may seem, the site is specifically targeting people who want that kind of specialised and highly unusual product.

State of Technology Use in Museums

The Institute of Museum and Library Studies did a survey of the field in 2002 on the state of technology use. One of their findings: “Museums' technology use is strong in the medium-sized and large museums, but lags significantly in the smaller museums."

TechnoPhobe and The Madman

The Arts and Humanities Initiative assists Internet2 members in enabling and advancing collaborations between high performance networking technologies and applications in the arts and humanities. One performance, The Technophobe and the Madman seamlessly linked actors and musicians at both universities into single musical presentation while audiences at both sites were able to see and hear the performance as a single show. The project was developed to demonstrate the possibilities of performance on Internet2 networks. Preparation for the event required the collaborative efforts of technical staff at both campuses along with assistance from NYSERNet to ensure this successful debut. The artists and directors also worked over a period of six months staging numerous rehearsals where the artists were in two places at once allowing the producers and collaborators to explore new and meaningful ways in which to uniquely use this new medium.

Museums and Technology

This year's conference for the Association of Art Museums has so many interesting sessions on museum technology and media that it would be hard to choose which one to go to. It even includes some sessions for small museums on how to integrate technology into service delivery. And, of course, a shoestring session.

Muse Awards

The MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE is a Standing Professional Committee of the American Association of Museums. They design sessions at the national conference on technology. They also administrator the Muse awards competition which recognizes outstanding achievement in museum media. Categories include educational topics as well as research databases and two-way communication projects.
Take a look at the
Media and Tech | MUSE Past Winners for some inspiration.

Leonardo's Brain

Michael J. Gelbdoes research on genuis, analyzing the way they think. His "How to Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci" provides a rich source of techniques and inspiration on creative problem-solving techniques. This was one of seven books by experts in creative thinking and problem solving techniques that I scanned for ideas.

Words and chains of words that we use to frame a problem play a significant role in the way we approach problems. When you frame a problem in words, you crystal your thoughts. Words give procession to vague images and feelings. But the first words that come to mind may disrupt your thought process. Here's a great web-based tool, Plumb Design Visual Thesaurus, to assist you with your word play.

Arts Policy

CPANDA: Cultural Policy & the Arts National Data Archive is world's first digital archive of arts and cultural data for researchers, policymakers and journalists. The CPANDA initiative is designed to help policymakers, journalists, scholars and others gain easy access both to current research findings and to previously hard-to-find data on the arts, including public opinion on the arts, city-specific data and recently released statistics.

File Management: Messy Desktop?

A great little tutorial from Bernie Dodge on File Management. What does your desktop look like?

Carp Method

CARP Vs. CRAP Homepage is a little image editing tutorial from Bernie Dodge. Some basics about visual design.

Creative Problem Solving

I'm working on a workshop on structured creative problem-solving techniques. I found this great resource from Directed Creativity, a meta analysis of over 250 creative problem solving techniques. Despite the diversity of tools to support creative thinking, all such tools are based on three simple principles: attention, escape, and movement. To read more: Three Principles Behind All Tools

My Bloginality is ...

My BLOGinality is INTJ! The bloginality site includes a personality test based on the Myers-Briggs test based on Carl Jung's work. According to the test, as an INTJ (Introvert, INtuitive, Thinker, Judger) my personality tends to be: autonomous, aloof, and intellectual; imaginative, innovative, and unique; critical, analytical, and logical; intellectually curious, driven to learn and increase their competence and knowledge; socially cautious and reserved; organized and definitive.

Understanding the different personality types and how to interact with them can be useful tool for technology consultants. It would be a great tool for the in-house IT person, too.

Parent's Guide to the Electronic Playground

What are some specific ways to guide your three-year old at the keyboard?

To find the answer, I followed a few good links from the list of resources described in the entry below. I wasn' surprised to discover that Big Bird and Cookie Monster are geeks. The Sesame Workshop site offered several articles with good advice on this topic for parents. The At-a-Glance Guide to Kids' Best Computer Use connects age appropriate development milestones with specific computer skills. A good place to start!

Developmental Milestone: Begins to develop the fine motor skills needed to control the mouse.

Computer Guiding: Place your hand over your child's and use the mouse together if necessary ("See, when I move the mouse up, the cursor goes up. Let's see if we can tickle the bird with the cursor").

Great List of Links: Preschool Technology

Early Connections - Preschool is a great set links from the Northwest Technology Consortium on integrating technology into the pre-school classroom. According to this site, In the preschool classroom, children and teachers are working on readiness skills and early literacy experiences. Technology can help to support these lessons when used in planned and guided manner.
A great deal of the learning in using a computer at an early age comes from the interaction between the child and the adult, not from the interaction with the computer. Hmm .. so what are some specific ways to guide your three year old at the keyboard?

Turn Your Palm Into A Pacifier

Walter Mossberg's Gadget column was about kid-friendly software for hand-held devices that can occupy restless tykes. The column focused on testing one such software product called Learning Together With Ani. Hmm, I'm not letting Harry touch my treo unless his hands are peanut butter free. Wonder if there is a plam version of kidpix.

Coach Early Learning Products

April Fool's Day

NPR used the April Fool's Day as lead to a story about war jokes, a slippery slope for stand up comics. I'm not in the mood for pranks, jokes, or any other humor.

Well, at least my colleagues in the nonprofit tech community can always get a good laugh at nonprofit sector, including CompassPoint's annual Food for Thought April Fool's Day edition.

And if need some inspiration for April fools day, check out the Museum of Hoaxes.

I remember someone posting a great piece of clip art in 2001 to the Rider's list, "Circuit Riding for Dummies." I had saved it on my hard drive, but can't find it. Drat, the list archives don't go back that far. I did find last year's April Fool's prank from 2002 posted on the Rider's List. However, seems pretty appropriate for 2003.

Meanwhile, time to take a break from this technology stuff and make a Mango Fool to mark the holiday.

Blogspiration

I'm blogging again. It has been a long and dreary winter. I got out of the habit. Good bloggers make posting a daily ritual. It is hard to be a blogger and be a mommy of a three-year old!

In January, 2003, my friend Jon Stahl gave me the gift of this moveable type blog. But, the technology failed to inspire me to pick up my blog habit. At the roundup, as I was riding the escalator, one of the best bloggers in our community said to me, "I'd read your blog if you'd update it."

Feeling a little inspired after Roundup and taking Rifkin's point about "optimizing relationships", I've decided to start blogging again. Jon had even given up on me and deleted my blog! However, he replied to my email with ... "Beth, I recreated you."

Inspired to make a comprehensive list of bloggers who hangout on the Rider's list, I posted a query - "Who's blogging now?" Got only one response from Michelle Murrain who keeps a
personal blog.

Other NPO Techie Bloggers out there include:

Jon Stahl

Michael Gilbert

Carl Coryell-Martin's Roundup Blog