Reflections on CAM

This morning Aimee and I shared our highlights from the California Association of Museums Conference which we attended in March 3-5, 2010. The theme of this annual meeting was Reflect on Tech, a topic which is near and dear to Zeum's collective heart.

Aimee and I began the conversation by demonstrating how several local museums are utilizing new media to make their collections more accessible, interactive, and engaging for a 2.0 audience.

Aimee shared how the Smithsonian Latino Center used Second Life to create an immersive online environment for visitors to interact with their collection and tell their stories. She also shared how museums are using mobile devices to solicit donations and encourage repeat visitorship through the use of such sites like MobligGiving.org.

I shared a few session which featured multitouch devices including the California Science Center which partnered with NASA to create Mars Mission games using the Microsoft Surface. As well as institution like the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles where exhibits developers created a custom 6x6' multitouch screen in their shop rather than pay $10,000 for an out-of-the-box product.

This idea of developers creating their own custom projects from start to finish truly inspired us. We thought "how could would it Zeum were a place for this type of innovation to take place, and better yet, what if this innovation was driven by our community!" This is where the concept of the Community Prototyping Lab was born.

From this initial idea, we shared three posible exhibits and asked for feedback on each. Here's what we got!

1) Community Prototyping Lab: Collaboration between artists, community members, and youth to create new exhibits.

Pros - appealing to 3-5 year olds, hands-on physical process, broader audience, funding, new offerings (members), creates "stake holders" out of participants, resources ($ and political coverage), fully collaborative experience!, achieves Zeum's mission

Cons - not appealing to 3-5 year olds, too broad, geared towards conceptual, too chaotic, too much input, who is spearheading this process? creates hierarchy - who makes the decisions?

2) Creative Design Studio: Artists/developers showcase prototypes alongside hands-on activities and opportunities to give feedback from visitors.

Pros: builds audience, creates impression of impact on broader culture as emergent tech developers, opening the museum up to students, emerging and established new media artists, link w/ local educational institutions

Cons: traffic flow, how do we know if projects are appropriate?, don't want the world of artists, etc. to outshine the kids, how is it funded?, possibly not kid friendly

3) Zeum Design Challenge: Real-world design challenges solved by visitors through creativity, communication, and collaboration.

Pros: on-site problem solving, member return rates, consistent facilitated workspace, community partnerships, help with outreach efforts, generate press coverage, more inclined to position Zeum as a thought leader, incentive for members, generate revenue/funding, world audience, very "Bay Area"

Cons: won't generate audience, real world problems change frequently have to constantly refresh, getting people to participate, vague, can't be open-ended

Finally, we asked folks to fill out a Exhibit Criteria Matrix through which everyone got a chance to rate the ideas based on: their ability to grow audience, generate revenue, generate funding, enhance visitor experience, make a community impact, appeal to 3-5 year olds, drive media coverage, and position Zeum as a thought leader...

And the results are.....

Creative Community Lab: 31 (out of 40 possible points)
Creative Design Studio: 29 (out of 40 possible points)
Zeum Design Challenge: 32 (out of 40 possible points)

Wow, what a tight race! Thank you all for your thoughtful feedback, ideas and critical questions! These are going to make a HUGE impact as we continue to plan our exhibits and programs for Zeum's future!

Please use this space to comment, share, and post other links or examples of new media which might be useful!

Here's to another inspirational Brown Bag!
Irina