Author Archives: Max van Balgooy

About Max van Balgooy

President of Engaging Places LLC, a design and strategy firm that connects people to historic places.

KCET Launches Online Neighborhood Field Guides

The Highland Park Field Guide by KCET.

KCET, a public television station based in Los Angeles, has been working for the last few years on Departures, a project designed to engage “community residents, non-profit organizations, schools and students, in the creation and procurement of relevant and relatable content.” Included in this work are a series of online interactive field guides to various neighborhoods in their region, and most recently launched is one on the historic community of Highland Park (which features the Lummis House, Heritage Square, and the Southwest Museum). Given that KCET is one of the major public tv stations in the nation, the field guides are beautifully produced and include lots of video.

According to Kelly Simpson, associate producer of the KCET Departures, “The Highland Park Field Guide was produced in partnership with the Highland Park Heritage Trust and the North Figueroa Association. In six categories (with two more coming soon) we feature fun, informative and adventurous activities for Continue reading →

Renting an Academic Research Article Now Possible

Conducting scholarly research has become much easier thanks to DeepDyve, a company that makes “authoritative information more affordable and accessible to users who are unaffiliated with a college or university and therefore lack easy and affordable access to scholarly sources of information.” They’re a Netflix for academic journals.

If you’re like me, access to journals is nearly impossible unless you have access to something like JStor–an incredibly expensive option for occasional use (although JStor may soon be improving access for individuals). DeepDyve allows you to search for articles in one place and if you find what you’re seeking, provides two options: rent or purchase. Renting gives you read-only access (no printing or downloading allowed) for a low cost. If you want to print or save it, you can purchase a pdf copy. If you want to investigate it, they’ve made it easier by providing a 14-day free trial.

Among the journals they currently list that might be of interest to those working with historic places are: Continue reading →

Field Trip: Homestead Museum in California

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Last week I had a chance to visit with my colleagues at the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum in the City of Industry, California. I was the assistant director there a decade ago and it continues to be a special place to me (if you haven’t visited, it has great architecture and a great story). After a generous lunch with the staff, director Karen Graham Wade and some of her staff took me to see the Workman House, the earliest house on the site. It’s undergoing extensive interior rehabilitation to make it more suitable and attractive as an exhibit gallery. It’s part of a major effort to respond to the changing interests of their visitors by increasing the self-guided experiences. They are also reducing the number of days per week the Homestead Museum will be open for walk-in public tours and increasing the number of days they’ll be open for tours by appointment and for other activities. At La Casa Nueva, the second house on site, they are Continue reading →

A Six-Stage Strategy for Engaging People

Engaging people is one of the primary responsibilities of an historic site, although we might call it membership, attendance, advocacy, support, fundraising, or “resources development” (yup, that’s what it was called at one place I worked). Expanding and growing engagement is usually focused on direct and simple efforts, such as working on individuals to give increasingly greater sums or putting out more announcements to increase attendance. Results are usually sporadic, rough, and unpredictable.

Engagement Pyramid by Gideon Rosenblatt.

I recently learned of a thoughtful strategy from Gideon Rosenblatt, the former executive director of Groundwire, a company that helps environmental organizations connect, inspire, and mobilize their communities. He lays out engagement in a spectrum of six stages from Observers to Leaders and each has a decreasing number of people involved. This is best illustrated as a pyramid, with the large group of Observers at the bottom and the small group of Leaders at the top. He’s found that each group has a specific mindset and communication preference, and therefore, organizations can effectively engage Continue reading →

A Great Conference for Historic Sites Coming Up in April

The Organization of American Historians and the National Council on Public History are combining their annual meetings this year and this double-header is creating a really interesting conference for people who are working to preserve and interpret historic places. Here are just a few sessions that caught my eye (and just a few–there are more than 200 sessions offered over five days):

Museum and Makers: Intersections of Public History and Technology Buffs from Steam Trains to Steampunk
Museums, Historic Sites, and the University: Public History Projects and Partnerships in the American Indian Great Lakes
The Witness Tree Project: Using Historic Landscapes to Explore History and Memory
Toward a Reinterpretation of the Indian Wars at National Historic Sites and Parks
Closing Up Shop: Strategies for Partners and Communities When Historic Sites Close Continue reading →

HBR: If People Are Your Most Valuable Asset, Do You Show It?

The January/February 2012 issue of the Harvard Business Review includes an article on building a team in which author Kevin Ryan, CEO of Gilt Groupe, argues that businesses succeed not because of ideas, but because of its people:

Execution is what matters, and execution relies on human talent. Every company thinks it’s doing a good job of managing its people. They all say, “People are our most important asset.” But most companies don’t act that way. Here’s a simple test: Ask the CEO if he or she spends more time on recruiting and managing people than on any other activity. For me, the answer has always been yes.

He admits this situation can only apply to organizations with more than 50 people because in smaller organizations the CEO has to tackle lots of other important issues to succeed. But Ryan does offer many other provocative approaches for finding and retaining great employees and you’ll want to read the article if you’re an executive director, manager, or boardmember. Here are some highlights:

Some managers prefer that executives check with them before talking with their people. That’s not going to happen here. Continue reading →

Associate Architect Elizabeth Milnarik departs National Trust

Former Associate Architect for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Elizabeth Milnarik has recently left her position to pursue other opportunities in historic building preservation and research. During her tenure at the Trust, Elizabeth gained tremendous experience in the technical aspects of preserving the Trust’s extremely diverse historic structures, varying from a structural and visitor impact study of Charleston’s Drayton Hall (1738), to an invasive investigation into corrosion issues at Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House (1951) in Plano, Illinois. A licensed architect, Elizabeth earned her M. Arch from the University of Illinois and received a doctorate in architectural history from the University of Virginia. In addition to her duties as architect, Elizabeth has also lectured widely on the architectural history of the Trust sites, on American residential architecture, and particularly on the history of public housing in America. She can now be reached at emilnarik@yahoo.com.

Welcoming New Members: Examples from the Field

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

As part of my year-end giving, I decided to join four different history organizations (one historic site, three historic preservation organizations). I support the mission of every organization I joined–there’s no attempt to embarrass them here–but I also wanted to see how a new member and unsolicited gift was received. In this tight economy, every organization seems to placing a great emphasis on growing membership and support, so it’s useful to learn what others are doing. Admittedly, this is just a limited experiment, but for each one I downloaded their membership forms from their websites, filled it out, and then sent it in with a check for the basic individual membership level all on the same day in mid December. So far, I received responses from three of the four organizations (and they arrived about a day apart) and here’s how they compared: Continue reading →