Maintaining Your Entreprenuerial Edge

The people who work in historic sites and house museums are often among the most entrepreneurial I’ve encountered, mostly because circumstances force them to be risky, resourceful, creative, and innovative.  Working with a tight budget and a reliance on volunteers to change the world (or at least their community), they are continually looking for new ways to succeed.  The trick is how to do it without getting overextended, derailed by interruptions, and staying in a rut.  In the Daily Muse, Adelaide Lancaster recently shared Three Bad Habits of Entrepreneurs and How to Break Them to attain these goals:

  1. To have a clearer head. At any given time, you should have only a few main areas of focus—no more than three a quarter. Other initiatives must be declared a secondary priority, and projects or “opportunities” unrelated to your business goals must be declined. [A focus on a few things done well rather than many things done poorly seems to Continue reading →

Flat Stanley Goes Mobile; Will He Visit Your Site?

Flat Stanley with Suzie Boss in India. From Edutopia.org.

“Flat Stanley,” the elementary school activity that’s designed to get students to explore places around the world, has moved from a paper-cutout to a clever smartphone application.  He can now be integrated into a phone’s camera to be part of photos taken in places visited by children–the result of some clever computer programming and a legal agreement with the estate of the author.  Read more at Suzie Boss’ blog at Edutopia.org.

Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission names James M. Vaughan as Executive Director

Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) Chairman Andrew E. Masich today announced that James M. Vaughan of Washington, D.C. has been appointed as the agency’s new executive director, effective November 28, 2011.

Vaughan most recently served as Vice President, Stewardship of Historic Sites for the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington, D.C., where he Continue reading →

Apps Students Want

Artist's rendition of "The Past Speaks to Us" mobile app. From THE Journal.

Project Tomorrow asked students from kindergarten through high school to imagine their ideal mobile app for learning.  They received more than 200,000 responses and T.H.E. Journal highlighted fifteen of them that could transform student learning and take advantage of this budding technology in their November/December 2011 issue.  For museums and historic sites, here are the ones with most potential (as well as what’s happening currently in the field):

  • The Real Thing.  Suggested by a sixth grader in California:  “Some students have a hard time with subjects but they don’t want to ask teachers.  This app would let them watch videos or talk to real professionals about the subjects they are learning in school.”  Some institutions are already offering YouTube videos like this to explain the job of a curator or an expert’s view on a topic.
  • iMu-see-’em.  Suggested by an eighth grader in New Jersey:  “This app is at once a virtual planner, information database, and textbook archives.  It includes a three-dimensional model viewer for referencing subjects, like Continue reading →

Should Historic Sites Become Social Entrepreneurs?

Historic sites and house museums are increasingly being encouraged to think as much about the revenue as they do expenses, as much about profit as they do mission.  It’s often hard for non-profit organizations to embrace this movement–many are still stinging from the years when “business thinking” and MBAs were all the rage in the executive office.  Certainly economic sustainability is a goal (if we go out of business, who will do our good work?) but it doesn’t seem the usual models coming out of business schools is appropriate.  Perhaps it’s time to recognize that another model can be followed, one that combines mission and money along with a new set of performance measures.

“Social Entrepreneurship” and “For Benefit Corporations” may offer a new approach to managing historic sites, although it’s actually not that new.  It’s been around since the 1970s and one social entrepreneur–Muhammad Yunus for his microlending program through Grameen Bank–has received a Nobel Peace Prize.  In “Social Entrepreneurship and the Next Generation of Giving,” the Washington Post provides the latest summary of this type of organization as well as some advice:

  • Get the Right People Working on the Right Team:  “To drive a social innovation to scale, it takes Continue reading →

What’s Next in the Social Media Revolution?

"What's Next for Social Media" Forum at the National Archives.

The National Archives brought together a diverse panel of practitioners and critics of social media to discuss some of the challenges and opportunities for communication with the public in, “What’s Next in the Social Media Revolution?” at its Seventh Annual William G. McGowan Forum on Communications on Friday, November 4.  A really informative (and free!) evening and for historic sites there were these particularly useful insights and recommendations:

  • Social media is not just for socializing, but can inform and motivate. Alex Howard, the Government 2.0 Correspondent for O’Reilly Media, provided a quick history of social media noting that many of them are very new (Flickr, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg launched in 2004; YouTube and Twitter in 2006) but the turning point was the Iran elections in 2009, which showed that the use of social media could have tremendous impacts on society.  My advice:  your organization may not have the capacity to use social media actively right now, but Continue reading →

Teaching History Through Inquiry

If you’ve ever worked with students, you know that lectures and PointPoint presentations are a sure way to kill any interest in history or historic places. In Teaching History Through Inquiry, Stephen Lazar, a social studies teacher at the Academy for Young Writers in Brooklyn, lists six ways he engages high school students to provide cultural literacy and help them develop as critical thinkers:

  1. Carefully craft your questions.
  2. Engage students in examining evidence.
  3. Move on to more nuanced questions.
  4. Navigate myths with the inquiry approach.
  5. Identify helpful resources.
  6. Prepare critical thinkers.

You can find details of each of these points at TeacherMagazine.org, which is making this premium article available for free.  But let me add another point:

7.  Engage with the real thing:  use original documents, visit historic sites, look at objects, and examine historical photographs and maps.  Those experiences bring mind and eye (and perhaps heart) together in a way that’s not possible in textbooks and classrooms.

National Archives to Launch Dashboard to Engage Users

Pamela Wright of the National Archives describes the forthcoming Citizen Archivist Dashboard.

At the Seventh Annual William G. McGowan Forum on Communications on November 4, the National Archives previewed their Citizen Archivist Dashboard, a single place where users can actively participate in the work of the institution (the Archivist of the United States debuted it earlier in his blog). Pamela Wright, Chief Digital Access Strategist at the National Archives, stated that this would be a way to develop deeper levels of engagement with its users beyond the basic performance measures of “likes” and “followers”. Scheduled to launch in December, it will use crowd-sourcing strategies to improve access and understanding of its enormous collections by allowing visitors to: Continue reading →

Claim Your Space on Google+ Pages

Yesterday, Google launched Google+ Pages worldwide, which expands their network from people to places.  Now historic sites, museums, galleries, organizations,  associations, and even advocacy campaigns can have a Page in Google+.  It’s similar to Facebook, but you have access to such Google+ features as:

  • email distribution lists (called Circles), which can help you build special interest groups around your collections or programs
  • group video chats (called Hangouts), which can help you hold meetings for up to 9 people
  • sending text messages as a group chat (called Messenger), handy if you’re coordinating a large event and need to communicate with everyone quickly.

Likewise, your members, users, and supporters will be able to more easily connect with you by adding you to their Circles, plus they can recommend your content on Google Search.

A number of pages are already available (Save the Children, Anderson Cooper 360, The All-American Rejects), but any organization will be able to join the community at plus.google.com/pages/create.  I’ve just created a Google+ Page for Engaging Places, but it’ll be fairly quiet until I better understand the possibilities (but I wanted to reserve my name before someone else takes it).

Upcoming Free Webinars for Historic Sites

The American Association for State and Local History is offering three free webinars that will particularly interest historic sites:  storytelling, interpretive planning, and engaging new audiences.  Thanks to an IMLS 21st Century Museum Professionals grant, webinar participation is free and open to staff, volunteers, board members of history organizations and anyone else interested in learning more about visitor engagement.  You can register for one, two, or all three!

Telling a Good Story

  • November 17, 2011
  • 2-3:15 pm Eastern
  • A good guided tour is a good story, told well, says guest speaker Linda Norris. Join us to explore telling stories to create Continue reading →