For a session titled “The Places and Stories that Matter”, chaired by Joan Saverino, Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s Assistant Director of Education, Matthew will discuss the technological challenges and innovative solutions involved in designing the PhilaPlace website. He’ll be joined by Minda Borun, Director of Research and Evaluation for The Franklin Institute and Marci Reaven, the Managing Director of City Lore.

At the panel discussion “Museum as Platform: Envisioning Visitors as Creators & Contributors”, Matthew will discuss common themes and best practices for producing participatory Web 2.0 and social media projects. He’ll cover how to motivate visitors to contribute and how museums can use Web 2.0 technologies to create sustainable, ongoing dialogues with their audiences. Danielle Rice, Executive Director of the Delaware Art Museum will chair the panel discussion. Additional panelists will include Effie Kapsalis, Senior Digital Producer at the Smithsonian Photography Institute and Bill Adair, Director of the Heritage Philadelphia Program for The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Registration for the 2009 AAM Annual Meeting is now open.

BarCamp is an “un-conference” – for the people, by the people. This burgeoning movement is an alternative to conferences that often fall short of the actual needs of the community. So, what is BarCamp all about? The simple answer is – whatever the attendees want it to be; topics are chosen and voted up or down by the community the morning of the event. The BarCamp Wiki is an excellent resource for more information on the resounding success these events have had around the world.

This weekend, BarCamp Philly will kick off from 7 to 10 pm on Friday, November 7th with a Pre-Party hosted by P’unk Ave in the Bella Vista Section of the city. The un-conference will start at 8 am on November 8th at the University of The Arts in Center City Philadelphia. More information regarding logistics and festivities can be found in the Where & When section of the BarCamp Philly site. Whether you go to speak, or just to listen, BarCamp Philly has a lot to offer, namely a community of people who seek to make a difference in this city and beyond.

• National Museum of American History: Set to reopen on November 21st 2008 after a major facelift, NMAH began blogging about their renovation in July 2008, giving their fans, press contacts, and supporters an inside peak at the renovation process, as well as a place to highlight NMAH publicity coups (such as a spot on The Colbert Report), and sneak peaks at what the museum will look like when it is completed. The blog is produced by the NMAH New Media team, including New Media Director, Matthew MacArthur, New Media Project Manager Dana Allen-Greil, the New Media Assistant Dan Hoerr.

By keeping the audience updated, NMAH has tapped into a new way to build excitement and ensure they remain part of the “current conversation” during their closed door phase.

• National Museum of American Jewish History: The new museum won’t even open until 2010, but it’s already reaching out to future visitors with a Museum Cam and their blog, Shaping Space, Making Meaning. The Museum Cam uploads pictures of the construction site every 15 minutes, giving visitors a view of the museum’s progress from anywhere in the world. Meanwhile, the blog offers insights into how a museum creates a major exhibition, invites visitors to give their feedback and share opinions prior to the museum’s opening, and uses current events and debates to help reach a broader audience of future visitors and potential supporters.

Being "under construction" doesn’t have to put you out of touch with your audiences. In fact, by opening up the process through a blog, it can offer fresh new opportunities to talk directly to supporters and reach new audiences.

In addition to taking on a new moniker (“The Franklin”) the rebranding efforts included a new web portal that hammers home the campaign’s tagline, “Curious?”.

The portal is beautifully designed. By using elements of nostalgia framed with tech appeal – a period piece mannequin with stop motion animation, a slide projector with flash movies – The Franklin has created an experiential and engaging web presence.

More importantly, though, is the way the “Curious?” portal manages to put the focus on the visitor – and not the museum (notice that there are no images of the museum featured.) This shift allows The Franklin to successfully establish a new public face as the place for anyone who takes wonder in the world, and goes along way toward broadening its appeal to a wider (and younger) audience … because who doesn’t like to think of themselves as “Curious?”

Hosted by The Franklin Institute, The Association of Science-Technology Centers’ 2008 Annual Conference theme is “Science Centers at the Crossroads of Science and Culture.” The conference will engage more than 1,900 science center professionals to explore their responsibilities to scientific and public constituencies. Topics will include inspiring interest in science education and the impact of web 2.0 on science centers.

Washington, DC’s newest museum, the Newseum, brings visitors an array of compelling artifacts and activities centered around the news, presented through the newest technologies. Billed as “the world’s most interactive museum”, it employs a range of engaging activities, among them the interactive Ethics Table.

This innovative table is actually a unique version of a Dialog Table, which uses gesture-recognition as the basis of interaction. The Newseum’s Ethics Table uses virtual characters to prompt visitors to think critically about the ethics behind how information is collected and presented.

A Dialog Table can be an effective platform for presenting all kinds of compelling content. While the technology may be complex, the idea is simple – bring people together and get them talking, debating and playing around this digital-age roundtable.

Night Kitchen Interactive is currently partnering with the University of Michigan Museum of Art to produce a series of short films for a Dialog Table to be featured in the museum’s re-opening in early 2009. Our blog post The UMMA Dialogtable: Rich-media Storytelling previews the project a bit.

It’s no stretch connecting these points about McCain to my prior post on how museums can benefit from visitor-contributions: tagging, sharing, surfing and digitally organizing information is the reality of how we experience the world today. These activities are not just a convenience, or a pastime, and they certainly aren’t a passing trend. To ignore this fact is to risk being dramatically out of touch with your audience.

Yet being web 2.0 literate isn’t just about keeping up appearances, either. Barack Obama’s campaign has put technology to work to tap into new audiences at an exponential rate. Listen to this NPR report for just one example of his campaign’s use of text messaging.

For even more about how the presidential candidates are using the web – and being affected by it – check out the Personal Democracy Forum’s blog, techPresident.

Being cyber savvy may not be the key to the presidency. But it is definitely an important aspect of understanding how your audience experiences its world – and it provides a whole new sea of connections just waiting to be made.

To meet these goals, Night Kitchen Interactive is integrating one of the world’s leading open-source content management systems, Drupal, with the leading social networking platform, Ning. This unique combination will allow DVIN to easily manage site content and foster a community that embodies the principles of collaboration, innovation, participation, and inclusiveness.