Finally back to Barcelona, being one of the stranded Europeans (new word to me, now too familiar), I’d like to share with you some first impressions. The past week has been a great week for the Museu Picasso.

It began with the interesting Wikipedia –Museums Day which meant for both communities a first approach at such large scale. (I blogged about it, only in Spanish and Catalan). As a direct outcome of our twittering and blogging about it, we received an email from a local wikipedian offering to cooperate and asking about the possibility for a meeting, which of course we are delighted to schedule. And I intend to include some wikipedia monitoring and writing as a practice for our students of the new Postgraduate course about Museum Management that my museum and the University Pompeu Fabra are about to launch next Autumn (more details coming soon).

Meeting Wikipedia-Museums, Denver April 13 2010

After the Wikipedia Encounter, the three intensive days of MW Conference followed (Fotos on flickr). A deluge of good presentations, lively discussions and interactions, some projects in perspective as well. Lots and lots of food for thought (as well as “real” food!). Among the contacts, a few for our brand new Postgraduate course I just mentioned.

At the end of the Conference, double surprise. The good one: the Museu Picasso online community project was awarded with the Best of the Web in the category of Social media!!! We are extremely grateful to MW, to the Jury and, above all, to our audience / users that are the real deservers of the Prize.

Second surprise: the volcano and subsequent cancelled flights. I had my connection in London… On Saturday 17th it was a little stressful, first not knowing how or when we could be back home. To United Airlines I can only say: better watch your info services. When all media and airline companies had informed about cancelled flights, they still kept confirming theirs to London both on their website and on telephone! Once this was settled, and being stranded for a few days, I decided to take the most out of it and, together with also stranded Maria Souza, from Oporto (Portugal), we head to spend those days in New York, from where we’d have our flight back.

These days have proved to be a magnificent opportunity to revisit museums, to have meetings with NY museums (among them the Social media team of MoMA, @MuseumModernArt , thank you, Victor and Allegra!) or the “mobile” meet-up organized by @mia_out for us, stranded, where two museum people, two wikipedians and three designers discussed Wikipedia, mobile interpretation, outsourcing and social media.

With the MoMA Social Media team | Informal meeting on museums and mobile interpretation, NY

To the good memories of MW2010 Conference, I’ll take back with me the nice and unexpected stay in NY, where “stranded Europeans” have been most welcomed! Huge thanks to all NY museums and to @museweb for their support and hospitality.

And… last but not least, the book Twitter for Museums, edited by Museumsetc, was published last week. It contains a chapter where we were offered to explain the @museupicasso experience on Twitter. The chapter can be downloaded for free at http://pea.to/eK.

All in all, due to the Award and to the book, we have been receiving tons of DMs, tweets, RTs and emails. We are immensely grateful to all museum people and @museupicasso friends. More details about MW Conference and other NY museums stuff in other posts to come (asap). Hope to see you soon. All the best.

Conxa Rodà
Project Management
@innova2

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