1st October 2012

Questions and answers to curators: Ask a Curator 2012

On the 19th September we held the second edition of Ask a Curator. This international initiative emerged two years ago from Sumo, and it has a very simple aim and at the same time very effective: people from all over the world ask a question, and the museums and the curators answer.  And all of this through Twitter under the hashtag #askacurator that in this edition once again ended up being a trending topic!

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25th November 2011

Seminar on Social Networks and Museums at the Museo Picasso in Malaga: 40 tweets I should have written

On behalf of the Museu Picasso I was invited to present our 2.0 experience at the seminar Social Networks and Museums: Reputation and credibility on the net, organized by the Museo Picasso Malaga and the UNIA, on 17 and 18 November. Bringing together experts on communication, museums, journalists and marketing people, the workshops were not about whether or not museums should have a 2.0 presence, but how. In keeping the issues being discussed, the sessions were streamed live and produced a lot of follow-up activity on Twitter.

I’m not really an active Twitter user — I’ve mostly followed the tweets after the fact — but when I got back to Barcelona and saw the amount of information and exchanges that have been generated around the seminar, I felt that I was missing something: a conversation and an exchange of views had been going on and I hadn’t taken part on it. And that’s just what can happen to us, both professionally and personally, if we don’t make the effort to incorporate the social media into our everyday lives.

So, now I’m going to attempt a little Twitter essay and write — after the event — the tweets I should have written in Malaga. Here they are, the 40 tweets I should/could have written. Read more »

10th May 2011

Museums and the Web in 10 Flashes / 1

In the process of sedimenting the contents of the conference a fair number of summaries and reflections, most of them in English, have been appearing in blogs. There is so much to Museums and the Web that each of us can only highlight some of the aspects and links that we find particularly relevant. Allow me to present my selection. At the end you will find links to others. As every year, all of the papers and presentations are accessible online.

1. Alignment of the intervention in networks and on mobiles with the mission and goals of the institution
2. Integrated digital strategy
3. 25 concepts and actions
4. Planning of multiplatforms and multichannels from the outset
5. Social networks and organizational change: cause or effect?
6. Mobile in the centre of user-oriented museums
7. Selected statements
8. ‘Best of the Web’ awards
9. Statistics
10. Networking / socializing

Today we will discuss the top 5 and in another post the rest. Read more »

8th March 2011

Picasso 2.0 Under the Microscope: Findings of a Master’s Project

It is with great pleasure that we publish the article and the project on Picasso 2.0, the research subject we proposed to Jacqueline for her final thesis for her Master’s. Our proposal was in two parts: the first was a kind of ‘audit’ o the museum’s presence on the social networks and the second was to suggest ways of improving it. The results went far beyond our expectations. And, quite rightly, the committee awarded the thesis its highest mark.
Thanks, Jacqueline, for the great work — and congratulations!

Conxa Rodà

A few months ago I did the practice placement of my Master’s in Cultural Heritage Management at the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, combining my time there with the preparation of my final project, ‘A Museum without Walls. Towards a more dynamic Museu Picasso Barcelona through the web 2.0 .’ Read more »

30th December 2010

2010 of the Picasso Museum in 21 images

By making a choice of the most representative images of the work we have done in the museum this year that is coming to a close, we ourselves have been able to visualise the reach and quantity of the projects in which the whole team has been working! With a relatively small team a lot of work has been carried out.  Whether it has been good or not is up to you to decide.  The rate of participation in the multiple activities organised, plus the more than one million visitors we have received, plus some awards indicate that we are heading in the right direction, but we still have to do more and better.  Your comments and criticisms help us to improve so that the museum becomes a space of more and more knowledge open to debate and participation.

[click on the images to enlarge]

1 2

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10th December 2010

Museums and Social Media in Portugal: rapport of a conference

On the 11th and 12th of November 2010 the Museu de Portimão, in southern Portugal, hosted a Conference of Users of Technological Applications for the Cultural Heritage. The Conference included a workshop on Museums & Social Media at which the Museu Picasso was invited to make a presentation.

Museums 2.0 Conference | The exterior of the Portimão Museum, a former canning factory

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30th April 2010

From mw attendant to stranded European: an exciting journey Denver-NY-Barcelona

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). Read more »

22nd April 2010

The Museu Picasso wins a Best of the Web 2010 award for the most innovative social networks project

This post was going to be a report on and assessment of Museums and the Web 2010, the annual MW conference held in Denver, Colorado, from 13 to 17 April, about which Conxa already advanced some information in her previous post. The conference brought together over 600 specialists from around the world to consider issues such as the uses and design of culture websites, the management of online collections, the construction of social networks in 2.0 environments and mobile multimedia resources for cultural institutions.

That’s what this post was going to be, but something happened at the conference which made us decide to change the focus slightly — something we are very excited about: the Museu Picasso won the award for the best work in the social media! Read more »

12th April 2010

The Picasso at the Museums and the Web Conference

For the third year running the Museu Picasso will be taking part this week (in Denver this time round) in the top-level international M&W conference, a real generator of knowledge and ideas about interactive museography, digital communication, mobile applications for museums, social media, the creation of content by the public and a host of related subjects.

In 2008 we ran a session at the Usability Lab presenting the then just revamped Picasso website. In 2009 we were asked to be part of the International Program Committee, which is responsible for, among other things, assessing and orienting the review of papers to be presented at the conference. And as we were going to be in Indianapolis, we decided to make a CRIT Room presentation of some of the improvements we made to the site in its first year of operation. This was an excellent way of publicizing the site — we even found comments on a blog from Sweden — and to cap it all we were given a prize for one of the best posts on the conference’s blog. You can read a report of MW2009 in Patrimoni Gencat blog. Read more »

3rd March 2010

The Picasso Museum on Twitter @museupicasso

Yes!!!  We have finally joined Twitter, the social network that we needed to complete the first phase of  our Social Media presence, launched in May 2009. Some of you are maybe wondering, but, weren’t you already on Twitter? And others may ask why weren’t you? Or even , why are you now?

I have answers for all these questions (sort of). The first one is a clear No. And there were several  reasons for that. First, to start small and grow from there. We opened this blog and profiles on Facebook, Delicious, Flickr, Youtube and Slideshare. The most time-demanding for us are the blog and Facebook. Twitter is tricky; it may seem that to post a short message now and then is not much time-consuming. Read more »