23rd December 2011

My experience in California after the Museum Management postgrad

After completing the Postgraduate course in Museum Management: how to make a museum work, run by the Museu Picasso and IDEC-UPF, I did my postgraduate practice in the Museu Picasso. During the four months I was there my work focused on studying the museum in its environment, in relation to the surrounding neighbourhoods, in the context of Ciutat Vella as a district with a lot of history, which conditions its cultural present. This search for information reflected the museum’s commitment to developing a strategy that embraces policies of proximity and the importance of working with the local community around it.

Yerba Buena Family Day:  Children’s Creativity Museum, MOAD Read more »

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 »

21st April 2011

The Museums are going Mobile / 2. Notes from #mw2011

Just as Social Media were the key theme of the 2010 conference, at Museums and the Web 2011 the main topic was Mobile. A lot of sessions, workshops and debates were devoted to it and it was present in many of the stands and conversations. We even had a Mobile Parade! Here we will focus on the Mobile Strategies in Museums workshop run by Nancy Proctor, Head of Mobile Strategy & Initiatives at the Smithsonian Institution, and some of the tips from the Crit Mobile Room.

Image from http://www.museumapp.nl

Read more »

24th March 2011

Museums and Wikipedia: towards a necessary cooperation

“It is not logical for the museums and Wikipedia to look at each other with mistrust as if they were enemies, because in reality they do a very similar job and are aimed at the same people, it’s just that they work in different ways.  The best thing for both communities is to work together so as to construct a proactive relationship that generates mutual benefits without detracting from their principles”. These words of Liam Wyatt reflect very well the spirit of the first meeting between the Catalan museums and Wikipedia representatives. The overall balance of the day was very positive: more than 100 professionals from museums and documentation centres from all over Catalonia actively participated in the different talks and discussions that were held throughout the day.  There was a feeling of great interest to know how this popular digital encyclopedia works and to explore ways that could help to spread the task being carried out by museums and cultural institutions.

The conference hall of the Picasso Museum full to the brim with professionals of museums from all over Catalonia

Read more »

31st January 2011

The catalogue of the Museu Picasso library is now online!

This announcement of the launch of the online Museum library catalogue will probably come as a surprise to many of you, and some of you may even have the feeling that you have already consulted it. The fact is that our regular users have previously had access to the physical catalogue in situ, in the Museum’s public consultation space, but what we are presenting here is the online catalogue, available on the Internet.

Read more »

1st December 2010

Museums face the challenge of the global audience

The conference Museums and the Web, which we have talked about on a number of occasions, is a privileged platform on which to discuss the use of the Internet and the new technologies in publicizing museums and their collections. The Museu Picasso took part in the conference for the first time in 2008, when we presented our new website, and since 2009 we have had a place on the International Program Committee. Thanks to this connection, we recently welcomed to the Museum two of the conference directors, David Bearman and Jennifer Trant, who came to give a talk on ‘Reaching a Global Audience. Engaging the Local Visitor’. This session, along with the talk and workshop given here by Nina Simon just a few days earlier, afforded museum professionals in Catalonia a wide-ranging first-hand vision of the most innovative developments worldwide in the field of participation and museums 2.0. Read more »

15th November 2010

Cultural Diffusion, Participation and the New Technologies

In this last couple of weeks I have attended two very interesting seminars which drew attention to the need to rethink the methods of disseminating culture in today’s society. What is art? What is communication? How is culture disseminated? Where is the boundary and how is that information transmitted: these were the subjects reflected on at the 3rd Conference on Innovation and Cultural Dissemination at the CCCB and the Digital Discussion: Key Aspects for Successfully Innovating and Internationalizing the Audio-visual Sector at Barcelona Activa.

At the CCCB the focus of the talks, as Juan Insua made clear in his introduction, was on the paradigm of innovation in the field of culture: going beyond a static culture in art, this proposes a participatory approach in which the users interact with culture, making it more accessible and therefore closer to people’s interests and concerns. Emphasis was placed on the importance of cultural institutions embracing the role of mediator between culture and its users in order to democratize it and make it more social and in this way emulate existing cultural networks. Read more »

20th July 2010

Discussing Wikipedia & Museums at the Picasso in Barcelona

Do you remember my remarks about the Museums & the Web conference? Well, we’ve just had an informal mini Wikimedia session here in Barcelona. This was prompted by the happy coincidence of three factors: the arrival of Liam Wyatt, who has just concluded his stint as Wikipedian-in-Residence at the British Museum, the growing interest of local museums in what is a real outreach phenomenon, and the dynamism of the Wikipedia community of Catalonia (Vikipèdia). Read more »

9th June 2010

Has it really been a year? The Museu Picasso’s 2.0 progress

It really feels like just a few days ago that we started this blog and the museum’s active presence on social media, but — believe it or not! — we’ve just had our first anniversary! To celebrate, we opened the doors of the museum to the online community one Monday, which is the day of the week we are closed to the public, to give our visitors the special privilege of having the place to themselves. Read more »