The Smithsonian 2.0 meeting is a great success and building up a lot of energy. Right now, I'm thinking what next?
Quick thought: the Smithsonian needs to hold quicker, shorter, and cheaper versions of this on a regular basis, think Foo Camp, Bar Camp, etc.!
Get 10 or so highly connected social networkers at the Smithsonian for a few days and have SI staff to the "Web & New Media Fair" to expose them to our cool projects. Grab those highly networked people in various specialities and let them loose to Twitter, blog, and get leverage of people with vast 2nd and 3rd degree connections (go play with Twinfluence: http://twinfluence.com/)
(photo above: Clay Shirky infront of the Smithsonian Flickr Commons tag cloud)
Martin, if this is going to work we need to bring in our content creators as well: our curators.
While there may be curators who look at the net as a platform for conveying their work, the vast majority still get their kudos from publishing via conventional media (i.e. books, catalogues). We need to bring these people into the process and make it attractive for them to work with us new media SI folk and engage the public in these new ways.
Our museum directors and senior Smithsonian staff can help us here by encouraging our curators to learn more about social/new media and how it can shape their work and enlarge their audiences.
Posted by: Jeff | January 24, 2009 at 06:05 PM
It would also help to bring in SI's public relations people. They should be promoting all the innovative things SI is doing and is about to do! And, they should be using these media as part of their promotional strategy.
Posted by: Diane | January 25, 2009 at 04:56 PM
Exactly, the curators/content providers would be working with SI staff ahead of time and then we could have THEM presenting these great projects to the "digerati".
I think your spot on in that management need to reward "new media publication" and user engagement as they've been rewarded for print publications.
Posted by: Martin | January 25, 2009 at 05:02 PM
Agree with everything stated above. We need to help the curators that may be resistant to these new mediums to better understand their potential use case and value. I think doing smaller and more focused camps on a regular basis is an excellent idea!
Being a NoVA resident, I would be happy to help as needed.
-Chris Melissinos
Posted by: CMelissinos | January 26, 2009 at 04:33 PM
A wonderful opportunity is coming to Washington DC this summer: NECC 2009, the largest educational computing conference in the country. At the National Educational Computing Conference, the SI community will be able to explore how technology is being used today in schools and colleges and what exiting new directions are being researched in Colleges of Education. All of the technologies touted in the SI 2.0 conference have been adopted by visionary educators for years, and this is the place to see these efforts showcased. I recommend that part of our "what next" action plan should be "devour NECC." Check it out at http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2009/
Posted by: Mark Christal | January 27, 2009 at 04:17 PM