Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Museum 2.0 Turns 1/2!


Well, folks, we've reached that point. Museum 2.0 was launched on November 2, 2006, after a rousing experience at ASTC when the words "wiki" and "2.0" were tossed around more often than free pens and chocolate.

I've been tracking the blog with Google Analytics for the past five months, and it's had 5,062 total visitors, 8,337 total pageviews, and 3,236 unique visitors. This blog has been linked to 94 times by 58 blogs.

The top posts by viewing are: Why You Should Use Flickr, What is Twitter, Really?, Hierarchy of Social Participation, and Institutional Blogs: Different Voices, Different Views

The top posts by comments are: Warning: Graduate School Spawns Legions of Zombies!, Best Practices in Innovation from the Tech World, and What's My Score?: Gaming in Museums

And a few of my favorites you might have missed are: Better by the Dozen? Exhibits that Require Multiple People, Mapping Experiences: Rethinking Wayfinding in Museums, Issues Exhibitions: Questions as a Basis for Design, and Professional Associations that Don't Suck

I think it's interesting that the most viewed (and linked) posts are about technology, but the most commented-upon posts are about the museum field. My guess is that reflects the difference between some of the gamer/tech users of this blog, who are probably using a high volume of blogs regularly, and the museum folks, who are most passionate about things that affect their own lives and work. I'm not planning to take the blog down a more tech path to attract more readers; I'm most interested in supporting a core community of museum designers and innovators.

Towards that end, some planned additions in the near future include a regular series on projects that display innovation in museums, guest posts from professionals, experts, and visionaries, and opportunities for blog users to collaborate on user-generated content projects. As some of you know, I am leaving the Spy Museum in the beginning of June and am looking forward to taking myself and Museum 2.0 on some wild adventures from coast to coast.


But today we're talking what's already happened. Please help me celebrate these past six months. If you enjoy this blog, consider recommending it to a friend or colleague. Click through the tag cloud and find a post you might have missed. If there is any content or features you'd like to see more (or less) of, leave a comment. This has been a great learning and relationship-building experience for me; I hope it has been positive for you, too.

8 comments, add yours!:

Lynn Bethke said...

Congratulations on your half blog birthday!

Unknown said...

Congrats, and happy half birthday. I'm glad to see you don't plan to go the route of tech/museum blog. I value the Museum aspect of the blog, having just entered the field from a long stint in the tech field.

Chris Larry said...

Thanks for the great work, your blog has been an inspiration and a joy for me as a tech head, a museum proffesional and a blogger. Keep up the good work, we here at the New York Hall of Science's "Ed Tech Reststop" read you regularly.

Isara said...

Congratulations! One of the best blogs on teh intarwebs, in my opinion! I keep forwarding discussions to my coworkers.

Anonymous said...

I found this because of technology but REALLY appreciate it because you push the edge on the museum issues. The field needs forums like this, thanks for sharing your thinking.
It's a pretty impressive lot of posts . Happy Half B-Day.

POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) said...

Halfy Birthday!

Good luck with becoming "deinstitutionalized"!

Sheila said...

You write a very thoughtful and thought-provoking blog--thanks.

And, good luck with the move and job hunt!

Lynda Kelly said...

Hi Nina. Just discovered your blog - good stuff! We're doing some blog experimentation here and we'd be interested in your thoughts. Have a read of Mel's blog