Smithsonian Workshops - Washington DC

Smithsonian Workshops in Washington
Tim Hart, Seb Chan and I are in Smithsonian in Washington at the moment, hosted by Michael Edson and Nancy Proctor to deliver workshops on cultural change in museums.

Tim's presentation gives insight into a number of issues from a managerial point of view
branding the museum: interaction with research community is with Museum Victoria even though
Google is your home page - if they go to Melbourne Museum, that should be your home page!
advocacy - website a good tool for this

Change requires motivation!
Tim discusses some of the background to Museum Victoria 8 years ago. More than 10 years of building projects to open three museum sites, causing internal strife.

Governance
robust infrastructure
board critical

Authorising environment
your place within the system and within government. Model for not-for-profits (Moore & Moore, 2006)

Strategy
critical for change
spending time in people's places so that you can see how they work
technology as an enabler

Leadership
invest in leadership throughout the museum
personal coaches; multiday sessions with those involved in leadership to share experiences around management;

Mavericks
covert operations that achieve the museum mission
work out how to harness energy
foster culture of change
you need to solve business problems beyond the project

Structure
BBC model for social media is a great model
decentralising communication, setting up clear rules and using technology to support this communication

Networked Organisation
centralising service functions
breakdown silos
shared purpose
appropriate people in teams
build trust

In Source
Making a commitment to building capacity within the organisation.

Collaboration
careful who they collaborate with and look at it as a long term commitment
Commitment to Staff
where you have a community of practice, it is difficult to network

Team Builidng
at all levels of the organisation

Trust
key outcome of the cultural change process

Planning Frameworks
agreeing on framework in a networked organisation means that all those who are affected by outcome are involved in the process of developing the framework

Research R&D Museology
Special projects involved in primary research

Productivity
increased tremedously as other aspects of model developed

Museum Victoria online strategy documents
http://museumvictoria.com.au/pages/3607/onlinestrategy.pdf?epslangu...

Museum Victoria Strategic Plan
http://museumvictoria.com.au/about/corporate-information/corporate-...

Pompeii exhibition online
http://museum30.ning.com/forum/topics/new-virtual-tours-on-the?comm...

DEN : Digital Heritage Netherlands
http://www.den.nl/getasset.aspx?id=Over%20DEN/DigitalHeritageNether...

The Melbourne Story
http://museumvictoria.com.au/melbournemuseum/whatson/current-exhibi...

IMA dashboard
www.dashboard.imamuseum.org/