David and I gave a workshop yesterday on 'Museums and Technology' for the Council of American Jewish Museums (CAJM). It was a last minute favour for a friend, that provided a chance to think about strategies for approaching technology choices.

We thought that we'd be spending a significant amount of time on the elements of formal procurement procedures: methods for managing requirements, building consensus and ensuring the delivery of what was contracted. But as it turned out, the review of available technologies and how they might be used in museum educational and interpretive programs totally took over the discussion. In a way, it was as it should be: mission and program drive technology choices and applications. And, since this was a very community-focused group of museums – with a strong interest in building dialog – Web 2.0-type applications were very attractive. Wikis, blogs and photo-sharing are all great tools for enabling regular communication among the communities that these local museums served, and supporting the collection of the personal stories that enliven objects and make culture real.

We weren't really talking about technology at all; we were talking about ways to reposition the museum, so that it stood in, and of its community. It was fun to think about how to enable multi-directional collaboration.

/jt

[the slides from the workshop are on-line, as are the handouts, including the ones for the part we didn't get to ... thanks to everyone who's written for Museums and the Web, we were able to use some really well-documented examples.]