As museums and cultural organizations push forward in their efforts to adapt to coronavirus closures, many are striving to redesign programming and educational resources for digital platforms, stay community-oriented, and embrace digital transformation across all departments. At this moment, many museum leaders, educators, curators, and other professionals are working collaboratively with their colleagues in digital and social media to usher in a new digital era at their institutions, and many may be in search of guidance and best practices to help navigate these changes.
This week over 3,000 people joined Brendan Ciecko (CEO & Founder @ Cuseum), Marie Vickles (Director of Education @ Perez Art Museum Miami) & Liz Neely (Curator of Digital Experience @ Georgia O'Keeffe Museum) as they discussed the ways that organizations can implement digital changes in education, programming, curation, and other departments. This webinar will addressed sustainable digital transformation, as well as best practices for engaging and supporting your community in light of coronavirus.
Read the full transcript below.
Brendan Ciecko:
Hello everyone. My name is Brendan Ciecko. I'm the founder here at Cuseum. First off, I want to thank everyone who is joining us today as well as say thank you to our panelists. I truly hope everyone is staying safe, healthy and optimistic throughout these really difficult times.
For those of you who have tuned into any of our past webinars, it's great to see you again and for all of our newcomers, welcome. We hope that today's conversation will be insightful, helpful and even inspirational. This is actually the sixth in a series of conversations we've facilitated on engaging audiences during coronavirus and over the past few weeks, more than 15,000 people have joined us from all across the globe and we're expecting over 3,000 to join us today.
We've spent a lot of time discussing digital engagement, social media, marketing and all things in between and have been fortunate to include the voices of many amazing perspectives, but with education as the root, the underpin of monition of museums. I'm super excited about our guests in the topic that we'll be chatting about today.
As we all know, these are unprecedented and challenging times. We're all being pushed into a new way of living, a new way of working, a new way of serving our audiences and there's no definitive playbook on how to connect to your audience during a pandemic. There's no definitive playbook on how to master remote work while creating educational programs that are geared towards serving students that have been thrown into a completely different mode of learning and reaching parents in the public who are spread thinner than anyone can imagine. And because of this, we must come together to support each other, to share ideas and these newly found best practices 'cause we're ultimately building the car while we're driving it today.
It's been incredible to watch the museum and art and cultural community unite to help and support each other and their community during these past few weeks. These types of partnerships, the solidarity, the friendships, the collaboration are nothing short of essential and they're nothing short of inspirational and I think much of this comes down to the spirit and the necessity of collaboration.
There's an old African proverb that says “if you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together” and right now, collaboration is more important than it's ever been. Today's theme for the conversation is all about that, collaboration and collaborating on virtual educational programs during coronavirus.
I'd like to introduce our special guests. Joining us today we have Marie Vickles. Marie is the Director of Education at the Perez Art Museum Miami and has served in various roles within the education department since October of 2013. Marie also maintains an active practice as an independent curator with work on over 30 exhibitions since 2003. She has administered and organized arts, educational programs, workshops and exhibitions across the United States and the Caribbean for over 15 years.
Marie completed her studies at FIT, Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City and Florida State University which includes degrees in both visual arts and public administration with a minor in education. She currently serves the City of Miami as a board member for the Arts and Entertainment Council. I love that civic involvement, Marie. That's awesome. In her work as an arts educator and cultural practitioner, she is concerned with the development of new ways to bridge the connections between creativity and community engagement with the goal of encouraging sustainability and access for all through the arts. Thanks so much for joining us, Marie.
Marie Vickles:
Thank you.
Brendan Ciecko:
Excellent. We also have Liz Neely. Liz is a respected, experienced designer, content strategist and creative technologist. As an established museum professional, she's focused on integrating digital transformation to develop innovative user-centered approaches for delivering scholarly, interpretive and learning experiences. Liz is the curator of digital experiences at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She has held positions at the Art Institute in Chicago, the Harwood Museum and the American Alliance of Museums and teaches in the Museum Studies program at Johns Hopkins University. She received her MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg's School of Management with concentrations in marketing, technology and social innovation. Thanks so much Liz, for joining us.
Liz Neely:
Thanks for having me.
Brendan Ciecko:
Lastly, I'm Brendan Ciecko. I'm the founder of Cuseum. I'll be your host and moderator for today's discussions. Without further ado, let's jump into some of these questions. We've been fortunate to have had a wide range of digital, social media and marketing experts on these webinars for the past month. Each webinar, we receive a new set of questions about how social media and digital folks can collaborate effectively with museum educators during this time. I'd like to pose the same question, but from the other side. What do you as educators and curators need from your digital staff and what have been some of the ways you've been collaborating successfully? Marie, could you start us off?
Marie Vickles:
Yeah, sure. That's a great question, and again, thanks for having me on to this webinar. This was a rapid change. From Friday to Monday, a lot of us were told, "Okay, no more coming into the museum. You're at home. We're going to see what museum programming looks like from a virtual setting."
Thinking now, if everything is conveyed and shared in these different digital platforms that we use, whether it's our websites, whether it's social media channels, I think what we're looking for as far as educators, curators is how do we translate these ideas that we have for content now into a digital space? What are the best platforms available to us? Take our ideas and not only just communicate them well, but maybe add something to it that we never even thought was possible. I say this just wanting to also shout out a new member that we have at our museum, Heidi Quicksilver. She just joined the museum a few weeks ago. Three maybe going on the fourth week. Heidi, if you're out there, welcome. It's so good to have you as part of the team. What a time to join, right? It's the best of times and the worst of times to join. She's coming on as our Director of Digital Engagement and I'm so excited to see how she can help us take things to the next level because we are not at a loss for ideas. I think it's more about how do we best communicate those ideas, what platforms exist for that communication to happen.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's great and congratulations on the new addition to your team. I've known Heidi for a while now and she's fantastic. I look forward to seeing what the Perez does over the upcoming days, weeks, years. Liz, do you have any thoughts on this question? What do you need from your digital staff and what do you think others need from their digital staff right now to collaborate successfully?
Liz Neely:
Well, it's really interesting because I'm actually a digital technologist that has a title of curator and the O'Keeffe Museum has tried something a little different with the curatorial team in that we have different functions instead of different topic areas that we look at. We have a curator of fine art, a curator of education and interpretation, a curator of digital experience and then the head of research collections and services. The idea being that we are thinking about content from all these different perspectives from our different areas so that we can collaborate and see where expertise from digital can, and media can add to what we want to do in education or what we're trying to do in the galleries.
It's a little bit of a different model in that we try to pull up where we decide digital is needed or what kind of infrastructures that we need or processes in place so then we can co-create together. It's something that's been in place for, I've been there about two years. In that way, it's really about how do we work with the other areas and best use technology to get done what we need to get done and how we best not use it where it's not needed.
Brendan Ciecko:
Excellent. Thanks for sharing that, and I think it is critically important to know where to and where not to use technology because I think for a lot of people it is a silver bullet. But the reality is it does have great value and benefit during times like this especially, but it might not be the appropriate thing for everything you want to do. I'm glad to hear that you have a pretty clear line of sight on that topic, Liz. That's great.
Marie, when we recently spoke, you expressed one of your big goals during this time is supporting schools, teachers and students. What are some of the ways you have gone about this? What sorts of resources are you creating and how are you getting them into the hands of teachers and students?
Marie Vickles:
Right. Yeah, much like the work we're doing, schools also and teachers also had this rapid fire turn around where all of a sudden, everything has to be provided in a digital space. Our biggest element and the meat of what we do within our school programs is the daily school tours. We serve up to 20,000 students per school year at the museum in our physical location. This is classrooms coming to the museum every day, hundreds of students each day. Thinking about how do we continue to try to offer this museum experience now in a virtual space, knowing it can't be really the same. It's not going to be the same.
But what can we do to try to think about what a school tour looks like now to a Zoom classroom? We have been working on this. We've had two weeks now. This is our second week of successful Zoom classroom tours with a variety of ages as young as kindergarten through high school students, students with special needs and that focus on translating our programming into this digital sphere, not knowing how it's going to work, not knowing if it's going to work, but just being willing and open to, "Let's try it out. Let's see what we can do given the limitations that we all are facing."
Teachers, at least in Miami-Dade County Public School Systems are also getting used to the online platforms. A lot of them are using different platforms. Just trying things out has been our first step towards making these programs possible. Knowing that we don't have all the answers, we're going to do our best, but thinking about those virtual classroom tours that are going really great so far and also adding other resources to those tours that teachers can share with students before and after using interactive PowerPoint presentations like Prezis, which are a little more dynamic. They have room for things to move around. Then having things on our website for download. We're getting back to basics. Maybe it's a teacher's thing. Go read this video, or go watch this video, write something or read about this artist on our website. Try a little bit of everything to see what we do best and what we should do more of.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's great. I love the experimental mindset of dipping your toes, seeing what works for your community and then shifting gears a little. Liz, are you doing anything in that vein around reaching schools and teachers and students? Is it similar or slightly different than what's going on at the Perez with Marie?
Liz Neely:
Well the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum also had a robust face to face programming and what we've collectively have looked at is what we've first began to offer our resources that could be used by school teachers, they could be used by school children, they could be used by adults. Really focusing, especially since that's what was available first on creative activities and things to engage with O'Keeffe from anywhere and things like that. Not necessarily starting with replicating the face to face, but thinking about putting out resources that are quick engagements and there has been then face to face programs that, not face to face, but also the education department has done handing out of art kits and also meeting those different needs at different levels of what we see in the community.
Of course, there are museums out there that have established online learning like the NGA and MOMA. We're really, at least from the start, getting it at resources that can engage on a lot of different audience levels.
Brendan Ciecko:
Excellent. We just received a really interesting question from the audience here. Someone posed a question and then over 25 people upvoted it within a couple of minutes. It seems like it's something on a lot of people's minds, so I want to toss that in right now. We have a question from Patrick Keen at the Museum of the Grand Prairie in Illinois. How are you all managing school trips? We want to be able to offer quality educational programs to our schools, but we don't want to give away too much information and possibly encourage some local teachers not to physically visit us with their students when this all is over. Very interesting question. Who wants to jump on it first?
Marie Vickles:
Yeah, I'll take it. I actually don't think there's any danger of that happening because you really can't replicate that in museum experience online. You can accentuate it. You can offer something that is equally valuable. There is nothing like standing in front of a work of art in the real.That museum experience for students, I don't think there's a worry of that.
I do think there's an opportunity in what you're asking because there may, in the future, be groups or classes that cannot come to a museum for one reason or another that now with the things that you might be trying in your museum in this virtual-only kind of space, you may be able to actually extend your museum's reach permanently in that kind of way. I would think of it more as a bonus as to learning how digital spaces become a part of what your museum offers. At least, that's what we're learning on our end because these are some of the things we're doing now are some of the things we've always wanted to try, but we never had the time because we were in the building, on the floor, giving tours and now we have a little more space and we have to. Digital is our only option.
Brendan Ciecko:
Do you find that it's faster or easier to produce digital educational experiences for students versus the physical onsite? Is it more streamlined or are there some obstacles right now?
Marie Vickles:
I would say it's about the same. It's the same because of the way that we work collaboratively in small teams within our departments. Developing content for these tours, it's just not in person, but with still three or four heads coming together to think about how we're going to talk about this work of art, what activities can best explain it, different grade levels all the different core curriculum learning achievement goals that teachers are trying to meet in their classrooms. It's about the same I would say.
Brendan Ciecko:
This question will be open ended. We'll start with Liz. As museums continue to direct their efforts towards producing and sharing a great deal of educational content, and even edutainment, there have been some concerns that it might be overwhelming for schools and teachers and parents and students. What are some ways to deliver content that meets the needs of educators and students and how can museums avoid overloading their audiences. It seems like this is a topic every single week, striking the balance. What's too much? What's not enough? What's too little? All things in between. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that, Liz.
Liz Neely:
Yeah, it seems to be something that comes up a lot. Are we flooding what's out there? I think that in terms of thinking about how we're creating content and how long it can live and if it has an event around it that is of a moment or then what can last for the long haul? Just because we're producing content doesn't mean it all gets used at the same time. If we produce things in such a way that we can still re-find them, resort them, they could be used with collections, then I don't think there's a danger in creating too much.
I think that what we really need to think about is we can't create everything, so what are the priorities? That's what the O'Keeffe Museum, thinking about working with a cross-departmental team to think about what are the opportunities that we can get out there quickly? We're only in, what? Week six? What are the things like at the very beginning, what are the quick opportunities? What are the things that we can turn into projects that should happen, but they take a little bit more time and in a project team. I resist that we can produce too much if it's done in a way that it can last because it might be something that in three years we're putting together different themes and things like that. It's then about how we message it, how we put in people's hands. That's part of the reason too that we've started by focusing on things that we could get our hands on, things that were not so hard to produce and things that could speak to a variety of audiences because something like coloring pages can be useful for a lot of different levels and always trying to see what is resonating, what are we hearing back from, what on social media is getting plays and views or surveys or anything that we can to get a sense for what is actually useful to people and what they're looking for.
Brendan Ciecko:
Is it safe to say that there might be a slightly different perspective on that, if a museum has a permanent collection or permanent fixtures versus temporary exhibitions? If you have evergreen content versus non-evergreen types of exhibitions do you see that as playing a little bit of a role?
Liz Neely:
I think it does. I think that's where thinking through what is the museum's content strategy? What should we be doing? What will serve our mission in the future? I was talking to a museum yesterday who had an exhibition that was supposed to open early April and it's not going to, to people, but it had 28 artists, living artists involved. Even though it's a temporary exhibition, they're artists from the communities having Zoom meetings or that feature each one of those 28 artists for five minutes. That's a month worth of content or more.
Even though that exhibition isn't going to last, those artist's voices will. I think that's part of the thinking is that, if it is a temporary exhibition, what would be a lasting tie back to what your museum or institution is trying to offer the community in general.
Brendan Ciecko:
Let's dig a little bit more deeply into that. We have a question from Carrie Gill at the Woodstock Museum in Bethel, New York. What do teachers want? She wants to know lesson plans, vocabulary sheets, games, slideshows, virtual exhibitions downloaded or used, what's most popular right now?
Marie Vickles:
That's a tough one. I would say they want everything. The reason I say that is because there are so many different platforms that are being used by different educators and also so many different grade levels that are trying to be taught now online. What a kindergarten classroom or even a third grade classroom needs is going to be vastly different than what a ninth grade or middle school classroom might need.
It also depends on the teacher's level of digital proficiency and also there's learning online can be multi-tier. You can have a video that is then accompanied by a lesson plan. Then there can be some reading online as well. I think it has to be a mix and then was this particularly for teachers? I think a mix. There's no silver bullet. I hate to say it like that.
Brendan Ciecko:
Liz, what do you think about it?
Liz Neely:
I also think part of this is just it's so different community by community, that ask them. Our education department at the O'Keeffe Museum is working with the Community Educators Network, which is a group of educators in the area. Through that educator network are asking or asking teachers because it can be very different depending. So really it's an opportunity to find ways to engage the teachers because they're looking for help and trying to figure this out just like we are. So asking them.
Then also I think thinking through at least I think just something that we're thinking through too is that this at home learning right now it's just so much. All the parents are at home working. All of the kids are and so I think that the role, and this is more my direct opinion. It may not be the opinion of everyone at my institution, is that there's also a value in us maintaining the role that we have in formal education and providing that fun aspect. Also thinking through, "Well, how do our digital resources help people get away from the screen?"Because we have so much screen time now.
I think that those are also things to think about positioning where efforts go as far as what can we offer teachers? Something that's not school. They could be thinking, but also just asking people.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's great advice. It's always helpful, rather than to assume, to ask, and on the topic of different types of education, I want to give a hat tip. I actually pulled over a hat. Giving a little bit of a hat tip to Sarah Jencks over at the Ford's Theater Society in Washington D.C. and the entire AAM EdCom Steering Committee for that matter. They've put together an incredible repository of distance learning programs and resources including about 450 items that with participation from about 100 institutions. I just wanted to give that quick shout out.
Liz, you've mentioned one of your top goals right now is staying community-centered. What does that mean exactly when there are no physical spaces to gather in?
Liz Neely:
Yeah. I think the O'Keeffe in general, we want to be community focused and think about what we need to do. Even when we had our doors open, what we can do to be more of that because Santa Fe is a tourist destination. A lot of our visitor-ship is tourism. It's one of our, in general, besides just in this moment, one of the things we want to make sure that we're good neighbors and that we are an integral part of what makes the community of Santa Fe amazing.
In this time, that's a goal in general as we do this transition right now. As Marie and as I'm sure everyone on this webinar, yeah, there's ideas galore, right? Thinking through what are the ideas, how can we decide what to do? Employing more of that why into and what makes a difference and what could make an impact. Again, this is something that we always want do with our programs anyway. Also every day life is going on with you, when the museum's open, so this is actually, this disruptive moment can be, are we living up to that?
How can we be? Think about all of these options. What are we, at this institution and our mission and our goals, best able to deliver upon? How can that make the most impact? As we know, also just thinking through, I know there's been a lot of talk about the different needs that there's always a whole Maslow's Triangle of needs from people that need food, that need mental stimulation, that need to be connected. There are plenty of people that aren't in fear of losing their homes and things, but they're feeling a little isolated. Thinking through which audience types we can and how we design a program or a resource for those audiences. Each week thinking, having a talk because we also know this is changing week to week, right? Every week, getting together, what do we feel people are feeling now? Trying to look at those analytics, trying to do surveying to get a pulse on what people need right now.
Brendan Ciecko:
For sure. Marie, can you talk a little bit about the process over at the Perez Art Museum behind creating content. Who's involved in creating educational content? How do you utilize the capabilities of people across your entire organization to produce high quality content?
Marie Vickles:
Yeah. It's a team effort. Our education department consists of amazing individuals. The core of our education team is our teaching artists, which are practicing artists with an art historian in the mix to keep us honest. It's a great group of people that are so committed to both education and maintaining their own artistic practice, which informs and influences the way that they teach. The content for the majority of all of our programming including the ones I've mentioned, Our school programs, and also our family and gallery activities, which are things that you would do if you're at the museum, now more so things you do online. You can watch videos online and do them at home now. Different ways to engage our audiences are crafted and thought about in this amazing group of people.
And then within also our administrative staff, which includes an Associate Director of Adult Programs, Anita Braham, Grace Torres, who is our School Programs Manager. Tamara Hervera, she manages our gallery studio programs. All of these folks are all so creative in their own right and thinking about ways that we can engage with our communities, connect to our communities, find out what the needs are and create programming around that. I would say collaboration is one of the things I have learned in a very real way, working at this institution since 2013. It's been one of, I think, the most central ways of how we create content.
Brendan Ciecko:
Excellent. I want to add a question that came in from the audience from Jennifer Guild at the Science Museum of Virginia in Richmond, Virginia. Very much on this topic. We have a lot of ideas from our museum volunteers, educators, scientists, astronomers, everybody has an idea and I'm really interested in the process part. Do you have any formal process used for getting digital content from idea to final product? Is there a project management app? Is there a meeting cadence? Is there an approval structure? Can you talk about some of those specifics, Marie? Then Liz you're welcome to jump on in too, MBA style of course.
Marie Vickles:
Well, I'm glad Liz is going to wrap this question up.I think in the past few years which should allude to my answer, do we have a formal process? Yes and no. I would say that our marketing department at the museum has done a really great job of creating a process for the creation of digital materials for us to utilize. Again, there are so many people to shout out. Like Alexa, she's the Director of Marketing Communication. She's all about the process of how we submit content for it to be translated into digital offerings. That's taught me a lot about how to streamline and keep things organized as we try to develop things. We never had somebody that was a digital keeper and crafter of everything. I'm looking forward to seeing what that's going to be like now with Heidi joining our team, because a lot of our digital platforms for educational content have been managed from within the department. Like our app, the Cuseum app has been managed by our gallery and studio programs manager. Things just live wherever they would find a home. Yeah, I'll be taking notes on Liz's answer now on systems.
Liz Neely:
Yeah one the ways that we had systems before all of this happened is that we do have a project manager that was for the collections and interpretation division. Ideas went in the pre-coronavirus, we would develop ideas and then they would turn into projects. We would do team based project management from there. When all of us were home for a day or so and realized that, Whoa, nothing's going to be the same again. This is not about just working from home, but we stepped up the effort on that.
It also pointed to some areas that were perhaps not as owned, didn't have the same governance structures such as the website and things like that, where it was co-owned, really looking at that. That's where we established a cross-departmental team that was specifically to look at how we change. We call it Team Pivot, #TeamPivot. We're really trying, well not trying, really upping the game with project management.
We use a tool called Wrike. I don't know if anyone knows that tool. It's pretty powerful. It's wonderful. It does a lot. It's a project management tool. But every project management tool is only as good as you use it. Really thinking through how we use a project management tool to experiment and then establish workflows and then make them repeatable by people throughout the organization. There's lots to say about that, but that's how we're thinking about it is that we've always had a commitment to project management and using the tool and then now, how do we really apply that to change who we are in the long run.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's great and I'm so glad to hear your thoughts on the project management or the product management side and I think you're absolutely right. The tool's only as good as your willingness to maintain it and to engage with it. I think truly we're in the golden age of project management tools. They're easier than ever. Whether you whip up a free version of Trello to easily manage that flow, can go a long way, and then the methodologies. I've always been a big fan of minimum viable product and I've applied that to content to say your MVC, your minimum viable content, how can we most easily get this out the door if it makes sense to do so at that time.
I want to give a quick plug before going into the next questions. I want to take a quick moment to mention we've started doing a weekly digital happy hour called Muse, Zoos and Clues. Anyone that's here is invited to actually be on the digital stage. We just talk about some of our favorite museum campaigns from the week. We do some trivia. We have some lighthearted fun in sharing news. We'll probably talk about #MuseumSunshine which went live yesterday. Again, to mix it up a little, the attendees and the participants are on the stage and if you're interested in participating, give us a shout.
Also, I want to mention that due to popular demand in conversation, we're going to be collaborating with AAM's Museum Studies Network to put together a conversation on virtual internships. There hasn't really been any convening on that topic and we want to bring to the people who know what they're doing, the experts on the topic to dive a little bit deeper on that.
Jumping back into the questions, on recent webinars, one concept that kept popping up is that digital is no longer just a concern designated to digital departments. Rather all departments including education and curatorial and visitor services are going digital right now. Marie, you've expressed interest in helping real life programs become successful on digital channels and Liz, you've spoken more broadly about organization wide digital transformation #TeamPivot. I'm going to check that out by the way after on Twitter, see if it's a real hashtag.
What are some of the ways you're facilitating smooth digital transformation? Everything around us is rocky. How do you make sure it's as smooth as possible, especially around the education and programming across your museums? Who wants to take that on first?
Marie Vickles:
I think what we started with first, thinking back to the first couple of weeks, was looking at what we already had and sharing that. There was a moment, I remember, I got an email from our school system administrators in the visual arts department specifically and they were asking about what we can share with our teachers. For a minute, I hesitated. I was like, "Oh, but everything's not perfect. There's so much more I want to do and I want it to look this way and that way," and we had ideas for the development.
Then it was also, "But hey, we have some really good resources that are up right now. Let's start sharing those. Let's start adding to those. Let's work with what we have right now and little by little, we'll build on it, because what we have today when the doors close is what we have. Are we going to make a new website in two weeks? Absolutely not. But can we make our website as good as it's going to be or as good as we can get it within the next few weeks? Yeah, we can start working on that." Thinking about what we have, using it and sharing it in the easiest way possible. How many lesson plans do we have? How many slideshows can you look at? Then also thinking about, in terms of more public programs, what we're doing right now, webinar talk-style programs. You mentioned the Jerry Saltz talk earlier. Thinking about what's accessible to us, which is also part of that. What do we have available? Working with our tech team to create programs that can spread across different platforms on the back end. Our AV team has now figured out all these awesome hacks and different ways to connect our platforms to both Instagram Live and Facebook Live, so we can reach a larger audience.
I would say it's working with what we have for the now and learning as we go what works, what doesn't. Not everything has been 100% successful, but we're doing something and teachers, students, families are able to access the materials that we're sharing and it's providing some joy during this really rough time. I think that's success in that regard.
Brendan Ciecko:
Excellent. Thank you. Liz, you've brought up Team Pivot a couple times and we're on the topic of making sure that the collaboration and the digital transformation is as smooth as possible. Can you talk a little bit about this mindset, this framework that you have for decision making and evaluating effort versus impact versus outcome at your museum right now? What do some of these workflows look like?
Liz Neely:
Yeah, I'm sure that both Marie, it's something that we've always worked on, this collaboration, but now, it's accelerated to 11. I guess that's what we're really interested in capturing that momentum and making sure that it turns into something in the long run. Really thinking, we've mentioned a few times that there's just so many ideas. Everyone has ideas. On top of it, there's two other sides of things that everyone wants to help. Everyone wants to contribute to making the museum valuable to people in the community right now. On the same token, the digital team didn't get any bigger and actually none of their work went away. What we started was how do we get a group involved and so, it's about content, someone from education, someone from the museum store, someone from communications and someone from art historic properties and then thinking about delivery, so that's the digital team, the media experts on how best to deliver things. We've got the content experts- the how to best deliver things and then importantly, as I mentioned before, adding a process person to that team so the project manager, who would have been very busy with doing exhibition stuff, but we can realign to establishing this. Then thinking about a framework that's very simple there. A lot of decision making frameworks out there, but this is looking at impact versus effort. And then thinking through if it's high impact and low effort, do it now. If it's high impact but high effort, then it's, "Okay, let's build a project around this and it will be something that gets worked on." Build a project team and build a way around it. If something is low impact, low effort, hmm maybe. Those things that are in the quadrant of low impact, high effort, it's like that's the little storm cloud. You don't touch those things. One of the things that this has been is we took all those ideas in the first week or so and, with that team, evaluated it into those buckets. And aside from it just saying, "Oh, these are things that we should do right away and these are the things we start designing programs around." It also began discussions. Where are the holes? What do we not know how to do? What's missing? And then making sure that each one of those things gets assigned to someone, whether they're on the team or not. And then we all help to get something on board and then build, seeing how that project works and make those repeatable workflows.
As I mentioned, so many people want to get involved and it's great because we try to make documents and everything and then a member meetup that's happening later this week, members can handle it without a digital team. For our webinar, education learned how to do it and they can do it without the digital teams. We're really actually going back to the last question that you had where how do we all be experts in our areas, contribute to the ideation phase to getting things done and then find the best person to execute which is going to execute that program in a repeatable way and make sure that we get surveys and everything and then talk about how it went. What's been nice about it also is that every meeting, we really talk about what does impact mean and how do we better work together to establish that. In these times, it can mean a lot of different things. It's been really exciting to be able to think about things strategically and then disseminate and work together.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's excellent. Two things. I think that was the first Spinal Tap reference on our webinars. Liz, I thank you for that. Goes to 11. These go to 11. I don't actually know how it goes. English accent maybe, but thank you for that! A lot of people are going to be pinging us and everyone around looking for this quadrant. I think I was super fixated and like, "Did I just hear a Spinal Tap quote?" Whereas you were describing, "How can I visualize that for folks at home? How can I visualize that process, that workflow?" Liz, if you could tweet that quadrant, I think that would help.
Liz Neely:
I will do that.
Brendan Ciecko:
Thank you. We have about 10 minutes left. We'll try to zip through a lot of these questions. If we could keep the questions very brief. Jennifer Sarver at the Cedarhurst Center of the Arts in Mount Vernon, Illinois wants to know as we put out digital resources, what's the best way to measure success? What do you think, Marie?
Marie Vickles:
Okay, actually, there is a short answer. Success will depend on who you're trying to reach and what the purpose of that particular digital tool or engagement is, what was it meant to do? There's no blanket answer. Each project or program will have a different metric of success.
Brendan Ciecko:
Excellent. We have some questions that have also come in that have been upvoted over 60 times, which means there are over 60 people that are curious about the topic. No easy answer to these, but let's try to dig in. Jasmine Turner at Jacksonville's Museum of Science and History over in Jacksonville, Florida wants to know what types of programming are you crafting for adults that will also be revenue streams? Since this is Florida, Marie, do you want to take that and then Liz you can take that after?
Marie Vickles:
Yeah, sure. This is kind of in my department. It starts to leak into our membership and development areas. We are thinking about programming that is made specifically for these audiences first. Perhaps special talks with curators or maybe the director of our museum that's behind some pay wall of sorts that is accessed first by the membership group that we're trying to connect with. Thinking about that.
Brendan Ciecko:
Great. Liz, are you doing anything at the Georgia O'Keeffe? Are you seeing any other institutions try to develop revenue streams around some of their programs right now?
Marie Vickles:
I think it's an active discussion, what kind of programs will people, can people pay for in these times and then what is the price point? It's definitely, previous to this, most kids resources and programs were free. Not all of them. Actually, education would have a better answer for that. I don't know the details. I might be getting that wrong. Adult programs were generally either membership based or paid and just really thinking through because digital is a different business model and there's so much content out there.
I think it's something we're actively discussing because also being community based, we are serving to meet the needs right now, but we also have needs. The museum has needs. In terms of what support structure do you need around what does that cost as far as having tech support and all of those kinds of things because those things also cost money. I think it's actively under discussion. I see there about generating income in general. It's a big discussion. Is it through content programs? Is it about a membership ask, a very strong and direct membership ask at the end of programs that are offered? Is it about trying to use the programs as more content marketing to drive other things.
We definitely are thinking, I mentioned that the museum store is on Team Pivot. Also, how do we have artisan showcases that are actually in the store and have pop up shops and things like that. It's, none of that all equals up to our old revenue streams. It's tough. It's definitely a balance between what's actually making a difference to the bottom line as opposed to the impact bottom line and it's tough.
Brendan Ciecko:
We've been watching a lot of that dialogue over the last couple of weeks and we've been really hoping to see pay what you can, pay what you please type of donation model. The point around the infrastructure is even quite difficult, but there are some ways to hack things together between Eventbrite and Zoom and other such tools. We're on the edge of our seats watching for those efforts, but we also know how well those compare to the commonly known or commonly accepted operating budgets and revenue streams remains to be the big question.
We have a question from over in the UK, where Spinal Tap's probably a big deal, from Ben Templeton. This was upvoted 60 plus times as well. What are your feelings towards a confetti approach? I have to do it that way. Confetti approach, lots of small individual easy to release learning activities, versus creating a more strategic unified evolving digital platform for longer term engagement. It's a great question. Who wants to jump on it first?
Marie Vickles:
A confetti approach. I think maybe if that's where you're starting from it can work, but at some point, you're going to need to start strategizing. Are you going to sort the confetti when it hits the ground? How do you start to find a bit of organization in the way that you're developing these projects? You might see that as the confetti starts to come down.
While it is important to do what you can initially, start looking to see if there's some sort of organization in the way that you're creating programs because it will help not only you, but you're marketing. If you do have teams of folks out there, a lot of people are saying they're working with smaller teams, whether you're a team of one or a team of 25, you're going to need to have some organization around the way you share what you're doing. It can work in the short term I think, but not forever.
Brendan Ciecko:
Yeah. Liz, what do you think? I feel like there's little whiffs of the idea of being agile versus waterfall in that component which you have a lot of thoughts on. What are your thoughts on that today, yesterday and tomorrow when it comes to the educational content approach that museums should be taking right now or could be taking right now?
Liz Neely:
Yeah, I mean, I think confetti is strong because confetti means everything whereas I think maybe, thinking in terms of what are the easy wins and some of those easy wins are worth doing and some of them aren't as worth doing. It's a little less pure confetti and looking at how we can do things now and see how they work and finding ways to reach out and to assess what's working. I think maybe confetti is a bit too strong, but more like starting small, getting something out there because then is it a goal to a whole learning management system? It may or it may not be. Also thinking that you can do some semi-sophisticated things with Zoom, the winner of the quarantine I guess. With the Zoom webinar, we were able at the O'Keeffe Museum to put on a lecture program that connected people, so people could talk. Did a post webinar survey so we could get in the qualitative feedback. It was great to be able to leave my home. It was great to be able to not think about this for a while. Each one of those things is also informing what other kinds of resources we might want to do.
Then just thinking about things, not to be a complete Zoom advocate, but it's what we have. We were able actually to do a video tutorial with one of our excellent educators where she set up a phone on Zoom and we had the TV on Zoom and then I just clicked between camera views so that it could a whole tutorial, like a two camera tutorial and I think that they're also experimenting into. Confetti might be more like what do we have? What can actually get to where we want, even if it's in a lo-fi, and it doesn't seem lo-fi necessarily. You're just having fun with it.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's great. I feel like both of you have had as much fun as I had saying confetti and diving into that literally and figuratively. I would like to make a couple closing remarks before we give our big closing question to Liz and Marie. I want to mention, after this webinar, we're going to compile everyone's questions and ideas and solutions that have been expressed in the chat and the Q and A into one living document to share with the community. Feel free to share your thoughts here in the chat or email them over or to tweet them or to Snapchat them or , whatever works best for you at the end of the day. I'm confident that your question will be answered by someone in this community and the fact that you're here ultimately shows you're taking proactive steps and action in preparing your museum. We are all invested in the success of our individual institutions, but also the collective success of the sector and it's a hard time right now, but we're in this together. We're going to get through this together and that's the most important thing.
That all said, we have one last question to each of our amazing panelists. Marie, can you leave us with one big idea we can bring back to our organizations during this time in the department of education?
Marie Vickles:
Totally. I would say center the community in everything that you're doing, and don't forget that, that community includes you. Right? You are part of your community's fabric. I think any programs, any goals, anything you're setting as an institution, as a department, think about how you are reaching your community, what are your intentions and how this impacts the community and move forward with that because this will pass. This will not last forever and the things that we do now as institutions will reflect on our missions and our goals and really reflect who we are as organizations. I would say move intentionally and center the community in everything that you do.
Brendan Ciecko:
Thanks Marie. I think that went to 11. Liz, you're up at bat.
Liz Neely:
That was beautiful and mine pales to a certain extent. Take care of yourself. There's a lot of people doing a lot of things. Don't beat yourself up because you're not doing everything. It's been mentioned in many of these webinars that the great thing about our community is that we share and we help each other. Let's keep doing that and in that, start small, do something, try it, don't be apologetic for it being a start and just try it and make it true to your mission and values no matter how big or how small and this isn't an economic thing. This is a health and everyone here has different things going on with their families and what they're worried about and that's what really makes this complicated and be sure to take care of yourself, your colleagues, your community and to do what you can, but don't beat yourself up. Take care of yourself.
Brendan Ciecko:
Thanks for leaving us with that token of wisdom, Liz, and thanks Marie. Both of you have been incredible. I really appreciate you sharing your time, your expertise and your energy I have to say. In the name of the museum community, all in the name of art and culture and education. I wish both of you well and for everyone who's tuned into the conversation, thank you. I hope everybody's staying safe and healthy, optimistic and happy during these really challenging times.
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