This week we had the pleasure of (once again) joining our fellow museum lovers for #DrinkingAboutMuseums: Boston. Drinking About Museums is “a global movement of museum professionals interested in informal socializing, networking, information sharing, and having a good time.” Yes and yes.
The Boston group is hosted by Ed Rodley and Jenn Schmitt. Founded in May 2011 after a Museums and the Web conference, the name is adopted from Koven Smith and Kate Tinworth’s Denver Meetup group. The rest will go down in real-time history. A Twitter search of the hashtag #drinkingaboutmuseums shows the excitement expanded across the globe. The group tours museums, shares cool stuff with one another, and hosts hang-outs with awesome people. People doing the kind of work that lights us up. The group is ever-changing, a “coalition of the willing” as Rodley says, and calls for all those interested to “come talk digital awesomeness and museum geekery!”
This week’s event was actually the second in July– the group has been busy! This month special guests included Don Undeen of the Met Media Lab; and this week’s gathering included Liz Neely of Museum Computer Network (MCN), New Media Consortium (NMC), and the Harwood Art Museum in Taos, NM; and Allegra Burnette, currently a principal at Forrester Research and the former creative director of digital media at MoMA. The recent Boston meet-ups have even attracted an early internet pioneer who engineered the original CNN.com and advisor to Akamai! The Cuseum team had a great time meeting everyone and chatting about our favs: museums and tech. Thanks to the organizers and community for the good times!
Want to start a Drinking About Museums group in your city? Their website has wonderful information on mistakes made and lessons learned. Check it out. There’s also a Google Group. If you’re in Boston, we hope to see you at the next one!