Research Roundup
July 26, 2010

Tools for the future
The near future
Social trends, etc.
Other articles, essays, and recent items of interest
Refresh and reflect

Tools for the future:
  1. GreenBiz.com describes itself as "the Business Voice of the Green Economy ... the leading source for news, opinion, best practices, and other resources on the greening of mainstream business." Despite the corporate boosterism, an excellent source of information and practical solutions for a greener future.
  2. Some people say that "social entrepreneurship" is the key to innovation and sustainability in the traditional nonprofit sector. But Ashoka, an international NGO, asks What Is a Social Entrepreneur, Really? Also see this list of articles on social enterprise from the Harvard Business School.
  3. Tools and Resources for Assessing Social Impact is "a database of 150 tools, methods, and best practices that can help you assess social impact for programs across all sectors and geographies." This joint project from the Foundation Center and McKinsey's Social Sector Office is primarily aimed at funders, but individual museums will find at least a few hints and tools for assessing their own social and community impact. 
  4. The head of the Innovation 360 Institute says that it's time to retire strategic planning and adopt innovation strategy instead. "The strategic planning process has become formulaic, and companies [museums, too!] have come to rely too much on what worked in the past."
  5. Is brainstorming the path to better planning? The consultants at Idea Champions have their doubts, as they explain in 26 Reasons Why Most Brainstorming Sessions Suck (& what to do about it).

The near future:
  1. As Britain looks ahead to a period of fiscal austerity (including almost-certain cutbacks in government support for museums), the Guardian's art blogger Jonathan Jones reminds us that free-to-view art is an investment for growth. "There is massive cultural value to free museums. It is one of the greatest educational assets we possess."
  2. According to a recent survey by the Software and Information Industry Association, "K-12 and postsecondary institutions are moving toward a vision of technology-rich, 21st-century education, albeit very slowly." The report concludes that higher education is moving into the 21st century faster than K-12 schools — but who knows where museums and other informal learning environments would rank using the same criteria. (Via Education Week.) 
  3. The founder of Facebook says that Nonprofit Groups Can't Change the World. "In a recent interview on the blog Inside Facebook, [Mark] Zuckerberg explains why he believes companies like Facebook are better equipped to tackle society's problems than nonprofit groups." (Via the Chronicle of Philanthropy.)  
  4. The good news: researchers say that global carbon emissions held steady in 2009 for first time since 1992. The bad news: this is probably a temporary lull, traceable to the economic slowdown in most Western industrial nations (but not India and China, which increased their emissions in 2009).
  5. Can museums learn something from the Office of the Future Consortium, a nonprofit initiative backed by some of California's major utility companies? The first official "office of the future" just opened in Irvine, California, featuring innovative lighting and HVAC systems, among other tech solutions to environmental sustainability.    

Social trends, etc.:
  1. Food Miles: Is Local Food Really Greener? A critical look at the climate-change mantra "think global, buy local."
  2. How the Great Recession Has Changed Life in America. This new report from the Pew Research Center shows that "the Great Recession has led to a downsizing of Americans’ expectations about their retirements and their children’s future; a new frugality in their spending and borrowing habits; and a concern that it could take several years, at a minimum, for their house values and family finances to recover."  
  3. Advertising Age explains Why Marketers Should Pay Attention to Booming Gaming Trend: "Game mechanics are the rules and rewards that make a particular game fun and gratifying," and the same strategies can be used to encourage engagement and build loyalty to a brand (or museum?). Jane McGonigal raised similar points in her 2008 CFM lecture, "Gaming (is) the Future of Museums."
  4. Common Sense is "a nicely crafted art exhibit examining the most important aspects that determine the American Dream. Through a collection of 13 different data-driven works, the exhibit questions assumptions about the history of the U.S., shows the common goals and dreams of its citizens and illuminates some of the inequalities in U.S. society." Combines social trends and innovative exhibit design. (Via Information Aesthetics.) 

Other articles, essays, and recent items of interest:
  1. New Wave Museum Marketing comes to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
  2. Joshua M. Avery, "The Democratization of Metadata: Collective Tagging, Folksonomies and Web 2.0," Library Student Journal 5 (February 2010). Read the full paper here. Not quite everything you always wanted to know about collective tagging, but an excellent introduction to the topic. Here is the abstract: 
    This paper explores some of the ways in which folksonomies are shaping notions and methods surrounding contemporary knowledge management, how they are currently being used and how information professionals are reacting to these developments. This paper will also explore the future of folksonomies and their contribution to the growth of Web 2.0 and a more democratic World Wide Web.
  3. The Global Art Initiative (http://globalartinitiative.org) is "based in Texas, and its goal is to help lift disabled third world artists out of poverty by providing them with art supplies, crutches, wheelchairs, safe spaces to create art, and art lessons. Another goal of the Initiative is to teach empathy towards the disabled, to both children and adults." (Via the Internet Scout Project, an absolutely essential web resource.) 
  4. The Best Blogs of 2010: "From the savvy to the satirical, the eye-opening to the jaw-dropping, TIME makes its annual picks of the blogs we can't live without."  

Refresh and reflect:
  2. Folk Art Dioramas from Dayton, Ohio, classrooms circa 1920. For more on the ongoing fascination with dioramas, see Diorama-o-rama (via the Smart Set at Drexel University). 
  3. The World's Weirdest Museums, according to travel website concierge.com.
  4. We love robots at the Research Roundup. Here's a gallery of Humanoid Robots From Around the World from Popular Science, plus some amazing Japanese sci-fi art.

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