Exhibition Development Blog: All About Evil

[Lynda Kelly]

The other project we identified was to start an exhibition development blog for the All About Evil exhibition. This has several aims:
* engage the audience in developing the exhibition at the front-end
* see if a blogging tool can do this
* track the time it takes for our input compared with the outcome

Here's the text Bliss sent to her contacts to promote this:

"Welcome to our first post! I know you’ve all been hearing about the Museum’s evil exhibition idea for a while and finally here’s a chance to participate.

Lynda and I have started an exhibition development blog to get feedback during the production of the exhibition. I’ll be posting various content ideas/ themes/ etc which may inspire you to contribute your ideas and help shape the exhibition. It’ll get jazzed up a bit too with pictures etc as I get used to it all...

Feel free to send on to your contacts too because the more interaction and feedback, the better the project will be.

It’s easy to post a comment - just click on the blogpost title or comments at the bottom of the post.

cheers!

evil bliss"

So please join our All About Evil blog

[Bliss Jensen]

No nibbles yet.... I'll title each blog post with a question I think... Hopefully this will provoke participation.

[Vanessa Smyth]

Hi Bliss

Would have posted on the blog but I can't as I'm not a blogger and so I don't fit any of your profile categories.

This exhibition seems like a timely opportunity to look at the corporate evil that has precipitated the current economic implosion - even some of the key players. Perhaps some historic comparisons where extreme greed and a breakdown in governance has had dire consequences for society as a whole.

BTW did you know there was a band called 'All about Evil'? - they have a MySpace page.

[Lynda Kelly]

Thanks for alerting us to this Vanessa. I have now changed the settings to enable anyone to comment. This also led me to wonder whether to have unmoderated comments. I have decided to leave it unmoderated to enable open discussion and make it easier for people but will track this.

So, look forward to you posting your comments to the blog now huh? :)

[Seb Chan]

I'm curious as to why this blog isn't in the museum's own website under 'upcoming exhibitions' or something. That would be a more logical place to put it.

(Yes I know you are launching a new site soon but still!)

[Lynda Kelly]

Thanks and I agree. However, due to the natrure of our current site we cannot add anything to it - even embed a link within a page! We will have the blogging capability on the new site, but are using blogger and this exhibition as a test-run to feed in to how we might do it in the future. We can't wait until April/May on this one.

Given that tho, I'll be blogging about developing a sustainability policy for the Australian Museum Eureka Prizes and this will be done via the Eureka site. Will post a link here once it's ready (I have written the posts, just waiting for the blog function to go live).

[Lynda Kelly]

Another techo-type issue I just came across. Added a comment to the blog this morning, I am getting email alerts when a new comment is posted however it was blocked by our mail marshall as unsuitable content for an email. I'll follow this up with our IT people but it's interesting the blockages that are already happening when we try and talk about topics that are deemed "unsuitable" or controversial".

The proposed internet filtering in Australia is alarming in this regard as it has potential to impact hugely on our museums and their online content.

[Scott Guerin]

Hello and what a good topic for an exhibit. Before Vanessa's post, I chimed in on Elaine's Soup Kitchen thread with the idea that museum's do need to voice outrage at the recent financial events, even if the Madoff's of the world don't get the Body World treatment I suggested.

Also, on Linkedin's Museum Design Group, check out discussion I started about doing the GW Bush Library...who am I to throw stones? I was the Senior Designer for the Nixon Library in the early 90's.

http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&gi...


S

[Lynda Kelly]

Just an update about our project. The blog has some interesting discussions, and we set up a Facebook page. Bliss and I are stoked cos in 8 hours we now have 65 members.

OK, now i will admit we are stalking what Seb and the PHM are doing with their boring 80s exhibition (and I'm allowed to say that as i grew up i that decade and adored Countdown...) but we want to turn it up a notch and actually get a bit controversial. So, if you want to have a go about museums and how conservative they are PLEASE add a comment to our Facebook page or blog - my challenge to you...

[Angelina Russo]

Exhibition development blog

http://allaboutevillk.blogspot.com/2009/03/is-there-evil-in-us-all....

5 posts and 12 comments
Have decided not to moderate the site
no logo on the site
21 followers
followers are contributing on Facebook not on the blog
crowsourcing useful for developing an online workshop - confirms the front end evaluation
confirms themes with internal ausmus staff
themes on Facebook confirm internal programming
Why the Australian Museum?
Showcasing the AusMus collection and relevant to society
Audiences want contemporary relevance and we can deliver
Experimenting and delivering on new processes - adaptable
showing how collection can be used to shed light on fundamental collections
collections across world cultures and science and natural history to show how evil as a concpet has changed over time
opportunity to build on collections in the contemporary realm
could be links with archaelogical and intangible heritage

Next steps
steer audience to become part of the content development

Q - if AusMus chooses not to do it, what happens with the content?
- could create an online exhibition - as technology has now caught up and social networks allow them to engage
- be transparent about why the sites have been set up in the first place - the good faith of the audience must be adhered to
- audience has had the confidence to to share the experience, these are the content makers who should be nurtured.




Facebook site
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1440292166#/group.php?gid=63...

192 friends

[Amelia]

This discussion is very helpful for my research on blogs, would love to keep getting updates!

Question - do you have a hit counter or statistical software/app that counts how many unique visitors you are getting on the blog?

[Lynda Kelly]

Hi Amelia - both the blog and Facebook group (now with 249 members, 8 discussion topics and 25 wall posts) are going well and giving us some good guidance and ideas for the exhibition.

As to the blog, as I wrote on your blog discussion here, we have many more readers than we thought. I only just remembered to put an analytics feed on to the blog late in the piece and to date we have had 147 unique visitors from 17 countries (incluing 9 from Finland - thanks guys!). I must say it gave Bliss and I a real lift as, again, we thought we were only 'talking' to the 23 followers we have on the blog.

Here's some images.

[Amelia]

Thanks for that Linda, how interesting - especially the ones from Finland. Could it be due to the prevalence of hardcore death metal in European countries such as Finland? You should find also that you will get more followers over time as you post more content which will have more keywords which will make the blog more Googleable which will be picked up as the Google algorithms crawl your blog (if that makes sense?)

I have also been fairly active on the Facebook group - I invited about 100 people to join and have tried to keep up with comments in the discussion board - it's great fun!