Thoughts on #MCN2015 from a MCN n00b
Last week, I attended MCN 2015, Museum Computer Network’s annual conference. In the last couple of years, FlowVella has been adopted by several museums to power their interactive presentations or ‘interactives’ or kiosks. This was not a market we had planned on serving, but one that we are quite fond of for several reasons; personal fulfillment, amazing brand alignment and to help provide ‘informal’ learning experiences to people young and old.
We began this journey by way of EMP Museum in Seattle reaching out to us to help them with the We Are 12 exhibit in October, 2014 which led to the Indie Game Revolution exhibit, which led to an introduction to the Smithsonian and their Star Wars: Power of Costume. In less than a year, with little effort, we were in three exhibits in an amazing museum in a beautiful Frank Gehry building that sits next to the iconic Space Needle, and the monorail literally runs through it.
This museum technology space must be really easy then, right? Not so fast.
We came to MCN 2015 and to this space because we are passionate about museums and we think our technology can help museums, big and small, tell better stories, easier (no coding), more securely, with multimedia, with interactivity, probably cheaper, with the ability to update any time.
Enough about us and me, what are my takeaways from MCN 2015:
MCNers are over-indexed in intelligence.
I’m not saying this to be nice or kind, but they (we) are some very intelligent people. Part of this intelligence is rooted as the community is diverse, international, educated, uber creative, passionate and a continued desire to learn more and learn from anyone.
'Technologists’ are artists.
Everyone in this field is an artist. They want the technology to enhance the art, to add another dimension to it. They are painters, musicians, photographers, videographers, hackers, coders, interactive designers, you know, artists. Their work may not be the focal point of the exhibit, but it is part of the exhibit.
It’s a close community, yet an open community.
There are some who have been part of MCN for a decade or 5 years or it’s their second year, but they already count these people as some of their closest friends or allies. I was new, yet was welcomed. Being a ‘vendor’ and not from an institution is ‘interesting’, yet I was still welcome (I think).
Sharing is Caring.
The ethos of this community is to share information, best practices, learnings so that we all can do better jobs and to further the advancement of technology in museums and museum culture. One of my favorite presentations was ‘State of the Art: Creative Technology and the Museum’ where Chad Weinard and Jason Alderman shared strategies and findings from their experience at BPOC. It was done with no ego, and pure knowledge transfer.
The biggest question I walked away from #MCN2015 is this:
Do museums want to work with third party (private) companies like FlowVella or do they want to DIY because of a low budget/culture or make 100% custom because of a larger team and budget?