London’s museums and following Smithsonian 2.0 on twitter

I rang Berta to find out how did the rest of her trip to London go. She told me she had a good time, the weather stayed clear until Thursday where she went to 3 museums, such as the Natural History Museum (access guide)  and the Science Museum (access guide)  and Madame Tussauds (access guide). I told her I have not been there since the kids were little.

I am not sure how much Londoners themselves visit these museums. I would venture a guess that most of the visitors are tourists and kids on school trips or with their parents. I love museums myself but I tend to target what I want to see rather than try to take in the whole thing.

Anyway, Berta was impressed not just by the architecture, culture and sights but by the helpfulness of a  fellow traveller. She told me that on their way back to Stansted, they took the wrong train and somebody who saw them with their luggage took the trouble to inform them that they were on the wrong track and pointed them to the right train to take. She said she had not even asked for directions  and she was grateful because they would have missed their plane if that kind person hasn’t bothered to help them.

And on the subject back to museums, I am really excited by following Nancy Proctor and her tweets on Smithsonian 2.0. It reminds me to the time when we used to be at conferences for ICHIM and Museums and the Web. I think I do not have an excuse to go to those any more now that Xavier Perot is dead. I so missed him, I have not realised how much of a mentor he was. And it was he that got me travelling down to Paris and help with ICHIM conferences. And that was for the first time, we had accessible buses – it was a truly inclusive conference, the last conference in Paris, ICHIM 05,(photos) where it was between Cité Internationale de Paris and the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF). I think that was due to Marianne Serra who  organised all those logistics for delegates.  I gained my confidence about using Parisian public transport from going to that conference.

However Nancy also gave a presentation there. And now shes the head of the New Media Initiatives at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. And shes relaying the proceedings there about the conference in progress using twitter. I love some of the messages shes sending :

• Nancy Reggie Henry: It’s not about the technology; innovation comes from the organization’s culture,
• People understand that repurposing is not the same as purposing; we should not fear misappropriation of our digital assets
• Nancy Colleen Macklin: Success is an iterative process so requires failure by definition. The technology will follow where our ideas lead

I think my takeaway from all this is the lesson of repurposing – this is the term used for recycling digital data – I think it is important to share our knowledge about accessibility and not precious about our knowledge.

I will have to do more content for the real site instead of twittering away!