Mental Floss

To Kidcity's Visitors: I'm in St. Paul, Minnesota for the annual children's museum conference. I'll be back to blogging about regular Kidcity news soon!

The annual ACM conference has never failed to serve up at least one Really Big Idea that sustains me long after I've returned home. One year, they engaged Jim Collins to talk about how his "Good to Great" philosophy could help children's museums develop their focus on their core mission, and I'm still carrying around the card with my hedgehog concept that I jotted down as he spoke. Another year, Greg Mortensen made us all examine whether we have really stretched ourselves to equal the importance of our purpose when he described his journey of building schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan with "Three Cups of Tea". And I will forever be grateful that I was in the room back in New York City in 1999 when Neil Postman blew the lid off any ideas I'd ever had about education when he listed the "Five Things we Need to Teach our Young" (which is inexplicably not available online, but was published in Hand in Hand, Vol. 13, #2.)

Here's one more for the list: after this morning's presentation by Dan Pallotta, author of "Uncharitable", I will never see my work and the tools I can use in the same light. He argues that we've set our whole non-profit sector up for failure, even though-- paradoxically -- we already know how to make it thrive.

The methods that make companies like Apple, Coke or Disney so huge, are the very methods that we won't allow our "helping" organizations to use. And isn't it more important to be successful in saving the world than in entertaining it?

He notes our obsession with evaluating non-profits by the size of their overhead. Although that produces pithy ratings about "how much of your donation actually goes to the cause", it doesn't measure whether the organization is doing a good job or having an impact. He asked us to imagine walking into a shoe store and saying: show me the shoes with the lowest overhead! Yet that's often how we make our choices for much more important issues.

Specifically, he pointed out five strategies of the for-profit world that we deny non-profits:

•can’t use money to attract leadership talent
•can’t advertise on the same scale
•can’t take risks trying new sources of revenue
•can’t take the long term view by spending cash now for a return years down the road
•can't raise money through the stock market

This guy was just genius. You have to read his book, or at least look at his website, because these ideas are inevitably going places.

Actually, I've encountered genius twice today, and it's not even noon.

I spent breakfast wandering around the convention hall where the various exhibit designers peddle their wares...which I usually find to be an underwhelming experience. Fortunately there is the occasional exception: I was rendered absolutely speechless (well, at least incoherent) by the images of the Noah's Ark exhibit at the Skirball Cultural Center of Los Angeles, particularly of the animals that were fabricated from found materials by Lexington, a fabrication and design firm.

The craft, the whimsy, the bold re-imagination of form, and the flat-out invitation to play - this is just the kind of unique, artist-driven work that would be the best business choice a children's museum could make. In these days of multiple museums (at Kidcity, we've got 5 other children's museums within 30-minutes drive, plus a new state-sponsored science museum), how can the same old laminate and label philosophy of exhibit design cut through the clutter. The answer is art. That's not just about aesthetics and core values -- those are just bonus -- it's also the business insurance you take out against the very real possibility of a cookie-cutter neighbor scooping up your visitors. Walking away from their display, all I could think was "When are people going to realize that you always go to the Dunkin Donuts which is closest to the exit?"

I wish I had a more eloquent way to express this, but here's the thing: I just get so excited about encountering excellence in any field. Dan's book, a twisted giraffe sculpture, or the perfect hotel we have in St. Paul - somehow we don't have a word for this sort of stellar entrepreneurial spirit. I actually feel a sense of grace in it's presence - and it's worth the trip.

(here's the pig sculpture that drew me to the Lexington booth in the first place - how cool is this!)

Putting the Muse in Museum

We're interrupting the construction of Kidcity's new bookstore for a visit to the national conference of the Association of Children's Museums! Over the next few days, I'll be writing about the conference, so my apologies to my regular Kidcity visitors - hopefully you'll find something interesting in these writings, but if not, don't worry. It will be over soon!

A great children's museum is like an advent calendar - that, and the title of this post, were just two of the nuggets of gold that I extracted from Daniel Spock's 400-second Pecha Kucha rant this evening.

Ok, I'll try to start at the beginning. (But don't you just love the idea of visitors leaning in and opening little advent doors full of surprises? I'd like to play there!)

Right....the beginning.

So, I'm in Minnesota at the annual ACM conference - with lots of people from children's museums around the world, including two others from Kidcity (that's Cait, our manager, and Matt, our exhibit builder).

We're here for three days of informative sessions on the nuts and bolts of the children's museum industry - there are workshops on how to hire the right staff, how to do promotions, and how to evaluate exhibits.

But before all that starts (Thursday morning), several dozen of us gathered for a Pecha Kucha session, organized by Paul Orselli and Peter Exley.

Pecha Kucha (say pe-CHA-ku-CHA) is a concept that started in Japan and has spread to cities across the world. Basically, each speaker gets 400 seconds to describe 20 slides, while the host periodically exhorts the participants to make more frequent visits to the bar.

Kind of like going to a poetry slam or church service - you feel like a good stiff breeze just blew through your head.

Here are a few moments:

Reverence:
Peter Exley lovingly pointed out the curved line of a favorite building, and Greg Belew offered up images of perfect steel pistons and crank shafts in the guts of an exhibit.

Risk:
With photos of the exuberantly crafted new climbing sculpture at the Children's Museum of Phoenix, AZ, both Becky Lindsay and Deb Gilpin talked about seeing the benefits of risk in play, not just the dangers. Or maybe Becky was talking about exhibit design when she said: Jump out of the window and make your wings on the way down.

Sass:
Aside from Daniel Spock's invigorating thoughts on liberating the play spirit, we got some of Paul Orselli's usual atypical common sense
on the topic of technology in children's museums. Sure there are exceptions - but mostly video screens just hypnotize and pacify us - which is pretty much the opposite of imaginative play and wonder.

Joy:
Brad Larson has been writing and tweeting his haiku, to capture his experience of nature. But Clifford Wagner thinks we should all take up the violin. Right now. There's a photo of him walking his dogs while fiddling. He says it's all about creating joy.

I think that's a good theme to start this year's ACM!

Pecha Kucha at Interactivity

I'm reviving this long-slumbering blog to report on Interactivity 2009 in Philadelphia. Interactivity is the annual conference of the Association of Children's Museums and if Monday night was any example, the whole field is letting its hair down a little bit.

Or that could just the impression anyone would get after spending two hours with Paul Orselli of POW and Peter Exley of Architectureisfun. The actual conference doesn't begin until Tuesday morning, but Peter and Paul got right to playtime by hosting a Pecha Kucha session -- and you don't have to google that one, because I'm going to explain.

Pecha Kucha is sort of part bar scene, part salon -- mix in some karaoke and social networking -- yes, I know that doesn't make much sense, but keep it all in mind as you read this: watch somebody present 20 slides and talk for 20 seconds during each one. That's 400 seconds, and the words don't have to match the slides, but done nicely it wraps up into a tidy epiphany. Sort of philosophy's answer to the haiku, but with a bar break halfway through.

Our hosts brought up some of their favorite people in the children's museum field to share their 20/20, in between exhorting people to have another drink. (I'm just going to use first names - unforgivable really, but maybe someone will clear that up in the comments) Here were some of my favorite moments:

-Aaron and Dana remembered playing, started keeping track of how they play now, took pictures of it, and asked us pay attention to how long we've been playing before we notice we are playing.
-Peter Exley offered up the exquisite mental image of an inflatable felt whale and showed photos of public art that he loves.
-I didn't catch his name but a fascinating guy from New Jersey talked about "Maker Culture" and how we've evolved from the days of making stuff because we needed it to making stuff as a hobby and ultimately into this hacker society of playing with things as we make them and getting them to do what we want them to do - not just in children's museums but everywhere -- so this is really kind of our moment, isn't it?
-Mary Maher (Hand to Hand) made me miss my own kids when she showed an adorable slide of hers in homemade Halloween costumes - and then revealed one of those interesting paradoxes of motherhood, as she told us that for 18 years she has started the day with a few hours of rowing crew (presumably without the children in tow). Ok, so that's my connection, not hers, but that's the point of Pecha Kucha isn't it?
-Mindy Shrago from Young at Art took us through 20 years of slides as her museum and her children got bigger.
-Paul Orselli has been thinking a lot about chairs, and he got hoots and hollers from the crowd when he asked us to give up "the notion that you can foster parent-child interaction by not giving the parent anywhere to sit down." On the other hand, Paul actually showed a photo of a dad asleep in a museum chair. He showed some other seating options too, some of which were interesting enough to keep anyone awake
-Jane Werner (Pittsburgh CM) talked about mentoring artists to make tough art -- tough enough, that is, to withstand life in one of our children's museums (loved the roller coaster for plants). She demonstrated this by wearing her own piece of tough art, a DIY orange fringe straight skirt.
-Brad brought up a long stick, not to hit us, but to tell us how his martial arts practice is like designing exhibits - how you have to stay empty and open, you can't be afraid of having an effect on the world or being affected by it, you can work with a partner to reach beyond yourself (that one got me a little misty thinking of our Kidcity team). Finally he closed with an idea that was just out of my reach, which is that the future is behind us, and it's our job to anticipate the moment it will catch up with us. I'll have to keep thinking about that one - or perhaps not thinking is more to the point.

Overall, Pecha Kucha was a great way to warm up for the conference and get people thinking about ideas, not just budgets, feasibility studies and exhibit assessment! Peter encouraged us to find a Pecha Kucha in our own town -- or failing that, to start one. You can learn more about that at www.pecha-kucha.org.

For next year, I just have one suggestion: they could add a drinking game to improve the take at the bar, and use it as a fundraiser for ACM:

-every time a speaker mentions "the children", take a drink.
-everytime someone shows a slide of a child playing with mud, take a drink
-every time a museum actually lets a child play with mud (just think of the laundry and customer service issues!) that museum gets free drinks on the house
-every time someone mispronounces Pecha Kucha, take a drink (here's a tip: say pe-Chak-a-Cha)
-every time a speaker says the word "play" take two drinks (remember the point here is to make money for ACM!)

It's a good thing that I wasn't in charge of organizing this, or I'd be in no shape for blogging. If my computer holds up, I'll write about the workshop's I go to tomorrow - sorry you can't all be here!