The Indy 2015

Just got back from 4 days in Indianapolis at the 2015 children's museum conference called Interactivity.  We were last here for ACM in 2005, so some things were familiar (one never quite forgets the sheer scale of the CM of Indianapolis) and some things were new.

Small Talks

Back in Pittsburgh 2013, Interactivity started a delightful tradition of inviting interesting people from outside the field to give Small Talks, letting those of us at children’s museums borrow inspiration or ideas from their experience.  A personal highlight was the Dance Kaleidoscope lady who got a stage-full of conference participants (needless to say, non-dancers) to co-choreograph a dance about waking up, eating breakfast and showering.   Exhibit designer Clifford Wagner distinguished himself with his enthusiastic rendition of what it looks like when he pulls on his pants in the morning; an image now indelibly marked on my brain.

Sessions

I attended a packed session called “How to Swim and Win in Data” - as a self-declared numbers geek, I like to hear what other museums measure.  One of the speakers, Blake Wigdahl, dazzled us with the news that his whole staff reports numbers daily by email to everyone across departments - and that’s at a museum just one year old, and part of the Thanksgiving Point museum/garden/farm complex in Utah (at the one-year mark at my museum, we were lucky to get our place cleaned up, the cash in the bank and the toilet paper re-stocked before the next day began, so clearly, they are doing something right out there.)  Lindy Hoyer & Jeff Barnhart from the Omaha CM shared their experience with measuring the actual result (rather than the anecdotal “feeling”) on whether traveling exhibits actually drive revenue and attendance in proportion to their cost.  After reading what the numbers said (which could be summed up like this:  “meh”) they decided to occasionally build their own temporary exhibits, which energized their staff creatively and fiscally.  Now they’ve settled into a mix of bought & built.  Karen Coltrane, talking about her experiences both at the CM of Richmond and at EdVenture, gave this advice:  Share all your numbers with everyone in your organization - which led to lots of enthusiastic nods around the crowded room.

I spent Wednesday afternoon at the CEO forum - which was limited to executive directors at open museums - and since the doors were locked and we agreed that everything said the room is now in “The Vault”, I can’t say what we talked about.  Just kidding!  We talked about fundraising.  For four hours.  But aside from that, I really enjoyed the guts-baring camaraderie around my table during the session.  The best thing was seeing my fellows around the conference for the next two days- like we’d all just filmed our own version of The Breakfast Club and now we’d find out if we can still be friends out in the real world!  Hey Tammie, Stephanie, Lara, Jeff, Mike, Rouleen & Karysia!

In fact, all of the sessions I attended this year were well worth the time.  I learned a lot  - or laughed a lot, as in the case of Kathy Gustafson-Hilton’s session called “Mistakes were Made”.  Kia Karlen from Madison CM took home the “Epic Fail” trophy for her story “GhostFire” about the time that she…well, you’ll have to get that one from her.    

On the learning side, it turns out that children’s museums are perfect places to build Executive Functioning skills, which are Essential to Happiness and Success in Life, according to all research ever.  If you’re not familiar with it, google the Marshmallow Test, and then think about all the moments in our exhibits that make kids slow down, think a bit, wait for a reaction or get someone else to participate for the biggest payoff.  It turns out that all this is a Good Thing.  This session - presented by Erin Ramsey from the Families and Work Institute on their Mind in the Making project - is exactly the kind of the thing that the ACM conference does well:  bring in an outside expert and let us learn from their work, and give us some room (rather than spoonfeeding) to think about how it relates to our museums.

In other news, I sat in on a session moderated by Aaron Goldblatt on my absolute favorite topic: how to create a vibrant town (and how children’s museums can help).  In other words, Urban Planning.  A few of my favorite people in the industry narrated their photos of public places that have a sense of fun and CM-type spirit, and there were also a few cautionary tales about how hard it can be to get things done in the civic arena (as opposed to our own seamless organizations?), especially when the cave people show up to protest (that’s c-a-v-e, or Citizens Against Virtually Everything).  

Michael Shanklin from Kidspace in Pasadena led a roundtable about “Next Practices” about what the future looks like for the children’s museum field.  I appreciated the chance to rant about some of my not-so-secret agendas.  Here are three:

1. How to encourage museums to create their own original exhibits.  If everyone buys exhibits from the same firms, we start to all look alike and that’s professional suicide if we want children’s museums to multiply and expand.  As Collette Michaud from the CM of Sonoma County noted, there's a place for exhibit firms and some museums need them, but more museums should feel empowered to try creating something of their own instead of thinking that's only for the experts (after all, we ARE the experts on how kids in our communities play and learn!)  At the table, we tossed around the idea of creating a “Tony Awards” for exhibit design - with nominations for “Best Revival” (a fresh rendering of an old chestnut), “Best Original Concept”, and “Best Engaged Play”.  The prize would be bragging rights!
2. We need a committed return to regular and robust gathering of data by ACM about our museums.  Until the mid-2000’s, there was an annual survey…then it puttered to every two years…now we’re still sitting on 2011 data.  I know that probably no one else greeted that fat envelope survey with quite the same glee as me, but I think ACM should use it’s Moral Authority to say “Hey, this is important.  We need accurate data on our own performance so that we can advocate for the support we need and show our impact.  So no more whining!  Just do it!”  I hear that ACM will re-start that process soon, and maybe we should consider a suggestion that Michael Shanklin made:  let’s ask for help from IMLS to create a streamlined online survey for all the museum associations combined to combat survey fatigue - and each could have specific questions just for their members. 
3. Let’s expand the repertoire of organizational structures that can create and sustain children’s museums (in other words, could there be non-profit variations on the existing board/staff model?  How does the current structure lead to better museums and how does it limit them?  What is required by law, and what board practices are cultural?)

The Zeitgeist

There are always a few trends or buzzwords at the conference, and I can say with relief that this year, it was NOT nano.  The question of intellectual property was hot  - and whether you can really steal an idea like “grocery store” or “bulldozer” - so when is the line crossed from inspiration to lazy or malicious plagiarism.  (My husband says, you can borrow my idea, but return it with interest!)  And there was some tussling over whether we should stick to words like “learning” and “education” in describing a children’s museum, or whether it was acceptable to ever utter the word “play” or “fun”.   (Note to field:  doesn’t matter what you call it, that’s actually why people come, whether you like it or not!)

So that’s my wrap-up - I had a great time in Indy, seeing my ACM BFF’s and occasionally being a troublemaker (shout-out to Paul Orselli!)   Next year the conference is in Kidcity’s home state of Connecticut at Stepping Stones in Norwalk!  So come play!

(I leave you with photos of the most brilliant thing at the CM of Indianapolis…the rotating round lounging bench under the giant Chihuly glass sculpture.  This was inspired magic and put everyone in the frame of mind that we seek to create at our museums:  Anything is Possible!)

At this rate, I will have to change the name of this blog to “What Happened at Interactivity • the Children’s Museum Conference” - since apparently I only feel the urge to post after my annual trip to ACM.

(pause for yet another mental vow to write more about what’s going on at Kidcity….ok, moving on!)

Lessons from Interactivity

One last post from my visit to ACM's Interactivity,

the national children's museum conference in Houston.

Here are some notes from the Interactivity conference sessions that I enjoyed:

Would you like fries with that?

Maybe it’s not the most glamorous part of our business, but children’s museums need good computer systems for making sales (cash register), booking parties and events (calendar), running our shops (inventory), and keeping track of members and supporters (database & online communication). I was complaining about the lack of good options at last year’s Interactivity, and was delighted to find a session this year that went right at the question, led by Denver’s Mike Yankovich and Please Touch’s Concetta Bencivenga.

While a few representatives from common ticketing systems watched, about 20 of us from children’s museums of all sizes and shapes made lists of what we want these systems to do, and how they fall short. Hopefully the vendors who were there appreciated their front row seat to an unvarnished customer opinion. As for the museums, we plan to compile our needs into a proposal, and if need be, work with the vendors to help them do a better job of serving our market, at a price we can afford.

One big happy family….almost

Most children’s museums participate in the national reciprocal program, selling a membership card that provides free admission to all the other museums in the program. In the past few years, it’s become clear that this system has some problems, and on Thursday, about 50 of us hashed it out over lunch. The problems fall into three main categories: pricing, geography, and abuse.

Price: the rules dictate that museums charge at least $100 for the ACM card, but some charge much more and they can find their customers scooped (sometimes by online savvy customers) by museums at the lower rate. On this issue, there seems to be some consensus among those in the room that $125 or even $150 was a more practical price, given that it hasn’t gone up since the mid-1990’s, and the use of the card is so much more extensive (and therefore has a bigger impact on museums) than it did back then.

Distance: Some museums feel that the card shouldn’t work on museums in close proximity to each other, instead having an exclusion clause for other museums within 90 miles. This is the system used by the Association of Science and Technology Centers (ASTC) for their reciprocal card. An on-going survey of reciprocal museums, though, showed that about ¾ would rather NOT have an exclusion (get those surveys in, folks!) In the past year or so, ACM has experimented with letting individual museums create mutual restrictions, which makes it a pain in the neck for card-holders, who have to wade through a lot of fine print just to be sure they can use the card. That hardly seems an improvement.

Abuse: Some people have figured out how to game the system, and sometimes it creates more lost income than a museum can bear. Sigh...

My own perspective as Kidcity's director is that I hope we Don't Throw the Baby out with the Bathwater. Even though visits on the ACM card are a full 15% of our overall attendance - that means we don't get any income from that attendance - I still feel that the program benefits both Kidcity and the overall field. I am in support of a price increase though - because I think that the value would still be there for families at $125 or $130, especially in our region, where they can visit about a dozen museums within an hour or two's drive.

The ACM Board will be considering changes to the program at their meeting this summer, and then they'll give museums a year to decide whether they like the changes or want to opt out of the program.

Oooh....Eye Candy!

Maybe it's just me, but I think the most fun part of the conference is seeing images from other children's museums, especially the good ones! The new children's museum in Madison, Wisconsin looks amazing, with chickens wandering around on the green roof, a steampunk big-kid space, and a wiggly suspension bridge crossing the airspace of their early childhood room. After just a few minutes, I was pretty sure I wanted to move there. Then I saw the photos of an amazing tree-walk designed by Aaron Goldblatt for the arboretum in Philadelphia. Imagine a beautifully crafted boardwalk through the tree canopy, punctuated with occasional giant hammocks, all 50-feet up in the air.

I won't bore you with the details....

....but I'm incredibly excited about the new ACM benchmark calculator which debuts this summer. You can compare your museum with others of the same budget, or attendance, or staff size, or regional population.... ok, nap time's over.

A Really Interesting Idea

ACM again turned out an amazing keynote speaker with Steven Johnson, who wrote Where Good Ideas Come From. Johnson challenges the notion that breakthrough ideas come from some lone genius, instead pointing out the importance of connections between people as the root of innovation. That's good news for our current generation of social networkers - according to Johnson, they are uniquely poised to take advantage of each other's expertise and resources when it's their turn to create the future. I'm part-way through his book, and my new favorite concept is the idea of the Adjacent Possible, which means that innovation can only grow from what already exists, but it also means that innovation is always possible from what's in front of you right now (I find this especially interesting from an urban planning perspective: what do I want my community to be come, and what's the next step to get there. I wonder what can grow out of the elements which are already here?)

I appreciated Johnson's optimism. Personally, I'm getting tired of all the doom and gloom about how we all need to focus on the economy and job training - I think it leads to a narrow focus in the education system and in business. I'd love to see more worrying about the quality of our ideas and less about our financing - that's true for the children's museum field and the whole country!

That's my wrap-up from Interactivity 2011. It was well worth the trip - next year, it's off to Portland, Oregon!

P.S. I don't want to leave the impression that we worked ALL the time in Houston. To satisfy Kidcity Manger Caitlin Pierce's obsession, we tracked down a hipster food truck on the corner of Montrose and Willard, where I had the best burger of my life (along homemade ketchup, tipsy onions & sweet potato fries) Just something we'd love to see more of in Little ol' Middletown, CT.

Adult Swim

The last session of the 2011 ACM conference was about as raw and honest as any discussion I've ever heard among children's museums over the years.

Kathy Gustafson-Hilton of Hands-On Inc. brought us together for a new-to-ACM format call The Fishbowl. She set the ground rules: People in the front row of a circle of chairs would offer a tale of risk from their museum - they would give up their seat when they were ready, and someone from the back rows could go for it.

It was a little scary in the Fishbowl. Interestingly, the group seemed to be mostly executive directors and others in leadership in the field. People told stories of faith, trust, betrayal, deceit, glory....if you had to sum it up in a single word, I'd have to say "Passion". The details of each story weren't important, but the sentiment was: we love what we do. But for a moment - and this is hardly typical of the conference - the vibe was less of the self-congratulatory and more of the confessional.

The topics ranged as widely as the museums themselves. Some museums are making hard exhibit choices - especially the question of whether traveling exhibits (a sacred cow in the industry) were really worth the money and loss of creative control for the hosting museum (um...can you tell where I stand on that issue?) Others were diving into challenging social issues where they felt driven to make a difference, but full of worry about the impact on their operations.

A few were excited about new opportunities and expansion plans, and others talked about the role that their boards play. For non-profits, it's the board that sets the policy and strategic direction, and the executive director who follows that plan. I hope I don't shock anyone when I say that this is a complicated dance in the best of organizations, and has wrecked havoc in more than a few.

This was a great format for an ACM session - I loved the chance to hear directors talk so openly about the issues they face. Since we're in true confession mode, I'll say this: I often leave the conference wishing I'd spoken less and listened more. This format let me hear from many people I've met or known for years, but I'd just never heard them speak so clearly, and from the heart.

Maybe it's because I came to be a children's museum director as a Mom fresh from the supportive atmosphere of the Playgroup circuit, but I really value hearing about how people feel about the work they do. In some ways it's less "professional" - but it also re-energizes us for the work ahead.

Pecha Kucha 2011

Dear Reader,
It's true I haven't been in touch lately on this blog - we've been busy on a top-secret project at Kidcity and I knew I'd spill the beans if I even opened my mouth. But we're almost ready to reveal what we've been up to - hopefully next week!

In the meantime, I'm at the national meeting of the Association of Children's Museums in Houston, TX and I'll be blogging about the conference for a few days. Be back at Kidcity soon!


I'm seriously considering taking up the ukelele. You would be too, if you'd been at the Pecha Kucha session last night at Houston's Heritage Society.

For the newbies, Pecha Kucha gives you 6 minutes and 40 seconds to show 20 slides and talk about what inspires you - it started in Japan and has spread all over the world, including the ACM conferences in 2009 and 2010. This year, the ACM Pecha Kucha showcased 10 people from the children's museum field. As instigator Paul Orselli pointed out, it alternates between the sublime and the ridiculous: where on earth did Erich Rose find that photo - let's just call it Manequin Parts with Hose and Duct Tape. It was more of a "Don't" than a "Do".

For me, the evening was a bit of a blur because I was so nervous about making my first ACM presentation - it was thrilling, even if I did accidentally press pause on the laptop part-way through my presentation.

Oh, I wish I had pictures...but here's a smattering of what I remember:

•Becky Lindsay captured the exhibit designer's quandry of the tension between the macro exhibit (how it looks from the outside), and the micro exhibit (the loose parts and tasks that actually engage your child visitors). Creating that outside WOW is important, but it's the micro level that leads to the sustained, imaginative play that makes a magical children's museum experience.

•Clifford Wagner demonstrated the power of the Path of Least Resistance, and encouraged us to use it both in exhibit design and in opening potato chip bags.

•Paul Orselli waved the banner - bless him - of why children's museums should develop their internal capacity to create their own exhibits. It's at least as important as having a snazzy cafe (where you just might find your visitors taking a nap.)

•Aaron Goldblatt treated us to sort of mental yoga class. Suggesting that ugly things become beautiful if you look at them long enough, he showed us his photos of found and forgettable corners of urban life. We mulled them over in silence, a la John Cage.

•Sari Bowen bravely and beautifully told us about her unexpected love affair with the ukelele - and how she dreamed of creating just such a "ukelele experience" for visitors in children's museums. When was the last time you fell in love with an idea and then let it move in? What makes that perfect combination of openess (you) and inspiration (it) that knocks you off your feet? After asking this question, she led us all in a sing-along of Ringo Starr's "You're Sixteen". We didn't sound too shabby!

The room was packed, the bar was busy, and two lucky winners went home with door prizes! I'd like to suggest that ACM issue a special community service award to Paul Orselli (and his usual co-host Peter Exeley) for this new tradition. Pecha Kucha is a great way to start the conference!

Books, books & more books!

If you've been to Kidcity in the past few months, this is old news...

...the new bookstore is open!

There is a lot more room for reading, a corner bench and fun library stools to slide around on. And, of course, lots of new titles. (A book called Chester is the new staff pick, but we're also partial to Binky, the Space Cat.)

We've separated the books into categories like "Small World", "Cool Science", "Things that Go" and "Busy Books".



My personal favorite is the "Vintage" category. That means we have a special shelf for the books we loved when we were little -- they're now back in print for our own kids. So you can get Harold and the Purple Crayon and A is for Annabelle right here.

Matt built this nifty cabinet to hold 8 new styles of t-shirts - but we're still working on the designs.








What do you think of this one...maybe on a bright purple tee?





P.S. I'm crazy about the photo-fun carpet tiles in the new bookstore - they're from Flor!

The Merry Month of May

The month of May typically means beautiful weather in Connecticut. Unfortunately, this year is no exception.

In other words, it's pretty quiet these days at Kidcity, since everyone seems to be playing outside instead.

Here's a photo of folks on the Kidcity staff trying to stay busy by trying on dress up costumes. Lookin' good, guys!

If you happen to be one of those families that hates a crowd, then please....come play!

Meanwhile, we are making progress on our new museum shop.

Here's a shot of Matt and Scott as we debate building another cabinet (see the cardboard prototype).

Instead, Matt built these steel "ladders" that fit between the joists, and then we lined the back wall with black beadboard.

In other news, we picked out ceiling tile, got the carpet in, decided to wallpaper, decided not to wallpaper after seeing the samples, and Scott is now testing a linen faux-paint technique on the walls.

Best of all, we got some new titles in, even though the new shop isn't ready for them. My kid loves this one:



Enjoy the nice weather and come back and play soon!

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!)