Can museums allow users to become participants?

Thanks for visiting Museums Remixed. We are excited to present a couple of panel discussions at this year’s American Association of Museums conference on the subject of participatory museum experiences and user-contributed content. All the panelists have spent a lot of time thinking about this issue and putting it into practice in various ways.

As John mentioned in his post, we are serious about the “discussion” part of panel discussion – starting with this blog. We want YOU to participate as much as possible by raising issues and questions, sharing experiences, and pointing to resources or examples that shed light on the subject. We hope the conversation will include not just the already-converted, but educators, designers, curators, and others who are essential to the museum-public dialogue and who may have questions or even concerns about the issues that will be raised here.

After the Part 1 session opens up the world of possibilities for visitor-authored experiences in museums, the second session which I’m chairing, “Museums Remixed Part 2: Can We Allow Users to Become Participants?” will take a deeper look at participatory Web sites and how previous notions about passive online “users” are being upended by the Web 2.0 phenomenon. Though the panelists will draw on their experience with a number of case studies, we are eager to move the conversation beyond show-and-tell and dive into some of the thorny practical and philosophical issues that arise when we talk about ceding greater measures of control to our constituents.

In the coming weeks we will be raising additional topics for discussion, pointing to examples, and taking your comments. Whether you will be attending the conference or not, please join the conversation as we engage this important topic.