Child's Play, Fairly Odd Parents-Past, Fairly Odd Parents-Present / 12.09.2010

My mother's tombstone is so high above my head, it's hard to connect with her grave. Every trip to Los Angeles is punctuated by a visit with my parents. They're buried at Mt. Sinai Memorial Park, just a few hundred feet from each other. I haven't lived in L.A. since the mid 1980s but it will forever be the place I come from. And this visit has become part of my ritual each time I return. I'm usually alone with my thoughts but this time the city was a stop on a family vacation so my wife and girls were with...

News Outta My Control, Professional Auteurism / 25.06.2010

A recently discovered magazine ad fuels speculation that Steve Jobs can time travel. This morning, in an old dusty box hidden in the corner of my attic I unearthed some old magazines. I can't remember why I kept them. But thumbing through their pages I came across this 1960s ad for Western Electric's Picturephone ® and something in the shadows caught my eye. Steve Jobs knew Marty McFly. But more importantly, proof positive why AT&T, the descendant of Western Electric, is the exclusive carrier for the iPhone. [ iPhone, AT&T, Steve Jobs, Western Electric, Apple ] ...

Artistic Tendencies / 24.06.2010

Click on image for a larger view. I picked up my new iPhone 4 this morning. One of the main reasons bought it was for its upgraded camera. It's been pushed from 3 megapixels to five and its sensor is now back-illuminated. In plain language that means I should get brighter images with more detail. Yes, I have my better and more professional cameras yet I never seem to have them when I need them. But I always have my iPhone. And, I've taken some pretty good pictures with it, despite its meager specs. Before moving on to my new iPhone...

Commuting with Nature, Fairly Odd Parents-Present / 02.06.2010

This is Glenda. The morning commute was ending like all weekday commutes. As I shoved my way to the surface it was time to start thinking about work: the fires I needed to put out or needed to start. I didn't look forward to either, quite frankly. I'm a risk taker but lately it's been in remission. "If I can just get through the day without making waves," I thought, "my day will be a success." (And it was only Wednesday.) I looked around at my fellow commuters climbing the stairs to the top, I mean the street. What were they...

Fairly Odd Parents-Present, Idiosyncratic Celebrations / 31.05.2010

My anniversary gift, set to the time we were married. Click on image for larger view. Yesterday was our seventeenth wedding anniversary. And while I wasn't expecting furniture, the traditional gift for this celebration, I definitely wasn't expecting this! I woke up to Susie's loving warning: "Don't come out until I tell you!" I obeyed. And when she finally gave me the signal I made my way the kitchen. "I know you've been lusting over a special watch so I wanted to give you this to go towards it," she said. I noticed the smile in her eyes. My heart leaped....

Child's Play, Fairly Odd Parents-Present, Professional Auteurism / 24.04.2010

Never say a commonplace thing. Jack Kerouac My name is Jeff Gates and I talk to strangers. More on that later. We don't want our children to be fearful of public engagements. But we want them to be able to understand the risks. Illustration from an ad for online security software. With one bona fide teenager and a proto soon-to-be teen in the house privacy has been a hot family topic. Well, only their parents seem to think it's an important issue. The girls seem totally nonplussed. And that's our point of contention. My wife and I are trying to teach our children...

Fairly Odd Parents-Present / 26.03.2010

My romantic rendition of the Del Capri wedding chapel. Click image for a the full view. The advent of tax season means it's time for our extended family's annual pilgrimage to Dundalk, Maryland, a working class neighborhood, just east of Baltimore. There we meet Ed, our CPA, at the home of his side business, the Del Capri wedding chapel. We've been making this yearly sojourn since our girls were toddlers. Back then, during breaks in the action I'd keep them occupied by walking each of them down the aisle set up for a wedding that was to take place later that...

Professional Auteurism / 14.03.2010

This is the second in a series of essays on the effects of social media on organizations. The first, Confessions of a Long Tail Visionary, looked at how social media is changing our jobs. This piece continues the exploration by looking at how these changes in information delivery are changing our relationships with our co-workers.


Introduction

Social media is changing the inner workings of our museums. Like many other organizations, our hierarchical structure has historically disseminated information from our experts to our visitors. The envisioned twenty-first century model, however, is more level. Instead of a one-way presentation, our on-line visitors are often interested in having a conversation with our curators and content providers. And many of us are joining our traditional experts in representing our institutions in these conversations. In response, we in new media have been looking for ways to engage our public by designing and using applications that encourage dialogue; however, in order to succeed all of us will need to approach our jobs and our relationships with our co-workers in different ways.

While the early hope of many technorati was that the Web would dramatically change the inner workings of our cultural institutions, new media's role began as a support for more conventional projects - exhibitions, outreach, and our collections - with their Web-based counterparts. But as new Web 2.0 tools developed and we saw the possibilities for a greater engagement, we often felt like Sisyphus. We heard concerns these new initiatives would take too much time or they would take away from our institution's core tasks. And just when we thought we had made inroads, the boulder would come crashing down: one step forward, two steps back. Our work was to function within our traditional organizational structure. Yet these first steps were just a prelude to real change.

Social media is now challenging the traditional flow of information throughout our institutions and out into the world. Researchers, educators, new media specialists, and exhibition designers are asking to join marketing and public affairs departments in conveying the mission of our museums to our visitors. Blogs, Twitter, and Facebook, just to name a few social applications, allow for and encourage multiple institutional voices.

But how is this transformation really taking place? Are there methodologies that encourage this shift? And how can we negotiate with our peers a greater role in content creation and dialogue? How can we challenge existing paradigms, yet maintain the support of our coworkers?


Fairly Odd Parents-Present / 20.02.2010

I was digging myself into a large hole. Where was that downspout? Click on photo for larger image. Imagine living through the DC blizzard of "aught ten" (I know that's not grammatically correct but it sounds good). Then imagine your arthritic back survived the post-storm shoveling of your paths, your driveway, and your car. And you managed not to fall and break your hip as melted snow refroze every night. All the while, you enjoyed watching the longest stalactites ever form off your roof as the temperature rose and slowly, but surely the heavy snow receded. Wouldn't you want to help...

Artistic Tendencies, News Outta My Control / 10.02.2010

Jeff Gates, From a Series of One Acts… #7, 1987. Click on image for larger view. Before moving to the DC area I spent a year teaching art in Minnesota. I learned to drive in the snow that winter and am proud to have survived a week of -90F (-68C) windchill. But that pales by comparison to what the Mid Atlantic is going through right now (okay, what I'm going through right now). It's a blizzard out there and believe it or not, I think this storm is worse than the snowpocalypse that inundated us this past weekend. We've been off...