By: Benjamin Benita & Mar Dixon

What. A. Week!

Thank you to everyone who took part either as a museum or individual (or mascot).  Every single time another hashtag event comes around, the worry of exhaustion is always there … and every time you guys push the bar hirer.  Thank you really isn’t enough.

When we were designing the week of hashtags a few months ago we can honestly say we were hoping to reach 1000 museums – never ever expecting the numbers achieved.  To be honest, our main concern has never been about numbers but ensuring it was fun, maybe educational, a platform for museums to share their collections and FUN (and hopefully not something that would burn any community manager out…).  The 1000 mark was to benefit the museums, not the campaign.

Weeks before #MuseumWeek officially went live, there was a real buzz happening on Twitter.  It was so exciting to watch everyone sharing their plans for the week. There was a real collaborative feel – it was even crossing language barriers. Read the rest of this entry »

One week from today, Twitter will be exploding with cultural goodness when #MuseumWeek kicks off.  With 1400+ museums in 55 countries signed up (and that number continues to grow) there is truly something for everyone.

Mini FAQ

During the webinar last week, there were a few more questions asked and I thought I’d share them here: Read the rest of this entry »

#MuseumWeek is Back!

SIGN UP FORM IS HERE

Mark your calendars as the week of March 23rd is the return of the very popular #MuseumWeek!  Last year, #MuseumWeek gave Twitter users special access to more than 630 European museums and galleries. For those that missed it, here is are two write ups from last year:

• #MuseumWeek – Why (and how) Everyone Should Get Involved
• Highlights of #MuseumWeek
• Twitter Post: #MuseumWeek: celebrating culture around Europe

I’m happy to announce that the dates (March 23-29) and themes for #MuseumWeek 2015 has just been announced on Twitter.

Les inscriptions à la #MuseumWeek 2015 (23-29/03) sont officiellement ouvertes. Ne tardez pas! http://t.co/S42arC7zAP pic.twitter.com/P8AWB0P6jb

— Museum Week (@MuseumWeek) February 4, 2015

This year, we (a great team including my partner in crime Benjamin Benita) created a combination of hashtags that we hope will be diverse enough for everyone to get involved. This isn’t just about museums – visitors and the public have a role in this campaign also!

Read the rest of this entry »

Prelude:
I started planning this event, well last year, but really in the past 3 months. I still worry no one will take part at first or get bored. Than closer to the event, I get all giddy with excitement like it’s Christmas!

This year is no different.

But here I am, technically the eve before and we have 41 countries and 634 museums signed up. I’ve been interviewed in 6 different languages (Wired.com article).  The sign up sheet continues to grow… [by end of play, 721 museums in 43 countries!]

Stats
I’m often asked why I do it as I don’t get paid.  The stats from LaMagnetica are why:

47,546 Tweets
13,000 DIFFERENT users

That is a HUGE community we have built together. How could I not do it? I’m seriously blown away by those numbers. These numbers represent the thirst from the #AskACurator Community for access to behind the scenes at museums/galleries.  The thirst for learning. The passion for our cultural sector. And most importantly, the yearning to share.

Please Note: LaMagnetica will be sharing the report and I”ll update this page when it’s done.

UPDATE:  I’ve a Feedback form and would love to hear your opinion Read the rest of this entry »

CultureThemes was looking for a theme for July and put the idea of cats out to people.

Cats and the Internet and Museums… what could possibly happen? 

I reached out to Curatorial Cats who run a few cat related tags every week to see if they would like be part of it.  We decided to use #MuseumCats as that is something Curatorial Cat already used and it would be less confusing for people (and hopefully help build their profile up a bit).

Well.  On July 30th 2014 CATS RULED!  We had over 14,500 tweets and trended worldwide.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Russian Twitter includes around 180 museum accounts from every region of the Russian Federation. These accounts feature both the great world famous museum complexes like the State Hermitage in Saint-Petersburg or the State Historical museum in Moscow and small regional museums like the Middle Kama Museum of History and Culture.

So we’d like to announce, that April, 25 is a #‎СпросиКуратора Day in the Russian twitter. It’s an analogue of the Internanational #‎AskACurator Day (with a kind permission of @CultureThemes and Mar Dixon). This tweet-event will be supported by the offical Twitter of Rissia (@TwitterRussia). It’s a unique opportunity to get all kind of museum information straight from the source.

Our challenge is to present the quite new sort of museum activity in the Internet for the Russian-speaking audience.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been asked to gather a few of my favorite tweets from #MuseumWeek  – Impossible!
But I’ll start off with a few and hopefully we can add to it as we go – Just tweet me!

#MuseumWeek Stats:
+630 museums
+260,000 Tweets
@sharypic 20799 photos 
@lamagnetica Analysis
barriblog.com Analysis # MuseumWeek 2014
Antoine Courtin #MuseumWeek Analyses 

First:   A MASSIVE Thank you & 3 cheers to EVERY Social Media person/team/representative that took part in #MuseumWeek You must be exhausted! 🙂

Second: #MuseumWeek Collection of all pictures that were used with the tag via @sharypic 

Credit: @lamagnetica

MY OWN HIGHLIGHTS

NHM and V&A Tweet OFF – Both Natural History Museum and the V&A had a late night during #MuseumWeek.  What happened was social media being used in a fun, sharing and semi-competitive way.  I LOVED IT.

Read the rest of this entry »

Been trying to keep and eye out for all the press, articles and posts on blog sites.  If you know of any, please let me know.  

• #MuseumWeek – Why (and how) Everyone Should Get Involved
• #MuseumWeek Stats for first 3 days via @lamagnetic

 So many brilliant #MuseumWeek pictures have been shared (22,900+) & thanks to Sharypic they’ve been captured!

Press, Articles, Posts

• Twitter (March 31) #MuseumWeek: celebrating culture around Europe
• Twitter UK
• Twitter France
• Twitter Italy
• Twitter Teams Up With European Galleries In #MuseumWeek To Push Its Cred With Culture Vultures
• Twitter、ヨーロッパの博物館や美術館とのタイアップで「#MuseumWeek」イベントを開催
• #MuseumWeek gives Twitter virtual access to hundreds of museums and galleries across Europe  via @thedrum
• Read the rest of this entry »

The following information is shared with permission from the fabulous La Magnética who have been tracking stats for #MuseumWeek.  Please note: These are for Monday-Wednesday ONLY. 

FOR FULL REPORT SEE FULL La Magnética  REPORT HERE 

The graph has grown huge, so to get to an image than one can read we have to trim a lot of edges and nodes (otherwise we would have 57.000 nodes, and names and dots will overlay all over the graph). That means that only the most active profiles are included in the graph and there is less change from one day to the next than in the whole graph, but the whole graph is impossible to draw.

Read the rest of this entry »

Twitter UK, Italy, Spain and France are coming together this month for #MuseumWeek – a week long event to help encourage museums and potential visitors to use Twitter to share.

SEE PDF PDF Twitter #MuseumWeek PDF 

Now those that know me know this is something I’m a huge advocate of.  Anything that stops the stereotyping that makes museums stuffy and visitors feel they aren’t worthy is a good thing!

Objective:
Twitter has asked museums to sign up and  tweet each day using the different hashtag/theme.  Some of these are incredibly familiar (#AskaCurator #MuseumSelfie).  I was asked if I minded, which is a good question.  As a huge supporter of Museums and Twitter, how could I mind?  I was a bit worried as the topics chosen are something CultureThemes does on a yearly basis but when I stopped and really thought about it – does it really matter?  AskACurator will still happen on September 17th and MuseumSelfie will happen again in January 2015.  What is important is to hopefully reach more museums that might not be using Twitter or know how to jump into social media to feel comfortable throughout the week taking part. Also to bring more potential visitors/advocates into the mix.  I am really proud that Twitter has seen the potential with the museum sector – Go us! 

What and When:
March 24 Day 1 – A day in the life (#DayInTheLife)
March 25 Day 2 – Test your knowledge (#MuseumMastermind)
March 26 Day 3 – Your story (#MuseumMemories)
March 27 Day 4 – Buildings behind the art (#BehindTheArt)
March 28 Day 5 – Ask the expert (#AskTheCurator)
March 29 Day 6 – Museum selfies (#MuseumSelfies)
March 30 Day 7 – Constraint drives creativity (#GetCreative)

Who:
List of Museums in each country
Want to take part and from the UK?  Twitter UK Form
Want to take part and from Spain? Twitter Spain Form
Want to take part and from Italy? Twitter Italy Form
Want to take part but not part of the four countries?  I created a form here

Read the rest of this entry »