The San Jose Museum of Art hosted the Annual meeting of the Museum Computer Network’sCalifornia Special Interest Group (say that fast five times) in August of 2008. The day long meeting had several presentations from local museums including History|San Jose, the Magnus, the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco and our museum. For the meeting I spoke about our iPod Touch tour and then invited the 20 participants to check it out for themselves in the gallery. The day was a success and it was great to meet so many new people and learn about their organizations.
Our challenge for this project was to create a video that would both promote an exhibition that had little marketing budget and at the same time front load an interactive/interpretive component in the exhibition. For the exhibition we were featuring an area where visitors could read postcards from around the world. The postcards came from viewers of the video which instructed them to send a fun, quirky postcard from a road trip they might be taking.
After strategizing, the museum came to the conclusion to again utilize the YouTube platform. After much brainstorming and story boarding we came up with a concept video (shown above) of a person traveling to a bizarre roadside attraction (in this particular case a giant cement artichoke in Castroville). In the video you would never actually see the persons face, but you would see the events that led up to the attraction. One of the noticeable aspects of the video are a pair of high heeled stilettos that emerge from an opening car door. Additionally, the person would purchase a post card at the attraction, fill it our and send it. There would be no actual sound recorded by the camera. Instead there would be sounds that were found via sound effects websites.
Screen shot from California Camp Bug Blog
The video was shot on an HD video camera in about a day’s time and then assembled back at the museum with Final Cut Express in about two days. Finding the right sounds for each of the scenes met with some challenges. Once completed, the video was uploaded to YouTube. To drive traffic to the video we contacted many travel blogs and asked them if they would showcase it.
The video is currently the most successful one on YouTube for the San Jose Museum of Art with over 80,000 views. It was posted at one point on the YT homepage as a “Featured Video” where it accumulated most of those views. We received over a hundred postcards from around the globe and the video has been featured on many blogs. There are around 55 comments about the video and we at one point had 8 video responses to it. The response to the video has inspired us to create a video serial around the shoes to promote other upcoming exhibitions.
For the American Association of Museums Conference in Denver, I was invited to speak about how our museum over the years has gathered visitor comments electronically. I gave a historical perspective and talked about analogue methods using paper and worked up to utilizing “web 2.0” technologies. The panel consisted of myself, Dave Ashiem from Guide by Cell, Peter Samis from SFMoMA, and Marla Shoemaker from the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the session was called Using Technology to Elicit Visitor Feedback. I was sick at the time of the presentation and was not at the top of my game. Ironically, while I was researching some facts about this post, I came across the audio from the conference available for purchase from the AAM website.
I was flattered to be asked, through our YouTube Channel, by David Hart at New York MoMA if I would be interested in presenting at Museums and the Web 2008 about how we utilize YouTube at the San Jose Museum of Art. I was quick to accept because this would be my first conference speaking engagement. Also on the panel were Allegra Burnette, The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Daniel Dark, The Indianapolis Museum of Art; Jennifer Rossi, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; and Nicole Minor, The Exploratorium, USA. The idea for our panel presentation and discussion built on a presentation at Museums and the Web 2007 put on by the Indianapolis Museum of Art about posting videos to YouTube. Our idea was – so now you have a video on YouTube now what? My section dealt on how to make your video viral in a marketing campaign. The session was very well attended with attendees spill into the aisles and standing out in the hallway and lined up against the back wall.
The paper that we collaborated on Beyond Launch: Museum Videos on YouTube is available on the Museums and the Web 2008 website. Thanks to David and Allegra for putting it all together!
Presentation to a group of Museum Studies students at Santa Clara University. Talked about current SJMA practices for creating and delivering audio and video interpretation with a strong emphasis on cell phones and Guide by Cell. Students are working on interpretive materials for an upcoming Anderson Art Collection exhibition. Interpretation includes writing labels, writing bios and creating cell phone tour.
