Digital Museum Leaders — Working with Dashboards & Across Silos
Software Tools to Help Governing Boards
There was a great discussion last week among MCN colleagues looking for collaboration tools for non profit Governing Boards. Several industry leaders suggested companies and tools that would help non-profit organizations in today’s era of online meetings and the cloud.
Cloud based collaboration tools that mentioned by MCN Leaders:
- Microsoft Office 365 SharePoint
- Mycommittee.com
- Boardspot.com
- Any others we are missing that are efficient, affordable, and useful?
This discussion reminded of my previous work to visualize business processes and innovation methods for art galleries and heritage museums — putting ideas into action.
I created this visual below on my website for museum leadership, staff and volunteers, so everyone feels like they are on the same page, working towards the collective good of the organization.
My recent work as a Co-Lead on the Leadership & Strategy Track for the Museum Computer Network 2021 conference with Chris Barr, has furthered this concept through the important work being done by the Pratt Institute with digital dashboard projects for Museums.
Linking Strategic Planning to Implementation Strategies for Museums
This visualization above, fosters understanding enabling discussion and interaction across silos to help everyone understand their role in the organization. Content creators, Social media ambassadors, web developers as well as front of house staff in museums, all play a part in the collective vision and action in a cultural site.
For my colleagues participating in the upcoming MCN Conference, please feel free to review this medium article and add any further suggestions or case study information from organizations that are effective at using online collaboration tools to create high performing teams in museums by using the comment feature available in medium, or through some of my other social media channels.
Through my role as Co-Lead for Leadership and Strategy Track for the upcoming MCN 2021 conference, I became aware of the excellent work by Pratt graduate students in this area for tracking Google Analytics information for museums. Craig McDonald will present a workshop on the User Experience Capacity-Building (UXCB) on Wednesday, October 6 • 3:00pm — 4:30pm ET. You can register for this session here. You will find this session as an add-on workshop option with limited registration so the interactions will be more engaging.
About a month ago, when I took a look at the case studies available online, I was excited to find out that Ingenium based in Canada had worked with Pratt on a case study called:
Digital Analytics — Ingenium — How Their New Website Is Performing
Kudos to Ryan Dodge, Chief Digital Officer @Ingenium for participating in this case study. When I spoke to Ryan earlier this summer, he highly recommended that museum professionals work with Pratt graduate students to develop their own dashboards for their organizations. When I took a look at their project proposal form, it emphasized that these projects are free. I’ve taken an excerpt from the case study below, so you can see the benefit to the organization.
Key Takeaways
Ingenium provides valuable offerings to its community both virtually and in person. Our recommendations seek to promote these offerings, improve their online presence, and create data analysis tools that the Ingenium team can use for a long time.
Next Steps
- Standardize measurements/metrics across all museums
- Begin posting to social media about virtual events until museums can reopen
- Investigate pages with high traffic and bounce/exit rates with event tracking, clicks on external links, and a short exit survey
With all of these reflections and interactions, I am looking forward to continuing these discussions with others involved in digital strategy, strategic planning, dashboards and implementation strategies to help the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) Recover, Rebuild and Grow.
