>Is there anything like this being >used anywhere in our museum/science center universe?
The technology department at the Denver Art Museum falls back to Twitter from time to time when things are really busy and we start to realize that we don't see each other for a couple of days. It was mostly just as a quick status update to the rest of the team so we knew who was doing what and how things were progressing. On the whole, it was interesting. I've been the only person that's consistently used twitter -- http://twitter.com/bwyman, but then I've been the most digital of the dept for years. Users need to reach a certain point of casualness in conversation that wasn't second nature for everyone although we all agreed that it was pretty useful as a kind of on-going train of thought. There were certainly a few moments of unexpected assistance between colleagues based on what someone was stumbling over (and had tweeted), so that was cool. We also thought it'd be a good way for new hires in the dept to get a sense of who was doing what and how. So, why didn't it sustain? Self-censoring was a big issue, where people just didn't feel like something was important enough or it felt like a little bit of an extra burden to tweet (really? 140 characters was too much!?), but those were also people more inclined to use voicemail. But, back to your original point, I think there's *incredible* value in services like Twitter behind the firewall. Whether it's directed communication or just watching the river flow by, it's interesting to get that really high-level view of that moment's mental status of the organization. -bw. -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Bruce Wyman, Director of Technology Denver Art Museum / 100 W 14th Ave. Pkwy, Denver, CO 80204 office: 720.913.0159 / fax: 720.913.0002 <bwyman at denverartmuseum.org>
