An article that I wrote for the July/August issue of the Association of Science-Technology Center’s Dimensions magazine is now available online.  Appropriately for these economic times, the issue focuses on ways in which science centers can save money and do more with less.

The article,  Nine Free or Nearly Free Ways Museums Can Take Advantage of Web 2.0 covers a variety of Web-based services and touches on some of the open source initiatives that are now available to museums. I also list a number of inspirational examples, demonstrating how science centers and other museums are using Web 2.0 technologies. 

Just a couple weeks ago our small company quietly passed a significant milestone-we exceeded 100,000 pounds of carbon avoided. Back in May of 2006, we made the switch to wind power for 90% of electricity needs.  A month later, we became a completely carbon neutral company. We calculated all of our carbon usage and began to purchase credits from NativeEnergy. Each June since, we recalculate our carbon production including travel for business and to and from work. We’re now entering our third year as green company.

This year I won’t detail all of the calculations (you can see how we offset our carbon production in previous years) but interestingly, even as the company has grown to twice the number of staff, our carbon production (and offsets) have remain steady. Much of the credit for this lack of growth in carbon production has to do with the fact that many of us ride our bikes or carpool to the studio. Carlos, our system administrator has even made the move to an electric scooter. The Vectrix has a range of about 30 miles, enough to get to work, and after a quick charge, back home.  Sixty miles-per hour and no tail pipe!

To see more on how and why we became a climate neutral company, visit our climate neutral page.

As we mentioned in posts earlier this year, we’ve written and have now submitted a proposal with the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) to fund an open source initiative to develop software for computer-based interactive exhibits.  Our preliminary Website for the Open Exhibits project is now available at openexhibits.org.  The new site contains a screencast introducing the project along with a description of this planned project.

Also on the Open Exhibits site, you’ll  find results from the survey we conducted in April and May of this year. We had a total of 125 responses from 110 museums.  The survey results can be filtered by small and large museums, as well as informal science institutions.  You’ll also find  links to our Facebook group, YouTube page, and Flickr presence.   Please join us on these sites and we’ll keep you up-to-date as we  (hopefully) start this new initiative.

This weekend, I headed up to Chaco Culture National Historic Park on the summer solstice to see traditional dancers. The Friends of Native Cultures have been organizing the appearance of native dancers each solstice since 2000, and I’ve been lucky enough to be at four out of the last five (you can see photos from 2004, 2006, 2007, and there are lots more photos of Chaco Culture at the Traditions of the Sun Website.)

The dancers perform in the plaza of the great house of Pueblo Bonito. For those of you who’ve never been to Chaco Canyon, Pueblo Bonito is largest of all the great houses found in the park, with nearly six hundred rooms, and it was three stories in some parts. Pueblo Bonito was built around 1000 AD and was continually built on for a few hundred years afterward, until the Chacoans left the area in 13th Century. Pueblo Bonito is a truly dramatic setting and it is a very emotional experience for those who dance; Chaco is the home of their ancestors after all.

This year the group of dancers were from Acoma Pueblo (which is the oldest, continually inhabited community in the U.S.). Below are some photos from their two morning dances. There are a few more photographs, including high-resolution versions on the Ideum Flickr site.

Dancing in the Plaza.

Marking the start of summer.

The two youngest dancers hold beautiful Acoma pottery.

Back in May of 2006, we launched Museum Blogs (www.museumblogs.org) as an experimental site and to “help increase the community’s awareness and authority.” By authority we meant search rankings and Technorati ranking in particular. By aggregating all of the collective feeds the site has created additional links to all the museum blogs in the directory.

When the site launched there were only around 50 museum blogs and now two years later there are nearly 300 in listed in the directory.  In just a few hours, we will exceed 100,000 blog posts, a pretty remarkable development for the museum blogosphere which, by all estimates, was pretty far behind in using blogging technology.  Two years later blogging is common-place among many museums and is seen as just another way to communicate with the public.