In my attempts to let the world understand the true voice of unreason I use Twitter as my main method of communication. In the old days I suppose I would have been found ranting on street corners and being quietly moved on by the local constabulary. Now I am a respected sage in 140 characters or less.
The time to step up to the plate and bear my tweeting teeth came at the MA Conference 2012. I vowed to tweet as much as my RSI would let me. However I quickly realised I would be up against true professionals - could a yokel from somewhere south/north of Yorkshire mix it with top twitterators?
To begin with I noticed many tweets were quotes from sessions with an added 2 or 3 words of analysis - if you were lucky. The brief for speakers at next year's conference should be to keep sentences to 100 characters or less to help us tweeters. The problem is that this instruction may reduce the clarity of the message by making speakers' sentences a bit too sh
In the end I only managed 20 tweets, a meagre 10 a day. Let's put this into context. I met my new tweeting hero @MarDixon and she had tweeted 4,123,345 times before lunch on the first day with insight, engagement and above all enthusiasm. I was truly humbled. Her best tweets? Perhaps these two as part of a conversation with MannyC?
MarDixon,"Audience are embracing weird and wonderful - why aren't museum people / museums?"
mannyc,"@MarDixon embracing and encouraging a culture of change can be a long, hard process. Not an excuse to avoid it though..."
MarDixon, "@mannyc Culture change should come from within an I haven't seen much change there. The public has changed & is bored waiting."
Biting, perceptive and a too rare perspective from outside of the museum world.
Anyway, having gone through the #museums2012 and not slept for 10 days I have now come up with my own
Museum of Unreason Tweeting Awards
* Note I have edited the hashtags out of all the tweets in the interest of sanity
Best suggestion?
Lynz_M_Anderson, "Philanthropy session: Museum Staff should ALL donate to their museums... "
I'll be using that little morale booster at my next team meeting.
Best food for thought?
ee_ve, "Engaging session on conflict in museums. Is it ok to display conflict but not ok to have internal conflicts?"
I think I've got it the wrong way round in my museum.
Best reason to work?
Sharonheal, "Emma Varnam in cultural rights session; why do we go to work in a morning? It's all about social justice."
Best reason not to work?
RachelCockett, "If you work in an organisation for more two years you are complicit. Can you live with it?"
Well to be honest - yes
Best food reference?
AustenJocelyn, "Keith Nichol: 'The UK spends more on cheese than charity.' Love cheese, but a sad statement."
As a cheese based life-form I might be partly responsible for this
Most honest tweet?
museumsrepublic, "Worryingly in the last session I put my hand up by mistake and then saw a microphone coming towards me.."
Most Medieval?
Acuity_Design,"They spent years meticulously making beautiful copies to put on shelves." "Monks?" "No, museums."
Most Excluded?
leehutchinson, "My BlackBerry died (seemingly self-destructed). Consequently, I felt marginalised at MA conference as a non-smartphone user."
The Museum of Unreason Holy Moley award
TamsinRussell, "I loved the Jar. of Moles!"
Great use of a full stop for effect
My best tweet? It gets the 'reducing social media to school playground competitiveness' award
MuseumU, "last tweet 13 seconds can anyone beat that?"
If anyone would like to share their favourite tweets from the conference, or come up with their own awards, I'd be happy to hear from you.
Perhaps together we can put pressure on the MA to come up with some official awards of their own at the next conference.
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