“What’s Emerging in the Field?: Essays from the MCN 2020 VIRTUAL Scholarship Program Recipients.”
Last year, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, MCN repurposed its planned in-person annual conference into a virtual experience. Thanks to the generous support of the Kress Foundation, MCN was also able to redesign its long running Scholarship Program to award scholarships to 10 qualified emerging professionals from the cultural sector. The grant allowed…
A Refreshed Scholarship Program for #MCN2020
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, MCN has decided to cancel the in-person conference in Baltimore this November. We will proceed with the 2020 annual conference in the fall in an extended virtual format. This caused us to rethink how we could best adapt MCN’s well-established Scholarship Program to align with a virtual conference model. I’m…
MCN 2018 Through the Eyes of a Museum Educator, Museum Studies Instructor, and High School Teacher
By: Hillary Hanel Rose In November 2018 I had the honor and privilege of participating in the MCN Conference as a Scholar. I first learned about MCN in 2016 as I searched for resources to share with my museum studies students and have been eager to become more involved with the organization since then. Determined…
Don’t Forget the Small Museums
By Kelli Huggins, Visitor Experience Coordinator, Catskill Center I am an accidental museum tech person. As a career small museum/non-profit employee, I have often found myself taking on social media, online exhibits, and other basic technology projects by default. They’ve never been the main part of my job, however, just something I ended up doing…
Third Time’s a Charm
By Samantha Norling, Digital Collections Manager, Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields As an early-career archivist I found myself working as a “lone arranger” in an art museum—a setting in which I had no previous experience. Early on, I learned from my colleagues in departments throughout the museum about the many organizations and groups in…
Looking back to move forward: Museum technology in the age of the BIG data
By Dr. Natalia Grincheva, Research Fellow, University of Melbourne This audio blog is a series of short interviews collected from several speakers at the 2017 MCN conference, both academics and professionals while I was an MCN Scholarship recipient. They include brief conversations with former board members, newcomers to the conference, and those who already…
Seeing Myself in the Museum Community
By Monique Lassere, Digital Preservation Librarian, University of Arizona Libraries As a first-time attendee and black librarian, I did not know what to expect at MCN2017. I had applied to the MCN Scholarship Program with the dream that I, an outsider, would be able to experience the museum computing community for a brief period of…
MCN: It’s all about the people
Ben Fast (@benfaster), Programs & Member Services Coordinator, BC Museums Association MCN is all about the people. Don’t get me wrong, the learning experiences available from the remarkably diverse sessions and the fun times visiting local museums and galleries are great, but it all comes down to who you meet. From Day 1…
Eye Opening Inspiration
By Kat Quigley, (@kathryncquigley) Senior Producer and New Media Lead, Lawrence Hall of Science Attending MCN this year as a Scholar was not what I expected—and that’s because I really didn’t know what to expect. MCN 2017 was my first time attending a museum conference of any kind. Although I’ve been working at…
More Than a Conference: A Place that Informs, Engages, and Inspires a Community
By. Castle Kim (@HelpingCastle) Doctoral Student, iSchool at Florida State University One of my favorite artwork is Irises by Vincent van Gogh, displayed at J. Paul Getty Museum. What I love most about the painting is the story behind it. Van Gogh did not truly ‘complete’ the painting, for him the painting was a…
Feeling Welcomed and Paying Interns: The MCN Experience
By Courtney Titus, Former Educational Technology Coordinator, Blaffer Art Museum As I walked into my first MCN session as an MCN Scholar, I was reminded of the days when I started a new school. The same anxieties bubbled to the surface about being the new kid and feeling uncertain if I would fit in…
MCN 2017 Scholars look forward to Pittsburgh!
Our #MCN2017 Scholars are looking forward to the conference in Pittsburgh, get to know them below and find out what they are looking to learn about this year. Ben Fast How did you learn about MCN? I heard about MCN through Twitter first, but only really paid attention to it when two long-distance colleagues of…