It’s not an exaggeration to say that 2020 will be remembered as one of the most challenging years in recent memory. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world as we knew it. And it’s changing us. As individuals, many of us are shaken to our core, bruised, uncertain about everything, and emotionally drained. The travel restrictions imposed around the world to contain the contagion continue to cause immense economic devastation across all sectors, in particular museums and the cultural heritage sector. And the dust hasn’t even begun to settle, making predicting the future all but futile. And yet, we need perspective. We need to deepen our understanding of the ways in which digital technology can better serve our engagement in a new world. We need to ask better questions to complex problems we care deeply about. With this in mind, MCN launches a new MCN blog series—MCN Insights—dedicated to exploring issues, trends, and ideas as we navigate the road ahead.
The MCN community has been leading innovation in museums for decades. As digital technologists in museums, we’re always looking for the best applications of the latest technologies to amplify the work of our institutions. Over the years, the MCN community has developed a significant collective wisdom through our body of work around digital practice in museums today. The MCN Insights blog series seeks to showcase that wisdom and share it more widely with the rest of the museum community. We’re excited to continue the deep conversations we have every year beyond the end of the annual conference. MCN Insights endeavors to be a space for reflection, context, debating big ideas, and offering inspiration.
The MCN Insights blog series comes in the form of two blog posts each month: one from an MCN board member along with another from a community member wishing to contribute. We aim to promote diversity of backgrounds, voices and perspectives, so priority will be given to BIPOC contributors and those from traditionally underrepresented communities as well as those from diverse professional backgrounds, experiences, roles and organizations. We want to hear about what’s been on your mind lately; trends you’re noticing or insights you’ve had; things that exasperate you and wish would be solved and how; those nerdy, geeky topics that animate and enthrall so many of us; your anxieties, and your hopes, about museums in general, technology specifically; how these unpredictable times affect our work and are changing our practice, our teams, ourselves, and our place in the conversation.
General guidelines to submit a post to be published on MCN Insights:
- 350–500 words
- Provide at least one image, if possible, that is at least 1,000 px wide (in the public domain or with permission and caption information)
- Rolling deadline is the 10th of each calendar month
- Author grants MCN sole rights to publication and distribution of the post in perpetuity. Authors are encouraged to share links back to the MCN blog to promote their submission, but are kindly asked not to re-publish the full text on any other platform.
- MCN reserves the right to reject proposals at its sole discretion, or to ask contributors to resubmit a proposal for edits.
- If authors agree to engage with the community about their posts, MCN will be happy to host an ‘Ask Me Anything’ chat on the MCN Slack #general channel.
If you have an idea for a post, or would like to submit a post for publication, fill out this FORM for consideration.