Transcript
Museum Computer Network 09:45
Welcome to MCN 2021 I'm Eric Longo, Executive Director of MCN, and it's a real pleasure to welcome you all today. For our second annual virtual conference. And without further ado, I'm going to hand it off to our current president Mitchell Sava and Yvonne Lee, our current vice president and president elect, this is the type of conference, where the transition that happens between President and Vice President. So, Mitch is president now, and when we end the conference in November 10 Yvonne will officially become president at that time. So, Mitch, over to you,
Mitch Sava 10:26
Fantastic you want to hit. Next slide. So welcome everyone, I am Mitchell Sava as our just mentioned on the My day job is as the vice president of Innovation and Learning at the Museum of life and science in Durham, North Carolina. I'm in our Chem chemistry lab right now. And as I also mentioned I am proudly wrapping up my term as MCNs President, I'm a Caucasian, cisgendered male of Southern European heritage, and I'm sporting a pandemic beard generously sprinkled with grey, and I am wearing my awesome purple live since demo t shirt, which was inspired by a talk by Tim Boutelle at last year's MCNs Ignite session, the entire board joins me in welcoming all of you to nCn 2021, which is our second annual virtual conference, although this event may be virtual, we recognize today and every day that the lands where we learn and play, have long been inhabited and sorted by others. My own institution resides on the traditional territory of the OTG band of this Apone nation. We hope you will join us in strengthening our commitment to listening, learning and growing as stewards of our land for the good of everyone with whom we share. We're now in the second year of the global pandemic, and I'd like to acknowledge the immense hardship and the recalibration that we've all had to endure over the past year and in fact are still enduring. For many in our sector. The past year has continued to be a real challenge for museums and museum workers really for all of us in our community. Still, as we plan for this year year's event. We invited everyone all of you to consider our theme, what is digital. Now, a question that encompasses the anxiety and uncertainty of the President, while making space hopefully for curiosity and the possibilities for the future, which I think are always represented incredibly well at MCN conferences, in spite of the circumstances you all responded enthusiastically to our call for proposals with a variety of really thoughtful and insightful proposals and we're excited for, for the next several weeks, next slot. So what's new. As I mentioned, this marks our second annual virtual conference and as you might imagine the planning for this began many many many months ago pretty much right after the close of last year's conference. Back then the team needed to make a call between an in person experience and doing something virtually again. With so many variables, and with also quite a bit of feedback from last year's virtual MCN in 2020, the choice really was clear for us, and to run to run virtually again for a second time. That said, we also knew that this year's conference needed to be different. So with more and more Zoom fatigue that we've all been facing and teleconference, fatigue, as well as what seems to be even more demands on our time than before. We designed this year's conference with with those, with those factors in mind and again with a lot of your input. First, the days of each, you know, each conference day is shorter by intention, and the overall conference has been elongated to really stretch throughout the month of October. Each day has a specific theme. So we have six professional tracks again over the coming weeks, we have for a first time for regional sessions, which we'll hear more about from from Eric and Yvonne we're incredibly excited for that. We also have a workshop day and a professional development day, we'll have multiple keynote speakers over the time, we of course will have Slack channels that you'll learn more about. And finally, our magnificent Ignite session this afternoon. You do not need to attend at all. This was something we really thought a lot about as we designed the session, and we knew going in that you wouldn't be able to and, and the whole program is designed for you to be able to pop in and pop out of the sessions that you care about connecting with the people you care about finding inspiration, hopping into Slack even whenever you wish for our virtual Hallway Conversations connect essentially with each other and feed your soul as best as you're able. Next slide. So it all begins today. Immediately after our intro here at 12:30pm. Join Heather ahtone, our opening keynote speaker, Heather is the senior curator of the first Americans museum Pham in Oklahoma City. The title of our keynote address decolonizing the museum. What does it mean to you to serve the community. We imagine is going to resonate with many of you. Then after that join Eric and dawn for the first of 10 That's right 10 speed networking events. The first is going to be at 1:15pm. It's a great way to meet other conferences and attendees, particularly given the virtual Nature this year, and also to learn how to make new friends in, in this virtual environment. At the same time conference co chairs Jessica Warchall and Max Evjen Will co host an AMA session about the conference. If you're wondering how to navigate this event, if you're a first timer or even if you've been coming to MCN for a while and want to understand better how to make use of all of the different tools and channels that we've set up over then. For these, these coming weeks, and get the most out of it. This session the AMA session is for you. So with that I thank you and welcome you again, and I will pass it along to our esteemed executive director Eric Longo.
Museum Computer Network 16:03
Thank you Mitch. So it's time for acknowledgement and there's a few slides here that would like to walk you all through. This is the composition of the board so we're welcoming, three, five new board members. This year, named Shay, from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and we're the desktop equipment now is with navigation north, if I'm believed correctly Brittany SRU who I believe is on the call, as well, from the coming Museum of Art in Jacksonville, Florida. Seema Rao, who has also been elected, VP president elect for 2023, and is with the Akron Museum of Art and Jessica Washoe with the charity foundation of American art in Chicago and Jessica was also a co chair of the program committee just here for board members who have served their term would be leaving us this November. Mitch, being one of them, Nathan Atkinson, Doug Allen and Courtney O'Callaghan, and we thank them for their service. All these people, including track feeds have contributed to the program this year. And I had the pleasure is served as co chair, along with Nikhil Trivedi Don Youngberg Max Ashman Torill Haugen and Tillman aperti on on Markita stone, and Jessica Warshaw we thank all of you for your time and effort and reviewing the proposal and conceiving of this conference. The conference never happens without volunteers behind the scene. We're grateful to our volunteer co chairs, Kate, Grace, Poole and case Natal. Nikita activity would be our emcee Ignite extraordinare later, and also are happy to have volunteers from around the world. SIG chairs. There are a bunch of SIG roundtables, you're seeing the program online. We want to recognize and acknowledge the SIG chairs who are members of the MCN community and really are the core of those communities of practice and keep us engaged your round. Thank you for all your work and dedication. Yvonne.
Yvonne Lee 18:32
Sure. And with that, I would also like to thank our support staff and contractors, including Eric Longo are Executive Director or senior digital strategist, Anna Chiaretta Lavatelli our production team digital marketing and graphic design.
Museum Computer Network 18:47
Thanks. And the conference would not happen, as it is every year but it's true. Without the support of all of our sponsors. We were extremely. We're extremely grateful to have them join us this year. They will host a bunch of events throughout the conference. They are, you will find them under a sponsor of ours. And many of them was sponsor or have sponsored our speed networking sessions with between them myself so make sure you join, and go to your session, you can easily sign up for them on the schedule program schedule and customize it. Also I want to acknowledge Jing Culture & Commerce here or their media partners. We have a great lineup of session for the Asia Pacific track tomorrow evening at 8pm Eastern. Make sure to join us then. And of course, A big thanks to knights foundation we are in the second year of a major transformative capacity building grant that we received last year, and our enhancement to our member portal and the website, have been made possible by their funding and support department.
Yvonne Lee 20:07
Great. So welcome everybody. Like Eric and Mitch introduced My name is Yvonne Lee My pronouns are she, her, hers, and when I'm not the VP now president of MCN, I am the head of integrated systems at the Huntington Library Art Museum and botanical gardens. I am a gulf, middle aged woman of East Asian descent with long dark hair, medium complected beige skin. I'm wearing a navy blazer and a bright highlighter yellow shirt. My background is a Jacob's Ladder style quilt from early American collection here at the Huntington, and I want to welcome you all and also go over some of our guidelines to ensure a safe and respectful experience here at MCN. So, please. Familiarize yourself with our Code of Conduct and Community Guidelines. The Community Guidelines outline expected behavior and unacceptable behavior as well as a link to the report form. If you witnessed or are involved in any kind of incident. Also, Max Evjen and Jessica Warchall, who will be hosting an AMA later today can also go into greater depth about what the code of conduct and the community guidelines mean for us to ensure that we have a great conference. Next slide. How to MCN virtual so if you like me are somewhat overwhelmed by all of the various platforms that we have available to us to communicate to engage participate, ask questions, etc. How to MC and virtual which is on the website gives sort of a Wayfinding, about how to use what, when, where, where to go, how to sign in, etc. Next slide please. And then finally a word about accessibility. Here are some guidelines for panelists for speakers for participants attendees etc. To ensure that your presentations and to ensure that the experience online is accessible or as accessible to our best promising sort of practices. So please take a look at that. Please familiarize yourself with all of the suggestions here and if you have any questions, of course, feel free to reach out to us via Slack via Twitter, via any of the means that we've made available including this q&a button. Next one.
Museum Computer Network 22:31
So the next one is Slack. You can all join our Slack channel, and the. If you haven't still yet to join it it's museum computer network.slack.com And this year, unlike last year for those of you who attended last year. We just had to to, instead of having private channels where you need to be invited to basically have open channels where you can have conversations as a kind of metaphor for the hallway conversations in a real life event, and we've organized the conference, channels, around the main conference track channels so there are six of them leadership strategy business finance capacity and sustainability, interpretation, storytelling, education, ethical responsibility. Experienced design and immersive experiences as well, why Museum, and, and then you have other channels like MCN 2021 The help desk, networking, random and pets and a couple of others around karaoke and job so if you have any questions about those go again on our Slack channel. And lastly, if you have any support question. It's the channel on Slack or MCN 2021 help desk, and we are volunteers have been trained to be on the lookout for all your questions and provide support. As soon as you need it. And that concludes our opening remarks, and if you have any questions, kindly put them in the q&a box of the Zoom interface right now. If not, there's no questions, we will conclude now, and we will see you at 1230 for the keynote address by Heather ahtone. Thanks everyone and have a great conference.