When Zack de la Rocha told you to rage against the machine, he didn’t mean take it literally. Agitprop. Fury bait. Yes, you feed it too.

I have been looking a little into AI in the past year or so (posts here and here), and am now revisiting in light of how fast things are moving in this space, and as I undertake more research for a variety of clients. Here’s where I've landed so far. AUSTRALIAN’S ATTITUDES TOWARDS AI EY, November 2024: 32% of Australians are comfortable with AI…

This week we discussed Chapters 1-2 of Falk’s book, Leaning into Value, which seemed to raise more questions than answers! Here’s my takeaways: Value is defined by the user / visitor, rather than the organisation, causing a disconnect Value is often focussed on intangible outcomes Disconnect between the many benefits articulated by visitors compared to leaders who are focussed on internal metrics (collections) rather than looking outwards…

A great start to our online book club talking about Falk’s 2025 book, Leaning into Value. As promised just noting some of the questions/themes/ideas that came from the discussion: “Leading a museum today is hard work” (p.ix) We still have challenges in implementing an evidence-based approach in museums, particularly regarding audience needs versus other priorities Biggest impediment for measuring value is lack of data, or, as we identified, the challenges of communicating research and data to management, curators, staff and other stakeholders (Board, donors etc) …

Members of the Evaluation and Visitor Research Network (AMaGA) will gather online from this week to discuss John Falk’s new book, Leaning into Value: Becoming a User-Focused Museum (Rowman and Littlefield, 2025). (from the back cover) This book: … provides guidance to museum leaders struggling to navigate today’s often tumultuous, ever-changing economic, political, leisure and educational landscape. Provided is a concrete framework for maximizing institutional success, a continuous Value Realization process that enables museum leaders to effectively: 1) Calibrate the needs and interests of their current and potential users; 2) Articulate how and why they create value so they can foster enduring relationships with users; 3) Create an ever-evolving series of products and services that consistently deliver unique value to an ever-more diverse set of constituencies; and finally, 4) Validate their activities through empirical processes that promote evidence-based decision making and catalyze measurable, year-on-year improvements in their organization’s community value.

YouTube video by NDF - National Digital Forum

Wow, it’s been some time since I posted in this blog. Busy times and not really feeling I have much to say, until now! Having been asked to lead a Strategic Planning process for a regional museum I’m thinking of different ways to engage the board and staff in thinking and planning. Tooling around LinkedIn, Paul Bowers’ writings have really resonated with me, especially the following:

Putting aside the Coalition, let's focus on the new government: the one that has won an exceptionally large number of seats and which is probably already doing stuff that's affecting us voters.

The days of media moguls deciding Australian elections are over, according to new research by The Australia Institute.

Apart from a slight uptick of hope when Malcolm Turnbull gained the leadership of the Liberal Party in September 2015, promising to bring “emotional intelligence” to the role, I have never wished the ...

LC Labs has been developing a planning framework to support the responsible exploration and potential adoption of AI at the Library of Congress.