Whether it’s planning next year’s strategy, thinking about next weekend’s schedule, or exploring the next breakthrough technology, it seems that the pace at which we’re moving forward leaves little time to look to the past. Meanwhile, we each leave in our wake an absurd footprint of information–photos, videos, emails, text messages, voicemails, tweets, blog comments, product reviews, transaction histories, GPS coordinates, grumpy passive-aggressive notes to neighbors, and so on. Will these tidbits of tedium mixed with occasional moments of brilliance become our legacies? more

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I am an unabashed history buff.  Ever since I was a young boy, I loved reading books, hearing stories, and watching movies about historical events.  It was no surprise then that I completed a history minor while pursuing my undergraduate degree.

This past month, it was my pleasure to speak to the Class of 2008 of the Seminar for Historical Administration.  This three-week seminar brings rising leaders from a variety of historical sites, museums, and societies together for an intensive program designed to shape the next generation of industry leaders.  It made sense then that digital and social media would be a part of that education. more

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Last week, Sarah Robbins and I were in Rochester, NY, for the American Association of State and Local History (AASLH) 2008 annual conference. We presented a 1/2 day workshop on Web 2.0 and how museums, historical societies, and other historical organizations can leverage social media.  Here are the slides:

I love history and preparing for the conference made me realize how much more alive history can be with digital and social media.  Knowing how much our past drives our present, the human race can gain much from understanding it better.  With the digital and social media tools at our disposal today, anyone with Internet access can experience the past better and derive more insight from it.

As we got into the second half of our workshop, we switched to the user-generated content (UGC) approach to generate examples of the principles we were teaching.  We had 28 people in the workshop representing 20 different organizations.  Here are some of the cool examples that came out of our joint explorations: more

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