Digital and strategy are two themes that keep emerging in all of my conversations around musetech issues at the moment, and with this morning’s great session on Digital Strategy as context, I proposed an unconference session on those questions. The basic parameters we wanted to explore were how do you act as an internal translator to others in your institution (ie advocacy and communication); how do we collaborate with internal/external stakeholders, and where does digital sit in your institution, and where should it sit?
I’m going to discuss this in more depth later, but for now I thought I’d do a very quick post that captures the documentation of the event.
The discussion on where those at MW2012 sit within their institution, and where they feel they should sit has also prompted a poll asking what department you are in. It would be great if you wanted to answer it over the next day or two before Keir Winesmith posts the results.
Thanks to all those who participated in the session, and to Erica Gangsei for being note-taker.
museum geek 
I’ve very hard to draw any sort of useful conclusion from 13 respondents.
So I’ll just post the numbers.
Country = US*4, Australia*3, Sweden*2, UK*2, Greece, NZ.
2 people in IT who think they belong in IT
2 people in marketing who think they belong in curatorial
3 people in digital media who are where they belong
6 people dotted all over their insituations who believe they belong in digita media.
So, more than half the respondents _should_ be in a different department. Hmm, still, I’d like to get about 100 or so respondents before I started making any bold claims. A question for next year perhaps.
keir
Hi, I did a very unscientific survey of people in education and digital media in the US, and wrote about it in my blog, Museum Commons, in the post, Museum Transformation, Who Has the Clout? I felt safe in asserting that folks in media in museums are often at the head of their own departments but are not necessarily in top decision making positions where long-term decisions are being made about direction, mission, and the necessary funding to make things happen. Although media folks may feel more comfortable in positions that draw on their talents, they should also think about whether moving into more administrative positions might help advance the role of media in their museums.