David Hingley, Head of Visitor Experience at Tate, talks about an initiative to share education and development between cultural institutions to professionalize visitor operations as a career pathway.

Arthur G Affleck III, Executive Director for the Association of Children's Museums, shares his organization's mission to support children and families to learn through play, with the importance of this work in lives and to society.

Show notes

The Association of Children's Museums https://childrensmuseums.org/

Playful Learning Landscapes https://playfullearninglandscapes.com/

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek's work https://kathyhirshpasek.com/play/

Kimberly Nesbitt's work https://www.education.nh.gov/sites/g/files/ehbemt326/files/inline-documents/2020/nesbitt-play-based-k.pdf

To celebrate international product day, Dexibit's Product Director Veronika Gower talks about contemporary best practices for product management in technology and digital first organizations, and what these mean for company culture and ways of working, drawing on her experiences at Dexibit.

Setting up a data function in your visitor attraction? Join Baku Hosoe, Head of Data and Analytics at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, to hear about the origins and evolution of The Met's data program and Baku's takeaways for structuring, hiring and enabling a data team.

Nancy Proctor weaves together two unique stories: her career intersecting entrepreneurship, academia and culture, with that of a radical vision for the Peale - the first museum in the US, currently undergoing transformation ahead of reopening (summer '22). Set against a backdrop of the evolution of digital and now of culture in society, Nancy redefines the meaning of the museum as 'a place where culture gets created', with a community centric philosophy inverting the curatorial model.

Elliott Ferguson, President and CEO of Destination DC shares his unique insights into the state of tourism, mandates, omicron and the question of what’s next from the Nation's capital, a premiere visitor destination filled with world class attractions.

Elliott talks about the pivot for destination marketers from ‘heads in beds and butts in seats’ into a new central role of chief communicator between venues and visitors, reflecting on the changing expectations and demands of travellers across attractions, events and hospitality.

Murray Thom, Cofounder of NFT start up Glorious and James Blackie, Director of Art, give us the download on everything we need to know about Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and their potential for visitor attractions - from art museums to stadiums. Combining their respective careers in music producing and art dealership, along with a who's who leadership team, Glorious have burst onto the scene to create authentic digital masterpieces. Learn about the potential for brand, engagement, revenue, loyalty, access and more that this latest tech trend represents and what to watch out for in terms of security, equity and environmental impact.

Seb Chan, Chief Experience Officer at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) discusses the evolution of how we think about visitor experience in experiential spaces, going beyond traditional engagement to cross creative and infrastructural elements.

Seb covers ACMI's redevelopment, a unique approach to staff restructure, establishing the museum as a platform and its technologies including the Experience Operating System (xOS) and the Lens: the ingredients which set the ACMI team to make the most of a terrible opportunity in coping with the pandemic.

Show notes:

For more on the Lens, visit https://www.acmi.net.au/lens/

A pavlova recipe courtesy of Seb's Mum https://www.sebchan.com/never-fail-new-zealand-pavlova-recipe/

"No one's gonna read that": David Lew, Visitor Services Solutions Manager at Auckland Museum Tamaki Paenga Hira talks about how to connect exhibitions with visitor experiences through the power of visitor services, including through an indigenous lens with He Kōrahi Māori, the Māori dimension.

SHOW NOTES

Read all about Te Ao Mārama, the South Atrium project https://www.aucklandmuseum.com/your-museum/south-atrium

David refers to several words in Te Reo Māori, the indigenous language of Aotearoa, New Zealand. They are:

- Marae, Māori meeting grounds

- Iwi, tribe

- Pōwhiri, welcome ceremonies

- Mana whenua, customary authority exercised by an iwi (tribe)

- Mahi toi, art or art work

- Kaitiaki, guardianship of the sky, sea and land

- Tanoa (Pacific), a large wooden bowl for kava ceremonies

Over the course of the pandemic, many visitor attractions experienced wild changes in their membership and season pass customer base - moves which have forever changed consumer behaviors and how we strategically respond to these. Hear how Chief Revenue and Marketing Officer Melissa Felder thinks about loyalty at the California Academy of Sciences and how their mission is inspiring the next generation of supporters.