Written by Nina Simon
We’ve had our first round of signups and lots of people have been inquiring about how to put in a proposal for a “wild idea” to serve as the basis for the conference. Putting in a proposal is easy - just send an email to [email protected] with a text description of your idea (a couple of paragraphs is fine).
But what IS a wild idea? And what makes an idea a good candidate for MuseumNext? Here are some criteria to help you think about your proposal.
Most importantly, is this idea something truly “wild” and new for you?
You should be proposing something that you are at least partly unsure of how to make happen. The goal is for us all to put our brains together on some really hard problems we haven’t tackled before, not questions we deal with day in and day out.
Are you willing to share your idea openly with strangers?
At MuseumNext, people will work hard to try to help you fully explore and detail the idea. This means you must be open to their probing questions and intriguing suggestions. If your idea is too fixed or you feel like parts of it need to be kept secret, it may not be right for MuseumNext.
Do you have specific challenges with which you need help?
Other participants will be able to help you best if you can really define your problem. For example, you might say, “I want to do an exhibition that changes over time, but I’m not sure how to design the space and manage the operating costs to make that happen.” We will have participants with lots of different skills, from facilitation to design to marketing, and the more you know what your needs are, the better we can partner you with folks who can help.
Is your wild idea in some way related to visitor participation?
While I personally love crazy ideas of all kinds, in the case of MuseumNext, we are focusing on projects that have some element of visitor-created content, input, or feedback.
We will be accepting wild idea proposals through the end of September, and we will let the selected project proposers know by 10th October whether their idea will be on the docket for MuseumNext or not. We will accept proposals on a rolling basis, so get your wildest ideas in early!