Note, this is a cross post, and can also be found at If I Were a Museum.

As Suzanne Hall from VMFA and I are finishing up our PowerPoint presentations for the Virginia Associations of Museums 2010 Conference, I thought it might be helpful to provide you with some links, that you’ll want to explore either before or after our presentation.

For Twitter:
Desktop tools:
http://tweetdeck.com/
www.hootsuite.com/ ****web based for those who don’t want to or can’t download or install a program
http://seesmic.com/

Some useful tags include:
#RVA
#VA

#SMCRVA (Social Media Club, Richmond & then Go!)
For more info on the Social Media Club, go here, or connect with them on Twitter & Facebook.
http://smcrva.org/ The next meeting is THIS Thursday, if you’d like to come you can get a ticket online. or….Create your own — but it has to bring people together, not be self-serving.

(Museum Specific)
#VAMUSE
#History
#Museums
#DC
#FollowaMuseum
#MuseumMonday
#Smithsonian

Track your Progress, refine your work
http://twitterholic.com/
http://www.twittergrader.com/
http://mrtweet.com/
http://twellow.com
http://friendorfollow.com/

Facebook Insights — on the left sidebar of your Facebook fan page.

Google Analytics — Ironworks has a great post on how to use the info you gain from Google Analytics.

Local trending
http://www.rvatweets.com/

iphone Apps:
Tweetie
FourSquare — 5 ways to use FourSquare for business
AroundMe

Get Review/Travel Tools sites, available on iphone, or web:
Yelp
TripAdvisor

Read others blogs, here are some Museum & Non-profit suggestions:
Nina Simon’s Museum 2.0 is by far the best on museums!

Non-profit Tech 2.0, social media for non-profits

Beth Kanter, how non-profits can use social media for change

Museum Marketing UK

Blog Carnivals: find one in your industry

Cross Pollination….Facebook & Twitter widgets on blog or webpage

I can’t wait 2 get school closings via @henricoschools & @RPS_Schools on Twitter this winter when it snows! It really is the 21st century!

This was my Tweet a few minutes ago! I think you’ll agree, it is about time that the local school systems joined Twitter. Perhaps I’m being too optimistic to actually hope that the schools will use Twitter in this way. Henrico has yet to post a Tweet (this would have been the first thing I would do BEFORE sending out the press release.) Richmond Public schools hasn’t posted since August (perhaps they are too busy with their back to school work) and have yet to engage their audience in any meaningful way.

Perhaps, if they get a really nice #FollowFriday welcome and lots of followers, they will learn 1. that people actually use Twitter and want to get information this way 2. that they need to follow people back to hear what their constituents are saying 3. that although using Twitter well takes time, it is well worth the effort.  4. One of the worst things you can do is use Twitter simply for announcements.  If you “get” Twitter you know it is very limited in its service in this capacity and seems hardly worth anything. The magic happens when you listen, reach out to your audience, and engage!

So, Near West End school parents, start to follow your public school system. Ask them questions on Twitter. Force them to interact with you. Social Media is the wave of the future, let the schools know that parents do want to connect in this way. Or, we can just cross our fingers and hope we get the school closing announcements here before we get them on T.V.

Photos from the event Visual Strategy: A Creative Workhop, photos courtesy Fraser Design

On my run today I had a great thought.  And if it weren’t for the collaborative project : Visual Strategy A Creative Workshop about Richmond, hosted by Peter Fraser, Ansel Olsen and John Sarvay, it is a  thought I  might not have had at all.  One of the biggest things that struck me about this 4-hour session was that Peter, Ansel and John actually walk the walk and talk the talk.  How do I know this?  Two examples come to mind. First  Sarvay told us a story about how he was chastised for telling someone they were full of bull, when they were. Instead of keeping his mouth shut. Instead of being polite.  He called it like he saw it.  John’s just one of those people that can tell it like it is, and do it proudly. Must have something to do with his punk rock post adolescent years on Grace Street.  He can also be polite when he wants to. But sometimes polite just doesn’t serve you.  And sometimes you damage yourself more by not saying what you really want to say, than by just saying it.   The second thing was a simple, old pencil — but more on that later.

In today’s world, things are changing. People value organic relationships. They value realness. Honesty. And they value humans for being human even if that means you sometimes see a blemish.  I know one thing I value is when people tell me how they really feel instead of what they think I want to hear.

Realness in relationships is taking over the world, and it’s about time. In the 21st century,  people are out there Tweeting about quirky customers, about what they are eating, about funny things that happen to them,  about what they see and feel, and they even Tweet about going on the road. The new world is less formal and they younger ones, well? They might not even use punctuation, or they might use texting slang that comes about when their thumbs want to find a better way, or they’d just rather not spell out the full word one more time. Social media is changing the way we think and the way we talk. It is changing how we communicate and also when we communicate.  We are living life in real time and telling a play-by-play story of it as we go.

Sarvay, Olsen and Fraser gathered  our eclectic group  together to think about Richmond differently and by framing things differently, changing perspectives, using exercises to expand boundaries, they helped us expand our minds.  We used tools like visual thesaurus, envisioning exercises, decks of cards like Oblique Stategies and Harvey Cards all to explore our ideas on a different level, and hopefully in a new way.  Maybe, through this process, we would rethink our truths of our lives and come to some new ones.  One truth for me  is that I sometimes feel like I’m apologizing for telling it like it is — which also just happens to be my style.  More often than that, though, I”ve been tempted to say nothing at all to avoid rocking the boat.  But, a funny thing happens when one person stands up. It becomes harder and harder to not stand up yourself.  It becomes harder and harder to apologize for who you are or how you feel.

And being genuine, and polite, or maybe not so polite, efficient and real, not polished and gleaming is becoming more acceptable again.  Hallelujah! Sarvay presented an idea that immediately seemed true and yet I’d never thought of it: consumer society is retracting in this economy and people are turning back to what they’ve always known: stories, relationships, community.  People are being themselves. They are being practical. They are   reveling in the me-ness of being me. And this is a beautiful thing. A very beautiful thing.

When I walked into The Marvin Lang Building, I was immediately surprised at the appearance. Here was a design company that was completely content with itself. No need to hire a fancy interior designer and have the place coordinated and polished like a fancy Christmas wrapping.  No need for interior walls, a finish coat of paint or carpeting.  The sense of style and design was created by functionality, and by ordered chaos.  The building is one big room, and despite the fact that it holds two distinct companies, I can tell it is one big happy family with very little division between the two spaces.   The walls are covered in a board that can easily hold tacks for posting the latest ideas — despite the fact that they leave white powdery marks on anyone who leans against them.  A  photography studio in the back of the building is barely separated from the many work spaces, the kitchen,  and  the “boardroom” table. Strangely, a beach-colored grandfather clock sits casually adjacent to rows and rows of books haphazardly stacked on the open shelves.  Ordered chaos might be how I would describe the room, but the amazing light and skylights somehow made everything grow.   One whole wall is studded with windows. This is a special place.

The day started with a list: 5 things that you love and seek out in Richmond, and 5 things that are distinct in Richmond Then we were to place them on the map and put check marks by duplicates. For me there were way more than 10.  It was wonderful to see the map filled with so many memories of exploring and getting to know this town. Even better was getting to see many of my classmates had their own favorite that sometimes overlapped with mine and sometimes just reminded me of all the great things I’d forgotten to put down.

Then very small detail that caught my eye.  A pencil. This pencil had been around the block, you could tell. It had a logo on it from in 70’s type and maybe was even foreign in origin. I don’t recall exactly what was written on it but It was not a product or phrase that I recognized as being anything modern, or even American. The eraser had been broken abruptly off and there was no hope of it ever erasing even one more letter. In fact there was a void where the eraser should have been and a jaggedy pink canyon inside.  This was a well-worn, but well-loved tool.  The perfectness of a newly sharpened point  stood in stark contrast  against the age and humbleness of the pencil itself. This pencil had gotten some mileage. In its perfect sharpness was a flaw of the lead itself having broken deep inside the tube and mildly flopping around if you turned the pencil just the wrong way.

This had to be the tool used to draw the skeleton and bones of a map of Richmond that the group used to mark favorite spots.  So if you haven’t figured it out yet, this pencil represents a new era for the city. An era that will embrace the old and the new in a strange dance of oneness. In a society that will value realness, honesty and truth.  A society where we keep and savor the old rather than toss it out and buy new.  A society where all will be welcome members at the table and we will accept any kind as long as they are real, hard working and devoted.

And this is a new era for me as well. It is easy for me to recognize myself in this pencil. And this is the beautiful realization I had when I was running. It’s great to be me — old or imperfect as I am. I savor the nostalgia. Even the simple quirkiness of myself.   Conforming to the norm is not an issue, holding oneself against another in comparison, whether you are a design business or a in individual offers so little value.  Turning quirks into strengths with  no apologies for being you is what it is about. Just like my friend, the pencil. Flaws, when they give you character are no longer flaws, they are assets.  And here I was showing  me realness as opposed to hiding it away.

And I found my voice echoed these thoughts. All of a sudden I was standing up at the Visual Strategy seminar no longer afraid to say that our city’s slave history shouldn’t remain buried. It should be remembered and held sacred. And our team came together and jammed on the riff that our ugly history should be cherished and we should have  educational and guided slave trail walks for anyone who wants to walk the slave trail and learn the horrible history.  I found myself speaking passionately, having found my voice, about un-burying our history and exposing it (painful as it may be), so that we can move on from this chapter, to the next.  Suddenly, since finding my voice, I was able to speak to my team about what “being sold down river”  means, and about why that phrase was created in Richmond. I was able to allow myself to think for the first time of the injustices that would be done if we don’t take advantage of this opportunity to bring something truly unique to Shockoe bottom. Our group recalled that Richmond’ first synagogue was in the Bottom, and the First Freedom monument, a few block West would make for another corner in the tapestry. The irony of Patrick Henry’s “Give me Liberty or Give me Death” speech hanging over Church Hill echoing cannot be ignored.  The reconciliation monument and the Civil Rights Monument just a few blocks away could all be incorporated.  The town gallows where Gabriel Prosser was hung, at age 24.  The slave markets that dotted across the Botttom. The bravery, the pain and the sacrifice, and the slave cemetery — all dug deep into the ground, will  not go away. The Devil’s Half Acre, Lumpkin’s Jail, can be resurrected from the artifacts the archeologists are finding, that the Smithsonian is declaring most important, and the local media is ignoring.  And in such a serious moment our team realized that the tie-ing theme for all this was spiritual.  Maybe a reflective pool or garden. Maybe just a place to weep for all the wrongs that have been and will continue to be done. And maybe our team didn’t agret on this, but I can certainly say for myself — not a baseball stadium.

So, back to my run. … I saw a bright yellow vintage metal chair out of the corner of my eye. It was a chair I had owned once and loved too well. Collecting metal porch furniture was a hobby right before triathlons and right after my first motorcycle craze phase. I had found and loved these metal chairs and painted them in the most shocking lemon yellow gloss paint that I could find.

They had a story. I painted them with love. And I loved them each day I sat in them. Each bottom they held told a different story. Because these chairs were special.   They look like normal sturdy metal chair, but when you sit in them they give and give and give until they stop inches from the ground and you bounced right back up and down and up and down and up again.

One year during our annual blue crab picking, our neighbor Mr. Allen, sat in one. He was a very large man and I will never forget the look on his face as he went down, down, down and thought he was going down for good and then came back up, up, up. Then down again, then up.  In a crazy bouncing fashion of panic. After that, we frantically tried to warn people when the sat in them. And we almost apologetically steered people clear of them or nabbed them ourselves first. So when we were moving to our new house in a pristine-looking neighborhood, my first home in a real suburb that I owned, and with covenants. I decided it was time to get rid of the shocking yellow chairs. We were moving from a transitional  neighborhood,  sprung from country in the city (roosters and all),  with junked up cars, gardens gone wild and plenty of junk, to cookie cuter houses with covenants.  No one wanted the chairs at our yard sale (though several people tried them out) despite the bargain price of $35 for the pair. They were in flawless condition, despite likely having been made in the 50’s or 60s.  But then, at the end of the sale, I convinced someone to take them.

And since then, I’ve regretted it. You see I loved those chairs more than I would admit. But I  thought they had to go, because what would my new neighbors thinks? And back then I would have thrown out that old pencil too. What would people think? Would they call the covenant police. The chairs would clash with everything we  owned and we were trying to escape from an eclectic alley-shopping past to a future where the grass would be perfect and the closest were always organized. Only there was one problem. It wasn’t true. It was all a lie. It wasn’t us.

And someone else has my beloved chairs.

I hope they are enjoying them. As for me, I will not make that mistake again.   I’ve learned a that lesson. I’m very ready to be an old, well loved pencil that is so strange and dorky, you might just call it cool because it is in love with itself, flaws and all.  And by admitting our flaws, and revealing them, even celebrating them, we are on a path to healing.  Richmond, the time is now, you are an old wooden pencil, you are a tricky, shocking lemon yellow chair. You are the Devil’s Half Acre, and I love you anyway, because of and despite of it all.