
Nina Simon
What I do, where I work
I’m an independent person working on exhibits and museum experiences that relate to visitor participation (as co-creators or highly enabled users) and gaming. I maintain Museum 2.0, a blog about ways that museums can integrate social networks, user-focused design, and etc. into our institutions. I work with museums on experimental exhibit processes and new ways of thinking about content sharing and technology.
Positions
scary radar earth science electrical engineering thingy at NASA
Curator at The Tech Museum of Innovation
Experience Development Specialist at International Spy Museum
all-around deck hand at Acton Science Discovery Museum
educational stuff at Boston Museum of Science
Website(s)
More about me
I’m interested in projects that are racy, challenging, and dynamic. There’s a constant struggle in my head between the benefits of highly designed, immersive, narrative experiences and those of user-focused, open-ended ones. My 5-year dream is to start a small museum/bar that can serve as an experimental launching pad for participatory exhibits and for museum folks to play with innovation and see how possible it can be in their own institutions.
I also live in the mountains off the grid and love building treehouses.
Recent publications & presentations
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"Is Museum a Four Letter Word?." Museum
January 2008
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"Discourse in the Blogosphere: What Museums Can Learn from Web 2.0." Museums and Social Issues
Fall 2007
Case Studies

The Tech Virtual Test Zone
by Nina Simon
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Published June 26 2008

Reflexive Architecture (in Secon...
by Nina Simon
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Published February 16 2008
Reviews

Rotten Luck: The Decaying Dice o...
by Nina Simon
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Published April 26 2007
Photos and Blog Posts
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Where I'm Coming From
November 25, 2008
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Free2choose and the Social Dimension of Polling Interactives
November 20, 2008
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Comment Cards 2.0: Three Tools to Check Out
November 18, 2008
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Lessons in Participatory Design from SFMOMA's Exhibition on (you guessed) The Art of Participation
November 11, 2008
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Two Tagging Projects that Make Sense
November 06, 2008
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Two Years Later
November 02, 2008
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Scratch: An Educational, Multi-Generational Online Community that Works
October 30, 2008
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How (and Why) to Develop a Social Media Handbook
October 27, 2008
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Self-Censorship for Museum Professionals
October 22, 2008
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Quick Hit: Meet Me in Philadelphia!
October 13, 2008
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The Future of Authority: Platform Power
October 08, 2008
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What Cross-Platform Gaming is Doing for Books... and Can Do for Museums
October 06, 2008
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Intranets, Yammer, and Other Web 2.0 Tools for Staff Communication
October 02, 2008
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Passionate Experts and the Museums that Avoid Them
September 29, 2008
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Quick Hits: Funding, Facts, and Futurecasting
September 26, 2008
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Exhibits and Artifacts as Social Objects
September 24, 2008



















