By Christian Deleon, Marketing Account Coordinator & Social Media, San Diego Hall of Champions
In institutions where cash is
limited, the ability to demonstrate a project’s impact on the organization as a
whole is a great tool to achieve approval from the decision makers in most
institutions.
As institutions along many fields
are scaling down, one element that must not be overlooked and should be
cultivated is human capital. Allowing
team members to have more ownership over their tasks and duties can increase
the human capital while uncovering potential that would otherwise remain
untapped. Through this, changes can be
made from the bottom up in institutions.
One method discussed to ramp up
while scale down was cutting back on consultant dollars while becoming
increasingly reliant on “insourcing” - staffing up to be able to have creative
development come from within rather than consultants. If you are paying a staff member to do the
job of a consultant with 80% of their time, then that leaves 20% for
innovation.
While staffs at most institutions
are cutting down, we are also looking at improving digital presences through
podcasts, video, social media, etc.
While online development is not zero cost, it can be done cost
effectively. It was also noted that it
doesn't make sense for every museum to be on twitter and/or facebook. You must analyze your institution and decide
what elements will most benefit you, especially since it is difficult to
measure ROI through social media.
- “Invest in people over technology
– people have a chance to innovate, where technology doesn't.” - “Staff is the most critical resource.”
How it relates to Balboa Park:
The two ideas that struck the
biggest chords with me were the development of human capital and
insourcing.
On Rob's idea of the development of
human capital, the workshops and seminars that BPOC has been able to provide
for us in their short term have been beneficial to our organization and I
believe to the park as a whole. While
they have big projects related to digitization, park-wide WiFi, etc., its been
those seminars that have the greatest short term effect on our organization's
mission.
We as Balboa Park
institutions have a built in advantage in terms of insourcing (albeit in a way
that is outsourcing outside of our individual institutions) because of our
extensive talent pool with a wide array of talents and expertise. Our individual intelligences become assets to
our other Balboa Park institutions, from collections to talents (ie video
editing).