Getting My Hands Dirty, or, Baby Steps to an Awesome Visitor Experience

Okay, so I may be the worst blogger of all time, well perhaps not of all time, but I certainly feel ashamed at my recent lack of posts. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, really: You put it off, then you feel guilty for putting it off, and then it's just been too long so you don't want to get back into it. <sigh>

I'm sure a lot of it has to do with the fact that the museum is now closed, so I'm not thinking "interpretation" or "visitor experience" as much as I do in the summer, where inspiration is always around the corner. The irony is that our museum is currently undergoing a redevelopment plan (which is awesome!), which means that there is a group of people out there (those lucky, lucky consultants) that are thinking about how to make my museum better as we speak. It blows my mind, really. So jealous, but I suppose that someone's got to actually run the museum.

Yep, I was this person in school.
Surprised?

I spend so much time thinking about things to improve and new directions to take that I'm usually bursting at the seams with ideas. You can't really share all these at once, because you'd be branded a crazy person, and as much as I'm sure many appreciate my unabated (re: seemingly impossible) enthusiasm, I understand that I can be exhausting. So I keep my little ideas in my notebook and wait with bated breath for the moment when they ask.

My boss announced to us today that the consultants would be contacting each of us for feedback about the plan. He turned to me and said, "I spoke with them yesterday. I warned them you'd have lots to say about the visitor experience." Heh heh. Me? Lots to say? Of course not...

Anyway, while this lucky group of people get to dictate the future of the museum, I get to go on with my little Program Officer life.
2011 Annual Report: check!
2011 Survey Analysis: check!
2012 Program Plan: check!

All this desk work makes me die a little bit inside, so I decided to go out to the museum with our maintenance guy yesterday and do some, well, maintenance. Remember when I spoke about the "Broken Window" theory a few months ago? Well, I'd be a damn hypocrite if I didn't do my part fixing the little things at the museum.

We spent far too long fixing a sign that is almost as old as I am. To be honest if the development plan decides to get rid of them I'd be pretty pleased, but I had these spiffy new signs I had made this summer and they needed to be installed over the old ones. We ripped off the old corkboard (I'll go back later and install some new stuff), cleaned the 26-year-old plexiglass, and tightened the old screws...

Then while the maintenance guy trimmed hedges that certainly hadn't been trimmed since they were planted in the late 1980s, I managed to do a little bit of interpretation for the random visitors who passed by.

Do you know what 120 tulip bulbs looks like?
I do...

One of the main purposes of this visit, however, was the planting of some tulip bulbs in the upper section of the garden so that we'll have a nice showing when the museum reopens in the spring. The garden itself is the bane of my existance, but I want it to look awesome for visitors, as opposed to the pit of despair that it'll resemble if I leave it as-is for next year.

For future reference, please note that you actually need tons of tulip bulbs to make a remotely nice display, I soon realized. The 120 that I purchased where nowhere near enough to make an exciting showing in the whole upper garden, so I planted half and will have to return to plan the rest soon, before it gets too #$#@ cold.

As I was doing this, I couldn't help but hear my mother's voice in my head, saying, "You didn't get your Masters' so you could dig in the dirt!!!" Yes, Mom, but I'm afraid that I understand the bigger picture. I may not have the fun job of writing and researching the development plan, but at least I can play my own little role in the site's success.

Someone's got to get their hands dirty.