Museum 2.0 at ASTC: Come Tour the Best Tech Museum in LA!

The ASTC (the Association of Science and Technology Centers) annual meeting is coming up in LA (home of my childhood), and Museum 2.0 will be there! The fine folks at ASTC must have made a teensy oversight when they neglected to include my favorite tech museum in the conference proceedings, so I'm remedying the situation by sponsoring a conference alternative on Sunday afternoon, October 14: lunch and a visit to the Museum of Jurassic Technology.

In a world of increasingly sterile museum environments, the Museum of Jurassic Technology is a beacon of emotion, strangeness, and wonder. Created by artists David and Diana Wilson, it is an homage to the curiosity cabinet of yore, a place where the grotesque, the imaginary, and the unfamiliar intermingle. Exhibits range from oil portraits of the Soviet space program dogs to immersive stories about scientists who may have existed to failed dice to letters sent to the Mt. Wilson observatory, and are by turns exquisite and disquieting. Enjoyable and fascinating both as a designed collection and a meta-commentary on museums, the MJT is small, quirky, and DEFINITELY worth a visit. Plus, they serve free cookies and tea. What's not to like?

The logistics:
This outing will be on SUNDAY, OCT 14 from noon until 3:15; we will make it back in time for the 3:30 sessions. We will leave the convention center promptly after the morning session, zip over to Culver City, explore the MJT for an hour, grab some lunch, and scoot back. I wanted to make it a more leisurely affair but am concious of everyone's needs for heavy conference time. We'll take cabs/my car; the whole experience should cost about $30 between food, transportation, and museum donation.

Please contact me at nina@museumtwo.com to join the adventure. It's an opportunity for us to discuss some of the content that's been brought up on the blog, but more importantly a chance to visit a really weird museum. And I mean that in the best possible way.

And if you want a more traditional Museum 2.0 experience, I will be presenting on:

• SATURDAY in "I'll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours"
• SATURDAY in "Defining Museums 2.0"
• TUESDAY in "Web 2.0 the Sequel: What's Now? What's Next?"

See you in LA!