Balboa Park Beat

Using the iPad in Museums

Infofilm, a multi-media production company in The Netherlands that produces a great of media for museums, has some interesting ideas on how museums could incorporate the new Apple iPad into visitor experiences and exhibitions. Check out their post here, (thanks to @museummedia for the heads-up and link) and be sure to let us know if it inspires you to come up with the next great mobile computing app or experience for Balboa Park museum-goers. And if you're like us and you still don't quite have a feel for what the iPad is really capable of, take a big ol' gulp of Apple kool-aid by watching the promotional video below.

A Picture of Apple's App Success

Accessing all the fabulous events, stories, pictures and content of balboapark.org on mobile devices is a topic that comes up often in our office. We're currently working on an iPhone App for Balboa Park, and I'm doing lots of "research" lately on the best cultural tourism, tour and museum apps, i.e. I'm buying and playing with lots of fun stuff on my iPhone.

According to this cool info-graphic, about a zillion other folks are playing around (and purchasing apps) in the App store as well. Click on the photo to see the extended version of the graphic and more iPhone app store stats.

Bill Howell: The 25-Year Canyoneer

One of the San Diego Natural History Museum's longest-running nature groups, the Canyoneers, received a bit of positive press today from the San Diego Union Tribune, thanks to one it's most dedicated "trail bosses." Bill Howell has been leading canyoneer hikes, walks and guides through San Diego County's back country for over 25 years.

What might seem like brown, dry, parched desert wasteland to some from more lushly landscaped hometowns is what Howell calls an acquired taste.  The UT's Joe Tash quotes Howell: “To enjoy Southern California, it’s an acquired taste. You can look and say this is boring scrubland, but once you get to know what’s really going on out there, you’re hooked.”

Read more of the profile here, and watch for similar features coming soon to balboapark.org.

2009 in Photos

We love perusing the year-end photo essays that emerge every December. A few of our favorites this year:

The WSJ has a great one here.

San Diego's local online news group Voice of San Diego compiled their year in photos here:

Reuters annual gallery lives here, and their picks of the decade here. 

Culture of Me's gallery features lots of informal portraiture here. 

For natural history photographs, National Geographic has an awesome list of the best of 2009 here.

The Newseum (museum of American Journalism) in Washington also published a photographic year-in-review here. 

What about Balboa Park? We're working on integrating Flickr feeds into the new balboapark.org next year, so we can more easily group, edit and curate photo galleries online. Stay tuned!

Balboa Park Archiving Content With Front Porch Digital

Here's a little insight into one of the many other projects that BPOC is working on, in addition to the www.balboapark.org website redeisgn. So far, the team with Front Porch Digital has digitized 700+ videos (topics ranging test flights films in the 1950s to Tony Hawk's skateboarding skills), with the goal of completing around 4,000 videos by the project's end. The process not only allows the museums to archive and identify their video archives, but eventually all will be on display for web viewers to curate and enjoy.

Check out the full story here.

Behind-the-scenes at December Nights

Ever wonder what goes into making those neat little two-minute news segments about events like December Nights? A LOT! In fact, Debbie Pettruzzelli (the PR manager for Balboa Park Marketing) sets up an entire "media morning" event starting at 5am the first day of December Nights, so that all the local media folks can come out, get their shot, interview the Park's VIPs, etc.

This year I went along bright and early at 5am to chronicle the behind-the-scenes action. We hope to cover more never-before-seen moments and behind-the-scenes videos going forward on the new www.balboapark.org. Enjoy!