SXSW blog intro— The boring intro.

Why the hell is a house museum (Glensheen) going to SXSW ?

That is the question folks ask. Why do they ask that? First, because most don’t realize there is a non-music festival part to it. Second, because we are a house museum — we should be going to an academic or museum conference. Right?

So why are we?

I would argue the number one problem with most museums is relevancy to the public. How does the private corporate world reach out to become more relevant (or make new sales)?

Marketing.

I use the word marketing in the broad sense. Not just ads, but community engagement, social media, external and internal public relations, etc.

We have had the fortune to witness first hand how important this element is to a museum through our focus on this the last three years. In a large part because of that new focus we have increased the annual attendance by double. We have also increased our tour revenue by an even higher margin. In 2016, we were awarded the Award of Excellence by Explore Minnesota, the Visitors bureau for the state of Minnesota.

But more importantly, we have become a talking point. We have become more relevant in our community. In other words people have begun to care.

So as we as a staff thought about it where can we go to up our marketing game. We have been struggling to find the next level of knowledge at any academic or museum conference. They still have their use (programming, networking, collections, etc), but they were not that useful for… marketing.

As we researched and asked around, we kept hearing a constant refrain — South by Southwest (SXSW). After looking at the sessions — we were immediately won over.

In addition to Marketing, there are amazing sessions on design, planning, workplace environment, and even public policy. On paper this conference offers us museums a lot. Yet there are not that many going.

Because this is such a different experience for us house museums, I thought it could be useful to create a series of daily blogs of our journey through SXSW. If it sucks… I will let you know that as well.

This blog one will be as boring as they will get.