After reading the blog posts of some of the other JHU seminar participants who designed Friday's Newseum experience (here, here, and here), it seems I was even more confused than I realized at the time. It was news (ha) to me that the Newseum visit was divided beforehand into four sections, each of which was led by a different group member. Following the Twitter feed, I was aware that the class was moving from exhibition to exhibition and that the goals seemed to be vaguely different in each place, but I didn't perceive the structure of the visit. Was I supposed to, or was it even relevant to me as a virtual audience member? Not sure.
I also had trouble keeping track of who was who on Twitter, and it turns out that (maybe?) I was responding to questions that were actually being asked of the group leaders. I was only confident of one group member's Twitter handle, so when I saw questions being posed by another name I recognized as one of the seminar people, I thought they were being directed at the virtual audience. But (maybe?) this person was also role-playing as well, since I discovered from the blog entries that he was hanging out behind the east side of the Berlin Wall to simulate the non-free experience. I followed the lead of another virtual audience member and responded to him, but was I supposed to? Again, not sure.
When I pulled up the #jhudc hashtag search a few minutes before the scheduled time of 10 a.m. on Friday, it was clear that the visit was already under way, so I might have missed an introduction if there was one. However, it would have been a huge help to me if the structure had been explained, the leaders introduced, and the event officially kicked off. As it was, I now feel even more silly and embarrassed, looking back on the event - probably not the intended emotions!
No lasting emotional damage, though, because I realize that the main point of this experience is to give the seminar participants a chance to experiment with digital technology. My role was to simulate an audience more than to actually be one, I think. And it sounds as if the in-person Newseum visit experience created by this group did a remarkably good job at encouraging visitors (i.e. the other seminar participants) to use social media to respond to and enhance their experience at the museum, rather than distract from it. This only helps to reinforce my opinion that bringing a "real" experience to a virtual audience is an extremely tricky, maybe impossible goal, at least when it relies so heavily on Twitter, with all its limitations.
Speaking of which, it has also been interesting to note the challenges the participants have encountered of trying to interface simultaneously with your smartphone and your surroundings. You run the risk of appearing rude to those around you (in this case, other visitors and the staff members guiding the groups), you lack real awareness of your setting, and what do you do when you lose your wireless signal or are in the depths of an old, stone-walled museum and can't connect to anything? Smartphones have their place, but I am far from convinced that that place is in a museum, during a visit.
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