On May 30th, IE hosted the lecture “The challenges of the collaborative culture; cultural institutions and social networks” where Susana Zaragoza, expert in digital culture and collaborative art, explained the museum´s transition, from being traditional to participative.

The conference started with a brief explanation on how the modern museum was created in the post revolutionary France. After the introduction, the speaker listed several challenges that the cultural institutions face in the internet era. “Nowadays a museum´s communication through social networks cannot be held by a single department, but the collaboration of all departments”. These days Museums aim to build up a community where the institution and the visitors interact. This carries its own risks; one is the overexposure.  Susana gave an example on mishandling the social networks; LABoral decided to open a chat in twiter allowing people to ask questions to its director.  After series of inconvenient twits the initiative was cancelled.

Afterwards Susana explained that “the biggest challenge for a museum is to create content for each channel; Twiter, Facebook, etc.” She continued “that the content must be Tailor made; institutes cannot simply convert the offline content into online.”

In the end the speaker gave some examples of some of the most interesting art projects leaded by institutions, organizations and particulars. Remake, a project promoted in the Blog “booooooom”, was the audience favorite.

After the conference, students, alumni, IE professor and guests from prestigious cultural institutions such as Prado Museum and Accíon Cultural Española participated in the Q&A round.