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The place is forsaken,
the populous city deserted. (Is. 32:14a cf. 2:11; 5:21)
In that day their strong cities will be like the deserted places, there will be desolation.
For you have forgotten the God of your salvation
and have not remembered the Rock of your refuge;
therefore, though you plant pleasant plants
though you sow and toil,
yet the harvest will flee away
in a day of grief and incurable pain. (Is. 17:9-10 contrast Ezek. 47:1-12)
Until the Spirit is poured upon us from on high,
and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field. (Is. 32:15a)
Then justice will dwell in the wilderness,
and righteousness abide in the fruitful field.
And the effect of righteousness will be peace,
and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.
My people will abide in a peaceful habitation,
in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places. (Is. 32:16, 17, 18a)
The nations shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war anymore. (Is. 2:2 cf. v. 3b, 4)
In that day the LORD will say, "Blessed be Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel My inheritance." (Is. 19:25 cf. vv. 21-25)
The LORD will swallow up death forever;
and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces,
and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,
for the LORD has spoken.
It will be said on that day,
"Behold, this is our God; we have waited for Him, that He might save us.
This is the LORD; we have waited for Him;
let us be glad and rejoice in His salvation." (Is. 25:8-9)
For the LORD comforts Zion;
He comforts all her waste places
and makes her wilderness like Eden,
her desert like the garden of the LORD;
joy and gladness will be found in her,
thanksgiving and the voice of song. (Is. 51:3)
Our Messiah brings good news to the poor,
binds up the brokenhearted
the Anointed proclaims liberty to the captives,
opens the prison to those who are bound
He gives beautiful headdress instead of ashes
the oil of gladness instead of mourning
the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit. (Is. 61:1-4)
"For behold, I create new heavens
and a new earth,
and the former things shall not be remembered
or come into mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever
in that which I create;
for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy,
and her people to be a gladness.
I will rejoice in Jerusalem
and be glad in My people;
no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping
and the cry of distress. (Is. 65:17-19 cf. 4:2-6)
There shall be no more a brier to prick or thorn to hurt. (Ezek. 28:24a)
Before My people call I will answer;
while they are yet speaking I will hear.
The wolf and the lamb shall graze together;
the lion shall eat straw like the ox,
and dust shall be the serpent's food.
They shall not hurt or destroy
in all My holy mountain. (Is. 65:24-25)
You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD,
and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
You shall no more be termed Forsaken,
and your land shall no more be termed Desolate,
but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her,
and your land Married;
for the LORD delights in you,
and your land shall be married.
For as a young man marries a young woman,
so shall your sons marry you,
and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
so shall your God rejoice over you. (Is. 62:3-5)
Zion's righteousness goes forth as brightness,
And her salvation as a burning torch. (Is. 62:1)
The name of the city from this time on shall be, "The LORD Is There." (Is. 48:35)
For, the LORD is King. (cf. Is. 33:22)
The government shall be upon His shoulders,
and His name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of His government and of peace
there will be no end,
on the throne of David and over His kingdom,
to establish it and to uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time forth and forevermore.
The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this. (Is. 9:6-7 cf. 42:1-4)
Every knee shall bow,
every tongue shall swear allegiance. (Is. 45:23 cf. 49:7; 66:23)
You shall know that I, the LORD, am your Savior
and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob. (Is. 60:16)
Our LORD says,
"Come, everyone who thirsts." (Is. 55:1a)


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School board count still at five
Jonathon Braden
On the first day of filing for school board - Dec. 15 - I wrote a story about five people who planned on filing: Phil Peters, Jan Mees, Jonathan Sessions, Dan Holt and Jim Whitt. Click here for the story.
Since then, no new names have filed for the school board race. What gives?
Last year, nine people filed before the deadline. Candidates for this election have until 5 p.m. on Jan. 19 to file for the school board race.
I've talked to some past filers, including:
- Sam Phillips, who finished fourth in the April election, 466 votes out of being elected: "I remain interested in helping assure we have great schools, but I will not be a candidate this year. Also, I have no plans to be a candidate in the future."
- Marc Bledsoe, who finished fifth in the April election: "No, I will not be running for election this time around. I am on the sidelines as an interested voter."
- Greg Flippin, who finished seventh in April's election: "I decided not to run for school board."
- Martha Tomlin-McCrary, who applied for Rosie Tippin's vacant seat: "I will not be interested in running, instead, I have decided to volunteer on one of the committees."
- John Miles, who also applied for Rosie's seat: "I have no plans to run for the school board." Click here to see the complete 2008 election results. You can track the number of applicants yourself as well. Just click here.
Who else are we all expecting to file?
P.S. Check out these educational reads: New York Times: Studying Young Minds, and How to Teach Them New York Times: Extra Homework Applying for Education Grants Washington Post: We Need More Male Teachers

subset: commoncrawl


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Mon, 04 Sep, 2017
How to make classroom more inclusive.
There are generally two types of student behavior while entering the class. One pertains to finding the front seats and trying to pay full attention to the teaching. While the other aims at finding the last seats. The last bench gives these students the liberty to have fun, goof around, finish their lunchboxes and along with their friends. The back benches are filled with drawings, formulas, little excerpts from books to help pass the exam. Many times all these things go unnoticed as when the syllabus is huge the teacher gets more concerned about the coverage rather than what goes on in the minds of the students.
The problem here is that not all students get enough students and some students lag behind. Once a student starts lagging behind, he/she is not able to understand the concepts taught and thus become unable to build on it. This results in rising backlog and further lagging, making it a vicious cycle. The challenge here is to break out of it. Often a child's self-esteem and self-worth are also tied to how he/she is perceived in his/her peer's group.
So the whole point here lies here in making sure that no child is left behind. With this in mind, many teachers try to adopt different teaching pedagogy. They rearrange the classroom to form circles, or divide the class into groups and assigns tasks to them. All these are an effort to reduce the learning gaps and enhance the outcomes. Also, this teaches the students to be more forthcoming and help their classmates do better.
Modern schools have also tried to experiment with new classroom structure on lines of amphitheater like format. However, while the teacher can see everyone, the front row tends to remain vacant. Also given the strength of the batch is it possible for the teacher to know all students name.
However when a child feels that someone looks forward to his/her presence in class, what he/she thinks., such sort of things makes them feel more appreciated and hence their interest in the school activities is ignited. This is nothing but inclusion.
What may not be very effective in schools given the teacher-student ratio is the essence of PlanetSpark's initiative, as given the teacher students ratio at a maximum of 1:5. It does make each and every child matter. Their opinions are challenged and developed. Here the students themselves become more involved in their learning process.
This is vet crucial as the kids are not mature and don't really know about the harsh realities of life. They don't really how their actions may become a habit and define their future. And hence it becomes the responsibility of the teachers and parents to impart these essential life skills and learning among the students.
It is true with the society as well that when someone groups don't feel heard or hidden, it can result in unrest in the society as a whole. Disgruntlement may seek in, making bitter, cynical people. If their opinions were discussed, taken into consideration, perhaps many problems can be solved amicably. This is also what inclusion teaches us. One needs not agree to the other's viewpoint, however, it does not make a case for not talking about it.
Inclusion in class is one of the steps which can be taken earlier in one's life and now is the best time for it, if not late. This can be done by having group based projects, not rows of seats but more of a circular kind of infrastructure, not having fixed seats for the students in class but rotation based.
- Anuja


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The Full Moon Promotion carried out a sampling campaign for the Badische Staatsbrauerei Rothaus at 14 Baden-Württemberg locations around Stuttgart, Ulm, Karlsruhe and Mannheim. The campaign took place over a weekend, during which a total of 25 hostesses - dressed in the Rothaus-Dirndl - handed out free Hefeweizen in a two-pack to visitors to the beverage market.
Due to the successful campaign, Full Moon Promotion carried out a final exit sampling at the MercedesCup.
Almost 3,900 cartons of the popular Hefeweizen were sampled by the promotion. Customers and visitors were enthusiastic about the promotion and especially about the fact that a "company like Rothaus gives out free samples".


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FBI to investigate shootings at Sikh temple
Staff Writer
Journal Star
Police in Wisconsin say the FBI will handle the investigation of shootings at a Sikh temple near Milwaukee.
Oak Creek Police Chief John Edwards says the case is being treated as a domestic terrorism case and the FBI is better equipped to handle that.
Edwards said during a news conference Sunday afternoon that seven people are dead, including the suspected shooter, and three people are wounded. One of those is a police officer shot by the suspect.
The shootings happened about 10:30 a.m. as people were gathering for a service at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in Oak Creek, which is just south of Milwaukee.


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Independent creative agency Unreal has unveiled a new look following seventeen years in the industry. The rebrand, visualised through a striking new flying pig marque and bold orange colour palette aims to reinforce the company's approach to producing unreal creative with real results.
Making a mark
The agency has a strong heritage in branding, advertising, print and digital and at the heart of each and every project lies a creative idea. We wanted our new look to focus on this from the very outset. We began by exploring mythical 'unreal' creatures to form part of the updated identity for the agency.
From unicorns to mermaids, the one that stood out the most was the flying pig. It symbolises the very essence of what it means to be Unreal, pushing our creativity as far as possible and delivering results for our clients that are beyond expectations. It emphasises that even the simplest of ideas can take flight and go the distance.
Similarly, we try not to take ourselves too seriously and are always keen to inject some fun into the creative process. The Unreal team is a diverse mix of talented, happy people – no big egos, no stereotypical designers. The flying pig is a nice metaphor for this.
Logo evolution: The pig quickly evolved into its final form.
Our initial pig development was too symbolic and graphic, looking rather more like a dog than a pig in retrospect. It needed more 'Awwwww' factor, so we refined it into the more rotund, happy chap seen in the final identity.
Final identity: More rotund and simplified, the final flying pig with the wind in his ears.
Making ideas fly
Alongside the identity, we have introduced a new strapline to position us as an ideas business rather than merely a design and advertising agency. Born out of the pig marque, 'Making ideas fly since 1995' aims to highlight a heritage which has scooped the company awards for both creativity and effectiveness.
Strapping chap: The pig and strapline together.
Making an impact
The combination of a new headline font and a striking new orange and grey colour palette helps to ensure the brand is taken seriously. Futura BQ Extra Bold Oblique was selected for its solid values, helping to balance out the wit and playful nature of the pig.
The Futura's Bright: Futura BQ Extrabold Oblique forms a solid part of the identity system.
Alongside the new font and colours, a range of icons have been created to highlight the unique selling points of the agency, from our heritage to our sponsorship of a Naked Mole Rat. These icons form the foundations of our website and credentials documents.
Icon suite: The suite forms the foundations of credentials documents and the website.
Making a good first impression
With a strong print heritage, we wanted our business cards to make an instant and lasting impression while also trumping those of Paul Allen in American Psycho.
Business cards: 270gsm GF Smith Colorplan Pristine White duplexed to 540gsm, printed with Pantone 425. Foiled in Kurz Luxor 404 and edged in flouro orange.
As with the core brand, we needed to strike a balance between the humour of the pig and a more serious first meeting. This is again achieved through the use of bold typography and a smartly applied colour palette. The cards were expertly printed by Generation Press with foil blocked lettering and flouro orange edging, to ensure they are attention grabbing.
Business card: Printed by Generation Press.
Making a lasting impression
To allow the idea to fully take off we set about updating every piece of communication within the business. Everything from business cards to invoices and from placement letters to our website was completely updated and injected with an element of fun and a playful tone.
New website: A new website featuring recent work is now live at www.unreal-uk.com.
Creds Documents: A tongue-in-cheek approach to strategy – the Unreal rainbow.
Communications: Letterhead (left) and placement payment form (right), which uses a direct, playful tone of voice.
Communications: Online advertising for our summer placement scheme.
Rubber stamp: The flying pig is a playful motif for outgoing mail.
WeTransfer: The WeTransfer page offered an opportunity to push the identity further.
Brand posters: Digitally printed on Waitrose Essentials Greaseproof Paper (we spent all our budget on the
business cards).
View more work on the Unreal website and follow them on Twitter.
Unreal elsewhere on Identity Designed: The People's Supermarket.


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We care, for the children and families we serve,andour dedicated team members.You are our best asset. Feelvaluedand get access tothebenefits and resourcesyou needto connect, balance, grow, and thriveinyour career.
- We supportyour work/life balancewith aminimum 50%childcarediscount,immediate (or next-day) access to earnings,paid time off,and more.
- We invest in your futurewith ongoing training,tuition reimbursement,credential assistance,and our unique Master Teacher Program.
- We strive to provide a positive, fun environmentwithplenty ofrecognition.
Join our talented team, where we inspire children to be lifelong learners! Through ourplay basedcurriculum, our affectionate and loving staff ensures that our children are imparted with the knowledge to succeed.
Looking to hire:
- Pre-k lead teacher
- Preschool lead teacher
- School age lead teacher
As a Lead Teacher, youll:
- Create fun,interactive learning experiences while serving asamentor to fellow Teachers.
- Promote the social, physical, and intellectual growth of the childreninyour care.
- Take the lead onclassroom managementand curriculum implementation,plusfollow all licensing guidelines and company standardsto ensure a safe environmentfor every child.
- Communicateand build relationshipswithenrolledandprospectivefamiliestopromote achievementfor the childandtosupport your centers success.
Wewant energetic, dependable, passionate individualswhoare at least 18 andhave:
- Experience leading a classroom and creating educational lesson plans.
- CDA or coursework in Early Childhood Education or related field.
- Highschool diploma or equivalent.
- The ability to meet state requirements for education and additional center requirements.
- Able to work indoors or outdoors and engage in physical activity with children
Learning Care Group is an equal opportunity employer and will not discriminate against an employee or applicant based on race, color, religion, national origin or ancestry, sex, age, physical or mental disability, veteran or military status, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, marital status or any other protected status under federal, state, or local law.
Job Industries


text:
Top Of The Line
Zirlin Interiors: When Alessandra Branca wants couture details on window treatments, she relies on this Chicago workroom, which has been operated by the same family since the 1950s. The Zirlins can whip up anything from Versailles-worthy bed canopies to state-of-the-art motorized blinds and shades. They worked on the restoration of Chicago's Driehaus Museum (aka the Marble Palace), crafting wall upholstery and draperies in silks, brocades, and velvets. Popular with such Chicago interior designers as Suzanne Lovell and Tom Stringer, Zirlin Interiors' reputation extends beyond the Windy City — designer Michael S. Smith and Paris decorator Jacques Garcia have also commissioned window treatments from this venerable atelier. 773-334-5530; zirlininteriorsinc.com.
Alexander Navas & Associates: More than a few Hollywood celebrities have had curtains made by hand at this Los Angeles workroom, which also creates its own hardware. 818-904-1080; alexandernavas.com.
Erik Bruce: A protégé of the late curtain-maker Mary Bright, Manhattan-based Erik Bruce continues her approach to window treatments with a contemporary aesthetic. 646-896-1091; erikbruce.com.
Stitch NYC: David Martinez's workroom, situated in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, hand makes chic window treatments for decorators including Jamie Drake. 718-875-6763.
Decorative Painting
Franklin Tartaglione: For a house in Maine, he painted a dining room mural of a dark pine forest. For Princess Maria Christina of the Netherlands, he covered the ceilings of two drawing rooms with dramatic clouds. Tartaglione — who splits his time between studios in Brooklyn and Ghent, New York — studied painting and printmaking at the Pratt Institute in New York before apprenticing to renowned decorative painter Robert Jackson. He founded his own firm 27 years ago and specializes in the entire range of decorative painting, all executed in eco-friendly water-based acrylic and latex paints. 917-297-2003; franklintartaglione.com.
Jefferson Miles: A former scenic artist for film and television, this Los Angeles–based painter creates murals and trompe l'oeil for many decorators, including Peter Dunham and Mary McDonald. 323- 497-1017; jeffersonmiles.com.
Bob Christian Decorative Art: Designer Suzanne Rheinstein relies on this Savannah, Georgia-based decorative painter to create delicate murals rooted in classical motifs. 912-234-1960; bobchristiandecorativeart.com.
Nicolas Pasquale Valle: This L.A.-based painter conjures decorative effects for designers like Paul Fortune. 213-200- 6937; www.nicvalle.com.
Hull Historical: Brent Hull's Fort Worth, Texas, firm produces accurate period millwork, from paneling and moldings to staircases, mantels, furniture, and, of course, cabinetry — much of it made by hand — with an emphasis on English, French, Gothic, and Colonial styles. Hull, the author of Historic Millwork, serves such Lone Star designers as Justin Seitz, who has used Hull for both residential remodeling and new construction projects. "You name it and Brent can do it," says Seitz. "He has really brought fine historical trim work and hand carving to our neck of the woods." Hull Historical is the exclusive millwork provider for the Winterthur Museum in Delaware. 817- 332-1495; hullhistorical.com.
Atelier Viollet: This all-bespoke Brooklyn manufacturer specializing in marquetry was established in 1986 by Jean-Paul Viollet, a seventh-generation descendant of the man who created the Viollet family's original company in France in 1836. The workshop has served such crème de la crème designers as Jacques Grange, Victoria Hagan, David Kleinberg, Peter Marino, and Stephen Sills. 718-782-1727; atelierviollet.com.
Antonio's Antiques: A standard-bearer in the world of restoration and fine custom work, where everything is handmade, Antonio's has been in business in San Francisco for more than 50 years. "Antonio's works with a lot of unusual materials," says James Hunter, one of the Wiseman Group's three principal designers. "They recently did a fabulous parchment top for a metal table for us." 415-781-1737; antoniosantiques.com.
Ferra Designs: Founded in 1989 by Robert Ferraroni, this studio, located in the redeveloped Brooklyn Navy Yard, has gained a well-earned reputation for excellence in techniques that range from classic blacksmithing to the latest in water-jet cutting — and everything is done in-house. Many on staff have industrial-design degrees, and they artfully produce complex staircases and railings, decorative screens, furniture, fireplaces, and more. "They have a deep understanding of the materials, and apply the same attention to detail and refinement to both architectural metalwork and freestanding pieces," says Lee F. Mindel of Shelton, Mindel & Associates, one of Ferra's many high-profile design clients. 718-852-8629; ferradesigns.com.
Les Métalliers Champenois: French-trained artisan Jean Wiart came to the U.S. in 1984 to work on the Statue of Liberty and stayed to oversee an atelier in Paterson, New Jersey, that focuses on traditional metalwork, particularly the art of repoussé (metal shaped by hammering the reverse side). Architect Peter Pennoyer says he relies on LMC for "the virtuosity of what they build and their creative spirit." 973-279-3573; l-m-c.com.
Reification: This high-end shop for metal fabrication has been a fixture of the San Francisco design scene since 1969; its meticulous products appear in museums and galleries as well as private homes. "They're knowledgeable and experienced," says designer Steven Volpe, "and their work is always beyond reproach." 415-553-4183; reification.com.
Orazio De Gennaro Studio: For walls as smooth as marble, interior designers such as Robert Stilin and Steven Gambrel call on Brooklyn-based Orazio De Gennaro, who learned the ancient art of Venetian plaster in his native Italy. De Gennaro is a one-man show: He selects the lime, marble dust, and pigments that go into his finishes, hand mixes them, and then applies them on site. "I'm very proud to say that everything is made by me from scratch," he says. In addition to smooth and textured limestone finishes, De Gennaro has created an ethereal fresco finish inspired by the brushstroke work of classical Italian painters. 718-855-5379; oraziostudio.com.
Holton Arts: Miami painter Richard Holton is a genius at trompe l'oeil and creating wall finishes with an age-old patina. 877-846-5866; holtonarts.com.
Plateau Painting Co.: For lacquer walls that gleam like mirrors, decorator Alexa Hampton turns to this Mamaroneck, New York, firm. 914-631-5140; plateaupaint.com.
Oscar's Furniture Refinishing: Mexico-born Oscar Elguea provides an unlimited palette of surface techniques to Southern California's leading designers. He's adept at lacquering, French polishing, distressing, and faux finishing. His clients include decorator Peter Dunham, who says, "Oscar is an old-school finisher who does killer antique-looking finishes, but he's also a genius at the modern stuff, like Tony Duquette-style faux malachite." 323-735-7317; oscarsrefinishing.com.
Christophe Pourny Studio: "Christophe grew up in a family of antiques dealers," notes designer Benjamin Noriega-Ortiz, "so he's incredibly knowledgeable." The Brooklyn-based Pourny's work on New York's City Hall included the restoration of George Washington's writing table. 718-855-8865; christophepourny.com.
Elizabeth Hargraves Mandy: Renowned for her delicate surface finishes, this New York restorer specializes in lacquering and japanning. Designer Maureen Footer notes that she "restored a Japanese lacquer tray table, a Directoire chest, and a Jansen chair in just one room of a recent project." 212-744-3214.
Goodchilds: This Dallas showroom and workshop traces its roots back to a firm founded in 1907 in Windsor, England. Today, clients include Michelle Nussbaumer, who uses Goodchilds both for her design business and her Dallas store Ceylon et Cie. "Peter Goodchild knows how to repair anything without taking away its antique glory," she says. 214- 742-7000; goodchildsinc.com.
Giannetti's Studio: George Giannetti founded his Washington, D.C.-area studio in 1935 and created so many government seals and federal-building details that he became known as the "eagle man." The firm, now run by his sons and grandson, has built a five-star reputation with its ceiling medallions, fireplaces, column capitals, moldings, and pediments for such buildings as Mount Vernon and the U.S. Capitol. Says designer Darryl Carter, "There are no words to adequately describe my respect and appreciation for their talent. Giannetti's is uncommon in their exacting detail and their love of preservation." For the past year, Giannetti's has been working with Sroka Design of Bethesda on a new 39,000-square-foot home in Potomac, Maryland, that has custom hand plasterwork in 19 of its rooms. 301-927-0033.
David Flaharty Sculptor: This Philadelphia-based artist, with 35 years of experience, has provided his services to the period rooms in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Blue Room at the White House. 215-234-8242.
Foster Reeve & Associates: "Foster has a deep personal interest in history," says designer Richard Cameron of Atelier & Co., "and he and the sculptors on his staff in Brooklyn do the finest custom plasterwork of anyone I know." 718-609-0090; fraplaster.com.
Michael Lauer Studios: The Charleston, South Carolina, artisan specializes in everything from cornices to fireplace surrounds. Besides private commissions, he has lent his talents to the restoration of the Thomas Bennett House, one of Charleston's grandest. 843-801-3588; michaellauerstudios.com.
Dmitriy & Co.: From a pillow shop on New York's Lower East Side, David Feldman has transformed and expanded his Russian-born grandfather's humble business into Chelsea Workroom, a custom upholstery atelier, and Dmitriy & Co., a showroom in the Flatiron district. Interior designers such as John Saladino and Jesse Carrier count on Feldman to create handmade furnishings the traditional way, using hand-tied coil springs and horsehair construction. Dmitriy & Co. stocks Belgian linens and Italian velvets, along with its own tailored furniture collection. "We equate making upholstered furniture to a bespoke suit," says Donna Blekhtser-Feldman, Feldman's wife and business partner. "We size people up and build each piece to order." 212-243- 4800; dmitriyco.com.
Avery Boardman: These upholstery specialists — with showrooms in New York City and Chicago — can customize any of their furniture styles, such as concealing a TV lift in an elegant bed's footboard. 800-634-6647; averyboardman.com.
Design Quest Custom: Designers like Kelly Wearstler trust L.A. upholstery expert Jose Luis Escobar and his team — including one of the best slipcover fitters in town — to get the job done with élan. 310-838-1226; dqcustom.net.
Jonas: When the White House needed a pair of strié velvet sofas for President Obama's Oval Office, it ordered them from this legendary New York City workroom, which has been in business for more than 80 years. 212-691-2777; jonasworkroom.com.
MT Custom: New York interior designer Michael Tavano is the creative director of this Harlem-based workroom that specializes in custom-made upholstery and window treatments; clients include Jamie Drake and Thom Filicia. 646-476- 7070; mtcustom.com.


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From Argonne Labs comes this intriguing video demonstrating the acoustic levitation of liquids on a piece of equipment developed for NASA to simulate microgravity conditions.
"The acoustic levitator uses two small speakers to generate sound waves at frequencies slightly above the audible range – roughly 22 kilohertz. When the top and bottom speakers are precisely aligned, they create two sets of sound waves that perfectly interfere with each other, setting up a phenomenon known as a standing wave.
At certain points along a standing wave, known as nodes, there is no net transfer of energy at all. Because the acoustic pressure from the sound waves is sufficient to cancel the effect of gravity, light objects are able to levitate when placed at the nodes."
To learn more how it might be used to develop pharmaceuticals, read more at Argonne's website.


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Freddy's Nightmares: A Nightmare on Elm Street — The Series
"There are worlds inside our minds. Worlds of peace and beauty. But when our minds wander too far, we lose control and enter the dark, deadly world of Freddy Krueger. Where nightmares come alive. Experience this world every week on Freddy's new television series A Nightmares on Elm Street: The Series—Freddy's Nightmares. Don't let him catch you sleeping."
— Freddy's Nightmares Promo
Freddy's Nightmares Navigation


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Service Suite 360 provides you up to date information on your schedules, your employees and the work you are doing. In addition, you'll be able to track a vast array of information that will help make your business more effective and more efficient.learn more
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Easily connects to QuickBooks to allow for your deposits from each day to be batched quickly. This saves you Time & Money.learn more
Sign up for your 90-day free trial and simplify your scheduling, invoicing and workforce managament to win more jobs today!


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December 2017
Desmidt, S. 2017. The Eastern African Standby Force: A regional mechanism without a political home. ECDPM policy brief, December 2017.
What blocks or drives regional integration in Africa? And what role do regional organisations play in this? To answer these questions, we have dug deeper into the political economy dynamics of 17 regional organisations in Africa.
This policy brief analyses why the Eastern African Standby Force and its national level stakeholders operate as they do.
The policy brief is based on a background paper that was prepared in March 2017.
+ Download policy brief | Download background paper
Our PEDRO project ('The political economy of dynamics of regional organisations in Africa') looks into the political economy dynamics of 17 regional organisations in Africa.
The study, carried out with support from the German ministry for economic cooperation and development (BMZ), will try to understand the actors and factors that shape how regional organisations play their role in promoting regional integration and cooperation.
For more information and to see our other 29 studies, have a look at our PEDRO dossier:


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31-year-old Gilberto Sanchez (Little Rock, AR) was fatally injured in an accident that took place on Thursday, January 24, 2019.
At approximately 6:00 a.m. a 2018 KW semi-truck was stopped in traffic due to icy conditions on Interstate 440 near the Springer Boulevard Exit. Mr. Sanchez was traveling east on I-440 in a 2010 Nissan Sentra when he approached the Springer Boulevard exit and lost control of his vehicle. Mr. Sanchez's vehicle rotated approximately 90 degrees before striking the rear of the 18-wheeler stopped in traffic.
Weather conditions were reportedly clear and road conditions icy at the time of the accident.
Additional Details: Arkansas State Police Preliminary Fatal Accident Report
Accident Location: Interstate 440 West (near Springer Boulevard), Little Rock, Arkansas, Pulaski County:


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With a staggering three hundred million users per month, Instagram is fast becoming the number one social media platform to its counterpart, Facebook. This has it's benefits to for small businesses since Facebook owns Instagram allowing you to use your ad dollars across both platforms if you choose too.
If you don't want put any advertising dollars, there is still ways to use Instagram effectively for your business.
Here are 7 ways your business can exploit Instagram
Set-up a strictly 'business only' account
To get started, you have to set a business only account. As you venture into using Instagram as your key marketing tool, your customers need a consistent picture of your business. Like your other social media platforms, you need consistency, for example, in your bio you can also include the business contacts and a link to boost traffic to your website.
Build a strong brand
A strong brand is friendly and consistent. Your customers need to connect with the brand. Businesses need to focus on storytelling as a marketing strategy. Your customers want to know how the business runs, who is runs it, what is the brand involved with.
Instagram is mostly visual, businesses can take advantage of this by posting images that will connect with their audience. In turn, your business will gain something called brand recognition.
Post trending topics
One of the main advantages of keeping up with what is trending, you will be able to understand what your target audience's interests. Once you understand that you can focus of tailor making your posts to resemble their interests.
Use hashtags
You can use custom made hashtags to make it easier for your customers to find you. Likewise, you can use popular hashtags to also make you easier to find.
Include video content
It is better to break up the monotony of posting picture by throwing in a short video every now and again. Thanks to Instagram's live videos feature, businesses can interact more easily and freely with their customers.
Add a splash of personality
Aside from looking professional, it is also important for your brand to seem and feel relatable.
According to a recent study, passive marketing is even more effective now due to the visual nature of most of today's social media. Aside from posting product-related content only, consider posting a picture of your staff at a recent company picnic, a special story, behind the scenes, a new product, unboxing, anything that would peak someone's interest.
Businesses should mix their product pictures with lifestyle pictures which will boost the brand identity of the business.
Be active and consistent
This goes without saying, you need to stay active on Instagram. It is the easiest to gain followers and increase your influence but most importantly it is how you stay visible. The easiest way to achieve this is by coming up with a post schedule.
You need to give your posts a lot of forethought, plan them and make sure they are purposeful and consistent.
Finally, it is important to mention to really reach and connect you your audience, businesses should consider cross-marketing across several social media platforms.
The strategies become even more effective when used across two or three platforms. Your brand will appear to be solid and that will bring customers even closer to the business.


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This is the gown you have been looking for! So soft, so sweet and so perfectly designed for optimal comfort, function and longevity. We like to call it the wear it longer gown. Designed in one size and fitting 0-6 months (or beyond) this item belongs in every packed hospital bag. A great take home outfit. Our neckline is designed for quick and easy outfit changes. Our knotted bottom is perfect for all those late night diaper changes. No snaps, no buttons, no fuss. This gown is longer than many other brands and allows for plenty of leg room to stretch even when knotted. Our gowns are fitted but will stretch for all those cute rolls as they come in. Our sleeves have three inch roll over cuffs to protect her newborn face. You can unroll the cuff to add length in the sleeve as your baby needs it. With our branding tags thoughtfully placed, there is nothing inside the gown to irritate your newborns skin. This gown has everything you need and nothing you don't.
Color: Charcoal - Dark heathered grey.
Material: 95% Cotton / 5% Lycra
Take care instructions -
Machine wash cold with like colors and with like fabrics (don't wash your towels with these soft sweet things!) Forever french products will look their best if you lay flat or hang dry. Delicate cycle on low is second best.


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You may have heard of (or even celebrated) Pi day on 3/14, but how about Tau day? What is Tau, you ask? In 2001, Bob Palais published the article "π Is Wrong" in which he argued that the beloved constant π is the wrong choice of circle constant. He instead proposed using an alternate constant equal to 2π, or 6.283… to represent "1 turn", so that 90 degrees is equal to "a quarter turn", rather than the seemingly arbitrary "one-half π".
Two years ago today, Michael Hartl published "The Tau Manifesto" echoing the good points made by Palais and building on them by calling this "1 turn" constant τ (tau), as an alternative to π. Tau is defined as the ratio of a circle's circumference to its radius, not its diameter and is equal to 2π.
Tau is approximately equal to 6.28, so that makes today (6/28) tau day! Aside from eating twice as much pie as we would on 3/14, we've found another way to recognize tau day: Thanks to Emily Eisenberg, one of our awesome summer interns, all of our exercises that can be answered in terms of pi can now be answered in terms of tau too!
All the hints and explanations still use pi, and of course we still accept answers with pi, but for those of you in the know, you can now use this secret feature to answer with tau!
Try it out for yourself, and let us know what you think!
To learn more about the difference between Pi and Tau, check out some of our videos:
- Sal's video on Tau versus Pi
- Vi's (slightly more opinionated) video on why Pi Is (still) Wrong
- Vi's A Song About A Circle Constant


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The Autistic Adult Advisory Panel (AAAP)
This panel shares insights into the neurodivergent point of view to aid the Autism Society of Texas in their endeavor to best serve the autistic community.
For more information about this panel, please contact Sal Silinonte: firstname.lastname@example.com
Board Liaison: Sal Silinonte.
Read about Sal here: S Silinonte Bio
Do you have a question for an adult on the spectrum? Ask the Autistic Adult Advisory Panel by submitting a question below!


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All News Releases By Date
Release Date: 11/23/1999
Contact Information: Leo Kay, U.S. EPA, (415) 744-2201
SAN FRANCISCO -- The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently awarded $155,000 to four local organizations to explore new ways that Bay Area hospitals can increase their recycling of discarded medical supplies.
The funding is part of a larger national effort to curb mercury pollution and other waste from hospitals. Last year, the U.S. EPA signed an agreement with the American Hospital Association vowing to virtually eliminate mercury wastes by 2005, while achieving an overall one-third reduction in total hospital wastes.
"We are pleased to be working with the medical community, local environmental groups and local and state organizations in devising new and safe methods for limiting the amount of waste generated by Bay Area hospitals," said U.S. EPA Regional Administrator Felicia Marcus. "Pollution prevention has achieved phenomenal results in other sectors -- our health care providers can be all-around models of public health and environmental protection as well."
A majority of unrecycled waste from hospitals in the Bay Area and throughout northern California is sent to Integrated Environmental Services in Oakland, where it is incinerated. Environmental groups and neighbors of the facility have recently protested the incineration, which must be approved under a permit currently under review by the the Bay Area Air Quality Management District.
$100,000 -- Waste Reduction in California Hospitals to the California Department of Health Services
This grant will help pilot pollution prevention strategies in several Bay Area hospitals with the intent of transferring the lessons learned to other health care facilities. Specific activities include:
- Revise the California Department of Health Services Medical Waste Self Assessment Manual to incorporate source reduction, solid waste reduction and mercury reduction.
- Conduct 4-6 waste reduction audits in Bay Area hospitals.
- Develop an awards program to recognize hospital waste reduction efforts.
$30,000 -- Solid Waste Management Assistance Grant to Contra Costa County
This funding will be used to produce signs for all California Hospitals that will instruct healthcare providers in what is -- and what is not -- legally appropriate for disposal as solid and medical waste. The program will result in less solid waste being disposed of as medical waste through incineration or other waste treatment facilities, and more solid waste being available for recycling.
$20,000 -- San Francisco Bay Area Hospital Waste Reduction
The funding will be used to hold a series of training sessions and meetings with leading health care institutions, regulatory agencies and public health agencies to implement innovative waste management practices. The program will educate and mobilize 40 grassroots community members in the Bay Area around issues of medical waste disposal and alternative technologies, and will also train and develop five community leaders to participate in decisions around health care waste management practices that affect their communities. Partners in the "Bay Area Health Care Without Harm Coalition" include: People United for a Better Oakland; Commonwealth; Center for Environmental Health; GreenAction; Communities for a Better Environment; Natural Resources Defense Council; Physicians for Social Responsibility; UCSF Students for Health Care Without Harm; and the California Nurses Association.
$5,000 -- San Francisco Bay Area Healthcare Pollution Prevention Project to Alameda County
This funding will foster communication between communities, hospitals, public agencies and waste treatment facilities in order to encourage reduction of the total health care waste stream, including medical, solid and hazardous waste.
# # #
Search this collection of releases | or search all news releases
View selected historical press releases from 1970 to 1998 in the EPA History website.


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KFXM and KMEN the Top 40 stations of the Inland Empire (San Bernardino/Riverside)in the 1960's. This site will bring you information and pictures from these two stations KFXM 590 and KMEN 1290. For other musical and miscellaneous interests take a look at.........................http://djsgone.blogspot.com/ Also known as........UNDERGROUND VAULT of Records, Music and all kinds of Stuff
Monday, May 21, 2012
Bee Gees on K/men
4 comments:
So tragic and bizarre that THREE of the Bee Gees brothers are now deceased. what a meaningful loss for us Baby Boomers!
- Mon May 21, 04:15:00 PM PDT
This past year has been devastating for the rock era.
First we lost Davy Jones, then Dick Clark, then Levon Helm. Just this past week we've lost two more legends, Donna Summer and Robin Gibb.
Thank God their music will never die....we can enjoy it again and again.
Doug, we appreciate you posting the K/men article on the Bee Gees.
- Tue May 22, 08:51:00 AM PDT
Just want to add that 2012 has been equally as bad for the K/men alumni. We've lost three great talents, Harry Scarborogh, Brian Lord, and Tom Becker. All three were pros, who loved what they did and it showed in their air-work. They are missed. May God bless their souls.
- Tue May 22, 09:10:00 AM PDT
- Lord Darth Rageous said...
THANKS TO DOUG AND THE HELMSMAN for their postings on the memorable losses of pop music/radio greats we've known in our lives.
- Tue May 22, 11:02:00 AM PDT


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God becomes "jealous for His land and spares His people." (Joel 2: 18) He promises "grain, new wine, and olive oil." (Joel 2: 19) He says that His people are "no longer a disgrace among the nations." (Joel 2: 19) God calls His people to no longer "be afraid." Instead, He calls us to "rejoice and be glad." (Joel 2: 21)
We are able to rejoice "because the Lord has done great things." (Joel 2: 21)
He "gives [us] the autumn rain for [our] vindication. He sends showers for [us], both autumn and spring rain as before." Whether the growing or the harvest season, God provides the refreshment and the sustenance of rain.
God promises to "repay [us] for the years that the swarming locust ate." (Joel 2: 25) Whatever He has taken from us in His disciplining wrath, He returns. "[We] have plenty to eat and are satisfied." (Joel 2: 26)
God says to us, "You know that I Am present… and that I Am the Lord your God, and there is no other. My people are never again to be put to shame." (Joel 2: 27)


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A while ago, I started a game out there to test out some ideas for a Roman version of Dux Brit. I ended up converting it to an AD&D 3.5 game. Its actually survived quite a while and I have a couple of dedicated players who are pushing on.
The story is set on the Roman Limes wall in Germania Superior. The players are Auxilia troops stationed at the fort at Saalburg. The players have been dispatched as an esploratori unit to investigate some strange happenings north of the wall. A barbarian migration had begun and is forcing the local tribes out of their homes and across the wall.
Since it is AD&D, it departs from history at this point but it has been fun. If you are interested, stop by and take a look. RPOL.net


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just the perfect weather in Cape Town to share this incredible wedding Today!
Die Woud in all its astonishing glory... all dressed up for Almarette and Rigardt's opulent wedding Day!
Rigardt and Almarette is without a doubt some of the most fun and happy couples I have ever met...
We instantly became friends and we sure felt like guests rather than photographers on the day
I just loved everything about this wedding! Almarette's dress from Charlotte Francina Designs was
a real eye catcher! romantic long sleeve beauty!
It is such a treat and honor to do weddings at Die Woud, which always have a way to totally
leave me speechless and in awe of its beauty! not even to mention the awesome owners and staff!
Every single wedding story I get to document there, feels like a movie. absolutely picture perfect!
This wedding is moody, romantic and oh'so'glamourous perfectly co-ordinated by the team from
Penny-for-you! I cannot wait for you to see it all!
Congratulations you Guys!!!! Enjoy the Photos :)
a BIG Thank you to everyone involved who made this couples wedding day beyond words |
Venue - Die Woud
My Second Photographer on the Day - Angelique Smith
Stationary - Maché Hopkins
Flower arrangements - Mabel Steenkamp from Die Gieter
Video - Kovacevicbosch
Brides hair and make-up - Anne-Mart Hair & Make-up
Bridesmaids Make-Up - Jonetha Beauty and Make-Up
Wedding Cake - Krummels Sugar Art
Catering - Di Doms from Plum Kitchen
Dj - DJ PG Sounds
Groom's Suite - Tommy Hilfiger
Bride Getting Ready - Wildekrans Estate
Live Entertainment - Aston Music


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Horse Trailers
The wide selection of Titan Horse Trailers from Jones Bros Agri Serice has a perfect fit for any equestrian operations. If you've got a horse you need to move, Jones Bros Agri Service, with two locations in Missouri, has a durable, functional Titan Horse Trailer to fit your needs.
Every Titan Horse Trailer available at Jones Bros Agri Service is manufactured in a huge 170,000 square foot facility in Waterville, KS. Titan employs a highly-skilled workforce and utilizes a state-of-the-art paint facility with infrared bake ovens using DuPont paint to produce the highest quality livestock trailers available on the market. Jones Bros Agri Service and Titan Trailers back their product with an unprecedented 5-year warranty.
Titan Classic II 22 ft 4-horse Gooseneck Trailer
Titan Classic 16 ft 3-Horse Bumper Hitch Trailer
Titan Renegade II 16 ft 2-Horse Gooseneck Horse Trailer
Titan Avalanche I 16 ft 3-Horse Bumper Hitch Trailer
Titan Avalanche II 16 ft 3-Horse Gooseneck Trailer
Titan Avalanche II 14 ft 2-Horse Bumper Hitch Trailer


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Buy this issue as a PDF
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Issue 17: Go Gaming: Is Ubuntu Ready for the Game Geeks?
So you thought Ubuntu was not for gamers? New tools and trends point to a bright future for Ubuntu gaming. Whether you're an occasional player or an expert, you'll score with our study of the state of the game in Ubuntu Linux.
Table of Contents
The Melting Pot free
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Originally posted by Buck Lovell on Monday, 23 January 2012 in Buck Lovell's - American Biker Blog
Way back in the early 1930's a man named Albert Crocker, who owned an aluminum foundry in Los Angeles California decided to build single cylinder Speedway motorcycles to compete with the then dominant Indian and Harley-Davidson machines. Speedway bikes have no brakes, and were very fast on the 1/8 mile tracks of Southern California. His Crocker Speedway motorcycles so thoroughly trounced the competition, that a demand was created for Big Twin models to be sold to customers and ridden on the street. Albert Crocker built the first Crocker Big Twin "Big-Tank" model in 1936. As the popular story goes, Mr. Crocker sold approximately 64 Crocker Big Twins, both Big-Tank and Small-Tank models, and he actually lost $2500 in 1935 era money on each sale. He was trying to build a legend, a super bike that was faster than the existing Harley-Davidson and Indian machines. He succeeded in Spades. His Big-Twin motorcycles were an honest 10-15 MPH faster than either the Chief or the HD EL models, and this in showroom condition. Of course ALL Crocker Twins were custom ordered. The only reason the Crocker motorcycle faded away was because of World War Two. The United States of American needed aluminum and aluminum components more than we needed another motorcycle company. Mr. Crocker was advised by the War Department that the US military required the services of Albert Crocker's aluminum foundry for essential war production.
I spent several years photographing most of the surviving Crocker motorcycles about 20 years ago. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 14-16 twin cylinder Crocker motorcycles survived out of the approximately 64 produced prior to the war. One or two Big Twins were assembled illicitly during the war using existing parts and components. I have complete photo sets of 14 of these machines, including Chuck and Tom Vernon's 1936 #1 Crocker Twin seen here, as well as their Maroon 1941 Big Tank model. As pictured the cylinder heads on #1 are not correct. The original cylinder heads had open (uncovered) valve springs. The first Crocker twin had hemispherical combustion chambers with open valve springs, but that design was replaced by a squish type combustion chamber after the first hemi designs proved impractical. The first 500 Harley-Davidson EL's of 1936 also had this open valve spring design flaw. Number 501 HD EL (61 inches) and number 2 Crocker Twin (80 cubic inches I was told) both had enclosed rocker arms and valve springs, which is the only way to keep any valve train clean and protected.
The Crocker twin transmission is/was a three speed crash box with a cluster gear on the bottom shaft, and a slider gear with dogs, which slid on the splined main shaft traversing the top of the gear box.The transmission was hand shifted, the clutch was foot operated. There were/are no synchros, so careful shifting the rule of the day. The Crocker gear train in the transmission is so robust there has never been a failure of the Crocker gearbox, at least none that that I could discover. The gears are the size of typical tractor components.
At any rate the Crocker Motorcycle Company has been reestablished, and is producing parts and components to allow you and I to build a Crocker motorcycle. Check out their website, it has ton American motorcycle history with photos that are worth a look.


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- Couples going through IVF
- Supportive partners
Going through infertility is a lonely experience no matter how great of a community you have. Across the board, the women I meet who are experiencing infertility all note the alienation they feel. In part I think the loneliness comes from the constant reminder of your circumstance because of the physical symptoms you endure. Going to the doctor on an almost daily basis also makes it nearly impossible to forget. You are semi present in conversations because there is always this constant nagging, a whisper that says, "Hey remember, there isn't something right in your body."
Its hard to say "I feel lonely" when you have an amazing supportive partner. Unfortunately you are the one experiencing the day-to-day and thus it makes it difficult to connect with your partner about the constant nagging that pervades your thoughts. Because my husband can't feel what I am feeling we have had a lot of in-depth discussions about how he can be actively involved in the process. He can't get ultrasounds for me (wouldn't that be nice!), he can't have surgery for me, he can't take shots for me, BUT he can walk alongside me and help out in little ways. Below are some ways for partners to help support you and take one more thing off of your docket.
- Your partner can easily become your pharmacist. Have him or her keep tabs of what you have so you have one less thing to worry about. We use a tracker that comes in handy! We worked together to create it. While it wasn't the most romantic evening activity it felt good to do it together.
2. Handle the CIZZASH!
- If you are coordinating insurance or payment plans, tell your sweetie pie/boo/pumpkin/cutey-patooty to take the reigns and make the calls. Who wants to deal with waiting on the phone?
3. Administer your shots!
- Who wants to stab themselves?! Let him prep the meds and kindly give you the shots. Sharing this experience helps carve time to laugh and be silly.
4. Weigh her after a retrieval.
You must be thinking, what the heck? If you over stimulate you have to weigh yourself everyday following a retrieval to ensure that fluid is not leaking into your body. One indicator is rapid weight gain. The fact of the matter is, after a retrieval (no matter who you are) you are going to be bloated and up a few pounds. BUT if you are over stimming you will experience this x10. Its not fun to get on a scale and see an extra 2-3 pounds (each day) for the days following surgery. Avoid the frustration and have him weigh you and record the info. If the doctor needs to be notified because of the number, ask for the info otherwise, who needs to know!
5. Be a good snuggle partner.
Meds slow me down. During the days leading up to a procedure all I want to do is curl into a ball on a couch like a big furry cat. More specifically, the thought of resting my head on my husband brings me great comfort. After surgery, continue the snuggling while binge watching tv shows. Make her protein smoothies (recommended by the doctor to keep you from bloating further) and be cute sloths together.
Although your partner will never fully understand all you are going through because they aren't being pumped with hormones (which takes a toll on you physically and emotionally) they can provide you support and strength when you need it most. They can listen, encourage, and cry alongside you.
To my beautiful and kind husband, thank you for always being there.


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Midnight Snack by Terry M. West
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Due to a nasty wreck on the interstate, Calvin decided to get off on an unfamiliar exit and take a long-cut home. His stomach was reminding him that it was past dinner time, and he wasn't looking forward to his plate of leftovers that his wife had waiting for him. His mind was wandering while he was traveling down the lonely road, and he didn't take notice of how long he'd been driving, or how desolate the area was.
Not only was Calvin lost, but he got lost in a dead zone, no cellular signal, no gps, and a minimal radio signal. He encounters another stranded traveler on the side of the road, and things just keep feeling stranger to Calvin. When they hit the drive-thru of the only restaurant on their lost highway, things go from strange to about an 11 on the wierd-shit-o-meter.


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Fresh Brewed Custom Coffee Growler & Mug Set
In stock
Regular Price: $82.00
Few things are better than a hot cup of coffee in the morning. Now you can carry that feeling with you all day with our custom coffee growler and mug set. Capable of holding 64 ounces and keeping your coffee warm, enjoy your favorite brew on your commute, in the office, or while you're tackling the day. The matching coffee mug is comfortable and stylish for any setting. The coffee growler and mug can even be engraved with the initials and two lines of your choice. It's a great way to treat yourself or get your coffee-loving father a gift he'll use every day. Each growler measures 11" x 4" and holds 64 ounces of coffee. Each mug measures 4.5" x 3.5" and holds 16 ounces.
- A matching coffee growler and mug takes coffee drinking to another level
- Thoughtful gift idea for birthdays, holidays, and housewarmings
- Initials and two lines of your choice are included
- Coffee growler measures 11" x 4" & holds 64 oz, mug holds 16 oz
Write Your Own Review


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Welcome to my Easter Garden Party! I was challenged by Kroger a major grocery brand, to put together a party using only items from the store! This challenge was easier than I thought and it was super fun! I want to bring you some inspiration from that Easter garden party. This post was … [Read more...]
Planning the Easter Menu!
It's Spring! I think you may need to hear that because many of you have told me you're still ankle deep in snow. Even here in the south our temps dipped into the 30's last night and I'm sitting here head to toe in my flannel PJ's. Nevertheless, Easter Sunday is just around the corner and I'm … [Read more...]


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Estels Rib BBQ Cook-Off Packs the Beach & Names Two Hometown Favorites Champions
Estels By The Sea is a San Pedro, Belize institution. Favorite breakfast spot. House of kitsch and interesting memorabilia. Best fry jacks and flour tortillas in Belize. Breakfast ALL day. A 6am opening time (except Tuesdays.) Only place that I know of that serves you a dish of deep fried chicken gizzards called tootch or Belizean Kriol for gizzard. (This I have not tried YET. But only because I just found out about it yesterday from Amy Knox, former chef at Victoria House, currently owner and chef at Wild Mangos. Talk about your inside tip! I bet its DELICIOUS.) Two entries from the island. Charles, the owner of Estels, who is famous countrywide for his delicious BBQ. All weekend, every weekend, hes got his giant barbecues going packed with pork chops, ribs, chicken and more


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Museums on Twitter: Three case studies of the relationship between a museum and its environment
Alex Espinós, La Magnética, Spain
AbstractIn 2014 at the Museums and the Web conferences in Baltimore, Maryland, and Florence, Italy, we presented our report on how two thousand museums were relating on Twitter. After our presentation, we decided to continue our investigation in two directions: The first are the case studies. We wanted to analyze some museums' Twitter environments: how museums are relating to their followers, how they form different communities defined by underlying relationships, the growth of the network around a museum, detection of influencers, etc. We also wanted to study how to use this information in order to design better social-media strategies for an improved and more realistic assessment of the work and actions' results on Twitter. Our case studies are London's Victoria & Albert, Turin's Palazzo Madama, and Barcelona's Center for Contemporary Culture. We have chosen museums with different Twitter strategies, countries, languages, and follower bases ranging from 7,000 at the time of writing this abstract (Palazzo Madama) to the 450,000 from V&A. The goal is to have different situations represented and run a useful research for museums of different sizes. The second direction is how museum professionals are interacting with each other on Twitter thanks to the use of hashtags, like #musetech, in order to share information, questions, and experiences.
Keywords: Social Network Analysis, Social Media, Twitter
1. Introduction
During the Baltimore and Florence Museums and the Web conferences in 2014, we presented a report on how two-thousand museums worldwide related on Twitter during a whole year (to download, go to http://www.lamagnetica.com/twitter-museum-study/). We analyzed the most influential museums on Twitter, the factors underlying the observed community structure, the evolution of museums' Twitter use during the study (with the awakening of Italian and French museums), and the museums that worked as a hub connecting communities from different countries.
That was the first part of a broader research that we are continuing in this paper. We will analyze the structures, dynamics, and features of the communities around museums on Twitter through three case studies. The focus is now on the relationships that a museum establishes with the people, and in the relationships among them.
These three case studies have different features and are based on seven months of data (from June 1 to December 31, 2014):
- London's Victoria and Albert (V&A), a world-class museum that at the time of closing this paper has 524,000 Twitter followers.
- Torino's Palazzo Madama, a medium-sized museum that is playing an important role in the Twitter engagement of Italian museums. It is the only Italian museum that was part of the core four hundred–museum graph in the paper we presented in 2014.
- Barcelona's Center for Contemporary Culture (CCCB), which has an interesting strategy of multi-profile Twitter communication and a high degree of engagement. It serves also as a case study for museums with a separated educational profile. CCCB has eight different Twitter profiles totaling over one-hundred-thousand followers.
We have analyzed these three cases (diverse in terms of size, language/country, strategy, etc.) with Social Network Analysis techniques. We have chosen three distinctive cases to show these techniques in action over different situations and help museums to draw conclusions from the cases that more closely resemble their situation.
We analyze the first case in more detail; in the other two, we focus on their main differences from the V&A Twitter environment to show their distinctive features.
We seek to understand the relationship patterns between a museum and its engaged users, and the relationships among these users; and to detect communities and influential users that do not belong to any community within their environment, but are key to reach in order to spread your tweets through to new audiences.
More important, we want to show a different approach to thinking about Social Network Analysis, going beyond aggregated values such as number of followers, likes, or retweets: an approach that focuses on the networked nature of social media that cannot be grasped with these aggregated values. This approach is useful not only for large museums (such as the V&A case) but also for small and medium-sized museums.
As a result, we want to introduce the reader to a different set of concepts and tools for defining better and more informed strategies on Twitter and other social networks, and for assessing your actions' results. The concepts used derive from different disciplines: graph theory, sociology, and, to a lesser degree, probability theory and game theory. All belong to a new discipline that has emerged in the last few years—network science—that has applications in many fields, including social networks (online and offline). In this paper, we have intentionally avoided mathematical formalism and centered the concept's descriptions on the intuitions behind them.
This approach can help museums to better set their social network strategy and to find more effective ways to achieve their goals. It also helps to answer questions that arise in our daily work on social networks: whom are we reaching? How can I get to users outside my community who may be interested in the museum's activities and social-media publications? Do local communities engage with the museum? Do communities of art lovers engage with the museum? If not, how can we fix this situation? Do we have to set up a different Twitter account for the educational department or for the press department? Do we need a social CRM (customer relationship management system) to properly manage our community and make the most of our social network's presence? The paper cannot offer conclusive answers to these questions, as the answer depends on the museum's goals, characteristics, and resources, but offers a set of concepts and examples that may be useful to help museums to find their own answers.
This is an ongoing study, and we will keep on gathering data for a period of up to one year.
We will devote the last part of the paper to present some results of the informal network of museum professionals interested in IT, analyzing the interactions in tweets with the hashatgs #museumtech and #museweb.
All the graphs published in this paper, and other graphs illustrating the different communities of the analyzed museums, are available in high resolution (9,000 by 6,000) at http://bit.ly/mtw2015.
The raw data is also available to anyone interested. Just keep in mind that by the end of the study, we will have about fifty-million tweets and over 650 gigabytes of data.
2. Case 1: Victoria and Albert
Let's start with some figures to grasp the dimension of Victoria and Albert (V&A) on Twitter, the largest Twitter account we are analyzing.
The V&A has 525,000 followers (as of January 31, 2015), and have been growing at a rate of around 20,000 new followers a month. In some respects, the position of the Victoria and Albert is similar to that of a celebrity. It is impossible for their Social Media team to talk to a significant percentage of their followers, or to reply to every mention. So, in this case, the bidirectional communication between the museum and its community—which is one of the features of social networks a museum may be interested in—is strongly limited by the size of the community. It is the price of their success, and it is a situation shared by museums with a number of followers of a similar or greater magnitude.
During the seven-month period analyzed in this paper, the V&A has interacted with almost eighteen-thousand users on Twitter. This figure includes the users that the museum has mentioned or retweeted, as well as those who have mentioned the museum or retweeted one of its tweets. As we did in our MW2014 paper, we focus on actual relationships and not on who follows whom, as it is a much more reliable and data-rich way to analyze interactions and their intensity. In the MW2014 report, we showed that every museum analyzed followed an average of around one hundred museums but talked only to an average of fifteen during a twelve-month period. Some of the communications consisted of dozens of reciprocal mentions or retweets, but others only involved a single one-way mention during a whole year.
Those eighteen-thousand users with which the museum has interacted represent 4 percent of their average number of followers during the analyzed period. It is a significant number for a community this size. To grasp the meaning of this result, we need to compare to museums with a follower count of the same magnitude. We cannot compare with our other two cases: CCCB or Palazzo Madama—which has around eight-thousand followers and is connected with around 25 percent of its users—as this percentage is impossible with half a million followers.
Engagement indicators and their relationship with the community size
To better understand the meaning of this result, we have compared it with the mentions received in January 2015 by the museums that have between 250,000 and 1,000,000 followers (from those which have half of V&A followers to those which double it). There are twenty-one museums in this range (http://www.museum-analytics.org). We show them in figure 1, ordered by followers count (starting on the left with the museum with more followers):
About one-third of the museums have a higher relative interaction than the V&A, whereas two-thirds have lower results. Among those that have greater interaction rates are some of the best-known (and most visited) museums in the world, such as the Met, the British Museum, and the Prado. The median is 1.13 percent, whereas the V&A rate is 1.46 percent (this is a one-month rate, and the 4 percent figure referred to seven months).
This leads us to a general rule: as our follower count grows, our total interactions grow (including retweets, mentions, and users we have related to), but the relative interaction rates decrease. This rule also applies to Facebook. Therefore, we can only compare engagement rates with other museums for which follower count is similar (as a rule of thumb, those that are in the range from half our follower count to those which double it).
Analyzing the Twitter conversation around V&A
Figure 2 depicts the conversations among Twitter users that have related to the V&A. As an 18,000-node graph is too dense to be readable and would require a huge image, we have selected only the most active users (filtered by their centrality; we will introduce the concept of centrality later on).
Table 1 shows the main characteristics of the conversation around the museum. It includes:
- Retweets by V&A
- Tweets by V&A retweeted by other users
- Tweets with mentions of @V_and_A
- V&A's tweets mentioning other users
- All users mentioned in any of these tweets
During the seven months we have analyzed the data, these 18,000 users have published over 17 million tweets that we have parsed. They contained almost 750,000 mentions to a user in our user's set.
|Number of different users that have interacted with @V_and_A
|Unique connections among users, which means that if two users have interacted through many different tweets, we count only one.
|Total connections (weighted edges)
|Same variable as the previous one, but including all connections and not only unique connections.
|Average degree
|Average unique connections (edges) per user
|Average weighted degree
|Average total connections per user
|Maximum distance between two users in the graph, following the connections (most of them are one way)
|Average distance between two users
|Clustering coefficient
|A measure of the degree to which nodes in a graph tend to cluster together. Ranges for 0 (no clustering at all) to 1 (all users are connected to all users). Most of the museum networks we have analyzed are in the 0.1 to 0.3 range.
Table 1: variables describing the graph of users connected to V&A
The V&A has connected with almost 18,000 users during the analyzed seven-month period. This represents around 4 percent of their average follower base during this period. This percentage is a meaningful measure, although some of the users may not be actual followers. For instance, some of them may have retweeted a tweet by the museum that they had discovered in their timeline because another user had previously retweeted it.
The number and averages of unique and total connections show us some interesting facts:
- These 18,000 users that have connected with the museums have an average of 11.4 unique connections within the graph and over forty-one total connections.
- Forty-one connections and 11.4 unique connections are large numbers that point to a significant degree of clustering; that is, of crossed interactions among users. All users in our set have interacted with the V&A, so they can have either one or two edges connecting them to the museum (two if the relationship is symmetrical, one if it is not). That means that the 18,000 users have an average of 9.4 to 10.4 unique connections with users other than the museum (the exact value is 10.3, as most connections are one way: the V&A is mentioned by over 17,000 users but has mentioned only 290).
- The value of the clustering coefficient along with these data shows us a network that grows more in density than in new users (nodes). This means that if we keep gathering data we are going to see an increase in the crossed connections among users in the list of 18,000 users that have been connected to the museum. This growth is likely to be more significant than the growth of new users that have been in touch with the museum on Twitter.
- The average distance shows us that most of the connections are asymmetrical.
The communities
Roughly speaking, a community inside a graph is a group of users that have strong internal ties, and lesser external ties to the rest of the graph. There are different procedures for analyzing them, and they lead to similar—but not identical—results. The procedures allow one community to be identified at each step, and the person analyzing the graph has to decide at which point it is wise to stop the process. The goal is to detect the groups that offer insights about the Twitter interactions around the museum.
In our case, 18,000 users allow a high-level approach, grouping the users in six large and clearly different groups. Splitting each group into several ones would have led to an even more detailed (and wordier) analysis.
The image above depicting the core V&A graph shows the six communities in different colors. Three of the communities of the image are easily identifiable in the graph image (two on the left and the red one on the right). The other three are not, as there are significant ties between users in these communities. Each community is named after the kind of users that more closely characterize it (table 2):
|Community (description)
|User (nodes)
|Inner unique connections (edges)
|Average degree (unique connections per user)
|4,421 (24.57%)
|2,724 (15.14%)
|14,031 (6.87%)
|Journalism / newspapers
|3,080 (17.12%)
|20,423 (10%)
|Arts and culture
|1,873 (10.41%)
|11,355 (5.56%)
|Museums and galleries
|1,670 (9.28%)
|7,598 (3.72%)
|Magazines (and leisure and lifestyle)
|1,236 (6.87%)
|9,461 (4.63%)
Table 2: the main communities around the V&A
Over 80 percent of the users that have interacted with the museum are included in these six groups. The edge count is always lower because when splitting the graph into several groups all connections among users belonging to different communities are erased.
As the Victoria & Albert is an arts and design museum, some communities are shaped by its broad range and variety of collections. The museum's extensive collection in different areas allows the museum to attract the interest of different topic-centered groups, such as the two larger communities:
- The larger one that we have called the design group (red) comprises one-quarter of the 18,000 users connected to the museum (see figure 3 for a graph isolating this community). Only the most relevant users have been included to make the graph more straightforward. High resolution of full and core graphs is available at http://bit.ly/mtw2015. If you are interested, do not hesitate to ask us for the lists of influential users in each community.
- The fashion group (green and orange groups, on the lower part of figure 4) is the second in users and third in edge (connections).
The third group (light blue) is held together by some newspapers and broadcasters such as the Daily Telegraph and several BBC profiles. Most of the users are not newspapers or journalists, but the most relevant users of this group are, and many of the other three-thousand users are connected by means of their mentions to the papers, broadcasters, and journalists. As these mentions happen quite often on Twitter when tweeting about news, it is no surprise that the average degree of this group (unique connections per user) is higher than that of the two main groups.
The fourth group (yellow) is related to culture and also to some museums. It includes: Guardian Culture, Serpentine galleries, and some museums of the United Kingdom. The distinction between this group and the next one is not always clear. This group seems to be more UK-centered than the next one that includes more foreign museums and users. However, Twitter only offers information about the language most frequently used by a Twitter account (when there is such a main language), but not about the country. The distinction comes from the analysis of the link structure, so despite being museums in both groups they are two separated groups.
The fifth group (pink) comprises museums, art galleries, and people related to them on Twitter. Its most relevant users (in the group, not in absolute terms) are museums such as the Metropolitan, the Louvre, and the National Museum of American History. It also includes UNESCO and the art websites Artnet and Blouin Artinfo, art galleries like Victoria Miro, and several highly prolific art-lovers' twitter accounts.
The last group comprises magazines related to leisure and tourism (Time Out London and Evening Standard's Going Out guide), newspapers (Evening Standard), events (London Cocktail Week), and society magazines (HELLO!—which is also a hint about how people's interests are mixed in social networks).
It goes without saying that groups with some 14,500 users are much more complex and can hardly be explained in a short characterization.
3. How does our follower base grow? Tips for our online strategy
In order to apply this Social Network Analysis approach to a social-network strategy, it is paramount to understand the dynamics of social networks and to focus on its evolution and trends. We must know the basic mechanisms by which our follower base grows, how to get awareness from users not following us, and how our information gets across Twitter (as this does not always happen).
There are different user behaviors and mechanisms that underlie this result (growth, awareness), and some of them are quite complex and related to the particularities of a specific social network. We have decided to focus on two of the main organic mechanisms: symmetry and triadic closure (figure 6). We differentiate organic growth from a growth coming from advertisement.
Symmetry or reciprocation is straightforward: if we follow a user, chances are he or she will follow back. This is useful for small-sized museums, local-interest museums, and those starting in a social network. But it is of no use for larger ones. Victoria and Albert follows only 1,200 users. Even if the museum can manage a 500,000-user list, it is not likely most users believe they have V&A's attention. The situation is again related to that of a celebrity.
Symmetry is possible in Twitter, but not in Facebook, as Facebook pages receive likes or fans but cannot follow or like individuals.
The second mechanism, triadic closure, is much more interesting. Despite its simplicity, when applied to a complex network, it is a key factor for a museum follower's base growth and awareness. Furthermore, with some particularities, it is shared by most social networks, including Facebook.
The notion behind the triadic closure is simple: if A is related to B, and B is related to C, it is quite likely that A is related to C or that they will become related in the future. The clustering coefficient we have shown before tries to formalize the "quite likely" in the previous sentence.
The more users connect A and C (the more triangles in which A and C are vertices), the more likely they are connected or will be in the future.
When we say that it is likely that A and C are related, we are speaking in relative terms, not asserting that there is a high probability but that the probability is higher than that of any random pair of nodes of being connected. In a large social network (either online or offline), one user is only directly connected to a small part of the whole network. As a consequence of that, this mechanism allows us to connect to a much wider audience. The triadic closure is also the system used by social networks when they suggest to us someone we may know on LinkedIn, a page that may interest us on Facebook, or profiles related with those we follow on Twitter; the more triangles are connecting us in a two-step path with this new user or page, the more likely the social network will suggest it.
The easiest definition of the clustering coefficient is:
Clustering = number of closed triplets / number of total triplets
where triplets are groups of three users connected, such as the A–B–C example. In an asymmetrical network like Twitter (the actions to follow, mention, or retweet need not be reciprocated), the casuistic of triplets is quite complex, and there are sixteen different kinds of triplets, but we will keep it simple.
One useful consequence of triadic closure for our Social Network Strategy
Quite often we focus only on the most active users within a community, or on the most influential ones within the conversation being analyzed. But one of the most useful approaches for organic growing is to detect users that are influential on Twitter but not in our environment. The best way to assess global influence is by using Klout, a free and widely spread tool that extensively uses the Social Network Analysis techniques shown in this paper. Indeed, Klout has access to Twitter's Firehose (a data feed of all public tweets), which allows a very accurate influence assessment. Klout values range from 0 to 100.
A user belonging to one of the communities around our museums offers opportunities for growing and spreading our messages, but these opportunities are limited by the facts that we already have a significant number of followers in the community (otherwise they would not be a community) and that we usually have many redundant ways to get to the same users, as we have many shared connections.
Detecting influential users not belonging to a community around us (and hence not influential in our community) offers an opportunity to organically grow our community through the triadic-closure process. An important user outside a community offers from hundreds to millions of potential new followers through triadic closure, and also a large set of users that do not follow us but that can receive our tweets through the retweets of this user.
Figures 7 and 8 explain the process, where M is a museum and K the user out of our closest followers' group, but with a high Klout score.
Influence and centrality in a graph versus number of received connections
Another concept is paramount to understanding the graphs: influence. Influence is related to centrality, which is the position that a node has in a graph. Influence and centrality are not exactly the same, but for the sake of simplicity we will treat them as synonyms. Although the math behind these two concepts is quite advanced–and there are several ways to measure graph centrality, depending on the highlighted feature–we have decided to present a naïve concept of centrality.
For the three case studies, we have used two different measures—PageRank and betweenness centrality—that result in similar but not identical rankings in the kind of graphs analyzed in this paper.
Figure 9 shows a graphical explanation of the naïve concept of centrality:
4. Case 2: Palazzo Madama
Palazzo Madama is a very different case, as it is a much smaller museum with 8,150 Twitter followers. There are several relevant differences from the V&A. First of all, the V&A is located in one of the two cities with the most museums in our top-twenty Twitter influence ranking (the other being New York). Secondly, Palazzo Madama is in a country with a growing but still much lower Twitter use than the United Kingdom. Last but not least, the V&A communicates in English, while Palazzo Madama uses both Italian and English, depending whom they are addressing. The bilingual communication is reflected in the community structure around the museum, as we shall see later.
Table 3 is the same as table 1, but with Palazzo Madama figures:
|Number of different users that have interacted with @palazzomadamato
|Unique connections among users, which means that if two users have related through many different tweets, we are counting only one.
|Total connections (weighted edges)
|Same variable as the previous one, but including all connections and not only unique connections.
|Average degree
|Average unique connections (edges) per user
|Average weighted degree
|Average total connections per user
|Maximum distance between two users in the graph, following the connections (most of them are one way)
|Average distance between two users
|Clustering Coefficient
|A measure of the degree to which nodes in a graph tend to cluster together. Ranges for 0 (no clustering at all) to 1 (all users are connected to all users). Most of the museum networks we have analyzed are in the 0.1 to 0.3 range.
Table 3: variables describing the graph of users connected to Palazzo Madama
In this case, we have processed 2.4 million tweets published by the 1,900 users connected to Palazzo Madama during the analyzed time frame. The users around Palazzo Madama are more prolific than those around the V&A, as they have published 25 percent more tweets per user.
The degree and average degree are really high and point to a smaller but very active group (or groups) of people, which does not necessarily imply a very cohesive community, as we shall see. The V&A had an average of 11 unique connections and 41 total connections per user, compared to 34 and 236 in this case. Furthermore, the ratio between the two variables is also pointing to a difference in user behavior. In the case of the V&A, each connection was repeated an average of 3.6 times (41.29/11.35), whereas Palazzo Madama has a ratio of 7.0. That means that the ties in this smaller community are much stronger than in the case of the V&A.
However, which conclusions can we draw out of the two museums having a very similar clustering coefficient? Isn't the V&A 0.25 for an 18,000-user set much more impressive than Palazzo Madama's 0.27 for a user set ten times smaller? In our opinion, it reflects two facts. The first is that Palazzo Madama communicates in two languages, which naturally splits its community into two groups. The second and most relevant fact is that although there is a very active set of users talking to each other, this does not turn them into a more cohesive community.
The average distance between two users and the diameter (maximum distance) are smaller than V&A's, but this is what could be expected from a smaller user set.
The communities around Palazzo Madama
There is an international museum-related group (mainly U.S. and UK profiles) on the top left corner of the graph (the Tate, the British Museum, Mar Dixon, Rijksmuseum, The Guardian). Figure 11 shows this community isolated (as in the previous examples, we show only the most active users, as more detailed images are harder to read).
The three main Italian communities
5. Case 3: A multi-profile strategy: Barcelona's Center of Contemporary Culture (CCCB)
In the CCCB's case, we will focus only on two interesting facts.
The first one is the strong group (in green on the left hand side of figure 15) that has @ciutatmorta as its most prominent users. The tweets connecting these users are about a highly controversial TV documentary that got to be global-trending topic despite being on Catalan television. The documentary was previously exhibited in a CCCB festival. Most of the tweets were published in the week after the broadcast. Such a phenomenon introduces a distortion in the analysis of the community around the different CCCB's Twitter accounts. However, we are pointing to it because this kind of phenomenon is not uncommon. Indeed, both news and a very successful marketing action or an opening can sometimes generate large numbers of tweets that may hide other more-constant but low-volume interactions that are more closely related with the museum's core activities.
The other interesting fact is the use of a multi-account Twitter strategy. Table 4 shows CCCB's profiles and followers:
|CCCB (major profile)
|CCCB Educació (Education)
|CCCB Debats (Lectures and Debates)
|Kosmopolis (Amplified Literature Festival)
|CCCB Música (Music)
|CCCB premsa (PR)
|Public Space (European Prize for Urban #PublicSpace)
Table 4: CCCB's Twitter acounts
Looking at the three main profiles, the total follower count ranges from 78,685 (complete overlap between the three accounts' followers) to 104,370 (the addition of the followers from the three main profiles). The total count is 87,481, closer to the first figure. There is a significant overlap between the profiles:
- 66 percent of CCCB LAB's followers are also followers of the main account.
- 36 percent of the educational account followers are also followers of the other two accounts, and 27 percent are followers of one of the other two accounts. That leads to only one-third of users who follow only the educational account.
The overlapping is not a flaw in the CCCB strategy, but it is a fact that must be taken into account when publishing, and also in the assessment of its real scope on Twitter.
6. The informal museum professionals community: #musetech, #museweb
To close this paper, we want to show some data about the informal community of Museum professionals interested in IT applied to museums: websites, apps, social networks, etc. This community relates to the more formal museums' community analyzed in the Baltimore conference and in the abovementioned report.
The procedure to gather the data is different from that of the three previous case studies. In the case studies, we have been gathering daily all tweets from the analyzed museum, as well as all mentions of the museum. With this starting point, all the nodes in the graph are connected to a central hub, which is the museum. Then, at the moment of performing the analysis, we gather all tweets published by these nodes (those that have mentioned the museum or been mentioned by it) in our time frame to get all crossed mentions between the nodes.
The case of #musetech and #museweb is different. We have gathered all tweets with either of these hashtags, and then we have looked for connections between users contained in those tweets. It is a less data-intensive procedure, but it usually takes more time gathering data to get a dense enough graph to draw interesting conclusions from it, as such a graph tends to be much more scattered.
This is exactly what has happened in this informal museum community analysis. After eight months (from June 2014 to January 2015), we have collected 10,630 tweets published by 3,801 users but involving 4,556 Twitter users (the difference is due to the users mentioned in these tweets who have not tweeted with any of the hashtags).
Table 5 shows the basic graph data (without the variable definition):
|Complete Graph
|Edges (unique connections)
|Connections (=weighted edges)
|Average degree
|Average weighted degree
|Groups of connected users
|Average distance between two users
|Clustering coefficient
Table 5: variables describing the graph of users and tweets with the hashtags #musetech and #museweb
This graph leads to some straightforward remarks:
- Tweets contain an average of three mentions (including those from the retweets). This is a natural result in tweets with hashtags meant for triggering conversation among museum professionals. This is much higher than the results of the three case studies.
- The average degree is quite low, due to the procedure followed being different from the three case studies. We are not processing every single tweet between any pair of users, but only those tweets with any of the hashtags.
- We have introduced a new variable, the number of components, which did not make sense in the three case studies (by means of the procedure followed—called snowball sampling—all users are connected in a single component), but that is relevant in this case. There are forty-seven unconnected groups of users in this graph. Although most users belong to the main component, there are forty-six smaller and disconnected components whose nodes have not connected with any user of the main one in a tweet with the hashtag during the eight months analyzed.
The top twenty users in this community have been defined according to two criteria: influence and the number of received mentions.
|Received Mentions
Table 6: top twenty users: influence and received mentions
The two lists are alike but have significant differences. The top two are the two main IT-focused museum conferences, and in the ninth place is the Museum Computer Network. Some museums are also active in the community (The Metropolitan, V&A, Cooper Hewitt, George Washington's Mount Vernon house, and library profiles). There are also participative and influential professionals from these and other museums: Sree Sreenivasan, Don Undeen and Neal Stimler (Met), Seb Chan (Cooper Hewitt), Dana Allen-Greil (National Gallery), Andrew Lewis (V&A); and Nancy Proctor (Museums and the Web, Baltimore Museum of Art).
We can also find university researchers (Mia Ridge), the Italian collective Svegliamuseo, and private companies (Nicholas Poole and Rob Lancefield, also former president of MCN).
An important feature of the conversation around #musetech and #museweb is that the main component forms a unique community. It would be useless to define sub-communities with the abovementioned procedures.
We can draw two conclusions from these facts. The first is that museum professionals that are interested in IT and part of this conversation form a cohesive group. This contrasts with the country-shaped community structure we found when analyzing interactions between museums. The second fact is that most of the users and museums in the graph are from the United States, the United Kingdom, or other English-speaking countries, the only exception being Svegliamuseo. There are some users from other countries, but they do not achieve an influential place in the community. The reason why they do not form country-based groups is probably that if they are tweeting with these hashtags, their intention is to be in touch with their colleagues abroad. Indeed, museum professionals use other local hashtags when they want to talk about IT topics within the same country.
7. Conclusions
Through the three case studies we have seen some of the main Social Network Analysis concepts in play. We have tried to use them to highlight features of each museum environment that are not easily captured with the aggregated variables commonly used for analyzing social networks. We have explored three different situations so each museum can choose the case or the situation that more closely resembles its own.
Moreover, the concepts and techniques presented may be useful for museums to set their tactics to achieve their goals in social networks and to analyze their performance.
I want to thank all the members of LaMagnética's team that has helped me with the paper: Marc Espín, Arnau Codern, and Eduard Almacellas played a significant role on gathering data on the early stages of the project; Carla Oliver has done an extensive job processing the data, coding, and drawing the graphs with Gephi, and has also reviewed the paper; Elisa Rabate has helped me with correcting the text; and Silvia Trillo, who has reviewed the paper and has made useful suggestions to improve it.
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Cite as:
. "Museums on Twitter: Three case studies of the relationship between a museum and its environment." MW2015: Museums and the Web 2015. Published January 31, 2015. Consulted .