I want my personal adventures and the adventures I design for others to have that electrifying sense of resonance and surprise that can only come when you’re deeply connected. I want to be part of making experiences that push me and my fellow adventurers productively outside our comfort zones, right up to our learning edges. I want experiences that will make us feel tingly or warm or refreshed or zapped or soothed or light, or some other somatic, embodied feeling that roots us right there in that moment, individually and together.

The doors to the field seemed to be open in both directions this year, not just offering a one-way path out … MCN2019 felt like self-care for the maintainers of cultural sector transformation.

It was a conference where I was alternately drained by, gaining from, and giving back to a community I love. And that’s what things we love do for us. We love them when they’re messy and maddening, and they’re always there when we need them.

The MCN community is a tribe of rabble-rousers. We rouse museum rabbles. We don’t accept that because something’s already out there, it’s necessarily out there at its best. We question and poke and push, because we know there are better things ahead, and we want to reach them. We want to create them. We want to share them with all the people who visit museums, physically or virtually.