You're planning a new exhibition. Considering a new strategic direction. Designing a new program. And you've decided that you want to integrate community feedback into the development process. Awesome. Admirable. Now how the heck do you do it? Here are ten things I've learned about making these kinds of community input meetings successful. Please add your own ideas in the comments too. SELECTING AND RECRUITING THE PARTICIPANTS 1. Consider whether you want a bonded group (people who are like each other) or a bridged group (people who are different from each other).  Bonded groups are useful if you want to understand people's existing attitudes and impressions. Focus group participants will be more forthcoming and honest if they feel like they are "among friends." Bonded groups exhibit groupthink--but sometimes that's the best way to really understand the concerns of a specific group of people. For example, when we held community meetings about the developme

Five years ago, I left the consulting world to take the helm at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History (MAH) at a time of crisis and change. We went through a dramatic turnaround. We started bootstrapping growth. Now, we're on the doorstep of a major expansion. It's exciting and tiring and rewarding as ever. As I did at the  one-year  and  three-year  mark, here are some of the things I'm most proud of, mistakes I've made, and questions on my mind as we head into the next five years. THINGS I'M PROUD OF: Building a rigorous strategic framework under our creative, community-based work.  In my first few years, it was all about getting the programming moving, experimenting, and exploring the possibilities with our community. Three years ago, we decided to put in the work to create foundational documents--a new  mission statement , values, engagement goals , survey methodology, and most importantly, a theory of change--to ground our work in shared language and prio