Museum | SocialWayne.com by Wayne Sutton

Posts Tagged ‘museum’

Posted on September 11, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton

Photo Gallery: Heroes, Villains and Special Effects from the Museum of Life and Science

Heroes, Villains and Special Effects | North Carolina Museum of Life and Science

Today at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, NC they held an exhibit focused on the science behind entertainment in the fields of special effects, make-up artistry, video game design, comic book art, and staged combat. My friend/partner and founder of TriOut Lawrence Ingraham had a booth setup for his iPhone and iPad kid application gaming business called Tantrum Apps. I stopped by the museum to show my support and got a chance to meet Dave L. @sonofalink and @TeddHuff as well as a chance to see a lot of awesome “Heroes, Villains and Special Effects”.

Here’s a list of the exhibit participates:

Dean Jones
Emmy Award-winning special effects make-up artist and director will be on-hand displaying his masks and making up models. His impressive credentials include Pirates of the Caribbean, Day of the Dead, Star Trek and more!

David McClutchey
Local actor, stunt coordinator, and fight choreographer demonstrating stunts
with a sparring partner.

Gary Destefano
Accomplished artist, science fiction diorama and model maker presenting his superhero and
pop culture work.

Star Wars characters
The Carolina 501st Garrison, a volunteer international Star Wars costuming organization which makes appearances to raise funds for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, will roam throughout the Museum grounds.

Stuntman Science
Test our mini stunt men and woman as they crash cars and jump off buildings. What can you do to keep them safe? Come to The Lab on the second floor 10:30-12:30 and 1:30-3:30 on Saturday.
GAMING COMPANIES
Redstorm Entertainment, Inc. division of Ubisoft Entertainment will demonstrate how game companies take ideas and translate them into features through animation and prototyping. The studio will show off early, playable prototypes of past projects and show how concept art helps to bridge the gap between the ideas and the final game.
Epic Games Inc. Established in 1991, Epic Games develops cutting-edge games and cross-platform game engine technology. The company has created multiple million-selling, award-winning titles in its Unreal series, including Unreal Tournament 3 for PC, PLAYSTATION®3 and Xbox 360®. Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 has also been recognized as the number one game engine by Develop magazine.

Virtual Heroes, a Durham based company will demonstrate and discuss the design and creation of its Moonbase Alpha game, an exciting new, free online video game designed to show how NASA content could be combined with a cutting-edge game engine to produce an experience that inspires interest in science, technology, engineering and math.

Republic of Fun (SATURDAY ONLY) has created a proprietary technology and process for using crowd-sourcing as a way to produce and develop games for iPhone, WiiWare, Xbox LIVE Arcade, the PlayStation Network and now iPad. By focusing on community, RoF gives gamers a chance to be involved in the development process, producing games that they really want.

Tantrum Apps Fun, simple games to play with your children, and great distractions to avoid a meltdown. Each game is designed by parents, for parents, featuring high quality images and sounds along with bright vibrant colors. Educational and entertaining, Tantrum Apps iPhone games are great for kids of all ages.

Walking around with my trusty iPhone 4 I took a few photos. Below are a some of my favorites along with an embed flickr gallery.

The exhibit is open tomorrow and if you have the opportunity I recommend you stopping by.

Posted on July 11, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

Social Media brings Dinosaurs back to life at the Museum of Life and Science

Today I attended the Dinosaur Trail exclusive Blogger/Tweeple Preview at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, NC.

The event was organized by Beck Tench, who manages the Museum Life and Science Twitter account (@lifeandscience). Beck reached out to the local Triangle, NC blogging and Twitter community, which is strong, for the exclusive preview event. And if you think bloggers and tweeple are not interested in dinosaurs, then you’re wrong. Before the event began, tweets were tweeted, asking who’s going, and everyone was excited to preview the new dinosaur trail.

Joining me was fellow OurHashtag partner, Jeff Cohen (Digital Papercuts). As we arrived, we were welcomed by Beck and other Museum of Life and Science employees to receive our V.I.P wrist band, and name badge. Then we were on our way to the Dinosaur Trail.

As we walked the trail we met fellow tweeple @SmallJones, @clubjuggler, @GregoryNG, @dburr10085 and blogger Kevin Davis of Bull City Rising. We also met a few other local Triangle Tweeple for the first time. Despite it being a little humid, the weather was perfect and Jeff and I started our Dinosaur photo-blogging, tweeting, brightkite-ing, Facebooking tour.

Take a look at my photos below:

A few years ago, or even a few months ago, if you would have said that a museum was having a special exhibit preview for bloggers and twitter users, some may have looked at you like you’re crazy and just laughed. But with the explosion of social media and a strong tech community in the area, having an exclusive Blogger/Tweeple preview at the Museum of Life and Science made perfect sense. Why? I would say for marketing and community engagement. Was the event a success? I would say, yes. The @lifeandscience twitter account sent out a tweet saying they had over 100 tweeple and bloggers attend the event.

The event was not only a success because of the attendance, but also for continued awareness for the Museum of Life and Science. As I walked around, I saw families on the dinosaur trail taking a lot of pictures. Adding local bloggers and tweeple to an already scheduled member preview is a great idea. It can only build excitement and generate awareness of the new exhibit. My hat’s off to Beck and the entire team for coming up with the idea. Will this work for every company looking to engage with the local community using social media? Maybe, but let’s take a look at the process of what the Museum of Life and Science did to have a successful event.

1. Hire someone who’s connected in the community.

2. Engage with the community using social media.

Their twitter account has over 1,700 followers and they have accounts on various social networks.

3. Think outside the box and be creative. Instead of trying to just pull bloggers/tweeple away from their computers and iPhones, they welcomed them with open doors, saying join us.

4. They made us feel special by including us in a sneak preview. The exhibit doesn’t open to the public until July 25th.

5. Have an engagement dinosaur. Unlike Raleigh’s Lego store. The museum had one open dinosaur for everyone to climb on. The kids were happy to play and the parents got better pictures. It was clearly the most popular dinosaur there.

6. They planned for success. They passed out Moo cards with the url http://lifeandscience.org/dinosaurs on it. The url is for collecting blog post such as this one, flickr photos and youtube videos. And not only from today, but from future attendees.