Planning and public service provision have not always been open to constituent input at all stages of the development process. The past few decades, however, have brought increased public desire to provide input, and technology has further helped to facilitate this participation in more efficient and effective ways.

Along these very lines, Nina Simon, a museum advocate, has helped to pave the way for public institutions everywhere with her innovative approach to program development and public participation. See her blog here.

In order to stay relevant in the coming decades, Simon suggests that museums use technology to engage new audiences in the exhibition design process. In fact, when Simon worked at the Tech Museum in San Jose, California, she invited people to submit ideas electronically for exhibits, the best of which were chosen for the museum’s next display.   Her participatory plan was so successful, especially among nontraditional audiences, primarily because this type of outreach tends to make individuals feel as if they have received a personal invitation from the institution.  In effect, such participation serves to create a public forum with an atmosphere approaching that of a community’s coffee house or library.  

Simon regards engagement through technology with such confidence that she even wrote a book of advice, The Participatory Museum, by first establishing a Wikipedia-style website where readers could post input by creating a free account.  Extremely pleased with the outcome, Simon said that people were generally happy with the opportunity to provide input for her book and were not bothered if their suggestions were not implemented.  As a result, everyone benefited from this process, as in the case of participatory planning for institutional programming.

The Smithsonian has already taken Nina Simon’s message to heart by using a new participatory planning phenomenon called Crowdsourcing.  Through this method, the host organization presents an open call to the public for input through the internet.  To this end, the Smithsonian has established a channel on YouTube where they invite people, like you and me, to submit one- minute videos, within a finite window of time, by using the following prompt:
“We're looking for a few friends and fans from around the world to help us form the future Smithsonian experience. A revolutionary Web and New Media Strategy project is underway, and we invite you to collaborate with us as we envision a rich new media future for the Institution.”

If other institutions were to engage in similar types of activities, as recommended by Nina Simon and employed by the Smithsonian, more inclusive and dynamic participation in all levels of community planning could occur. Technology is by no means the panacea to poor programming and community planning, but harnessing the power of the tools we have, can only enhance and enrich prior practices and bring in input from groups that were, in one way or another, alienated from the participation process.

Read an interview with Nina Simon from Smithsonian Magazine