Last Wednesday was Ask A Curator Day in which over 700 international museums participated, answering questions about their collections and museums in general.
The effort reminded me of an article I saw on The Guardian’s website last summer suggesting arts and cultural organizations use Reddit as a way to talk about their organization.
I will admit that other than viewing a few AMAs (Ask Me Anything) by notable folks over the course of a year, I don’t visit Reedit too much.
Which is not to say it wouldn’t be valuable for me to do so or be something more suitable to your circumstances than mine.
If you visit the Theatre reddit, you will see there are all sorts of messages from audition questions, advertisements, obituaries and a couple people mentioning Howard Sherman’s article about the high school teacher who got fired over Spamalot.
There are a number of related sub-reddits associated with theatre that provide discussions with a more specific focus.
One of the features the Guardian article really focuses on is the Ask Me Anything section where people make themselves available to have others ask questions of them. Right now at the top of the list is a Holocaust Survivor, a nun who help women victimized by the Lord’s Resistance Army and the actor Simon Pegg.
There are also EMTs from Pennsylvania, professional mountain bikers and an American kid playing football in England listed so the topics don’t have to be weighty or the participants famous in order to participate.
Reddit AMAs provide a better forum for Q&As than Twitter because there is more room and you don’t have responses scrolling up your screen as you and the participants type and the discussions can occur over time. You can provide a link to your AMA so that people know where to find you and they can view a record of the conversation when it is over if they are unable to participate during the scheduled period.
I agree that AMAs are a great opportunity for cultural organizations. However you should probably know the name of the hip new site you’re writing about… it’s “reddit”, not “reedit” or “redit”.
Yeah, I know and I was looking right at it while I was writing the entry.