This past weekend brought Pennsylvania its first snowstorm of the season.  Luckily, I was able to sneak in a planned visit to The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio a few days before the messy, white stuff fell.  Each year I work with the museum to conduct videoconferences with my classes, and I was interested in moving my experience with the museum from virtual to actual.  Snacks packed and friends in the car, we started off for the six-hour ride west. 

The experience was well worth the ride.  We were part of a large group tour and the museum docent was full of knowledge and tidbits that kept us fascinated.  There were a number of times, however, where I, or others in the group, had questions that we were not able to convey to our guide.  The group was large and those in the back could never get his attention. Some in the back of the group speculated on answers, others added what they knew, and we spent much of the tour piecing together individual knowledge to create a group understanding on much of the collections. The docent also spent a significant amount of time quizzing the group on Rock and Roll trivia throughout the tour, and again, those of us in the tail end of the group could never quite get involved.  Although we could hear him, it was impossible to interact. 

On the drive home I thought about how communication is a problem in many museums or group tours in general.   I recall a similar problem during the Independence Hall tour in Philadelphia this past summer.  Since tours usually have routine stops and “talkabouts,” how easy it would be to use Poll Everywhere to interact with a group.  If the R & R docent had provided us with the code to text in periodic questions to the iPad he carried with him, how great it would have been to have all the group’s questions answered. “How much did Elvis Presley weigh when he fit into that white jumpsuit?”

Knowing your visitors and personalizing their experiences are important issues for museums, or places of interest, to address.  With the technology available today, the ability to communicate and provide more effective services is made easy.  A live audience response system could also be used at the end of a tour, workshop, or convention to rate individual preferences of a museum’s collections, services provided, or exhibits shown instead of a postcard survey handed to visitors as they exited.  (I will admit I set my blank survey card atop the stack of approximately 200 other cards on the table outside the venue).   Giving visitors an interactive and personalized feel to large group events and gatherings can make all the difference in drawing new and returning visitors.