Planning for Social Media!

This paper, presented at the 2009 Museum Web Conference by Australian researchers, has a brilliant, basic concept:

1. What is social media and
2. Key topics which impact efficient and effective use of social media.

Now, I'd like to steer away from a focus on social media, because I'm not convinced by it for it's own sake - but I like several questions outlined in the structure, as major concepts that I imagine impact any aspect of arts and cultural planning (pulled ver batim from the actual workshop's description):


The workshop will address:
The range of web-based social media available to museums.
The issues that will arise in planning for such applications.
How to anticipate/address such issues.
Structure
The workshop will be structured around four key topics:
Changing communication models in the museum.
Connecting youth audiences to museum content.
Navigating internal resistance to implementing social media
Strategies for engaging communities in the sharing of knowledge.

Frankly, any of the 4 structural questions are valid across the board! For my own purposes, as I look back at my research - it is suddenly clear how much I need to streamline my focus, particularly as I am now liberated to engage in a readings-based capstone. I'm thinking I'll minimize my definitions of social media - they'll change in 6 months, anyway - and focus more pragmatically on management issues such as efficiency and effectiveness (planning, implementing or evaluating has yet to be determined) related to a REAL question... but which one?
Connecting youth to such tools and content is certainly worthwhile, for many reasons, and one would think there's literature out there talking about this...

Yet the the issue of "internal resistance" -- particularly pertinent given my past summer in a federal museum, slow to embrace the new technologies which will be their lifeline to continuing national relevancy -- is pretty darn big, less obvious and perhaps the most obscurely influential reason a museum's strategic technology plan gets off the ground (or winds up avoided, trivialized as a needless fad, and given to the interns as a token project). Hmmmm.