VENICE.- The 25th-28th June 2008 saw the 8th edition of Communicating the Museum in Venice – the international conference dedicated to the communication of museums, with very positive results: a record number of participants, a programme bringing together the principal experts in museum communication as well as representatives from the most innovating sectors of communication, working sessions over two days mixing all levels of presentation in response to a variety of public expectations for the conference with networking opportunities for this new and growing international community of museum communicators in the most beautiful cultural places in Venice.

In total, more than 279 directors, communication directors, marketing directors and press officers participated in CTM 2008, a record number since the creation of the conference in 2000. This number marks the growing internationalism of the conference represented by 29 countries. Amongst the new participants, we note with particular interest the delegation from the United Arab Emirates with a delegation of 15 participants. The other new participating countries were: New Zealand (2), Croatia (4) and Japan (1). In addition, the 2008 conference also demonstrated the ever growing interest of North America and the United Kingdom for Cummincating the Museum: 21 representatives from the USA (as opposed to 7 in 2007), 7 Canadians (as opposed to 2 in 2007) and 71 British (as opposed to 62 in 2007). There were also 24 delegates representing France: Société des Amis du Louvre, Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Musée Guimet, Musée du Quai Branly et Les Arts Décoratifs.

The theme this year was “Communications Strategies: How to make an impact” and during two days of work sessions at the Doges’ Palace and on the Island of San Servolo, the participants were able to take part in the presentations on the concept of branding applied to museums: Branding is Strategy by Amitava Chattopadhyay of INSEAD, Singapore – the most recent developments: Museum needs a new kind of Branding by Robert Jones, Head of New Thinking at the very cutting edge London agency Wolff Olins – its most creative dimensions: intervention by Juan Cabral, Creative Partner at Fallon who underlined the fact that a brand or an advert « is not pollution if it has the potential for communication ». All of the interventions also underlined the importance of communication and how to adapt it to the specific museum domain – as well as being cultural, intellectually innovating and also concentrating on new issues of globalisation in the media and in organisations. The strongly illustrated subject on the second day of the conference was the now incontestable importance of new media applications which can be used for museum websites such as YouTube (for videos) and Flickr (for images). Podcasts and images of the conference will be available on these sites from the 18th July 2008. Alongside these keynote speeches there were also practical workshops on these specific domains (for example « How do you use the internet to reach real and virtual visitors from Asia» by Pierre-Yves Lochon from SinapsesConseil, presenting his strategy for the Château de Versailles) in addition, and new to this year, there were free consulting workshops, which gave direct access to participants to the keynote speakers – world experts in branding and communication. The gala dinner at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, receptions at Palazzo Grassi (Fondation François Pinault) and at Ca’ Rezzonico supported the extensive networking possibilities for the international community of museum communicators.

Communicating the Museum is the creation of the Paris based marketing and communications agency Agenda. It has become the international conference of reference for all questions which touch on the recent developments of museum communication.