Suse Cairns, a super energetic and smart PhD student in Australia, manages the thought-provoking museum geek blog, which she uses as a forum to think through issues around museums, technology and ideas, to join the debate about the future of museums, and connect with others in the field.

Intrigued by the tweets coming out of the National Museum Publishing Seminar, Suse asked if I would do a guest post for the blog. Maybe I was inspired by Joseph Mohan’s music-centered post or  it just made sense to embrace a collaboration theme, because it seemed like the best format for the post would be to co-author it with my former music band mates Katie Reilly, Head of Publications at Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, and Sarah Guernsey, Director of Publications at the Art Institute of Chicago both of whom also participated in the conference.

Over the course of the conference, the three of us had several great conversations about the future of museum publishing. Read our take on creative collaboration as a publishing model in Making the Museum Publishing Band. As a bonus, the post includes a photo of the band in action.