About

You may wonder why are there no comments or 'likes' on this site. The answer is that I just want to geek out on stuff I'm interested in and I don't want to think about whether it will be popular or not. That being said I hope you geek out here too and I'd love to hear from you. — Mike
 

Michael Peter Edson

{ bio at the bottom of the page }

Bluesky: @mpedson | Twitter: @mpedson | Mastodon: https://mastodon.world/@mpedson | LinkedIn | Presentations on SlideShare Email: usingdata at gmail dot com
Contact me or comment via form here.

I’m a museum and library founder and director, digital cultural strategist, writer, and artist working globally at the intersection of tech, culture, and civil society. My special focus/expertise is creating new institutions, and revitalizing old ones, to help drive societal change at local and global scales — particularly regarding climate action and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

In May 2023 I was appointed as the Director and Chief Museum Officer of the Museum of Solutions, Mumbai (MuSo), a new, state-of-the-art museum in Mumbai, India, dedicated to inspiring and empowering people to solve the world’s most pressing problems.

In July, 2024, MuSo was named to TIME Magazine’s World’s 100 Greatest Places list. We also just won the prestigious Hands On! Children In Museums Award bestowed by the European Museum Academy and the International Association of Children in Museums.

I was the Co-founder and associate director of the newly emerging Museum for the United Nations – UN Live. (See my TEDx talk about it here, from the early days, and a good, more recent interview in Artribune Magazine.)

Prior to all of that I was the Director of Web and New Media Strategy at the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum and research complex, where I also built exhibitions and founded and led digital offices for several of the individual Smithsonian museums. My first job at the Smithsonian was cleaning Plexiglass cases for exhibits.

Sometimes I do consulting, facilitation, coaching, workshop design, and strategy development.

I’ve written some things about technology and culture, including Dark Matter, How Change Happens, Think Big, Start Small, Move Fast, Fire and Frost, Hidden Collections for Everyone, and Boom!

I'm a Salzburg Global Fellow; a 2017—2018 Fellow at the Getty Leadership Institute, Drucker School of Management, Claremont Graduate University; and a Distinguished Presidential Fellow (emeritus) at the Council on Library and Information Services (USA).

I’m the instigator of Climate Things, an emerging global collective of library, museum, and cultural professionals (and many other types of people!) who develop transformational initiatives for culture and climate action.

I was the instigator of What Matters Now event, the Openlab Workshop (video), Ignite Smithsonian (2009), and a series of free, global, peer-to-peer “sense-making” workshops that have, so far, served over 200 cultural leaders from 25 countries.

I’m Chair of the Advisory Board for Europeana, Europe’s digital cultural aggregator, and I’ve served on advisory boards for City of Copenhagen History and Culture institutions (Københavns Kommune Historie & Kunst); the Saxo Institute's Past's Future project; Greenhouse Studios at the University of Connecticut; and more.

I was a juror for the MacArthur Foundation's $100m 100&Change initiative and the Cumulus Green competition, as well as the Wiki Loves Monuments photography competition global architecture firm Perkins&Will’s 2024 Phil Freelon Design Competition to “imagine the civic library of 2049.”

I’m a student in Harvard Business School’s online program for global strategy.

I'm a certified LEGO SERIOUS PLAY ® facilitator; a certified (but lapsed!) Java developer; a certified (also lapsed!) Scrum Master, and a visual artist.

Presentations and recent work

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Stuff I'm doing soon

  • Keynote, Eureka!/Hands On!, Liverpool, England. November, 2025.

  • Panelist/Moderator, AI, Memory, & Society: AI Policies for Institutional & Societal Goals. Internet Librarian. October, 2025

Some stuff I've done recently


Video's/interviews/press

Short Bio

.. If you need it for some reason...
[Updated August 1, 2024]

Michael Peter Edson is a director, strategist, and thought leader at the forefront of transformation in the cultural sector.

Michael was the Director and Chief Museum Officer of the Museum of Solutions (MuSo), a new, state-of-the-art facility in Mumbai, India, dedicated to inspiring and empowering young people to solve the world’s most pressing problems.

In its inaugural year MuSo was named to TIME Magazine’s World’s 100 Greatest Places list and won the prestigious Hands On! Children In Museums Award bestowed by the European Museum Academy and the International Association of Children in Museums.

Previously, Michael was the co-founder of the Museum of the United Nations – UN Live in Copenhagen, and the Director of Web and New Media Strategy for the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum and research complex in Washington, D.C.

Michael is a Salzburg Global Fellow; a Fellow at the Getty Leadership Institute; a Presidential Distinguished Fellow emeritus at the Council for Libraries and Information Resources (USA); and a juror for the MacArthur Foundation's $100 million grant initiative, $100 & Change, and Cumulus Green, a global design competition for solutions to the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. Michael is chair of the Europeana Foundation Advisory Board; he is an O'Reilly Foo Camp alumni; and he was named a "Tech Titan: person to watch" by Washingtonian magazine.

More about Michael’s work can be found at https://usingdata.com/about

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photo cc-by Lars Lundqvist