The 2019 IAMFA (International Association of Museum Facility Administrators) Annual Conference was hosted by the Carnegie Museum Of Natural History, Carnegie Museum of Art, Phipps Conservatory, and Heinz History Center among other fine venues in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Robert Lambe presented on The Role of Small Data in a Big Data World, a summary of how current metrics can help you make the transition to some of the exciting new facility-related technologies.

Cultural Institution Benchmarking

As usual, the Benchmarking Workshop was held the day before the annual Conference, with 48  participants who overwhelmingly rated the meeting highly.

In addition to a review of the draft benchmarking results in the business intelligence system, case studies included:

• Glenstone’s Use of Metrics
• HVAC Machine Learning at Art Institute
• Benchmarking Watt Density at Smithsonian
• Energy Submetering at Musee de la Nature

There were also break-out discussions on Amenities for Your User Community, Operational Issues during major renovations , Sustainability Governance , Sustainability Metrics. The Town Hall discussion remains the most popular part of the meeting (where else can you ask a “panel” of 50 international cultural facility experts about your problem/project?).