Experts in the Field: Lessons from Tim Merriman

Thursday, July 6, 2017 1:04 PM by Taylor Studios in Professional and Industry Tips


Established planner, leader, and interpretation veteran, Tim Merriman takes the time to share some of his career experience with us this week. You may know Tim from the several books that he and his wife, Lisa Brochu, have published together, or from his years as Executive Director with NAI. We hope you enjoy this inspired read!** ** Taylor Studios (TSI): Tim, thank you for taking the time to talk with us this week. Let me start by asking what inspired you to pursue a career in the outdoors? 

Tim Merriman (TM): I was the kid who was always going fishing, catching crawdads or looking for turtles. The outdoors fascinated me. By ten years of age I would tell anyone who listened that I wanted to be a biologist. In high school I worked for my father, who had a lawn mower distributor business. He was disappointed that I did not want to join the family business, but grew to accept that I was chasing a different dream in college. My mother was a florist and I worked for her in high school also, which started a lifelong enjoyment of growing flowers, bonsai trees and landscape plants.

TSI:  How did you get to where you are today in your career?

TM: I went to SIU-Carbondale and earned B.S. and M.A. degrees in six years in zoology and botany with a teaching certificate. I thought I would teach high school but instead found a job at what is now Touch of Nature on Little Grassy Lake in southern Illinois as the nature expert and then environmental programs director. I ran five-day environmental workshops for high school students from all over the state of Illinois. The university downsized and terminated all of us who lacked a Ph.D. after only three years there. I moved to a position as park naturalist/interpreter at Giant City State Park in Makanda, Illinois. I worked part-time on a Ph.D. in Speech/Communications for ten years and eventually finished it. I had several jobs over the next few decades, non-profit nature center director, Director of Science at Bat Conservation International, Manager of Research and Innovations at Land Between the Lakes Recreation Area in Kentucky and Executive Director of National Association for Interpretation (NAI) for 17 years. Lisa Brochu, my wife, and I developed the certification program for NAI and trained more than 1,000 trainers and 200 planners during those years as NAI’s executive staff. In 2012 we left NAI and began consulting full-time as Heartfelt Associates. We have worked in 24 nations these past two decades with multiple trips to Asia and Africa. Most recently we have worked with USAID and African Parks Foundation doing interpretive planning and training for national parks in Rwanda.

In 2015 we moved to the Big Island of Hawaii, bought a small Kona coffee farm and built an off-grid solar bamboo house. We raise miniature Appaloosa horses, Kona coffee and continue to consult and train on a part-time basis. We also teach tourism and hospitality at Hawaii Community College and two classes in interpretation and interpretive planning at University of Hawaii in Hilo. Somehow in semi-retirement we are busier than ever, but still find time to enjoy getting outdoors and exploring Hawaii’s natural and cultural features.

TSI:  What is the most challenging issue your organization faces?

TM: When we consulted on a more full-time basis the challenge was keeping the right number of jobs in progress without having too much to do. Now it is easier for we do not bid competitively for work. If a client who knows and likes our approach hires us, we enjoy occasional planning and training jobs. The demands of teaching, coffee farming and a small horse operation keep us working every day. The panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean from our home at 930 feet elevation is inspiring all day long. In winter we can see humpback whales in the coastal waters while we drink our coffee on the lanai. ** **

TSI: How do you determine what’s important to your visitors? 

TM: We use a variety of approaches to assess visitor interests. Watching them move through a site is one of the most effective and honest ways to see what captures their interest. Listening to their questions helps us know what they’d like to see or do that isn’t being offered or at least isn’t readily apparent to them. It helps to be unobtrusive, and able to watch and listen as part of the crowd so you hear what visitors really think about an exhibit or experience. When you ask them using an interview method, they may only say what they think you want to hear. But there’s a place for the many varied ways of studying visitor interests including surveys, social media comments, TripAdvisor.com ratings, guest book comments and focus groups, and each situation will dictate what method works best in that instance.

TSI: What natural site or museum (anywhere, anytime) has made the greatest impression on you? Why? 

TM: My favorites are Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum and Monterey Bay Aquarium. I like organizations who place more an emphasis on interpretation within their mission than collections display and information delivery. I think the most interesting places integrate stories about natural and cultural history without viewing their identity as being locked into one or the other. Both of these display live animals in a respectful manner. The Museum at Warm Springs is excellent in sharing the unique stories and culture of the Ute and Paiute people of Oregon. It has some excellent hands-on elements and really brings you up close to the people being interpreted. The Anne Frank House and Kigali Genocide Memorial are excellent museums telling difficult stories. At Anne Frank House in Amsterdam you walk through where she lived and hid while reading words from her journal projected onto ceilings and walls. It puts you very much in touch with how she felt. The Kigali Genocide Memorial addresses the 90-day genocide in Rwanda in 1994 that took more than 800,000 lives. More than 250,000 of the victims are buried in a mass grave on the grounds of the memorial. The thoughtful use of photographs, videos and text tell the story in French, Kinyarwandan and English. It challenges you to imagine how you rebuild from such a sad situation but it is uplifting in another way for it explains the system of justice used to address the lives of survivors, both perpetrators and victims.

I really like the American Indian Museum at Smithsonian Institute and especially admire how their building and food service match their mission in sharing the diverse cultures of Native Americans with all of us. I am quite sure there are hundreds of other sites I could mention, but even after 1.3 million air miles of travel to 24 nations, I have had experiences at a small fraction of the amazing natural and cultural history sites in the world.

**

TSI: What’s your best advice for someone starting out in this field? **

TM: I really recommend that you start with a good education and then get involved with professional associations while still a student. I was 28 and had been working in parks for five years before discovering the Association of Interpretive Naturalists, parent organization with Western Interpreters Association of National Association for Interpretation (NAI). I would eventually serve as President of AIN in working toward consolidation of the two groups to become NAI. And I was Executive Director of NAI for 17 years. Colleagues helped me learn and grow in every way possible and helped me find the jobs that mattered for me.

American Association of Museums (AAM), North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE), Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AAZPA) and American Public Gardens Association(APGA) are just a few of the many organizations that serve natural history, cultural history and science organizations in professional development. Their conferences and training are invaluable at every stage of a professional career. You just need to find the one that best matches your interests and needs.

Visit other places and professionals in your field also. Borrowing ideas is a time-honored tradition and a good “cooks’ tour helps you understand the complex logistics and politics behind successful organizations, whether governmental, non-profit or private for profit.

TSI: What is the most challenging aspect of your job? 

TM: This is just not very applicable at my stage of semi-retirement. We raise coffee in South Kona District of the Big Island and breed miniature horses. Our daily lives are pretty much the same as that of other small farmers. Gather eggs, water gardens, feed critters, make improvements and enjoy the routine. By also teaching tourism and interpretation at Hawaii Community College and University of Hawaii at Hilo, we stay connected with young people and our profession. Occasional trips to Rwanda to train guides or planning projects on the island keep us in touch with the realities of site management and visitor experience design. Recently we cruised Akagera National Park in Rwanda on our days off between training courses. Meeting elephants in a Toyota Land Cruiser is a breathtaking experience. We stopped and studied their body language, knowing our careful response is important for them and us. And we had the good company of a Community Guide who had been in our training which gave us a sense of how important training is to them. We also have visited the mountain gorillas of Diane Fosse fame in Volcanoes National Park. That is simply one of the most stunning and life-changing experiences with animals you can have.

In terms of the consulting/training we do, perhaps the most challenging part is helping clients understand the difference between information and interpretation, and setting objectives that will realistically provide both planning and evaluation tools. Some clients seem bent on making choices that cost more and do less, because they want to have the latest, greatest gizmos rather than determining what they want to achieve with what audiences and then choosing the best methods to do that.

TSI: Which feature of your site has been the most popular among your visitors? Why?

TM: We actually do not manage a site these days, although we have considered providing permaculture tours of our small farm someday. I have always thought agritourism can create some of the most interesting visitor experiences as people discover where their food and fiber comes from. We trained in Tuscany in Italy several years ago and it was amazing to see the diverse agritourism sites and the visitor experiences created there. The Big Island offers coffee farm tours, macadamia nut factory tours and even a vanilla orchid farm tour. It would seem that agritourism could present opportunites in all of the agricultural communities of the planet. TSI: We’d love to help promote all that you and your site does; is there a book, blog, project, website, or anything else in which you’d like us to tell our readers about?

TM: We continue to write books, both fiction and non-fiction. In 2007 we published our award-winning first novel, The Leopard Tree, and it enjoys a great reputation with readers, having 304 reviews with a 4.6 average on Amazon.com. We are about to finish a sequel to it, yet unnamed. For the interpretive community, we have published several texts that are all still available on Amazon or through NAI. Of special interest: Personal Interpretation is in its third edition and continues to serve as a text in NAI’s Certified Interpretive Guide training program. Put the HEART Back in Your Community sells as both a Kindle book on Amazon and hard copy. It shares how communities can plan collaboratively to tell their stories and achieve local objectives. It includes 19 case studies of communities exploring innovations in solving problems. Lisa’s book Interpretive Planning is in its second edition and continues to be a valued text and training resource around the world.

Our little one acre coffee farm, Hale Pono ka Puʻuwai (Home of the Peaceful Heart in Hawaiian) produces enough arabica coffee each year that we sell our Estate Coffee each fall to friends and family over the Internet. If you have an interest, let us know. It becomes available in August and sells out quickly at $30 a pound.

We once enjoyed traveling 120 days a year and 100,000 air miles each to meet and train colleagues around the world. It’s now equally great to stay home most of the time with horses, chickens, dogs, cat and a parrot with short trips to teach and train on the Big Island and elsewhere. We miss seeing our many colleagues on the mainland on a more regular basis, but when they visit the island, we enjoying getting together with old friends.

Contact Information:

Heartfelt Associates http://heartfeltassociates.com http://heartfeltassociates.wordpress.com (blog) tim@heartfeltassociates.com

970-231-0537

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