Sreenivasan named chief digital officer of NY's Met musuem

Indian American education expert and journalist Sreenath Sreenivasan has been appointed as the first chief digital officer of Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, musuem’s director and CEO Thomas P Campbell announced Thursday.

Sreenivasan is currently chief digital officer at ColumbiaUniversity and a member of the faculty of ColumbiaJournalismSchool, where he teaches social and digital media.

"At the Metropolitan Museum, he will explore new digital opportunities for the museum and lead its digital media department, which is responsible for managing and producing digital content -- especially documentation and interpretive materials on the Museum’s collection -- and for delivering it to a variety of audiences, both online and in the galleries. He will join the museum on August 12," statement said.

The statement, quoting Campbell, said, „Sree comes to the Met with a strong background in the communication of ideas. His work in traditional journalism, his role as a commentator on technology and media issues, and his expertise in websites and social media will all be key to the Museum’s work in the digital space. His academic background will also position him well within our community of scholars, and we look forward to working with him as we leverage mobile, in-gallery, and online platforms for the Met’s collections.”

"Until now, I’ve had a one-way, three-decade-long love affair with the Met,” said Sree Sreenivasan, “so I am absolutely delighted to have this opportunity to contribute as part of the staff and as the leader of the digital media team there. Much of my work in recent years has been about connecting the physical and the digital, the in-person and the online experience. Now I look forward to forging new connections between the superb, expansive collections of the Met—which are a true representation of our shared global history—and the two billion people who use the web.”

Sreenivasan became the first chief digital officer in 2012 at Columbia University, where he has been a professor of digital journalism at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism since 1993 and served as Dean of Student Affairs from 2008 through 2012. He trains and coaches journalists and other professionals around the world about smarter use of social and digital media.

In 2012 he became a blogger for CNET News, writing the SreeTips blog about social and digital media.

He appears weekly on WCBS-TV to discuss technology trends and tips, and was a technology reporter for WNBC-TV (2007-2009) and WABC-TV (2000-2007), as well as co-writer of the Poynter Institute’s weekly Web Tips column, aimed at helping media professionals understand the Internet better(2001-2007). He published more than 40 stories in the New York Times between 1996 and 2002, including regular contributions to the “Taking in the Sites” column when the web was new, the statement pointed out.

Sreenivasan has been named one of Poynter’s 35 most influential people in social media; one of AdAge’s 25 media people to follow on Twitter; one of SPJ’s top 20 journalists to follow on Twitter, among other accolades.

Sreenivasan was born in Tokyo and raised in Manhattan, Bhutan, the former Soviet Union, Myanmar, and Fiji. He received his BA in history from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, and subsequently earned a Master of Science degree in journalism from Columbia University. He lives in Manhattan with his wife and two children.

Photograph courtesy: Sreenath Sreenivasan's website