MuseumNext 2013 - Final Thoughts

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What did I learn from MuseumNext 2013? 

Many wondrous things, but after much pondering here are some snippets that spoke to me; 

Products and Offerings

'Prototype is the product' (Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum) - acceptable to put things out in Beta or at least not as perfect as previously measured. It allows development to continue based on credible user experiences, examples from V&A, Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya and Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

Not all science involves test tubes and loud bangs, there are projects (Weblab) in science spaces which are engaging the audience to interact, learn and enjoy the world around them more.

Websites and audience interactions are constantly changing, museums need to make the choices how to adapt not when, e.g. Rijksmuseum open everything on the Rijks Studio website >125,000 high-res images for people to view, collect, edit and interpret, while their galleries have no technology.

We will never ever be finished collecting and interpreting (Pocket Museum) 

Theory

Ablative thinking (Science Gallery) - allowing things to be done by, doing things with and drawing ideas from an active community of participants.

Marketing

A short video on YouTube with a catchy tune can make your offering more exciting:

Facebook tips and ideas (National Museum of Denmark) use it as a place to communicate cultural history rather than trying to convert digital visitors to real visitors.

Participation 

Ask the audience to participate and the response will vary, Your Paintings replicated Galaxy Zoo for amateur astronomers and has spawned a following of 9000 art history tagging volunteers, with 50 (0.5%) earning title of super taggers. 

Digital natives need to be engaged in the real objects too (Naturalis Biodiversity Center) and can be invited to make the bridge from real to digital to real (Tate Kids).

Relationships are key, even in digital world, "Affection Management is a mindset that helps cultural institutions build strong relationship with the different audiences and play a relevant role in their communities" and is being deployed in some of the top 1% of world's museums. Building repeat visits and strengthening relationships is key to Dallas Museum of Art - Friends.

Innovations

Always room for new ideas and innovations (Audio Tour Hack) 

Museums can contribute to today's debates and act as catalysts in social and environmental and economical change (Happy Museum) and (Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester) 

There are many HUGE ideas and ambitions out there, like the semantic web and the challenge is how it can be used for collections (National Museum of Denmark) 

A robust data engine is a firm foundation to begin with and then incremental changes. (V&A) 

Museums 2020 and tools on how to cope (Flow Associates) 

Having now been to four of the five MuseumNext conferences my enthusiasm has not waned, I did have less 'wow' moments this year, that said it was countered by the fact the presentations did evidence more senior management buy-in of the digital opportunities available to museums. The director of the Van Gogh Museum was very supportive of the new policy to allow photography and also the opportunities the 'proliferation of devices' was bringing to the visitor and museums. All that remians is to find our where the next one will be in May 2014.

MuseumNext Keynote - Seb Chan, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum

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Slide 1 @sebchan presentation

@SumoJim introduced Seb Chan as having the blog everyone in the room should be reading, are you? His keynote at #MuseumNext was inspiring, intimidating and informative. Slides are at slideshare and rather than regurgitate the talk here, this post will be key bits I found as new, useful and how they may be useful. 

The past 10 years has seen a noticeable shift in control of content, from museums to the visitors and is an area I definitely agree with Seb and strongly believe more people need to acknowledge and start building their museum offer with that in mind. Museums can remain an authoritative source, encyclopaedic in their specimens and as repositories of knowledge, but visitors can add to that and need to have options open to share such information.

Seb made the observation of all Cooper-Hewitt had achieved was with done only 75 staff, his previous museum Powerhouse had over 300. This point generated good debate in later conversations and the question debated of whether the size of organisation had a Dunbar number equivalent point which saw dynamism or flexibility reduce as the staff number increased, people thought 100 was possibly the tipping point.  

Technology acts as an amplifier - TOTALLY check that point - along the "vectors of scale" of geographic reach, temporal persistence and deepening context capture this well. 

Slide 97 @sebchan presentation

These rules or strategy are followed at Cooper-Hewitt (C-H) and have contributed to the huge amount which has happened since Seb has taken over, I find it intimidating and hugely impressive. Key is the staff and two great points were made which have to be adopted everywhere. "hire people smarter then you. Invest in training" and as digital audience grows so too should the digital audience facilitating and delivering that! *hands up those doing either of those* 

A theme seen in later presentations is the idea that the prototype is the product, getting things out the door and improving iteratively is the lesson of the week for me. Borrow/link to data already provided, that is why the Internet is a network, surely. For the 93% of objects not digitised or with poor records then C-H has worked a system that creates links to places with more information; Wikipedia, other museums, etc. And the search facility had two days of work on it which created a Josef Albers effect to the default image to help scan them and ascertain more data, simply through colours and shapes designed dependant on the known data on the object versus what is missing, genius. 

Slide 82 (detail) @sebchan presentationUsing the building as an object and a user of the API is an idea I am not 100% clear on, that said better use of the building as a player in the experience is important. You choose whether it is a 'shouter' or a 'helper,' e.g. the Rijksmuseum is the helper, it's galleries are designed to show off the art (help), while the corridors are providing more visual pleasures (shout) as you move between the curated ages. As the collections begin to catch up on how they are being catalogued, stored and displayed in the digital age so too will the buildings be able to provide more information for the visitor's personalised tour(s). 

Finally Seb talked of metrics and they were 'simple' and nothing unexpected, it just shows simplicity does pay of. Great kick off to the conference and had delegates buzzing the rest of the day. 

MuseumNext 2013 Fringe

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MuseumNext 2013.JPG

Red is the Colour to go with the District!

A new approach to MuseumNext conference tonight with a fringe event brought by N8 - the 20 somethings who bring Amsterdam Museums Nacht every November. They spoke at MuseumNext in Edinburgh and I have since mentioned them to many people as a model that is different, challenging and yet seems to be working. Here's MuseumNext's take on them via blog. Tonight, they put together three speakers of very different projects with the theme, Heritage Pays and below are my understandings and the links. Apologies to the speakers if I have misinterpreted anything. 

The Big Internet Museum

New to me and those sitting in my row, an online museum. This, one year old project is a real inspiration. Initially, I was cynical, but they really are doing a museum on the Internet and capturing/cataloguing the 'objects that have defined where the Internet currently is. I immediately thought of the Internet Time Machine which archives web pages, was doing the same thing but it's not, it is the difference between the British library collecting books under the Legal Deposit Act and the British Museum collecting printing presses, ink, books and the devices that you read books on - bad analogy.

Dan Polak and two colleagues from an Ad agency felt the need to create the museum and over three/four nights a week and a day every weekend they now do just that. Admirably answering every email and also reviewing every suggested submission they are building a collection based on loose rules; 'everything is correct', 50% is information and 50% is entertainment, and 50% is handled like it's a museum and 50% is Internet. There is no business model for money making, it's ad-free and supported by generous benefactors. What would you like to see in the museum? they will listen to all submissions, I've already found the best entry ever...how to know who looks at your Facebook page .dare you click it?

Smart Replicas

Next up was Maaike Roozenburg to talk about a project she is doing with a museum, university and others while she is a technical designer. She was interested in handling objects held by a museum, both those on show and also the 95% hidden in stores to be brought back into the original locations. She used the example of 17th century drinking glasses or tea cups and the chance to have them back in the home, dishwasher proof and usable. 

She has prototyped scanning objects (CT-scan) and then producing a 3D printed version and/or a porcelain version - I was not clear if the porcelain was produced via a mould or was it generated by the 3D printer. Anyway, the final version is white and not decorated, but it maintains the chronology of the piece, design/decoration which has impacted the surface is picked up by the scanning process, any cracks or damage are also picked up and the slicing process of the scan can be noted too. Rather than produce an age appropriate replica the product is true to the whole history and experience of the object, The current phase is to make the porcelain version 'smart' by adding layers of augmented reality which can then be viewed using a smart device. Obvious content could be an image of the original glass or tea cup, showing the colourful designs, or makers-marks, however there is also other ideas for content like; illustration of the contemporary manufacture, provenance, museum catalogue information, stories, etc, Maaike has a blog which has more info and she and the partners will be prototyping the AR in the museum next month. 

Double Denim

The third presentation was less defined and was a conversation with Joachim Baan from Anothersomething & Co. My understanding is Joachim has a collection of denim and is also a designer/marketer and has managed to include items from his denim collection in the design and display of a denim shop in Amsterdam. We heard of the early marketing by Lee which involved having dolls wearing denim,(Go Mizzou or Michigan!) I may have dreamed that but if it is true, then that's intriguing. 

His next project is potentially using historic money bags from banks to inspire the designing of a store. While I didn't really understand what was the benefit of historic storytelling within current commercial goods or translate it to a more UK/US based stiore, Baan is an intriguing individual who using historic artefacts of all sorts to inspire and influence contemporary designs, something all museums could do with promoting more with the advertisers and designers of their neighbourhoods.