The digital team at Southbank Centre are investigating how to build an ‘Open’ website. The journey started last September with a 10-week stint in a glass box where the team met 100’s of people who visit Southbank Centre. Following this unique experience, the team grew in confidence and decided to open everything up to the public – this included their website vision, processes, thinking, designs, and even the development backlog. They have now created the first version of an open CMS platform that any cultural events organisation could pick up, configure, change and use. In this presentation Rob will explain why the Southbank Centre opened up everything. He will talk about the Glass Box experience and what the team learnt. He will also present the Open Event CMS and how he thinks this approach could fundamentally change how the cultural sector develops future digital platforms. Rob Gethen Smith is the Chief Information Officer at Southbank Centre where he is responsible for Digital and Technology strategy. He joined Southbank Centre in November 2012. Before this, Rob led business and technology transformation programmes at Tate, Macmillan Cancer Support and WWF-UK.

1. Open Everything
Rob Gethen Smith
@robgethers

2. Southbank Centre passionately believes the
arts have the power to transform lives

3. 4500 Events
13 Festivals
6m people

4. 1. Best in
breed event
ticketing
website
2. Unique
digital space
for arts and
learning

5. How do you
build an
OPEN WEBSITE?

6. THE GLASS BOX

7. “Talk about taking transparent
participatory to the next level!”
Mar Dixon

8. New Ideas

9. User testing

10. Drop in
sessions

11. Workshops

12. Tim

15. Open Everything

16. ● Open process
● Open use
● Open designs
● Open data
● Open platform

17. Open Event CMS

18. Open Event CMS - What is it?
Open Event CMS is a foundation for any
cultural organisation wanting to manage and
publish their events online

19. Open Event CMS - What is it?
Open Event CMS is a Drupal CMS that directly
represents an Event Open Data Model and
automatically publishes data through an API.

20. Open Event CMS - 3 parts
Open Event CMS is a Drupal CMS that directly
represents an Event Open Data Model and
automatically publishes data through an API.

21. Part 1: Event Open Data Model (ODM)
Collaboration
Event Model
(Ontology)
Schema.org
Classification
(Taxonomy)
Future standard?

22. Part 2: Drupal CMS
Drupal 7 (8?)
Open Source GPL
ODM “baked in”
Minimal assumptions
Drupal Distribution
Github
Adapt/customise

23. Part 3: API
(Application Programming Interface)
Read only data export
JSON format
Open Data Set
Schema.org
Self documenting

24. Basic Implementation

25. Basic Implementation
Digital
Officer
I could build you a
website in a day!

26. Add a Presentation Layer
Digital
Officer
Front End
Design/Dev
A separate
presentation
layer is a really
powerful and
flexible tool!

27. Publish to other Apps
Digital
Officer
Front End
Design/Dev
The API can
publish the data
any application

28. Publish direct to the Internet
Digital
Officer
Front End
Design/Dev
The API
publishes open
data in Schema.
org format for
other people to
use

29. Integrate data sources
Digital
Officer
Front End
Design/Dev
Database
Officer
The CMS now
gets its content
efficiently and
accurately
Data can be
automatically
aggregated from
any source

30. Customise the CMS
CMS DEV
Front End
Design/Dev
Database
Officer
I can extend the
CMS to hold all
the other content
my organisation
needs to publish

31. Bells and whistles
CMS DEV
Front End
Design/Dev
Database
Officer
● Search
● Caching
● Ecommerce
● Microdata
● RDF/XML

32. Summary
Open Source CMS
Install via Drupal Distribution
Develop via Github
Adopt a standard data model
Extend reach of your content
Become part of a community
Pilot?

35. Rob Gethen Smith
@robgethers
digital.southbankcentre.co.uk
2015