If you love something, set it free

quot;if you love something, set it freequot; ..in which we’ll consider the benefits of making stuff (more) available as well as some of the issues around value, scarcity and scale

I am Mike Ellis I have spent about ten years on the web I am a generalist, strategist, social(web)ist I work for a not for profit IT company called Eduserv my mum

we’re used to producing content in silos

we've often produced experiences to be consumed in a linear way

..within the confines of our quot;virtual wallsquot;

and once, we even used to say things like: “don’t link to that external site – we’ll lose a visitor” but we don't do that any more...right...?

we're only just starting to understand that our users are talented and fickle. they get what they want from whoever will provide it. they want more stuff via more channels

this means users find stuff through means other than those we provide, they drop into the depths of our sites rather than via the homepage and they use our material in ways we’d never even begin to imagine

users aren’t necessarily having controlled experiences... ...a lot of the time, they're beautifully chaotic

and increasingly, they’re experiencing our content somewhere other than on our site...

% referrals from myspace to sciencemuseum.org.uk?

(cultural) institutions often struggle with this

after all, authority is what makes us...us, right?

well, maybe web2 is teaching us that authority comes from the real, from authenticity

and not (always) from a designed, understood, moderated pathway

once we've realised that the important thing is our content and not where it is consumed, we should find it easier to let go..

..and instead of being protective, strive to make it easier for people to use our content anywhere

this approach makes “mashups” possible

http://www.patroc.com/paris/free-museums.html

http://simile.mit.edu/timeline/examples

http://electronicmuseum.org.uk/experiments/rss-to-image

http://mashedmuseum.org.uk

http://freeearth.poly9.com

http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/visualizations/lost

content service your site

the problem is... there isn’t much exposed heritage content

which is a shame, because much of it is superb...

take a look at web2.0

creative commons user generated rich “non web-like” environment content web 2.0 is.. viral marketing mashups and permission based activity radical collaboration de-centralisation

the social web

I'd argue that one of the most important things about web2.0 is this:

the sociability isn’t just on the surface

under the hood web2.0 is social too, in the form of data sharing

it's about RSS, API's, REST (these are geeky ways of saying you can get content and data in and out of your website and systems...)

it's about giving freedom to your content, letting it out of the confines of your website. if you do this, other people will be able to mash your stuff as well

give it away??? what about...cash?

in this brave new online world, we’ve had to re-appraise everything else. now might be the time to re-appraise what we understand by “value”.

Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist “ In 2001, I sold 10,000 hard copies. And everyone was puzzled. We came from zero, from 1000, to 10,000. And then the next year we were over 100,000. [...] I thought that this is fantastic. You give to the reader the possibility of reading your books and choosing whether to buy it or not. [...] So, I went to BitTorrent and I got all my pirate editions… And I created a site called The Pirate Coelho. ” http://torrentfreak.com/alchemist-author-pirates-own-books-080124/

“losers wish for scarcity. winners leverage scale” ian rogers, ex vp video and media applications, yahoo! scarcity? or scale?

the take-home...

freeing data is a virtuous cycle: the more people do it the more there is and the more it gets seen

1. we truly is is better than me 2. development of additional channels (mobile, facebook, text only, kiosk, screen- reader) is made easy, almost trivial. 3. it isn't hard, or expensive 4. investing in this even at an early stage (< web2.0!) means you can always get at your stuff

and once your content is out there, who knows where it might go?

thanks for listening www.eduserv.org.uk twitter.com/dmje mashedmuseum.org.uk

thanks also to these flickr people for sharing: hello world http://www.flickr.com/photos/oskay/472097903/ freedom http://www.flickr.com/photos/frankloohuis/468320896/ mike on beach mine silos http://www.flickr.com/photos/zoomzoom/304135268/ simple http://www.flickr.com/photos/louganmanzke/2722701187 corporate http://www.flickr.com/photos/dhinson/1439657540 charlotte mine cloth puppet http://www.flickr.com/photos/hellomokona/2907265786/ airplane mine chaos http://www.flickr.com/photos/penny2036/2498097929 jellyfish mine number 9 http://www.flickr.com/photos/kibbles/2902544170/ d(anger) http://www.flickr.com/photos/sindesign/221297512/ tower mine authentic http://www.flickr.com/photos/josefgrunig/1732787905/ babel http://www.flickr.com/photos/pulpolux/384199243 seesaw http://www.flickr.com/photos/zaxl4/16950197 easy http://www.flickr.com/photos/spackletoe/90811910/ mash http://www.flickr.com/photos/plasticrevolver/61068219/ desolate http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremyengleman/158208286/ e=mc hair http://www.flickr.com/photos/ocularsmith/239674652 question http://www.flickr.com/photos/drachmann/327122302 dark tunnel http://www.flickr.com/photos/citizen_poeta/425749475/ web2 logos http://www.flickr.com/photos/ryyo/249804450/ crowd blur http://www.flickr.com/photos/victoriapeckham/164175205/ moon tree mine night fight http://www.flickr.com/photos/strocchi/295280599/ gadget http://www.flickr.com/photos/lotts-family/2092624726/ cash register http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=315274981&size=o truth or consequence http://www.flickr.com/photos/kxlly/349894433 newton http://www.flickr.com/photos/sunnyuk/2357899880 scale http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1461810959&size=l escape http://www.flickr.com/photos/practicalowl/329076696 broken tower mine blurred night mine fireworks mine dan hand mine

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If you love something, set it free

by Mike Ellis on Nov 19, 2008

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If you love something, set it free — Presentation Transcript