hello

\"if you love something, set it free\"
..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 \"virtual walls\"

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