During October and November 2009, Mike Ellis (Eduserv) and Dan Zambonini (Box UK) built a museum website in 12 hours from beginning to end, under the title "Museum In A Day".
These slides accompany a workshop we delivered at DISH 2009 with the same title (see http://www.dish2009.nl/node/89)
The workshop uses the Museum In A Day project as a means to frame the wider conversation, and looks at where online museums are in terms of audience, traffic and reach, asking:
- How can we do things differently?
- How can we do more with less?
- How can we be where our audiences are?
For an overview of the Museum In A Day project, see http://museuminaday.com/
9. What We’re Going To Talk
About
• The Wider Context
• The Relevance of Museums in This
Context
– Where We Are
– Where We Could Be
• Practical, Real-World Ideas
– Including What We Tried: “Museum In a
Day”
– Issues & Risks
21. What about other bits off-
site?
• over 40% of all Salesforce.com traffic is
via their API
• $490m (28%) of Amazon revenue is
generated by 3rd party sellers
• eBay has around 25,000 developers
with over 2,000 certified applications
http://blog.programmableweb.com/2006/03/20/how-much-revenue-via-apis/
45. Possible Implications for
Museums
• Lower digital content value + less big
business = less image licensing
• Lower content value + Higher app value +
Higher mobile usage = demand/resource
shift from content to service provision
(museum as platform?)
46. Possible Implications for
Museums
• More small business = more competition
Your audience is a mass of niche
communities, being increasingly better
served elsewhere.
47. Context/Where People Are
(Summary)
• Everywhere but our websites
– Social Networks, RSS, Mobile, Blogs,
Communities
• And it’s always changing, e.g.
– Less value on content, more on services
– Many small producers on cheap
infrastructure
• More competition
48. Q: What changes are
you noticing?
Q: What implications
do these changes have?
31
50. National museums make up 8 of the 10 top
visitor attractions in Britain
(Source: http://tinyurl.com/mus-vis-num)
Most popular museum website with UK users is
the Tate: 1,690th (21,037th in the world)
(Source: Alexa)
559th = onemanga.com
749th = xkcd.com
1722nd = brainyquote.com
51.
52. 2007: 20% of homepage clicks on ‘visiting’
(Source: http://www.archimuse.com/mw2007/papers/haynes/haynes.html)
2009: @zambonini Thurs 29th Oct,
Ormeau Baths Gallery Belfast.
@zambonini a couple of us visited Checked on site with phone
@swanseamuseum in the summer, beforehand to find closing time
checked out opening times on
website first : ) @zambonini Generally visit museum
site prior to a real-life visit. See
@zambonini bogota museum of gold. what's on, book etc
3 weeks ago. Website before we went
to check directions and opening times @zambonini Serpentine a couple of
weeks ago for the Koons exhibit.
@zambonini I went to the Reina Visited the website beforehand for
Sophia in Madrid on Sunday; I used details.
the National Maritime Museum's
website a few months ago for opening @zambonini about 6 months ago
times. and ditto (to get directions to it)
59. • Offering a relevant service…
• in the relevant location…
• at a relevant “cost”.
60. Service Location Cost
Provide Access In-Museum Free
Provide Content Touring Exhibition At Cost
Provide Data Outreach
Provide Media Little Time
Main Website Substantial Time
Group Website
? RSS
Facebook
YouTube
Twitter
Mobile
61. = Museum As A Platform
Museums should facilitate, encourage
and support the self-organisation of
the niche communities that they
inherently represent.
By demographic, interest, locality.
62. Why We Should Be There
• More future-proof
• Size of Audience (Traffic)
• Easier (stuff is already there..)
• Cheaper
• More Effective (audiences are already
there)
• More engaged audiences
63. What The New Museum
Looks Like
• Museum As A Platform
– Content / Collections / Community
• Case Studies
– Brooklyn
– Launchball
– V&A Design a Tile
73. The Traditional Museum
Project
• “Big Budget”
• Long Timescales
• Many Stakeholders / Funders
• Archaic Software
• Copyright and Restrictions
• Anti-User Centred
74. Perfection Is The Enemy Of The
Good
• museums are built around perfection,
“knowing”, being “sure”...
• ..but....“we didn’t need Einstein to put
Armstrong on the moon”
75.
76. “Fail Quickly”
• the tools today are cheap (free) and
easy
• try something, see if it works:
– If it does, great
– It it doesn’t, adapt it or kill it and move
on
• this “Darwinian” approach is very
powerful
77. The New Way
• High Speed, Low Cost
• Democratisation of Software
• Usability
• Easy Standards
• Cloud / Scaling
• “boltability”
78. Freedom
• API
• Copyright
• Distributed Content (RSS, etc)
• Community: Approach & Trust
• Tone Of Voice (Devolved Authority)
79. How We Get There (Summary)
• Just do enough, don’t be a
perfectionist
• Use high-speed, low cost tools
• Embrace freedom and facilitate
freedom
• It’s OK to be wrong, but get there
quickly
80. Q: What stops us using agile/
quick solutions?
Q: How can we start using them?
Q: How do you approach failed
projects?
63
82. What We Did
• We endeavoured to build a museum
website in 12 hours, start to finish
• This time included all planning,
technical and design build and content
writing / migration
• Read more at http://
museuminaday.com
92. Why We Did It
• Firstly, we’ve both talked a lot about
how making (museum) websites
should be easier, and wanted to see
what we could do in reality
• Secondly, we have documented (and
will continue to document) the project
so that others can benefit from what
we learnt...
93. ...so what did we learn..?
• 12 hours isn’t long
• Even when software is good, Technical
Integration is Always Hard
• Small details can take a long time
• Sustainability takes longer
• In 12 hours, we only managed 2 out of
3 parts of ‘the new museum’ (no
community)
96. Content Management
• Lots of similar choice, how to choose?
• Depends on context and budget
• How we compared for our needs
• Core requirements (editor usability,
scalability, support, data lock-in/
standards, tech)
• Wordpress
97. Collections Management
• Most in-house CM systems let you publish
to web, but this is usually dire!
• Look for systems that have standard
outputs:
– RESTful API
– Feeds (RSS, etc) or even CSV!
• Omeka is a great example:
– good documentation
– ease of use
– feeds and API
– a developing platform
98. Community Management
• There are tools to do this as part of
big CMS systems..
• But actually this is more about a
“distributed model”:
– Google keyword alerts
– RSS feeds
– Monitoring Twitter
– Finding the confidence and voice to
respond
99. What about the risks?
• Sustainability
– archiving
– reliance on 3rd party services
– accessibility
• Authority
• Lack of control
• The Patriot Act!
• But...what about the risks of not...?
101. Summary
• Don’t think like a museum
• Users are in other places. Go there.
• Use existing tools and techniques
where you can
• Experiment
• Let your users do the hard work!
DZ & ME
managers
curators
librarians
designers
directors
scholars
consultants
educators
developers
ME
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ME
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DZ & ME
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Museums and galleries have now been digitizing and putting their collections online for well over 10 years. In total, many tens if not hundreds of millions of objects have been placed online, at the total cost of many millions of pounds. Typically, up to about 15% of the total traffic to museum websites will be to these collection pages.
DZ
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ME
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Content could be educational, interpretations, blog posts, articles, journals, etc.
ME
loosely joined
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This exhibition closed in 2005.
Four years later, the interactive is still live and being played