THE AGE OF SCALE

I’VE BEEN THINKING A LOT ABOUT SCOPE, SCALE, AND SPEED

SCOPE
WHAT WE
CHOOSE TO
WORK ON

SPEED
THE PACE AT
WHICH WE
MOVE

SCOPE SCALE SPEED
THE WORLD HAS CHANGED
IN EXACTLY
THESE THREE WAYS

BUT
MOST
GLAMS*
HAVEN’T
NOTICED
*GALLERIES, LIBRARIES, ARCHIVES, MUSEUMS

WE FORGED OUR DREAMS IN A SIMPLER TIME

WHEN SUCCESS MEANT COLLECTIONS

BUT NOW BILLIONS CAN ENGAGE AND CONTRIBUTE

OUTCOMES THAT WERE ONCE
INCONCEIVABLE
HAVE BECOME ROUTINE

AND NEW TOOLS
SUGGEST A NEW APPROACH
TO THE
MISSION

You can tell a lot about
someone’s dreams by
what they choose to
measure… and what
they measure with.

Video: http://youtu.be/EbVKWCpNFhY
MY DREAMS GO TO 11

“We won’t even consider a new project unless it
returns 10x better performance than the last one.”
A Smithsonian Astrophysicist told me

10xfarther back to the beginning of the universe.”
returns 10x improvement lets us see“Every

The Crab Nebula (composite) http://www.chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2013/w49b/

Annual attendance
National Gallery of Art
1978 through 2011

-1% growth
over 33 years
Annual attendance
National Gallery of Art
1978 through 2011

People who don’t visit the NGA
People who do visit the NGA

How you feel about this depends
On what you think your mission is
and how you think about scale.
But either way…

There’s a lot of room at the top
--Business proverb
How you feel about this depends
On what you think your mission is
and how you think about scale.
But either way…

“We won’t even consider a new project unless it
returns 10x better performance than the last one.”

Hypothetical Project X, starts where
the National Gallery of Art started,
grows at 10% a year for 33 years

Let’s adjust the vertical scale
(Zoom out to 500 million)

10% annual growth gives you
102 million more visitors/year
after 33 years

Let’s adjust the vertical scale
(Zoom out to 6 billion)
Wikipedia Unique visits…

10 million
100 million
1 billion people

Oops! Wrong scale! This is actually
Wikipedia Unique visits …A MONTH!
(Let’s adjust it to unique visits/year)

Wikipedia Unique visits!
(…extrapolated to 12 months, an
approximation)

2.4 billion Internet users
(34% of world population)

4.6 million
National Gallery of Art visitors
2.4 billion Internet users
(34% of world population)

…A 2.395 billion
person difference

A global “audience”
of collaborators
(individuals, learners, fans, community)
of this scale was not imaginable to an
organization 30 years ago…

108.4 million viewers for 2013 Super Bowl
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mbk/2241960032/ (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
2013 super bowl: 108.4 million viewers. http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-super-bowl-ratings-20130204,0,4439351.story

1,341,882,399 views of Gangnam Style
http://www.youtube.com/user/officialpsy

1,341,882,399 views of Gangnam Style

http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20121209/07431921317/psy-makes-81-million-ignoring-copyright-infringements-gangnam-style.shtml

http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20121209/07431921317/psy-makes-81-million-ignoring-copyright-infringements-gangnam-style.shtml
Lucia Gangnam Style http://youtu.be/5R1b1GaY8r4

https://plus.google.com/+TimOReilly/posts/VGhQ5kXZaom
“It seems to me that the
potential of YouTube to be a
game changer in the media
marketplace, a powerful new
channel and business model
for artists is still not widely
understood.”

http://www.fastcompany.com/1146469/youtube-monty-python-videos-boost-dvd-sales-23000 via Merete Sanderhoff (@msanderhoff)

23,000% increase in sales after
posting free, high quality clips
on YouTube.
http://www.fastcompany.com/1146469/youtube-monty-python-videos-boost-dvd-sales-23000 via Merete Sanderhoff (@msanderhoff)

http://blog.ted.com/2012/11/13/ted-reaches-its-billionth-video-view/

http://www.ted.com/talks/chris_anderson_how_web_video_powers_global_innovation.html

Crowd Accelerated Innovation
[at 5:50]
“And there are just three things you need
for this thing to kick into gear. You can
think of them as three dials on a giant
wheel. You turn up the dials, the wheel
starts to turn.”

1) A crowd
“The bigger the crowd, the more
potential innovators there are. That’s
important, but actually most people in
the crowd occupy these other roles.
They’re creating the ecosystem from
which innovation emerges.”

2) Light
“You need clear, open visibility of what
the best people in that crowd are capable
of, because that is how you will learn how
you will be empowered to participate.”

2) Light
“You need clear, open visibility of what
the best people in that crowd are capable
of, because that is how you will learn how
you will be empowered to participate.”
Woah! I think this is a profoundly important concept that
merits much deeper contemplation (but not here)

3) Desire
“…Innovation’s hard work. It’s based on
hundreds of hours of research, of
practice. Absent desire, it is not going to
happen.”

Openness [at 6:55]

Openness [at 6:55]
“We’ve become a little obsessed with this
idea of openness...”

1) “We opened up our talks to the world,
and suddenly there are millions of
people out there helping spread our
speakers’ ideas, and thereby making it
easier for us to recruit and motivate
the next generation of speakers.”

2) “By opening up our translation
program, thousands of heroic
volunteers — some of them watching
online right now, and thank you! —
have translated our talks into more
than 70 languages, thereby tripling
our viewership in non-English-
speaking countries.”

3) “By giving away our TEDx brand, we
suddenly have a thousand-plus live
experiments in the art of spreading
ideas. And these organizers, they’re
seeing each other, they’re learning from
each other. We are learning from them.
We’re getting great talks back from
them. The wheel is turning.”

http://www.ted.com/pages/tedx_in_a_box

Wikipedia 1.8 billion edits
http://toolserver.org/~emijrp/wikimediacounter/

SpaceShipOne: owned by the
Smithsonian, but on Wikipedia…
1,414 words, 128 hyperlinks, 15
images, 14 external references,
26 languages, ~400 editors

“[Somebody who reads Wikipedia is] rather in the
position of a visitor to a public restroom. It may be
obviously dirty, so that he knows to exercise great
care, or it may seem fairly clean, so that he may be
lulled into a false sense of security. What he certainly
does not know is who has used the facilities before
him.” Robert McHenry, a former editor-in-chief of
the Encyclopaedia Britannica
2006 (Attitudes have changed!

https://www.zooniverse.org/
792,780 people taking
part worldwide

http://www.openstreetmap.org/ | http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Stats | http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/changeset/14947636
Over 900,000 registered users
have contributed 14 million edits
and 1.6 billion locations

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/technology/internet/17maps.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/technology/internet/17maps.html
“’It is a huge shift,’” said Michael F. Goodchild, a
professor of geography at the University of California,
Santa Barbara. ‘This is putting mapping where it
should be, which is the hands of local people who
know an area well.’”
“That is changing the dynamics of an industry…”

http://www.kickstarter.com/year/2012

http://www.kickstarter.com/year/2012
In 2012…
2,241,475 people
from 177 counties
pledged $319,786,629
to support 18,109 projects

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/magazine/why-would-you-ever-give-money-through-kickstarter.html?smid=go-share&_r=1&

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/magazine/why-would-you-ever-give-money-through-kickstarter.html?smid=go-share&_r=1&
“…it provides something increasingly rare
in today’s society: a platform for an
essentially noneconomic transaction, the
kind that builds friendships and
communities. Kickstarter…is baffling by
the tenets of a self-serving marketplace.”

There is an increasing amount of
“private space masquerading as public space”
John Palfrey, Harvard Berkman Center
Digital Public Library of America

http://europeana.eu/
“Scale is really at the heart of the
business model for Europeana”
Harry Verwayen
Business Development Director
Europeana
Over 20 million CC-0 Records
Over 2,400 content providers

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm
This order of
magnitude is visible
at web scale

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/China%E2%80%99s+new+Age+of+Enlightenment/23495

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/China%E2%80%99s+new+Age+of+Enlightenment/23495
China is scaling museum
construction to a degree
that I can barely
comprehend…

http://www.economist.com/node/9339948
China is scaling museum
construction to a degree
that I can barely
comprehend…

http://www.economist.com/node/9339948
1,000 new museums between
2000 and 2015
THAT’S ONE NEW MUSEUM
OPENING EVERY
FIVE DAYS FOR 15 YEARS

“without users,
our shelves are empty”
Brewster Kahle

“The people who are supposed
to be doing universal access
to knowledge, and are getting
$12b a year to do it, are not
getting the job done”
Brewster Kahle

1.6 million members
81 million books
96 million tags
2.1 million reviews
3.9 million talk/comments

User “ending2012” has
added/cataloged 65,535 books

User “bluetyson” has
written 35,779 reviews

User “ThomasKleinert” has
added 144,973 tags

“Library is not an
institutional thing:
anyone who has a large
collection of books has
a library.”
Tim Spalding

IS SCALE JUST FOR BIG ORGANIZATIONS?

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO9Q5_D6tItyoilmDogexng

Public.Resource.Org is a small non-profit that helps make
public/government information available to all.
In one project, they ask US government entities to send
them old analog videos, which they rip and put online.

20 million views on YouTube
20 million views on Internet Archive
MORE VIDEO than all but 3 U.S.A government agencies
“Me in my spare time and a couple of volunteers”
--Carl Malamud

http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/

”A free, not-for-profit, multi-media web-
book designed as a dynamic enhancement
(or even substitute) for the traditional art
history textbook.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecca-
taylor/smarthistory_b_785154.html

512 videos
247 essays
6 million visits
Viewed in 200 countries
Tech budget of $700 + two laptops

http://www.youtube.com/user/smarthistoryvideos

http://www.youtube.com/user/smarthistoryvideos
”As professors, we reach 200 students a
semester.” -- Beth Harris
Last semester, Smarthistory content
reached 750,000 users

http://dml2013.dmlhub.net/content/videos-day-1-keynote-ignite-talks

symbolic impactful
thin
thick

symbolic impactful
thin
thick
SLACKTIVISM
Example: liking a cause
on Facebook

symbolic impactful
thin
thick
Voting
Designed to be easy for
everyone, but impactful

symbolic impactful
thin
thick
OCCUPY…
The “occupy” movement is
a lot of work, but they’re not
directly working on proposing
new policies

symbolic impactful
thin
thick http://en.wikipedia.org/w
iki/Occupy_Sandy
Occupy Sandy
After hurricane Sandy,
experienced occupy members
became a highly effective local
aid team

symbolic impactful
thin
thick
easy to scale
hard to scale

http://www.shakespearebehindbars.com/
OTHER KINDS OF SCALE

Scale has a Z axis
X
Y
ZThe Z axis, depth, is for
emotion and impact on
individuals.

Scale has a Z axis
X
Y
ZThe Z axis, depth, is for
emotion and impact on
individuals.
It scales, not in quantities of
individuals served, but in how
deeply we affect them.

http://metrotimes.com/arts/behind-bars-with-the-bard-1.1371708

“Inmates who have been involved in the
program say they experience a profound
personal growth through it, first by
recognizing the depths of their own
emotions, then by connecting with fellow
prisoners through the camaraderie of
sharing a stage.”

“…Those benefits are hard to quantify, but
they have a big effect on a number that
isn't. Participants in the Shakespeare
Behind Bars program have drastically
lowered recidivism rates to a low of 7
percent, [compared to a] national
recidivism rate at 43 percent.”

AND MISSIONS CAN BE SHAPED
IN DRAMATIC NEW WAYS
THE Z AXIS
Can you deepen the experiences
of the people you already serve?
http://www.yongestreetmedia.ca/features/humanbooks1208.aspx

“The Toronto Public Library held its
first Human Library event at five
branches on Nov. 6, attracting
more than 200 users who checked
out the likes of a police officer, a
comedian, a sex-worker-turned-
club-owner, a model and a
survivor of cancer, homelessness
and poverty.”

SPECIAL KINDS OF SCALE
0 to 1
http://channelviewpublications.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/education-and-literacy-in-ethiopia/

SPECIAL KINDS OF SCALE
0 to 1
Going from the total
absence of something to
the basic presence of it
is its own kind of scale.
http://channelviewpublications.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/education-and-literacy-in-ethiopia/

Room to Read is a non-
profit that builds libraries
and schools in places
where literacy and
education are wanted,
but absent.

• 850 million people lack
basic literacy
(2/3 are women)
• 100 million primary age
kids are not in school.
UN Estimates via
http://books.google.com/books?isbn=006112
107X

Distributed 10 million books
Built 12,000 libraries
Built 3,200 schools
Since 1998 Room to Read has…

“There are no books for kids in some
languages, so we had to become a self-
publisher,” Wood explains. […]
Room to Read has, so far, published 591 titles
in languages including Khmer, Nepalese, Zulu,
Lao, Xhosa, Chhattisgarhi, Tharu, Tsonga,
Garhwali and Bundeli.

“In 20 years,” [founder John Wood] told me,
“I’d like to have 100,000 libraries, reaching
50 million kids.

“In 20 years,” [founder John Wood] told me,
“I’d like to have 100,000 libraries, reaching
50 million kids. Our 50-year goal is to
reverse the notion that any child can be told
‘you were born in the wrong place at the
wrong time and so you will not get
educated.’ That idea belongs on the
scrapheap of human history.”

CULTURAL IMPOVRISHMENT ISN’T
JUST A 3RD WORLD THING
IT EXISTS EVERYWHERE

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/10/uk-lost-200-libraries-2012

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/10/uk-lost-200-libraries-2012
"Working men and women in the north-east have fought,
generation after generation, for the right to read and grow
intellectually, culturally and socially – to be as 'civilized' as
anyone else. It is a heritage that took decades and
decades to come to fruition but will be wiped out in a
moment. You are not only about to make philistines of
yourselves, but philistines of us all."
Billy Elliot playwright Lee Hall

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/caitlin-moran/libraries-cathedrals-of-
o_b_2103362.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003&utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false

Everything I am is based on this ugly building on its lonely lawn--lit
up during winter darkness; open in the slashing rain--which
allowed a girl so poor she didn't even own a purse to come in twice
a day and experience actual magic: traveling through time, making
contact with the dead--Dorothy Parker, Stella Gibbons, Charlotte
Brontë, Spike Milligan.
A library in the middle of a community is a cross between an
emergency exit, a life raft and a festival.

No new libraries will be built to replace them. These libraries will be
lost forever.
And, in their place, we will have thousands more public spaces
where you are simply the money in your pocket, rather than the
hunger in your heart. Kids--poor kids--will never know the fabulous,
benign quirk of self-esteem of walking into "their" library and thinking,
"I have read 60 percent of the books in here. I am awesome."
Libraries that stayed open during the Blitz will be closed by budgets.
A trillion small doors closing.

No new libraries will be built to replace them. These libraries will be
lost forever.
And, in their place, we will have thousands more public spaces
where you are simply the money in your pocket, rather than the
hunger in your heart. Kids--poor kids--will never know the fabulous,
benign quirk of self-esteem of walking into "their" library and thinking,
"I have read 60 percent of the books in here. I am awesome."
Libraries that stayed open during the Blitz will be closed by budgets.

http://danielsolisblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/cutting-libraries-in-recession-is-like.html

We love our museums, libraries, and archives
We want them to be successful

We love our museums, libraries, and archives
We want them to be successful
We need them to be super successful

PUT THE TOOLS OF KNOWLEDGE CREATION
INTO MORE HANDS

SHARE THE JOY AND MEANING OF ARTISTIC AND
CULTURAL EXPLORATION WITH MORE CITIZENS

DEEPEN ENGAGEMENT WITH THE CHALLENGES
THAT FACE OUR SPECIES

NURTURE THE HABITS OF A CIVIL
AND SUSTAINABLE SOCIETY

INTO MORE HANDS

INTO MORE HANDS
This is our job in society… But can we do this
quickly enough and at big enough SCALE
to make a substantial difference in the lives of
Individuals and the fate our our species?

Scale can be confusing
If scale matters, are 1 billion TED videos
better than 2.4 million museum visits?

Not necessarily, but the vast difference
in scale is evidence that something
significant—rich in potential—is going on
There are more powerful
ways of accomplishing
museum missions than
getting people through
the doors.

“Anything is scalable”
http://www.wired.com/business/2013/01/ff-qa-larry-page/all/
Larry Page

http://www.wired.com/business/2013/01/ff-qa-larry-page/all/

“Page expects his employees to create
products and services that are 10 times better
than the competition. That means he isn’t
satisfied with discovering a couple of hidden
efficiencies or tweaking code to achieve
modest gains. Thousand-percent improvement
requires rethinking problems entirely, exploring
the edges of what’s technically possible, and
having a lot more fun in the process.”

“Page expects his employees to create
products and services that are 10 times better
than the competition. That means he isn’t
satisfied with discovering a couple of hidden
efficiencies or tweaking code to achieve
modest gains. Thousand-percent improvement
requires rethinking problems entirely, exploring
the edges of what’s technically possible…”

We have all this money, we have all these people,
why aren’t we doing more stuff? You may say that
Apple only does a very, very small number of things,
and that’s working pretty well for them. But I find that
unsatisfying. I feel like there are all these
opportunities in the world to use technology to make
people’s lives better. At Google we’re attacking
maybe 0.1 percent of that space. And all the tech
companies combined are only at like 1 percent. That
means there’s 99 percent virgin territory.

This “small scale/boutique” rationale
is often used by GLAMs to avoid the
challenge of scale and speed

Larry Page

Larry Page
There’s a lot of room at the top!

I DON’T WANT LESS 1:1 ENGAGEMENT

MORE GLAMS
MORE VISITORS
DEEPER ENGAGEMENT

MORE WEB
MORE PARTICIPATION
BETTER OUTCOMES

And when we do,
new opportunities present themselves…
WE CAN GO TO 11

THE AGE OF SCALE

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