At MuseumNext in Geneva we presented how at Southbank Centre we are approaching building an ‘open’ website as part of the Web We Want Festival. At the start of this journey, we posed the question: What does Open Web mean when it comes to designing and building your new website? Along the way we've worked in a glass box in full view of their users, met Tim Berners-Lee who wrote the first line of code, and debated long and hard about what the word open really means for the organisation and its community. We shared the lessons, tools, methods and technologies we used to help us tackle this challenge.

1. How to build an Open
Website
Rob Gethen Smith
Lucie Paterson
Paul Vulpiani

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

13. What we learnt

14. Open Everything

15. Website User
Advisory Group

17. ● Open platform
● Open data
● Open designs
● Open use

18. Users can reuse content, data and software,
explore how the website works and easily
manage their privacy so that the Southbank
Centre website becomes a trusted and
valuable resource.

19. Challenges

20. Surprises

21. “...you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only
connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the
dots will somehow connect in your future.”
Steve Jobs

22. Rob Gethen Smith
@robgethers
Lucie Paterson
@luciepaterson
Paul Vulpiani
@forestvinnie
digital.southbankcentre.co.uk
2015