1. The document discusses scale and how organizations can achieve greater scale through open communities, being web-centric, and having a global reach from the start. 2. It provides examples of highly scaled online communities and platforms like Wikipedia, Kickstarter, and Google Books to show what is possible with the right approach. 3. Museums are encouraged to think bigger about how to accomplish their missions and engage more people worldwide through embracing new digital approaches and tools that enable widespread participation and collaboration at a large scale.

1. Michael Edson (@mpedson)
Director, Web and New Media Strategy
Smithsonian Institution
February 22, 2013

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

3. You can tell a lot about
someone by what they
choose to measure…and
what they measure with
You can see the
scale
of their dreams

4. Scale is a matter of perspective
“These go to 11”
Video: http://youtu.be/EbVKWCpNFhY

5. This is NASA’s Chandra
x-ray observatory
(operated by the Smithsonian)
It takes pictures of the universe

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

7. 10x improvement lets us see
returns
“Every
10x farther back to the beginning of the universe.”

8. returns 10x better (simulation)

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

10. Let’s make some graphs

12. At this scale, each one of these
represents 10 million people
Each one of these represents
1 year

13. Annual attendance
National Gallery of Art
1978 through 2011

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

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

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

17. 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

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

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

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

21. Now, each one of these
represents
10 million
100 million people

22. 10% annual growth gives you
102 million more visitors/year
after 33 years

23. Wikipedia Unique visits
…

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

25. Now, each one of these
represents
10 million
100 million
1 billion people

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

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

28. 2.4 billion Internet users
(34% of world population)

29. 2.4 billion Internet users
(34% of world population)
4.6 million
National Gallery of Art
visitors

30. …A 2.395 billion person
difference

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

32. But it is now

33. 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

34. 108.4 million viewers for 2013 Super Bowl
1,341,882,399 views of Gangnam Style
http://www.youtube.com/user/officialpsy

35. 108.4 million viewers for 2013 Super Bowl
1,341,882,399 views of Gangnam Style

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

37. Wikipedia 1.7 billion edits
http://toolserver.org/~emijrp/wikimediacounter/

38. 78,879 text
corrections,
by volunteers,
today
http://trove.nla.gov.au/

39. 792,780 people taking
part worldwide
https://www.zooniverse.org/

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

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

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

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

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

45. 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 & meaning of artistic and cultural
exploration with more citizens
• Deepen engagement with the challenges that face
our species and nurture the habits of civil and
sustainable society

46. We love our museums, libraries, and archives
This is our job in society!
• Put the tools of knowledge creation into more hands
• Share the joy & meaning of artistic and cultural
exploration with more citizens
• Deepen engagement with the challenges that face
our species and nurture the habits of civil and
sustainable society

47. We love our museums, libraries, and archives
But…can we do this quickly enough
and at big enough SCALE to make a
This is our job in society! substantial difference in the lives of
Individuals and the fate our our
species?
• Put the tools of knowledge creation into more hands
• Share the joy & meaning of artistic and cultural
exploration with more citizens
• Deepen engagement with the challenges that face
our species and nurture the habits of civil and
sustainable society

48. Not if we’re only
counting this…
1 2 4
3 5 6
7

49. Not if we’re only
thinking like this…

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

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

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

53. http://books.google.com/books?id=L5zxn5JFIeQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=fals
e

54. If you want
scale
start with this Open community
Web-centric
Born global
http://books.google.com/books?id=L5zxn5JFIeQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

55. 1. Start with an open community
• Built-in growth potential
• Network effects
• Joy’s law (the smartest people)
• Minimize drag from unnecessary
intellectual property controls
http://books.google.com/books?id=L5zxn5JFIeQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

56. 2. Be web-centric
Faster, cheaper, more efficient
http://books.google.com/books?id=L5zxn5JFIeQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

57. 3. Be “born global”
• Everyone can be a collaborator,
developer, customer, learner,
community member…
• Global scale, by default
http://books.google.com/books?id=L5zxn5JFIeQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

58. Every meeting
Every project Open community
if you care
about scale
Web-centric
Born global
http://books.google.com/books?id=L5zxn5JFIeQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

59. 1. Start small
2. Ask the users
3. Adapt
4. Experiment
5. Seize the opportunity
at hand
http://books.google.com/books?id=mafZyckH_bAC&printsec=fr
ontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

60. 1. Take cues from your lead users
2. Build critical mass
3. Provide infrastructure for
collaboration
4. Take your time to get the
structures and governance right
5. Make sure all participants
can harvest value
6. Abide by community norms
7. Let the process evolve
8. Hone your collaborative mind
http://books.google.com/books?id=DVomiOeBg_YC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=fa
lse

61. Museums can go to 11
And when they do,
new opportunities present themselves…

62. …TO BE CONTINUED…