The document discusses the evolving role of museums in the digital landscape, emphasizing the need for museums to adapt to changing audience behaviors and technological advancements. It presents practical ideas from a project called 'Museum in a Day,' which aimed to build a museum website in 12 hours, highlighting the challenges and lessons learned regarding content, collections, and community engagement. The importance of positioning museums as platforms for community interaction and facilitating user-generated content is underscored as essential for future relevance.

1. MUSEUM IN A DAY
Building a Museum Website in 12 Hours
DISH 2009 11am – 1pm, Dec 10 museuminaday.com/slides

2. The Benefits of Doing Things Differently
DISH 2009 11am – 1pm, Dec 10 museuminaday.com/slides

3. Introduction:
Who We Are

4. Mike Ellis
electronicmuseum.org.uk

5. Dan Zambonini
www.boxuk.com

7. And you are…?

8. What We’re Going To Talk
About

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

10. Wider Context (1 of 2):
Where/Who is everyone?

12. Acquisitions: $billions
.com registered: 11m

17. http://pewinternet.org

18. http://pewinternet.org

19. Most Popular Sites (US)
1. Google 11. Craigslist
2. Facebook 12. MSN
3. Yahoo! 13. Twitter
4. YouTube 14. Go
5. Myspace 15. AOL
6. Wikipedia 16. ESPN
7. Amazon.com 17. Bing
8. eBay 18. CNN
9. Windows Live 19. LinkedIn
10. Blogger.com 20. Wordpress
Search Engine UGC Social Media

20. simplyrecipes.com
• Unique visitors (per month)
– 1,387,000
• RSS subscribers
– 1,464,000
(Sources: compete.com,
ratingburner.com)

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/

22. Platform vs
http://web2.socialcomputingjournal.com/the_growth_of_open_apis_more_evidence_that_web_services_dri.htm

23. Q: Where/Who are
your audience?
19

24. Wider Context (2 of 2):
What is changing?

25. Mobile

26. Mobile

27. Mobile

28. Mobile

29. Mobile

30. Mobile

31. Mobile

32. Mobile

33. Mobile

34. Mobile

35. Mobile

36. Digital content: less perceived
value
volume of
free content
availability of
pirated material
time

37. Digital content: less perceived
value
volume of
free content
availability of
pirated material
value of content
time

38. Web Dependence
connection speed
connection ubiquity
time

39. Web Dependence
value of web apps
reliance on web apps
(Digital services: more perceived value)
time

40. Data Overload

41. Data Overload

42. Invisible Infrastructure
infrastructure cost accessible computing power
Chrome OS
time

43. More, Smaller Companies

44. More, Smaller Companies

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

49. The Relevance of
Museums:
Where are museums online?

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

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)

53. Collections! Collections! Collections!
2.5 – 15% Visitors
£25,000 - £100,000 to put collections online

56. Where Museums Are
(Summary)
• Physical museum more popular than
website
• Websites largely similar to 10 years
ago
• Collections online, but...

57. Q: What is the purpose
of museum websites?
to advertise the physical experience?
to educate / provide content?
to generate revenue?
40

58. Where We Could Be

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

64. Brooklyn museum: truly social
media
http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/community/blogosphere

65. Launchball: not museumy

66. V&A: the tile game

67. We > Me
• From a Me-seum to a You-seum
• The Powerful Stories are from Real
People

68. Where We Should Be (Summary)
• Where Everyone Else Is
• Servicing Our Communities
• The Museum Should Be A Platform

69. Q: What is a platform?
Q: How can we support
communities?
Q: What successful examples do
you know of?
52

70. How We Get From Here To
There

71. Transition: Not Easy
Money & Resource
Google, Microso$, VC-Funded Apps
= Freedom
A Little Money & Resource
Museums & Ga#eries
= Limbo
No Money & Resource Kids in Bedrooms, Bootstrapped
= Freedom Ideas, Side Projects

72. The Mindset

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”

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

81. What We Tried To Do:
Museum In A Day

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

83. 66

86. 69

87. 70

88. 71

89. 72

90. 73

91. What We Didn’t Do (Yet)
• The Community Bit

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)

94. Practical Ideas

95. The Three Components of a Museum
Online
content collections
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...?

100. Summary

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!

102. Questions?

103. Thanks