radical social media: mobilizing museum communities to do meaningful work

Radical Social Media:Mobilizing Museum Communities

to do Meaningful Work

Kom je ook?

Amsterdam 9 December 2010

Nancy Proctor proctorn@si.edu

What do you find hard in your work?

1. More money

2. More staff

3. More time

4. Culture change

5. Other…

What would help?

The Business of Museums

1. Invaluable collections = highest possible quality

2. Public good = relevance & service for all

3. ‘Forever business’ = must be sustainable

http://smithsonian20.si.edu/schedule_webcast2.html

A crazy idea?“A Wikipedia of the Physical World”

Wikipedia

…78 million visitors monthly as of January 2010. There are more than 91,000 active contributors working on more than 17,000,000 articles in more than 270 languages.

That means the average contributor works on ~186 articles?!

Meaningful Workers

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cambodia4kidsorg/4294119350/

Powerhouse Museum: original online record, incomplete

7

http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/dmsblog/index.php/2009/04/27/another-opac-discovery-the-gambey-dip-circle-and-the-value-of-minimal-tombstone-data/

Powerhouse Museum: 1 week later…

http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/?irn=2486518

V&A Crowdsourcing

Citizen Science

Save Outdoor Sculpture! / Wikipedia Saves Public Art

http://maps.google.com/ User-created content: Save Outdoor Sculpture!http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wikipedia_Saves_Public_Art

BeExtra.org

http://museummobile.info/archives/234

Text Messaging

http://www.impactlab.net/2009/09/27/omg-text-messaging-does-not-harm-kids-spelling-abilities/

Twitter Hashtags

http://joblessrob.com/job-search/how-to-use-twitter-hashtags-to-boost-your-job-search/

Mobile Social Media as Art

Halsey Burgund’s ScapesdeCordova Sculpture Park & MuseumLincoln, MA – until Nov 14

http://wiki.museummobile.info/archives/16082

Mobile is personal

and social

Mobile is Disruptive

A fundamentally new way of connecting, collaborating, producing, educating – and intervening.

More than a new set of tools and platforms for communicating, learning and developing, accessing and distributing… content

http://www.queerty.com/smithsonian-not-pleased-with-patrons-bringing-aids-jesus-back-into-the-museum-on-an-ipad-20101206/

It’s not (just) about the technology

http://geschiedenis.vpro.nl/artikelen/19265092/http://musematic.net/2009/05/19/about-that-1952-sedelijk-museum-audio-guide-and-a-certain-willem-sandburg/

Stedelijk Museum, 1952

Think outside the audiotour box

“From we do the talking to we help you do the talking”– Chris Anderson

From headphones to microphones

Designing Mobile Social Media

Metrics of Success: Is the mobile program…

1. Making the museum more relevant?2. Improving the quality of the collections,

events or museum experience?3. Making the museum and its activities

more sustainable?

Make the mobile program relevant

1. Know the museum’s mission and goals What do the core collection & activities offer

over the long term?2. Know the target audience

Metrics, bookmarking, favorites & collections, questions & comments…

3. “Meet them where they are…” Location-based services, social media

platforms, games, APIs, Google maps, iTunes U

Cultivate quality of collections, content and experience

4. “… And take them somewhere new.” Recommendations: “if you liked…”; Timely

contextual info and alerts; Augmented Reality & other location-based discoveries

5. Invest in quality content Highest possible resolution, production values,

range of media, quality metadata6. Make it findable

Tagging, geocoding, interactive maps, clear interfaces

Build for sustainability

7. Cultivate conversations & communities of interest

Forums, citizen scientists/curators; Rewards and incentives for connecting

8. Think cross-platform Integrate across platforms and with real

world connector events9. Adopt content standards

http://wiki.MuseumMobile.info/Standards

SI Mobile Strategic Goals1. Information architecture and

framework for connecting SI mobile properties and initiatives

2. Common resources for developing best-in-class mobile products and initiatives

3. Infrastructure4. Standards for content, data

and platform management5. Governancehttp://smithsonian-webstrategy.wikispaces.com/Mobile

http://www.si.edu/commons

Edward Hoover, 2010, from Flickr.

Network Effects

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=43113

Radical Social Media mobilizes the museum’s communities

to do meaningful work

More about Mobile http://smithsonian-webstrategy.wikispace

s.com/Mobile http://wiki.museummobile.info/ http://tatehandheldconference.pbworks.c

om

#mtogo #simobile Nancy Proctor proctorn@si.edu