the age of scale

THE AGE OF SCALE

LONDON 2013

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

SCOPE

WHAT WE CHOOSE TO WORK ON

SCALE

HOW BIG OUR WORK IS

SPEED

THE PACE AT WHICH WE

MOVE

SCOPE SCALE SPEED

THE WORLD HAS CHANGEDIN EXACTLY

THESE THREE WAYS

BUTMOSTGLAMS* HAVEN’T NOTICED

*GALLERIES, LIBRARIES, ARCHIVES, MUSEUMS

MOSTORGS

HAVEN’TNOTICED

WE FORGED OUR DREAMS IN A SIMPLER TIME

WHEN SUCCESS MEANT COLLECTIONS

BUILDINGS

AND STAFF

BUT NOW BILLIONS CAN ENGAGE AND CONTRIBUTE

OUTCOMES THAT WERE ONCEINCONCEIVABLE

HAVE BECOME ROUTINE

AND NEW TOOLSSUGGEST A NEW APPROACH

TO THEMISSION

NEW DREAMS

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

Video: http://youtu.be/EbVKWCpNFhY

MY DREAMS GO TO 11

http://youtu.be/EbVKWCpNFhY

The Chandra X-Ray Telescope

“We won’t even consider a new project unless it

returns 10x better performance than the last one.”

A Smithsonian Astrophysicist told me

10x farther back to the beginning of the universe.”

returns 10x improvement lets us see “Every

returns 10x(simulation)

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

http://www.chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2013/w49b/

Let’s make some graphs

10 million people

1 year

Annual attendanceNational Gallery of Art

1978 through 2011

-1% growthover 33 years

Annual attendanceNational Gallery of Art

1978 through 2011

People who don’t visit the NGA

People who do visit the NGA

How you feel about this dependsOn what you think your mission isand how you think about scale.But either way…

There’s a lot of room at the top--Business proverb

How you feel about this dependsOn what you think your mission isand 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 wherethe 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 million100 million people

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

Wikipedia Unique visits…

Let’s adjust the vertical scale(Zoom out to 6 billion)

Wikipedia Unique visits…

10 million100 million1 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 millionNational 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…

But it is now

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

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mbk/2241960032/

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

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


1,341,882,399 views of Gangnam Style

And

growing

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



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

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



http://twitter.com/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

2006 (Attitudes have changed!

“[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

https://www.zooniverse.org/

http://www.openstreetmap.org/ | http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Stats | http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/changeset/14947636

Over 900,000 registered usershave contributed 14 million edits

and 1.6 billion locations

http://www.openstreetmap.org/

http://www.openstreetmap.org/

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Stats



http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/changeset/14947636

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



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&


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 CenterDigital Public Library of America

http://europeana.eu/




“Scale is really at the heart of the business model for Europeana”

Harry VerwayenBusiness Development Director

Europeana

Over 20 million CC-0 RecordsOver 2,400 content providers



http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

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




China is scaling museum construction to a degree

that I can barelycomprehend…



http://www.economist.com/node/9339948

China is scaling museum construction to a degree

that I can barelycomprehend…




1,000 new museums between 2000 and 2015

THAT’S ONE NEW MUSEUM OPENING EVERY

FIVE DAYS FOR 15 YEARS



http://openlibrary.org/



“without users,our shelves are empty”

Brewster Kahle

“The people who are supposedto be doing universal access

to knowledge, and are getting$12b a year to do it, are not

getting the job done”

Brewster Kahle

http://www.librarything.com/



1.6 million members81 million books96 million tags

2.1 million reviews3.9 million talk/comments

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

User “bluetyson” haswritten 35,779 reviews

User “ThomasKleinert” hasadded 144,973 tags

“Library is not aninstitutional thing:anyone who has a largecollection of books hasa 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 YouTube20 million views on Internet ArchiveMORE 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


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecca-taylor/smarthistory_b_785154.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecca-taylor/smarthistory_b_785154.html



512 videos247 essays6 million visitsViewed in 200 countriesTech budget of $700 + two laptops




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




”As professors, we reach 200 students a semester.” -- Beth Harris

Last semester, Smarthistory content reached 750,000 users



SPECIAL KINDS OF SCALE

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




symbolic impactful

thin

thick




symbolic impactful

thin

thick

SLACKTIVISMExample: liking a cause

on Facebook




symbolic impactful

thin

thick

VotingDesigned to be easy foreveryone, but impactful




symbolic impactful

thin

thick

OCCUPY…The “occupy” movement isa lot of work, but they’re not

directly working on proposing new policies



symbolic impactful

thin

thickhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Sandy

Occupy SandyAfter hurricane Sandy,

experienced occupy membersbecame a highly effective local

aid team

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Sandy



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 foremotion and impact on individuals.


Scale has a Z axis

X

Y

ZThe Z axis, depth, is foremotion and impact on individuals.

It scales, not in quantities of individuals served, but in howdeeply 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 SHAPEDIN DRAMATIC NEW WAYS

THE Z AXISCan you deepen the experiencesof 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.”




0 to 1

http://channelviewpublications.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/education-and-literacy-in-ethiopia/




0 to 1

Going from the total absence of something to the basic presence of it is its own kind of scale.




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=006112107X

http://books.google.com/books?isbn=006112107X

http://books.google.com/books?isbn=006112107X

Distributed 10 million booksBuilt 12,000 librariesBuilt 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’TJUST A 3RD WORLD THING

IT EXISTS EVERYWHERE

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

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.


false




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.


false




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.


false




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



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

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

We need them to be super successful

PUT THE TOOLS OF KNOWLEDGE CREATIONINTO MORE HANDS

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

DEEPEN ENGAGEMENT WITH THE CHALLENGESTHAT FACE OUR SPECIES

NURTURE THE HABITS OF A CIVILAND SUSTAINABLE SOCIETY

PUT THE TOOLS OF KNOWLEDGE CREATION

INTO MORE HANDS

SHARE THE JOY AND MEANING OF ARTISTIC AND

CULTURAL EXPLORATION WITH MORE CITIZENS

NURTURE THE HABITS OF A CIVIL

AND SUSTAINABLE SOCIETY

DEEPEN ENGAGEMENT WITH THE CHALLENGES

THAT FACE OUR SPECIES

PUT THE TOOLS OF KNOWLEDGE CREATION

INTO MORE HANDS

SHARE THE JOY AND MEANING OF ARTISTIC AND

CULTURAL EXPLORATION WITH MORE CITIZENS

NURTURE THE HABITS OF A CIVIL

AND SUSTAINABLE SOCIETY

DEEPEN ENGAGEMENT WITH THE CHALLENGES

THAT FACE OUR SPECIES

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?

Many museum visits are...

imperfect

Scale can be confusingIf scale matters, are 1 billion TED videosbetter than 2.4 million museum visits?

Not necessarily, but the vast differencein scale is evidence that something significant—rich in potential—is going on

There are more powerful ways of accomplishingmuseum missions thangetting people throughthe 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!

DON’T GET ME WRONG

I DON’T WANT LESS 1:1 ENGAGEMENT

I WANT MORE OF EVERYTHING

MORE GLAMSMORE VISITORS

DEEPER ENGAGEMENT

MORE WEBMORE PARTICIPATIONBETTER OUTCOMES

And when we do, new opportunities present themselves…

WE CAN GO TO 11

THANK YOU

the age of scale

Technology