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Whats the point of a museum website? Mia Ridge, Open University @mia_out http://openobjects.blogspot.com

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Definitions? Museum website = Stuff that lives under your domain name? Social media accounts under your brand? Games and mobile apps? Your objects and content on Google Art Project? Your content in a students Tumblr?

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Simple stuff

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This is great. But does it scale?

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Our audiences are (getting) used to being heard

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Walker Art Center

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Met Museum collections

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Crowdsourcing as engagement Links between content Ratings/Votes Tags Corrections Transcriptions Descriptions Images, multimedia Game levels Research Object identification Family records

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Museum metadata games - 'difficult' objects: technical, near-duplicate, poorly catalogued or scantily digitised 'toy' model steam engines, Powerhouse Museum

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Active engagement Players enjoy the objects Close, active viewing Curiosity and 'just one more' Learning Leaving a trace

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National Library of Australia: Trove

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Over 20,000 helpers, 52 million lines of text corrected...

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NYPL Menus

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Flickr Commons

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HistoryPin

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What Was There

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15 Second Place, ACMI

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Science Museum: Oramics

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A platform for community

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Ugly Renaissance Babies?

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Best practice in design Have an answer to 'Why would someone spend precious time on your project?' Be inspired by things people love Design for the audience you want Make participating pleasurable Don't add unnecessary friction, barriers

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Best practice in design Validate procrastination meaningful work Show how much you value contributions Easy start, scaffolded tasks Let audiences help manage problems Test with users; iterate; polish

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Best practice within your museum Have a clear objective Know how to measure success Allow for community management resources Realistically assess fears, decide acceptable levels of risk

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Best practice within your museum Fish where the fish are Decide where it's ok to lose control Open data Don't do it alone

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Thank you, and over to you... Mia Ridge, Open University @mia_out http://openobjects.blogspot.com