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[Yes - another long post]
Agreed - this has been one of the best ideas threads we've had for a long
time. Yes, it's been passionate, and that does indeed get people thinking,
and firing up laptops in reply.
I think voices who advocated tact in the exchange (Nick, myself via Twitter,
and others) did so because we're already engaged in working with museum
people all over the regions, not always in the most glamorous places; we're
all working for peanuts, doing about ten million things at once, including
managing that puzzling interface between museum directors and the onward
march of digital technology...
To me, that's one of the reasons there needs to be some tact in the way we
review each other's projects; if you'd been behind the scenes of projects
like NMOLP you'll have seen the sort of passion and hurt that less careful
comment arouses. I also saw people (like Terry, and Carolyn, and the teams
of writers like Rachel and Rowena L) working like absolute stink to get the
project done, and ploughing through all sort of effluent to manage
relationships across and through the project. Those who stuck the course
deserve medals.
I think the emotionality was also caused by the big fees funding the project
- big ticket jobs like this cause a certain amount of envy, and that too,
leads to comment that doesn't always please. One gets a picture sometimes of
vast (National museum) battleships manoevring around a smallish patch of
sea, each one guarding it's own flanks, carefully manning the bulwarks, in
case a stray shell cuts the rigging, or someone jumps ship.
Best things coming out of the Creative Spaces debate, for me? Read more on
my website: http://tinyurl.com/agf9gx
Jon P
Jon Pratty
Journalism: arts, heritage, technology and society
Digital publishing consultant to the cultural sector
[log in to unmask]
http://machineculture.wordpress.com
Terrestrial: 01273 277396
Mobile: 07739 287392
Twitter: @jon_pratty
-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Paul
Walk
Sent: 05 March 2009 09:10
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: 'Creative Spaces'
So, this thread was started by Frankie Roberto asking the question, "Why?".
His approach, a simple one-word question, was criticised - unfairly I think.
Implicit in Frankie's question is a challenge - it invites someone to
explain, very succinctly and convincingly what it is that that Creative
Spaces (in its guise as a user-facing
application) is for. I think this challenge is well made, and deserves to be
answered.
Nick, I appreciate your desire to be diplomatic - this discussion has been
fraught at times. However, I think there is something important being
contested here, and Frankie's question is still not really answered. In the
spirit of continuing this line of inquiry, I'll respond to some of the
points you make here with some points of my own.
When you describe Creative Spaces as:
"a beautiful piece of work and quite an achievement - not least for the
effort of will and human and political wrangling that has gone into bringing
it to life (I'm hoping someone will write that case study some day...)."
It seems to me that you tend to support an assertion which was made earlier
in the discussion, that the real value of Creative Spaces is the effect that
*engaging with the project* has had on the organisations involved - their
politics, culture, licensing regimes.
Thus the project's actual output, a user-facing site, is of secondary
importance. I really would like to pin this aspect down, because the cynics
among us would suggest that this is an easy 'get-out clause'
from having to deliver something which is demonstrably successful ("Oh, it
was never about the website, don't you know, it was about getting the people
involved together in the same room....").
Now, if you believe, as I do in fact, that getting the organisations
together, sorting through licensing issues, aligning architectures...
whatever it takes, to offer better straightforward access to these resources
should be the *primary* objectives of the project, then why cannot this be
stated up front? Of course, such work has to deliver something - but an
increasing number of us believe that this something should be an API. In my
role on the steering group for an entirely different project recently, I was
told that the 'portal' being developed was not the most important thing - it
was the 'plumbing'
underneath which really mattered. The whole of the meeting was then
concerned with the portal, what it was for, who might use it, what icons it
should use.....
You suggest that attractive sites like Creative Spaces move us closer to
some sort of event horizon where the 'public consciousness' will recognise
the value in participation. Yet I look at the output from the Creative
Spaces project and it seems to me, an interested outsider, to be a portal.
It has a few nods towards asking users for content, and it is attractive
enough in the sense of graphic design and use of CSS, but it is,
nonetheless, a *destination* web-site. I cannot see, on the face of it, how
this is nothing other than a tremendous gamble that the team assembled by
the nine institutions could build the most compelling portal - the 'killer
application'. If I follow your logic, I have to conclude that you believe
that the "Why" which Frankie asked so pertinently, is that we need to keep
gambling like this, that you believe that Creative Spaces might well be a
'beautiful failure' which is nonetheless a necessary step to take us towards
some breakthrough moment.
You invoke Flickr as a comparison. I think this is a bogus comparison for
several reasons. Flickr actually arose out of a last gasp attempt to return
on the investment that some high-risk venture capitalists had made in a
start-up games company - all of the original ideas failed but the 'object'
sharing framework they had developed as part of this failed venture turned
out to be just what the world wanted for hosting and sharing their photos.
I'm sure that you are not suggesting that public money be invested in the
style of venture capital....?
Also, Flickr works because licensing is relatively simple. The content is
owned by the users. It does one or two things really well and leaves the
rest to others to develop by offering an easy to use API.
Here's an entirely different model: Spend this money sorting out a licensing
model which can actually work. Consider every penny spent on building a
portal to be money which could, and should have been spent on the
'plumbing'. Offer an API at the earliest opportunity. Offer incentives,
prizes, whatever it takes for the developers to build the applications they
they want to build on top of your API. Showcase the best. This has worked
for the BBC. It has worked for Flickr. It's still a gamble, but a more
controlled and risk-managed one, where some of the risk is born by
third-parties.
Now I realise that both you and I have speculated about the motives behind
Creative Spaces and we may have been wide of the mark. I welcome any
response to this because, like you, I also believe we are approaching a
tipping point. But I suspect that this tipping point may be rather more like
the one which the music industry is currently experiencing, which has been
painful for some.
Let's keep this debate going - it has been too interesting and revealing so
far to leave it at that, don't you think?
Cheers,
Paul
On 4 Mar 2009, at 23:55, Nick Poole wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> 'Interesting' chat today. For what it's worth, I think Creative Spaces
> is a beautiful piece of work and quite an achievement - not least for
> the effort of will and human and political wrangling that has gone
> into bringing it to life (I'm hoping someone will write that case
> study some day...). I registered and really enjoyed using the very
> well thought-through interface, even though I did find it a bit hard
> to find stuff to put in my notebook.
>
> My real question, though, is 'now that it exists, how would you bring
> it to market?'. In other words, how do we market a social web/ online
> collections hybrid to the general public in a way which both locates
> it within and differentiates it from other mass-market offerings?
>
> Some of the 'social' functionality depends on critical mass, and
> critical mass depends on market share. We have seen how the current
> crop of high-footfall services (Flickr, YouTube, eBay etc) are
> increasingly turning to traditional print and broadcast media,
> ironically enough, to give their brands the kind of solidity and
> credibility which the Internet still finds it hard to establish.
>
> I have seen it said that the nationals need only divert a fraction of
> their millions of hits into this for it to be a success, but even then
> we are talking relatively low numbers in comparison to other
> consumer-facing services, and certainly in comparison to other social
> media platforms.
>
> I don't know what proportion of the Creative Spaces project is given
> over to marketing, but it will be interesting to see whether it is
> sufficient (a) to break into the mainstream media and (b) to keep it
> there. What I believe we are really looking for here is our 'breakout'
> moment - the killer app which enables digital cultural content to
> cross over into the mainstream and appeal to a whole new cross-section
> of society who may or may not be interested in crossing the threshold
> of the museum itself.
>
> Forgetting about us museum professionals for a moment and thinking
> about 'real' people - I think Creative Spaces enables us to start
> asking some interesting questions. During what part of a person's day
> does their behaviour correspond to the kind of activity which Creative
> Spaces makes possible? And how are we going to make sure that a
> reasonable proportion of the many millions of Internet users know that
> it is there to be used? What is our 'sell' (a simple unique value
> proposition which makes this unique and uniquely relevant to a clear
> user need) and how are we going to exploit every opportunity to
> communicate it to consumers? And how are we going to keep them coming
> back?
>
> Answers on a postcard, but what seems certain is that in Creative
> Spaces and the few other examples of next-generation museum-based
> online services we have an offering that is at or near the standard
> where we can start to make some real inroads into the popular
> consciousness, and really start to test what until this point seem
> largely to have been assumptions about consumers and their needs. I
> applaud the Creative Spaces team for moving us that much further
> towards our breakout moment.
>
> All best,
>
> Nick
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
> Frankie Roberto
> Sent: 04 March 2009 15:11
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: 'Creative Spaces'
>
> On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 10:07 AM, Jeremy wrote:
>
> Very constructive, Frankie. Care to elaborate on the question?
>
>
> Okay, so I'll admit I was being a bit provocative opening with such a
> short question. What I hoped to be alluding to was that I'm not sure
> what the purpose of the site is, or what user need it's fulfilling.
>
> I'm not sure I can agree with Jeremy that the home page has a clear
> call to action - I think Tony's observation that it doesn't explain
> anything feels more accurate.
>
> "Connecting with your favourite museums" seems both vague (what does
> 'connect' mean?) and presumptuous (some of my favourite museums are
> included, but lots of them aren't).
>
> Let's look at the next line:
>
> "...allowing you to explore their *collections*, find like-minded
> *people*and create your own *content*."
>
> I can already explore collections. 'like-minded' is pretty unspecific,
> and finding people is what social networks are for. 'Creating your own
> content'
> is about as generic as it comes. This isn't communicating any 'USP',
> and doesn't really tell you much about what the website offers.
>
> The next 3 calls-to-actions are a little more specific at least:
>
> "Get creative", "Create a notebook"
>
> It's telling here that there's a "what is a notebook?" link straight
> underneath. 'Notebook' feels like a functional thing to me, rather
> than a creative thing. But I can guess at what the feature might be.
> The issue though is whether this fulfils any need. I don't think
> anyone starts out by saying "I want to do something creative". It'd be
> better to provide something to stimulate people and let creativity
> arise naturally (nowhere on Flickr does it say "be creative", yet
> creativity happens). The next issue is that even if I do want to be
> creative, and do this through collecting images, links, notes, etc in
> a notebook, do I really need a new online tool to enable this? Why
> don't I just use an application on my computer, which I'm more
> familiar with, and which gives me more control?
>
> "Inspire someone", "Start a group"
>
> Group functionality is pretty common now across all sorts of social
> networks and services. Yet it's rarely a key feature. Google Groups
> aside, I don't think people go to Upcoming / Flickr / et al with the
> aim of creating a group. Rather, groups become a way of organising
> content and people that's useful when the number of contacts and
> content you have starts to become unmanagable. For me they're a kind
> of secondary feature, so I'd shy away from putting them on your
> homepage.
>
> "Be inspired", "Watch a video"
>
> At least this one doesn't need a "what is a video?" link :) This one
> needs to give you a bit more of a clue as to what the videos are,
> who's created them, and why they might be inspirational. Why not
> mention that you've got videos with well-known people in them? Or
> better still, list a few videos directly on the homepage.
>
> Those are some specific comments on the individual features on the
> homepage, but I can't end without coming back to the question of what
> connects them all together? They read a bit like a list of random
> features, each of which is familiar from other sites (groups,
> notebooks, videos, links) but no overraching purpose or need which
> links them all together. 'Being creative'
> is too vague a topic for any site to cover. The only unique thing here
> seems to be the museum content, which doesn't even seem to feature
> that prominently.
>
> I appreciate that this might be for schools, or educational groups, or
> something, but from the perspective of someone who just stumbles
> across the site... I think there's still work to do! :)
>
> I've been spending the last 3 days giving 'mentoring' advice to a
> bunch of TV types who are pitching web ideas. Something I've been
> constantly repeating is "do one thing, and do it well". Think that'd
> be good advice for this project too.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Frankie
>
> --
> Frankie Roberto
> Experience Designer, Rattle
> 0114 2706977
> http://www.rattlecentral.com
>
> Sent from: Byker Newcastle Upon Tyne United Kingdom.
>
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--------------------------------------------
Paul Walk
Technical Manager
UKOLN (University of Bath)
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/
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+44(0)1225383933
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