Hi Paul et al,

I just wanted to come back on the licensing point which has been raised a couple of times.

The Design, Artists and Copyright Society has contacted the Collections Trust to say that they will be launching a license to effectively indemnify museums for a range of collections-based activities including web publication. This follows about 4 years of work undertaken with DACS by the Museums Copyright Group.

This brings us tantalisingly close to a solution to the issues which Paul and Dan have both raised in their posts. However, the behaviour of our sector towards the proposed license has been really interesting.

It is, on the face of it, an astonishing development. It is the first time a Collecting Society has bent over backwards to find a workable solution to enabling us to do the kinds of thing we are always discussing on this list (although it stops short of open-API syndication, but hey, let's walk before we can run..) When it was presented to a group of eminent museum directors, the attitude ranged from 'meh' to open hostility.

They were concerned about the risk of upsetting the delicate filigree of 'special arrangements' and licensing deals brokered with artists and creators, they were concerned about undermining commercial content licensing models. The whole thing was slightly depressing, to be honest, because there wasn't a general will to *make* it work. Hats off, then, to DACS, who believe in it so much that they're talking about working with us to take the punt, shape a workable license and just, you know, launch it.

So, who is our enemy when it comes to copyright? We are. It's us that wants to have our cake and eat it. It's us that wants special treatment, but also to reserve the right to run picture libraries. It's us that doesn't document the copyright when acquiring objects, and it's us that wants the law to change to permit us to use things when we don't know who owns them. It's us that digitises stuff without clarifying its status, and it's us that makes the decisions not to digitise stuff because we aren't sure of the copyright.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. It's NOT Copyright's fault - there is plenty of scope within both Copyright and Contract law to permit us to do what we want to do in the brave new open online world. The open content lobby need an enemy and they've focussed on the lawyers, but they might equally look closer to home to their own working practices. It isn't copyright law, it's how we manage our collections and how we negotiate our licenses, and the scary realisation that some of our family secrets are being dragged out into the public eye by the impetus to provide open access to collections online.

Again, let's not miss the achievement of NMOLP here (and I'm really not just being diplomatic here Paul!) - most of us talk about distributed content licensing. They've done it. Let's find out how it worked and build on that knowledge so that we stop holding ourselves back from becoming an effective media sector.

Oh yes, and support the DACS license when it comes out!

All best,

Nick


-----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.
>
> **************************************************
> For mcg information and to manage your subscription to the list,
> visit the website at http://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk
> **************************************************

--------------------------------------------
Paul Walk
Technical Manager
UKOLN (University of Bath)
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/
[log in to unmask]
+44(0)1225383933
--------------------------------------------

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For mcg information and to manage your subscription to the list, visit the website at http://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk
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**************************************************
For mcg information and to manage your subscription to the list, visit the website at http://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk
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