Dear MCGers,
There are just 2 weeks to go before we meet in York on May 6 to discuss
'living with digital projects'. Tickets are running out, so book now:
http://lifewithdigitalprojects.eventbrite.co.uk
If you or your organisation have struggled to integrate digital projects,
resources, skills into everyday cultural heritage work, then this is the
event for you. We keep ticket prices affordable so you can bring colleagues
- have a day out and learn together! You'll return to the office refreshed,
inspired, and with a better understanding of how to make sure your digital
projects have a lasting impact.
Need more information? Our full programme is below - the day is packed with
expert speakers from a range of organisations, with a fabulous mix of
experience from senior management to IT staff to content editors. We've
also built in lots of time for you to connect with others, and stay tuned
for news of our evening event where you can continue the conversation...
*Keynote: Charlotte Sexton, ‘Life post-launch: how to tackle a digital
hangover’*
Charlotte Sexton is a digital strategist and independent consultant for the
museum, heritage and cultural sectors. She specialises in supporting
organisations to transform and modernise by bringing digital thinking to
the very heart of their philosophical and working practice. Moving
organisations beyond a ‘digital strategy’ she has helped them to share
their stories, connect with audiences and support their essential
day-to-day activities through more effective use of digital media.
Formally President of MCN, an international peer network for museum
professionals, she understands the new opportunities and challenges facing
cultural organisations and their staff as they attempt to adapt to an
increasingly digitally driven world.
As Head of Digital Media at the National Gallery, London she defined the
organisation’s digital ambitions and transformed the way the public could
engage with the Gallery’s world-class art collection using new digital
technologies – whether physically in the museum, online or using mobile
devices.
With more than 20 years experience creating and managing complex digital
projects she is highly skilled in her field and is frequently asked to
share her expertise both in the UK and internationally, through consulting,
lecturing and presenting at conferences. She has also been published in
“Museum Ideas: Innovation in Theory and Practice” published by Museum
Identity.
Session: working with others *From Digital Beaver to Digital Diva*
*Graham Davies, Digital Programmes Manager, Amgueddfa Cymru – National
Museum Wales*
Using a wide range of practical examples along with the odd analogy, this
presentation will deconstruct what we think of as a ‘good digital idea’ and
explain how experiences at Amgueddfa Cymru have helped shape a new way of
thinking for the digital team there.
I will explain some of the practical quick wins you can do in order to
start embedding digital skills throughout your organization, and so
beginning the journey away from the assumptions that digital teams are
responsible for everything digital. I will conclude that digital teams can
empower content creators by embedding digital skills, and so spread a
culture of user centric thinking, not just for digital but for all our
outputs.
*Sharing knowledge for digital sustainability*
*Ivan Teage, Digital Development Manager, Natural History Museum*
This paper will give the audience a fresh look at digital project/product
support, focusing on how to handover and retain critical information to
keep things running. The presentation will explore the true cost of lost
knowledge and information, via real examples of what can (and often does)
happen.
The paper will look at what really motivates people to share, and to adopt
lessons learned? Why do conflicts of interest arise and how can these be
managed? Does ‘Agile’ make keeping track of critical information more
difficult? The presentation will consider some strategies and practices
(from the speaker’s own experience of managing development and support
teams) that can make a difference.
*Adrift on a Silver Sea: Developing HLF funded digital projects with
purpose*
*Lucy Yates, Programme Manager, and Chris King, Digital Programmes
Producer, National Maritime Museum*
Travellers’ Tails, our four year HLF-funded programme, has developed a
digital interactive which unites the collections of four partner museums.
This allows users to journey over a silver sea and make their own
collection of objects from each island they visit. The interactive also
draws on research carried out with CEDE at UCL
<https://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/casa/research/current-projects/cede> into
using digital empathy to engage users.
Our talk will explore what it’s like to develop a complicated digital
interactive, which is also supposed to be a research project, on the go.
This will also explore the challenges of working with four separate partner
museums whilst trying to involve a university-based research collaborator.
This presentation will explore both the project management and technical
side.
Session: working with your environment and audiences *Reverse engineering
the updateatron!*
*Mark Pajak, Head of Digital, Bristol Museums*
Over the last 10 years we have been living with legacy flash based
interactives developed as part of large project museum or gallery openings.
As technology and the expectations of our visitors have superseded the
capabilities of these systems, we have been working to redevelop them into
html web apps – a task that has meant working out how to bring closed
systems into the fold of our main collections management system. Having
completed this task we are more agile and can adapt to our users needs –
our content is portable – but we now have new challenges as visitors expect
a multi touch experience – do we need to go back to the developers and
start the whole thing again?
*Taking ownership of digital exhibitions*
*Dan Q, Web & CMS Developer, and Jennifer Townshend, Digital Content
Editor, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford*
In 2015 the Weston Library in Oxford reopened after a three-year renovation
as a special collections library which provided visitors with
fully-accessible public spaces for the first time. This included new
exhibition galleries and display cases. As part of the renovation project,
Samsung supported the Library with a gift of state-of-the-art hardware and
bespoke software. This hardware provided the opportunity for digital
signage and interactive displays in both the public and reader areas.
Using the Samsung platform to deliver engaging exhibition content made us
run up against some limitations early on – it provided little scope for
customization, locked us into a particular way of working and required a
skillset that isn’t within the remit of the current Digital Communications
staff. Furthermore, it didn’t enable us to fulfil our vision of providing
highly interactive exhibition content.
To overcome these limitations we developed our own system and process,
based upon modern offline web technologies delivered through locked down
kiosk browsers, for providing digital exhibition content. We are leveraging
the existing skillset of our Digital Communications team to develop
engaging digital interactive experiences in a cost-effective and
sustainable manner. We will present the approach we’ve taken, the lessons
learned and will share the tools we’ve developed in-house.
*The DiNAR project: Meaningful Mixed Reality for Heritage*
*Gareth Beale, Researcher, Centre for Digital Heritage/Digital Creativity
Labs, University of York*
Mixed reality technologies, including virtual reality and augmented
reality, are increasingly affordable and easy to use. However, the
availability of technology does not necessarily justify its use. The DiNAR
project aims to examine the underlying affordances of mixed reality in a
heritage setting and to propose new models for use which reflect the needs
of the sector. We are working with a network of museums to design, build
and evaluate compelling narrative and game-like experiences which are
embedded into the urban landscape. In this presentation I will present the
findings of our first research and testing event which took place at the
University of York from 3rd-5th May 2016.
Session: working internally *Digal – just add ‘IT’*
*Anjanesh Babu, ICT Support Officer, The Ashmolean Museum, University of
Oxford*
Projects without attention to foundational resources at the start may be
doomed to languish in the zone of obsolescence, facing skills shortages and
introducing security risks at the enterprise level as underlying operating
systems and modules remain unsupported – in what I refer to as the
‘graveyard orbit’.
In order for us to avoid this, it is crucial for key stakeholders to be
grounded in reality with involvement and input from Information Technology
– by putting the “IT” back in Digital. IT could point out all too
predictive costly curves that may not be apparent from the euphoric project
start perspective. Too often, when IT are involved, it is late for any
meaningful guidance leading to the typical ‘slow IT’ feedback or stamped as
naysayers. In essence, planning robust infrastructure should be a two way
process – learning from technology can help Digital resource delivery and
understanding Digital requirements can ensure capacity planning for IT.
*It’s not your fault.*
*Andrew Larking, Creative Director, Deeson*
People that work at museums love what they do, and they are damn good at
it. But they are being set up to fail. By being asked to design and build
the visions of a small conceptual team, often the idea of a single person,
the project has already been derailed.
You ask how to live with digital projects after they launch, the answer is
to solve the problems before they occur. The culture sector is no different
to any other, the lessons have been learned over and over, but my
experience has shown me that it’s being ignored. It’s nobody’s fault, it’s
just happening, but it’s easy to solve.
You do it by understanding and respecting the design process, how to use
empathy to discover insights, and from those insights identify your actual
challenges, and then how to write a great brief when it’s time to hire
agencies or build a bigger internal team. And then how to work with them.
Debate: ‘outsourcing digital heritage projects is more harm than help’
What are the pros and cons of outsourcing digital projects? Is outsourcing
digital heritage projects is more harm than help, or the opposite true?
This lively, interactive session will close the day in style!
Debaters include Nick Clarey, CEO, Atrium / Airsource.
*Make an investment in your museum’s digital future, and book now* to
attend an event packed with practical tips and realistic solutions. Connect
with colleagues from around the country, to share best practice on
sustainable ways of working. Return to your organisation with new ideas and
energy to apply to your projects.
Book now! http://lifewithdigitalprojects.eventbrite.co.uk
What did people say about our Spring 2015 event?
- Thoroughly enjoyed #mcginnovation day, thoughts provoked re right kind
of innovation for you, documenting process, funding & failing well -
@LornaOB
- Great snapshot of museums innovation @ukmcg, lots to reflect on;
success criteria, process/outcomes, risk/opportunity #mcginnovation thanks!
- @a_dinnen
About our Spring 2016 workshop theme
Museums have invested in digital projects for exhibitions, events, audience
interactions, collections management and more. Core budgets rarely stretch
to major website rebuilds, developing new digital interactives, creating
online collections portals or launching a digital picture library. But,
fortunately, myriad funders, from government to trusts and foundations to
philanthropists, are willing to provide project funding for museums to
complete this necessary work. But what happens the day after a project
launches? How do museums integrate project activity into their core
business? How do individual projects impact on the museums and
organisational practice as a whole? And a year after launch, what traces
remain of the lessons learnt?
About the Museums Computer Group
Since its founding in 1982, the Museums Computer Group’s events have been
an important part of the UK heritage sector. MCG events are an opportunity
to learn from experts and peers, and like many others, this event’s theme
was partly inspired by discussion on our practitioners’ list
<http://museumscomputergroup.org.uk/email-list/>. Our events have an
excellent track record for featuring a range of emerging and eminent
speakers presenting on topics that matter to you now. Come prepared to
challenge speakers, ask questions and network in a friendly and welcoming
atmosphere. We will also host an evening event open to all so you can
continue the conversations started during the day.
*Book now! http://lifewithdigitalprojects.eventbrite.co.uk
<http://lifewithdigitalprojects.eventbrite.co.uk>*
See you there!
Mia
For the MCG's Spring 2016 event team
--------------------------------------------
http://openobjects.org.uk/
http://twitter.com/mia_out
Check out my book! http://bit.ly/CrowdsourcingCulturalHeritage
<http://bit.ly/CrowdsourcingCulturalHeritage>
I mostly use this address for list mail; my bl.uk <http://open.ac.uk/>
address is checked daily
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