Oonagh Murphy

I am completely enthralled with Tate’s new mobile game, Race against Time. I’m actually rather addicted, but am currently stuck in the mid 1970′s … the goal is to get  to the present day.

The game is based on an art history timeline with famous paintings appearing through out. As the picture above shows, players can access power ups to help them on their journey, but must avoid obstacles and enemies such as art attackers!

Each decade forms a level, when you complete a level you get access to information on the art movements featured. The image below shows a futurist image alongside the graphic it inspired.

Alongside the strong links to art history in the app, another really clever feature of this game is the emphasis that it places on going to Tate Modern. To access Turbo Power, you have to actually be in the Tate Modern building.

I really like the game, it’s great for when you have 5 minutes to kill, but I think I may be stuck in the 1970′s until my next visit to London. Did I mention it’s free? …. and is available in the app store now, so yes it’s great, go and get it, but you may find yourself being very unproductive for the next few days (although on a plus note your knowledge of Art History will have increased!)

The Ulster Museum or as its know in Belfast ‘The Museum’ has taken an exciting approach to making a travelling exhibition a little bit more venue specific. To coincide with the V&A’s touring ‘Street Art‘ exhibition which is currently on in the Ulster Museum, the museum commissioned a  number of local artists to create their own ‘gallery pieces’. The exhibition of these commissioned works has been titled ‘Tags Not Labels‘

The travelling exhibition is great, its got all the big names from Banksy to Jamie Hewlett…but the addition of work by local artists makes it a must see exhibition. As someone that spends a lot of time in London when I visit museums and galleries in Belfast I often think I’ve already seen that exhibition in London, or I’ve seen that painting  in a bigger more compelling exhibition. But by creating a mash up of the the travelling exhibition ‘Street Art’ and commissioning new work  the travelling exhibition looses its pre packaged feel, and instantly becomes a uniquely Belfast show.

Alongside commissioning  new work, the Ulster Museum has really reached out to new audiences by using a blog for the first time …check it out here >> , advertised in AU a popular local youth / culture magazine, and also used Facebook advertising.

Adam Turkington a local arts manager, and former director of Trans Urban Arts Festival worked closely with the museum on this exhibition. This partnership and the use of relevant platforms for advertising and to facilitate online conversations creates a strong foundation for future projects to tempt a younger, dare I say it cooler crowd into the Ulster Museum.

This is my second post on the Museum Computer Group, UK Museums on the Web Conference , you can read part 1 here >>

Key Note: Jane Finnis, Culture24

‘Let’s Get Real: How to Evaluate Online Success’

Jane talked about the action research project carried out by Culture 24 and 17 partner cultural organisations. The outcome of which is the ‘How to Evaluate Online Success’  report  which provides a sector wide benchmark, and a social media toolkit.

The report showed that museums and other cultural organisations only command a very small proportion of online attention share. To succeed Jane suggested museums need to embrace  both agile working, and failure – two things that may seem like alien concepts to many museums.

In order to succeed Jane suggested museums needs to build brands around specific interests, niche rather than mass. Reassuringly for smaller museums she highlighted that whilst money may buy web hits, it does not buy engagement!

My main ‘take home’ from Jane’s talk is a simple question, that I think we all need to ask more often….

‘If the answer is an app……What was the question?

Open Mic Session

This quick fire session allowed people 5 minutes to quickly introduce a project that they are currently working on, below are some useful links to these projects:

British Museum. Samsung Digital Learning Centre: AR gaming with children

Sound Delivery: Social media training and creating an accreditation programme for young people

Pesky People: Go Genie  a site to allow people to check the accessibility facilities of cultural organisations before they visit.

BBC: Things to Do a listings facility that allows cultural organisations to reach out to BBC’s online audience

iMuse: a programme to enhance the enjoyment and educational value of museums for people with communications disabilities.

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Alex Bromley, Rhiannon Loosley and Matthew Rose, Museum of London

‘Integrating collection data to build sustainable online resources’

© Museum of London

The Museum of London team talked about moving towards a digitally integrated system, that allows different departments to re-purpose and re-use the same content. Essentially the creation of  ’sustainable and efficient working practices’.

Working across departments the team made the case to senior management for increased inter departmental digital projects, placing an emphasis on building solid foundations the team worked together to appreciate each others priorities from learning audiences to data standards.

One of the outcomes of this is the Picture Bank, an online image service that was created with a view to being used by teachers in classrooms.

The focus of their work has been laying steady foundations, integrating data management across departments, and embedding future proof thinking in all that they do. On twitter the main conversation point during their talk was the challenge of making the case for digital to senior management, something the Museum of London team seem to have done successfully.

Luke Smith and Giv Parveneh, IWM

‘Lives of the Great War: Building First World War life stories across archives through crowdsourcing’

This project collates data on the 800,000 people who’s names are on war memorials around the country, but this is just the starting point working with partner organisations, and the the general public the aim of this project is to start to piece together the life stories behind these names.

The project uses a range of digital platforms from Flickr to Facebook to disseminate the information they already have, and also to reach a wide range of audiences. As Luke and Giv said nearly every school in the country is within walking distance of a war memorial, this however moves the concept of the memorial beyond a name and a stone to allow people to engage with and help uncover the individual stories of those that served.

Seth van Hooland, Max De Wilde, and Ruben Verborgh 

Free your Meta Data 

What can I say these guys made meta data interesting….something I’m not sure I can do, so I think it is best that I recommend you watch this video and take your first step towards becoming a ‘meta data liberator’

Joesph Padfield, National Gallery

‘Presenting and Referencing High Resolution Images on the Web’

Joseph talked about the National Galleries use of IIPImage to manage high resolution images. As digital imaging becomes more advanced file sizes continue to increase, for example most of the National Galleries computers struggled to open Google Art Project  images properly.

IIPImage allows the gallery to manage large image files to create a day to day working system for conservators, allowing conservators to view, annotate and examine images as they work on them. These images are also used to compile technical bulletins.

Jon Pratty, Arts Council England

Jon introduced the new digital commissioning programme ‘The Space’, the video below provides an overview of the programme. The key detail to note is that arts organisations must submit expressions of interest by the 9th of December.

My key take homes from the day…

• Research is important. Funders and Senior management may not get digital, so we need to create a strong evidence base to demonstrate the value of what we do. The Let’s Get Real report is a great example of research that helps make the case for digital, but also provides a benchmark from which to measure success….and failure.
• Partnership is key to success, from skill sharing to developing niche networks and projects that incorporate collections from a range of museums such as IWM ‘Lives of the Great War’.
• Eat cake (as advocated by Claire Ross). Eating cake, and in person meetings help to keep project teams motivated to push boundaries, to try new things, to bounce back from little failures and to create even greater successes.

As ‘official blogger’ I just want to say a massive thanks to all the speakers and to the Committee for organising such a varied and exciting day. It’s great to work in such a diverse, engaged and generous sector – I just hope I’ve managed to convey some of this vibrancy in my blog posts.  I look forward to seeing MCG members at future events and to continuing the conversation on the MCG list and on Twitter.

Ross Parry, outgoing chair of the MCG committee kicked off the day by acknowledging the austere times that we currently face, but also pointed out that the MCG is a forward looking, practical group and suggested that we can use this as an opportunity to innovate, to press reset and to look to ‘a brighter future’.

This years UK Museums on the Web Conference took a new format, with both invited keynote speakers and papers from members.  Along with the traditional after lunch ‘open mic’ session.

Carolyn Royston, Head of New Media, at the Imperial War Museum (the conference venue) welcomed delegates and briefly introduced some of IMW’s current digital projects including their new website, and an open government licence which they have  worked hard to put their collection online under. Carolyn also mentioned the continuing partnerships around the WW1 centenary, something which one of her colleagues expanded on later in the day.

Keynote: Mark O’Neill, Head of Innovation and Delivery, Government Digital Service

‘What’s the difference between museums and Ikea?’

Marks vision is to shift public services into becoming ‘digital by default’, not digital for digital’s sake, but instead putting the user at the centre of the experience and using digital as appropriate.

Highlighting the difference between optional and mandatory UX, Mark pointed out that museums are optional, people choose to visit our websites so we have to work that bit harder to make that an enjoyable, rewarding and intuitive experience . Government UX on the other hand is often rubbish from benefits, to filling in your tax returns, whether you like the experience you still the need the information, so your still going to use the site. This is where museums can influence wider digital practice, because they create ‘optional’ experiences they are generally better than mandatory experiences.

Moving on to talk about barriers, Mark emphasised the need to move the barriers that prevent us from putting the users first. He mentioned legal, HR and Procurement, something which I know is something that often shapes digital projects in museums. Recognising that innovation = ideas + action we need to move these barriers, or perhaps more feasible work with or around them to ensure that we can keep pushing boundaries and putting the user first.

When Mark said ‘ I’m very conscious that you shouldn’t do everything yourself- because, you can’t ‘ I perked up, embedding digital across organisations is something that I am particularly interested in, the suggestion that we need to create a toolbox of capabilities is something that I found particularly interesting. MCG, and the MCG email list is for many that ‘toolbox of capabilities’ so I guess what we now need to look to do is create a similar toolbox either internally, or across institutions for the non digital members of our teams to ask questions, test out new ideas, and up skill, or skill share.

Ending his talk Mark looked at the search experience of an online museum visitor, and an online ikea shopper. Searching for a vase on both sites he demonstrated the text heavy, difficult to navigate responses generated by the Getty museum to the the visual response generated by Ikea   Whilst I don’t really agree that it is a fair comparison, it is a useful comparison. Sometimes looking at how other sectors are responding to user needs can help us define how museums should develop their digital practice.

Session 1: Getting it right from the start

Peter Pavement, Surface Impression and Marc Steene, Pallant House Gallery

Intensive collaboration between museum, developer and participants

Surface Impression worked with Pallant house to facilitate an open submission exhibition, and to create an online exhibition space. The project questions ‘what is art? and how is it selected? the team where mindful of creating an easily accessible site that would allow the widest possible participation.

‘Outside In has no set creative criteria, boundary in art process or limit on subject for the artists that choose to align themselves with the project.’

The website allows for easy image upload, with the option to create an online exhibition.  There is the potential to develop the submission and image upload process into an app which would allow pictures to be taken and uploaded, instantly in a gallery space or in a persons home.

Accessibility is a core component in this project, rather than simply an after thought.

Claire Ross, UCL and Tom Grinsted, IWM

‘Cultural Collaborative Exchange: Collections, Social Interpretation, Partnerships and Project Management’

Claire and Tom spoke about their NESTA Digital R&D project which centres on Social Interpretation. Beginning by discussing the project management methodology Tom explained the difference between Agile and Waterfall methodologies. Agile being developmental and responsive, and waterfall a methodology which scopes and fixes the project at the begin and does not permit change.

This project takes an agile approach, something which is quite unusual for a museum project, but quite common in software development. Using this approach the project explores social interpretation under three strands: in gallery, mobile and online.

Social interpretation ‘happens anyway in person, it’s not new- it’s just using new platforms to facilitate it’ however as soon as the idea that visitors will be allowed to voice their opinions online museums often freak out, Tom framed this conversation quite nicely

Traditional museum person: So you want to let people say what they want about our collections online?

Digital person: Yes

Traditional museum person: Does that mean people can say the Nazis where right?

Digital person: Yes, but that doesn’t mean that they will! and if they do it is not a disaster, because we we can take it down, and often the online community will itself self moderate and correct inaccuracies.

The agile project management of this project is it seems as central to the process and indeed the desired research findings as those surrounding the social interpretation analysis. The application form was collaboratively written using google docs, the project has both a traditional project board and a wider reaching advisory board to direct its progression. Outcomes are being shared from the outset, with Claire saying that their goal is to fail faster, and learn quicker.

The fast paced, nature of this project makes it quite unique, but another central research method that I think we all liked the sound of is eating cake, drinking tea and meeting in person, all central to maintaining a dynamic and engaged project culture. you can read more about Claire’s thinking about project management and cookies on her blog  , or for info on the project check out the Nesta blog

You can read part 2 of my blog on the Museum Computer Group conference by clicking here >>

If you really want to embed digital across your organisation then you need more than just your ‘digital’ staff to think digitally. What shocks me is that very few organisations ask their staff what skills they have.

A simple, quick yet effective way to get a better picture of skills that your staff hold would be to carry out a digital skills audit, a simple survey that asks staff how confident they are on a wide range of platforms from Facebook to Twitter, Blogs to social apps such as Foursquare.

This information could then be compiled to create a skills database. These skills could be called upon to help fulfill project needs from guest blogging, to live tweeting at out of hours events, to covering twitter when someone is off sick or on holiday.

A key to collating accurate information is to ensure staff know that you don’t want to check what they are up to online, indeed you don’t even want to know their Twitter, or Facebook names it is simply a skills register.

I think many museums would be surprised at the skills their ‘non digital’ staff have, put in to good use these skills could help your organistion embed digital across all that it does.

Dr Lynda Kelly wrote in her blog recently ‘We have seven community managers based on enthusiasm and capability and allocate one day per week to each community manager for them to monitor our Facebook and Twitter accounts’

The emphasis on enthusiasm and capability, rather than traditional job titles is an important one, digital should not be something that sits in one department, instead it should be something that all staff with the relevant skills are actively encouraged to become involved in.

A digital skills audit may be the cheapest and indeed quickest piece of research you do this year, but in terms of impact and engagement it may be the most effective!