John Shevlin #Museumnextsketch

I’m just back from Museum Next in Amsterdam, it was a really really good conference – coming less than a month after Museums and the Web I was slightly worried there might be a lot of overlapping presentations and ideas, but I was pleasantly surprised at how both conferences complemented each other. This blog post is a quick run down of interesting ideas and conversations that have stuck with me:

1. Be of and for the internet

I really like the work of N8, they are a marketing and audience development style agency that work with museums across Amsterdam . They have an interesting organisational model, all the staff are in their 20′s, and can work at the organisation for a maximum of 3 years. This ensures that they remain relevant to the people they are trying to engage. One of their key events is running Amsterdam’s Museum Night – this event is a key fundraiser for the work that N8 does throughout the year.

What really stood out for me was that N8 are both ‘of and for’ the internet. They not only created digital content, digital content and digital culture shaped what they program. They aren’t people who have studied ‘digital culture’ instead they live their lives online – they are part of digital culture. In their presentation they discussed how the Rijks Museum had opened to bikes for the first time in years the night before the conference – this was really exciting for them and Sarah Berckencamp made a video of her and her friends cycling through it for the first time. The video was shot on her phone after a few beers in the Van Gogh Museum, the production quality is pretty bad and she is screaming the whole way through it – but the immediacy of the video and the experience is what makes it valuable. It really takes someone that is ‘of and for the internet’ to see the value of showing a video with such low production value to a few 100 museum geeks. I loved it!

2. Adapt and Adopt existing models i.e. residencies

N8 talked about digital culture and bringing different voices into museums. One example they showed was a break dancer taking a tour of the Rijksmuseum and chatting about the collection in his own words (which, shock horror included swearing), and ended with him break dancing in the museum. Can we have more rappers and break dancers in residence, please? The idea of wikipedians in residence is still quite a revolutionary one for most museums – but lets face it, wikipedians in residence are not cool. Sorry, I know that might sound harsh. I do recognize the value of wikipedians in residence, but I think there is a lot of potential to utilize the long established ‘xx in residence model’ to engage with young visitors in more exciting and dynamic ways.

GIF maker in residence

YouTuber in residence

Geeks in residence - something Culture Sync have already done very successfully

you might get something as wonderful as this video which features 211 works from the Rijksmuseum collection

Javier Celaya suggested that museums should ‘host start up companies’ and talked about the potential to develop mutually beneficial relationships. Javier advocated hosting start ups that were working on areas that could provide museums with solutions to the problems that they are facing. I was interested in the idea of hosting start ups, but for me greater success would come by hosting start ups through a ‘residency model’ for example providing them with space for a couple of months and asking them to host a few training sessions for staff and or visitors. The residency model would be easier and quicker to implement – going down a partnership route, or hosting a start for a year or more would lead to difficult conversations around intellectual property and would be much more difficult to get up and running.

Museums have the potential to catalyst innovation and support the development of creative companies. It doesn’t have to be complicated, the residency model is pervasive and prolific because it works.

3. People not Technology lead

The most interesting talks for me were the talks about people not technology. There was a noticeable move towards ‘digitally mediated solutions’ at Museum Next this year, and a move away from shiny digital projects that had no lasting impact. Science gallery, Dublin and Dallas Museum of Art both exemplified this with a strong ethos of ‘visitors add value’.

Science Gallery *needs* visitors to make it’s exhibitions work the gallery has for example collected blood, sweat and stories through experiments as part of themed exhibitions – the data from these experiments have provided the grounding for key academic articles. Indeed rather than seeing participation as an end point, Science Gallery places participation at the core of its design process. They showed a really interesting process map that placed visitor engagement at the centre of their design process – I wanted to include a copy of it here, but I’m told it’s a work in progress – but I look forward to discussing it further when they do publish it.

DMA recently abolished admission charges and instead invited visitors to become a ‘friend’ for free. The logic behind this move is that Visitors add value. I actually didn’t attend this talk as I had heard Rob Stein speak in Portland a few weeks ago – this paper explains more about DMA friends within the context of business model alignment. I managed to have a brief but very insightful chat with Rob at Museum Next about how digital projects impact museum operations, in essence if the aim of your digital project is to increase the number of visitors to your museum then you have then you need to work closely with your Front of House department. It might seem basic, but actually its really important to ensure the success of your project – but also, and perhaps more importantly dreaming up digital projects that impact upon your business model provides digital departments with the opportunity to break out of their ‘digital silos’ and demonstrate the value of what they do across the museum.

5. Use what is already available

There was a lot of love for Google at Museum Next. From google docs to hangouts and surveys …. you get the picture. Why reinvent the wheel. If it already exists use it!

6. We won at Tumblr

Museum Next and Tumblr teamed up to run a competition to create the best ‘Tumblr’ we – myself, Mar Dixon and Claire Ross won with Immersive Serendipity

I actually really enjoyed this competition, I’m normally a wordpress kinda gal – but having a specified platform was really useful – it meant I had to learn. I’ve used Tumblr before – but learning some of the more advance settings at Museum Next was great, any time I got stuck I was surrounded by a couple of 100 geeks who could help. Through this competition I also learnt how to use another really interesting app Paper a drawing app for iPad. John Shelvin created a really beautiful Tumblr using drawings from it

I love learning something new – and having the competition run through out the conference was a lot more interesting than attending a workshop.

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In the spirit of sharing I’ve posted my slides on slideshare my Museum Next presentation was based on ‘Museums and Digital Engagement: A New York Perspective‘

Museum Next was amazing, a great conference, well organised, great talks, good food, good people, good beer. Well done to all involved!

Via canadianveggie Flickr CC

A few of my key takeaways from Museums and The Web

1. All hail the PDF  - I went to the User Testing Workshop  expecting to talk about user journeys, and developing bespoke approaches to user testing for museums (which we did) but my main takeaway from this session was the need for digital content to work both online and offline. Whilst exploring the Guggenheim’s website from the perspective of a tourist my group got into a really interesting conversation about how annoying it is to have to print screen multiple sections of a museum website, from opening hours to maps so that you could use them while out and about. Why print screen? Because as a tourist you don’t have access to mobile data. All of us in the group had experience of print screening websites while on Holiday.

Our user journey in the context of this workshop lead to a really simple suggestion – provide PDF downloads of visitor information. PDF’s are like soooooo 10 years ago! But hey if you can open it in iBooks and it alleviates all the stress of print screens, then creating and offering PDF’s of visitor information makes sense. It’s a heck of a lot cheaper than creating a bespoke app, and a heck of a lot more convenient for most visitors.

I would love museums to offer downloadable visitor info that I can open offline on my iPhone or iPad.

2. Games and Badges - What happened to playing games because they are fun? Or going to the museum simply because you want to? It seems that everything needs points and badges from playing games to attending the museum these days. There was much heated debate about the difference between good game mechanics, and ‘gamification’ at MW this year. The ‘Let the Game’s Begin’ professional forum provided some polar opposite opinions on the place for ‘gamification’ and games in museums – and the panel strongly argued that these are not always complimentary ideas. Gamification through the awarding of points for the completion of tasks was also evident during a paper on ‘Nurturing Engagement: How technology and business model alignment can transform visitor participation in the museum’ which looked at the revolutionary new ‘friends’ programme introduced by Dallas Art Museum earlier this year.

The conversation around games raised more questions than it answered for me. Fun and Play seemed to be topics dwarfed by business aligned gamification. As Sharna Jackson reminded everyone – games provide an entry point, they are not the be all an end all. Games have to be good or you’ve lost visitors before you’ve even got them through the door of the museum, or on to the next level of your game. (I’m paraphrasing) In other words gamification can ruin a game, and a bad game leads to a bad visitor experience.

3. Serendipity – the Buzzword of 2013 First we had ‘apps’ then we had ‘agile’ now we have ‘serendipitous’. I’m not really sure where it came from, and only time will tell if it is here to stay.

4. What Can Museums Learn from Immersive Theater?  This was the title of the closing plenary  which focused primarily on what museums could learn from ‘Sleep No More’ a large scale immersive theater experience, produced by the UK company Punch Drunk and currently on show in New York.  Having been to Sleep No More I was able to relate to many of the points raised by the panel. The idea that adults can be trusted to handle objects (without breaking them), that having a one to one personal experience with an actor can create a strong memory, and helps the visitor to develop a unique rapport with performer. Sleep No More has developed a unique ‘super fan’ following, who despite the price (around $70) have attended multiple times.

It is difficult to examine what museums can learn from Immersive Theater by discussing only one example and I would argue that museums could learn a lot from children’s theater – which focuses on scaffolding discovery rather than delivering narrative. I really hope this session sparks a bigger conversation on Immersive Theater, interactive design, and museums.

5. Facebook – is dead? Facebook. What happened to Facebook? I didn’t hear Facebook mentioned in any of the sessions I attended. What that says I don’t know. I’m intrigued to see if this trend is replicated at Museum Next in a couple of weeks.

Thanks! This was my first time at Museums and The Web and it was brilliant, thanks to everyone for being great. The digital museum community is simply brilliant, open, friendly, provocative and challenging. I really enjoyed all the conversations I had, the feedback I got on my work and the insights you gave me to yours.

(For a more coherent and representative summary check out Danny Birchall’s blog post  it’s really good!)

Last week I went to a really great workshop on Crowdfunding with Patrick Hussey, which was organised by Arts and Business NI. I promised @Bolster and @CilarisMedia that I would blog my notes – so here goes:

Crowdfunding isn’t new: Back in the day it was called public subscription – and it paid for most of the older statues in our city centres, and to set up Trusts and Foundations, like the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust.

There are lots of different platforms, Kickstarter is the most well known, indiegogo is also popular (one that Patrick didn’t mention but might be useful to people in Northern Ireland is Fund: It. which is an Ireland wide platform run by the Southern equivalent of Arts and Business)

Each of these platforms has different terms and conditions. Each takes a different cut of the money raised. On some you only get money if your project is fully funded, others let you pay the platform a higher percentage to keep the money raised even if your project isn’t fully funded.

One of the things I really took away from this workshop is that people don’t care about the in’s and out’s of a project – they want to make an emotional attachment to it. As Patrick put it think of Crowdfunding as ‘Charity uncoupled with tradegy’

…. a note: Crowdfunding isn’t easy. Half of projects fail. So you have to compel people to act. To fall in love with your project. How?

Cats!

Yes cats – the internet loves cats, cats are viral, people share them. Before you start a crowdfunding campaign you need to build your social network – otherwise no one will know you exist and no one will fund your project. Creating interesting visual content is a great way to build your social network, don’t be boring, be funny, and when you don’t have time to be funny, be interesting, share stories about other organisations. Don’t just talk about yourself!

Once you’ve built your social network, your ready to launch your crowdfunding campaign. If you have a self righteous campaign that would look good on an Arts Council application form, its probably not going to do well on the internet. People want videos, and funny images and internet memes that they can share with friends. How can a small, poor arts organisation afford cats and videos and shiny internet content that will make people fall in love with their campaign? Students! Is the answer Patrick provided – he showed us a number of brilliant campaign videos from cartoon to stop motion on Kickstarter and explained that these did not require fancy equipment only a bit of imagination and some media production skills. Something students on digital and interactive courses have lots of.

Go and watch videos, see what gets funded and the stories behind these projects.

Be funny and clever – orchestrate your content. Indie GoGO has an algorithm called the GoGO factor – this basically picks up on any projects that are getting lots of attention. Exploit this! When you are about to launch a project get everyone to tweet, and post about it on Facebook at the exact same time say 12:01, send an email get everyone you know to do it. If you can set off GoGo factor then there is a good chance they will pick you up on your blog or tweet about your project – which means you have a much higher chance of succeeding.  Don’t forget print media, get the Newspapers talking about your project that will also drive traffic to you campaign.

So in conclusion be cool, be popular – and put some spin on it. People won’t fund you to go and look for dinosaur fossils for an academic research project – but they will fund a ‘Dinosaur Hunt’

Hopefully I haven’t done Patrick to much of an injustice in this blog post, it really was a great session, I know I learned a lot from attending and this blog post is really just a very short summary of the bits that sparked my attention.

On a side not – if your interested in creating a compelling ‘call to action’ the thing that makes people fund your project right there and then, rather than coming back later this is a great talk:

I travel a lot, and I’m used to doing some damage control on behalf of my home town …  ’Belfast’

But I’ve noticed an increase in questions and comments in the last couple of years, perhaps its because this country / Island is putting itself out there more than ever before. From the country wide tourism push of last year, to City of Culture this year, and the equally powerful global success of our golfers.

I live in Belfast. That is about the only non loaded statement I can make about where I live, I always say Belfast because Ireland, or Northern Ireland has political connotations – but only on this Island. I was in Madrid at the weekend and when asked where I was from I said Belfast, I got a blank stare and then I would say Ireland, my favorite response this weekend was ‘Oh wow, you live in the extreme bit of Ireland’

Another person asked me what I thought about Rory McIlroy saying he may not play in the Rio Olympics to avoid having to make a decision on his nationality.

Whilst marketing can put a good spin on a difficult situation from ‘Our Time, Our Place’ to ‘Legenderry’ this glossy facade isn’t for tourists it’s for the people of this Island. Tourists don’t visit Derry/ Londonderry, stroke city, City of Culture or indeed Legenderry they visit ‘Ireland’. Would you visit let alone invest in a city/ town or country that couldn’t decide on its official name?

A few months ago I got an email from a friend of a friend who works for a world leading cultural organisation in London. Her organisation is producing one of the signature events for City of Culture, her off the record email was a cry for help. The organisation had been given the official low down on the many names of one city, but they didn’t really understand it, they wanted to get someone to come in and do a workshop with them to make sure they didn’t say the wrong thing. When I got the email all I could think was how embarrassing. Come and work with us, but first learn the politics! Eeeek!

Matt Johnson from Digital Circle has been advocating for years that we need to stop talking about Newry or Belfast, or indeed any town in between, we are a tiny place and people outside of this place do not care for the specifics of town names or places. But agreeing on a name for this place is something that has escaped us for the last 100 years.

This is a small place, and to create impact, we need critical mass and for critical mass we need to unite under one ‘banner’. I say banner because, we can’t decide on a place name, we can’t decide on a flag, or a national anthem … you get the picture.

I’m a big fan of the  ’Made in NY’ branding, because rather than being a superficial brand name, it pulls resources to create a critical mass, a movement, an active community. From tech meet ups, to the signposting of digital organisations, to helping start ups hit by Hurricane Sandy, this branding fosters a community and creates a powerful narrative that says: New York is open for business, it is an exciting place to be, so why not come and work with us?

A simple but effective map is the cornerstone of this branding:

‘The Made in NY Digital Map is a visual testament to the vibrant state of New York’s digital industry – showing a powerful constellation of over 500 homegrown startups, investors and coworking spaces across the five boroughs. Browse by neighborhood, review job postings, or add your own startup to the digital landscape – the Made in NY Map is a living resource that reflects New York City’s dynamic innovation ecosystem.

Led by Mayor Bloomberg’s commitment to realize New York City’s digital potential, the Made in NY Digital Map was created by the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment in partnership with Internet Week NY and the New York Tech Meetup. Distribution of the map was also made possible thanks to the Association for a Better New York.’

The Made in NY blog is another good example of how to get ‘good news’ stories out there.

Whilst the start up community in Belfast is a small one, I often feel that no one outside that community even knows it exists. 

Wouldn’t it be great if you Googled Belfast and the first thing that came up was a map of digital companies and cool creative businesses, coffee shops with wifi, or coffee shops that open late that are great to work in. Wouldn’t it be great if you googled Belfast and up popped stories of how people from this wee place are conquering the world be that Rory McIlroy, Oliver Jeffers or Damian McGinty.

If we can’t decide on a cultural identity, perhaps we can unite under a narrative of success. The message we need to get out is that not only are we open for business, but we are a desirable place to do business. It’s all in the storytelling. Something that Oliver Jeffers suggests has always been central to our culture … indeed, this brilliant video about Oliver Jeffers shows us what’s possible if we focus on a narrative of success rather than politics.

What does your PhD journey look like? …PhD training workshops. Picture says it all really.

2012 was a year of excesses for me,

an embarrassment of riches perhaps ….

In January I went to London for an interview that really shaped my 2012, that interview was for a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship. I was successful – and in February I excitedly started to plan a 6 week trip to New York  * I started teaching on both The Interactive Media Arts and Museum studies courses at University of Ulster and developed a teaching / research project called ‘This is Our Playground’ with my fabulous supervisor Alan Hook. ‘This is Our Playground’ concluded with a 12 hour hack day at The Ulster Museum, we learnt lots from this project, and sharing our findings has taken me to London (CHArt Conference) and in April 2013 to Museums and The Web in Portland, Oregon* As a bit of a side project, and again with Alan Hook I developed the ‘Foursquare Mayor Chair’ an interactive installation that investigated the development by and use off Apps in arts organisations, the chair took up residency at The Crescent Arts Centre, The Void Art Gallery, and Queens Film Theatre – (The chair was found after hours of scouring charity shops, and masterfully recovered by Alan) * In the spring I held a couple of digital arts meetup with my friend and colleague Karen O’Rawe who works at Audiences NI, these were a real stab in the dark. I had total fear no one would come – we needn’t have worried we were blown away by the response and each event had about 40 people at them. These were really fun no budget events, speakers spoke for free, venues provided space and like minded people came together. Heated debate was had, and new partnerships formed, I would love to have more events like this (perhaps when I’m finished my PhD and I have time to apply for a bit of funding) *I worked as an event manager at Belfast Children’s Festival – something I’ve done for what seems like forever now – and something I always really really enjoy* In March/ April I worked with Arts and Business NI, researching levels of Trusts and Foundations funding in the Art Sector in Northern Ireland. This was a big piece of research for me, and my first time working with the very Lovely A&B NI – this was a really fast paced project and the research was designed, undertaken and delivered within only a couple of months (a nice change from the slowness of academia!)* I went to New York in June – My New York trip is very much a blur- I didn’t stop- I met so many amazing people- I visited nearly 30 cultural organisations – interviewed a ton of people – attended some amazing events like The Metropolitan Museum of Arts 3D Hackathon with Makerbot- I attended 2 amazing conferences: Games for Change and Communicating the Museum. I came home and slept for 2 weeks and then wrote this report: Museums and Digital Engagement a New York Perspective. Later I wrote an article for Arts Professional: Strategies for a digital culture and in May 2013 I will be presenting my New York research at MuseumNext in Amsterdam * I joined the Museums Computer Group as a committee member in late 2011, in 2012 I coordinated the MCG’s annual conference ‘ Strategically Digital: Museums on The Web 2013‘. I really enjoyed coordinating the conference, Wellcome Collection was a brilliant venue, the speakers great to deal with in advance, and inspiring on the day, and the feedback from delegates was overwhelming positive – 80%  said the conference was excellent. Good feedback makes all the planning worthwhile * In December I handed in my teaching coursework, so hopefully sometime in early 2013 I will become an associate fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and just in time to fit  into my 2012 review – I became a fellow of the RSA (The people behind the fabulous animated lectures)*

Behind all of this, and the driving force for everything above is my PhD. I’m now in year 3 – write up time. My research has always been a bit different to other peoples in my office- they do most of their research from books. My research is about now, not the past, it’s constantly changing, and I’ve been chasing digital culture tirelessly trying to keep up, its been fun but I have to admit  I got to Christmas feeling completely exhausted, weather beaten, and a bit jaded.

Trying to balance the writing, the research – and professional experience is something I struggle with, the sad reality is that today a PhD won’t get you a job, it might open a door but it’s my experience and contacts that will decide what I do when I finish. It would be great to walk into an academic post but realistically, I know I will go back to what I did before I started this, working in arts management (which I love), consultancy, or working in a museum. I’ve been spreading myself thinly, trying to cover all bases.  I’m normally over enthusiastic about everything in life – painfully enthusiastic sometimes. A friend said to me, I miss the Oonagh that used to go out and go crazy on the dance floor. I realised I did too! Being jaded, negative and totally unmotivated isn’t me, but it is someone I was quickly becoming. I was working so hard to prove myself, to, well,  everyone that I was starting to lose myself. I haven’t had an epiphany over Christmas, but I have had fun-and fun and some time off has given me a bit of perspective. Perspective which has gave me a few  ’work’ New Years resolutions -

1. Do Less, Better

2. Stop working all the time – I’m going to enforce PhD bans, and internet free evenings.

3. Enjoy the journey. I’ve been working on ‘finishing’ my PhD – that’s a whole year away. It would be stupid to suspend ‘living’ for a year, start living for today.

4. stop saying yes to everything because ‘it will be good on my CV’-  I fear this resolution will be my main challenge!

I saw an interview with the Spice Girls over Christmas, and they described feeling exactly how I did when they wrote the lyrics for  ’Stop Right Now’ ….so a final word to my friends the Spice Girls, and my new theme tune for 2013

This post is very much a note to self – and one that I’m going to come back to every time someone asks me to take on a new project this year.

It shows the redesign of

Its made by the people at IMA Lab – they talk about it here >>

Which made me think …

Wouldn’t it be cool if the big National Museums – Tate, V&A, British Museum etc etc donated their digital teams to regional museums for 24 hours every couple of month.

Imagine team Tate rocking up to the Ulster Museum (my local museum)

Or Team V&A going to visit Poole Museum

…. and for 24 hours hacking, making and building with staff from those museums

(yes I know there are a million and one reasons why this wouldn’t work – but forget them, and you have to admit this would be a great way to drag regional museums into the 21st Century to get them excited about whats possible, and move regional museums beyond conversations about limited resources, money, and staff, to conversations around how can digital tech make us a better, stronger more engaged museum for our visitors and community….. )

Twitter update – seems to be a popular idea

Digital Quill – SERENA Project

Last week I attended the Computers and the History of Art conference for the first time, the conference took the broad theme of Display: Consume: Respond – Digital Engagement with Art and had an eclectic programme.

I was delighted that The CHArt committee awarded me a Helene Roberts Bursary Award, as a recieptent of this award  the committee asked that I write a blog post on the conference. I’m sure many of you have read previous conference blogs by me, I want to try and do something different for this post, rather than trying to cover each paper I’m going to pick out a few highlights, papers that really stood out for me – mainly because they aligned well with my own research. Abstracts from all the papers can be found on the CHArt website

Exploring New Models for Mobile Learning in Museums - British Museum  (Shelley Manion et al)

The British Museum team presented the approach they have taken to developing mobile learning for school groups. The main focus of their presentation was evaluation, and iterative development. The team specifically talked about a mobile app they developed for the Hajj exhibition, the app was designed to move school visits away ‘from audio to mobile experiences’. Rather than simply directing students around the exhibition, the app was activity orientated and challenged students to draw objects, answer questions, and prompted social engagement as the pre planned routes of the app meant that students had to work in teams to complete some tasks.

• Two external influences guided the development of the app 1. Cultural and religious sensitivities 2. No network connectivity in the gallery space.
• This wasn’t a big budget project, but the team were able to reduce production costs by reusing videos from the BM’s website/ exhibition etc.
•  All school sessions where facilitated and had tech support – this demonstrates that app was used to facilitate learning, rather than substitute the role of educator.
•  Evaluation was carried out in a variety of ways with 33% of participants completing surveys after the exhibition. The team categorised responses as:

1. Factual
2. Functional
3. Emotional

•  And found that Drawing was the most popular activity, followed by watching videos:

1. Drawing ( this was the most popular the list is in decreasing popularity)
2. Watching videos
3. Voice recording
4. Answering questions

• In developing future apps, they want to encourage students to freely engage with exhibitions, to do this the BM intend to work with teachers to encourage them to let the mobile learning app guide students – moving teachers away from a ‘control’ to ‘facilitator’ role.

Hacking Art History - Oonagh Murphy

Slightly biased as this was my talk, but I thought it would be good to include a couple of links to projects I talked about for those that attended the conference, and those that followed it online, I hope to publish this research in the coming months:

This is Our Playground - Ulster Museum

Paint Job - RijksMuseum

3D Scanning and Printing Hackathon - The Met

Encouraging reflectivity in mobile interactions in Mobile Interactions - Mel Woods

I found this talk fascinating, Mel talked about a SERNA research project that she is Principal Investigator for:

‘The vision of the SerenA project is to transform research processes by proactively creating surprising connection opportunities. We will deliver novel technologies, methods and evaluation techniques for supporting serendipitous interactions in the research arena.’

In her presentation she talked about the value of serendipity, reflection, delight and creativity – the joy of the unexpected and how digital technology could become facilitate and prompt the joy of the unexpected.

Mel spoke about designing for reflection – and asked how do we do this in a mobile device? she suggested that slow technology may be the answer.

Some interesting apps that Mel suggested demonstrate the potential to facilitate serendipitous experiences:

• Serendipitor app
• A Machine to See With - blast theory ARG at Edinburgh festival
• RAMP rock art on mobile phones
• The semantic notebook (developed as part of the SERENA project)

In a second paper Mel talked about ‘The Digital Quill’ see picture above – this project looked at how design could inspire creativity and set to tackle the chunkiness of touch screen. Touch screen is great by there is something so much more enjoyable about painting, or writing with your favourite pen – The talk over lunch was how do we get our hands on one of these beautiful iPad stylus – the bad news is they have no plans to develop them commercially -yet anyway.

I really enjoyed Bianca’s talk – as it had a lot of overlaps with my own work. Bianca is looking at why museums are not using social media to engage with visitors in Germany (while I’m looking at why museums in Northern Ireland have been slow to embrace the opportunities that digital technologies provide museums).

In her talk Bianca showed a number of blogs, and social media platforms of German Museums and discussed the low levels of visitor engagement. For example she showed a blog which was written in heavy academic language, and she explained that the lack of a holistic approach to social media demonstrated a lack of understanding.

She concluded by providing 5 explanations of why the German Museum Sector has been slow to embrace social media:

1. Lack of Know-How
2. Reluctance of Technologies
3. Fear of Losing Control
4. Fear of Marginalization
5. Web Presence Has no Priority- Lack of time, money and will

I know I could relate to all of the above – and it was great to see someone talk about digital uptake across an entire sector – all to often research focuses on one museum, one funding stream, or specific cultural policy.

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I really enjoyed the CHArt conference and all the papers – it was great to present my research to a new group of people, I hadn’t meet anyone at the conference before I attended, but I made some great connections and look forward to following the projects I discussed above develop….

Conferences for me are all about the people, and one of the really interesting people I met at this conference was Cassiope Sydoriak, A recent graduate from an MA in Art History at Oxford she has set up  Broken Spike Bike Co-Op  . It sounds great! So if you live in Oxford make sure to pop by, learn how to fix, use their tools – or have a cup of tea…

Thanks to the CHArt committee, and everyone I met for a great few days.

Museums and Digital Engagement: A New York Perspective
This report highlights interesting case studies and key trends following my recent trip to New York

To read the report click the image above or visit Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Website: http://www.wcmt.org.uk/reports/1065_1.pdf

Guest post by Lyndsey Jackson, General Manager, Kabosh

Sometimes you hit upon an idea or a model of operation that just works, and for Kabosh, Belfast Bred was just that.  That isn’t to say it didn’t take a huge amount of work, nurturing and collaboration to get the production on its feet, but from the first performance it was clear we’d hit on something that spoke to audiences, entertained, amused and delighted. The show is a 2.5-hour theatrical walking tour of Belfast that explores the vast food and drink history of the city. Audiences are led around the city by Barney, a chef from the ill-fated Titanic, and as he collects ingredients for the elaborate menu he tells audience members all about the Belfast he knew and loved as a boy.  Barney takes you to some of Belfast’s finest food and drink establishments, namely; Sawers Deli, Mourne Seafood, The John Hewitt, Nick’s Warehouse and McHugh’s, to sample their delights and meet the proprietors, before depositing you at St George’s Market to explore the sights and smells for yourself.

Kabosh’s work is, by the nature of it’s site-specific form, often seen by a limited number of audiences but much of the company’s canon is easily revived and provides the company with scope to ‘earn’ income through revival and digitisation.  When considering the fit between potential projects and the criteria of CIIF funding (which, at the time of our application, had a heavy focus on digital content), Belfast Bred presented itself as the front runner for exploration into this new area of work.  It made sense that a digital medium for the show would enable audiences worldwide to experience the wonders of Belfast food and drink and would (hopefully) draw audiences into Belfast, and thus, the idea for a mobile application was born.  The application was made in partnership with The Design Zoo, a Belfast Based design studio, app and game developer.  The funding was awarded to develop a mobile app, specifically for the iPhone, based on the walking tour.  The app would integrate a GPS tour of Belfast with video from venues, audio, photos and animation.

The Design Zoo were on board from pretty much the start of the process and were able to attend a Belfast Bred tour, this helped them understand the model of operation and to begin to think about how we could transform the live performance into a mobile application.  They were introduced to us by Culture NI, who had worked with them to develop their app, and the value of both the recommendation and the experience of the working relationship was invaluable in helping us navigate the process. Our Artistic Director had never used an app but had a very clear idea of how the experience should feel for the user.  The Design Zoo had never made an app based on a performance before but had some really unique ideas on how the user interface could bring the app to life.

The relationship between Kabosh and The Design Zoo was very open; they were incredibly knowledgeable in their areas of expertise and spent a long time ensuring we all understood the processes they were undertaking and didn’t attempt to confuse us with jargon to make their own lives easier.  They were genuinely engaged in developing a unique user interface, and help us comprehend the requirements of the medium and how best to fit this to the experience we had in mind.  We were involved at all stages, through a very well maintained and open communication, led entirely by The Design Zoo through Basecamp.  The process was clearly time-scaled and the developers were entirely committed to answering all manner of stupid questions about the technology and we were confident in both their skills and shared ownership of the project so were fully able to allow them to guide decision making on areas that we were less knowledgeable.

On the whole our experience of CIIF funding was positive, we encountered very few problems or stumbling blocks, but along the way it did throw us many challenges we hadn’t anticipated.  One of these challenges arose from being given the opportunity to consider additional elements to the app with potential for further investment.  We were successfully selected to a Belfast City Council Digital Media Scheme, with included mentoring support and the opportunity to pitch for a share of funding toward the project.  The mentor assigned to us through the BCC scheme was one of the most useful partnerships in terms of our learning, it was through this scheme that we began to discuss the potential for the app to generate income.  The main focus of the pitching process was how we would take investment and generate income/value through this.  We were forced to consider the inherent ‘Why?’ of the project – we all understood that the app would look lovely and would give users an unique experience of Belfast but we still hadn’t answered the essential question – what was the point of the app in terms of the company and it’s development.

After a lot of time, chat, tea and biscuits we uncovered the sticking point; if the app only encouraged one time use then it would not be useful for the company as a means the advertise further shows or market activity, and would quickly be forgotten among millions of other apps on the store.  Through our mentoring we decided a game element to the app would encourage repeat usage, and with a very limited brief The Design Zoo pitched us a number of game ideas for the app, and we are hugely indebted to the compromises made by The Design Zoo to give us the game we wanted on the limited budget we had!  The game was developed as a separate app and to date both apps have been downloaded just over 500 times each.  We actually had no idea what our expectations of downloads should be, and were a little adrift as there were no comparable apps for us to measure ourselves against.  We continue to measure these and examine how the traffic between apps, websites, facebook and twitter translates to new potential audiences for Kabosh, which was our overall aim.

What next?

We see the potential to provide best practice advice and guidance in producing a similar cultural tourism product, as well the market potential for the IP model of operation, which is unique to our product.   Kabosh has been approached by numerous hospitality outlets keen to be involved; cities in England and America eager to learn more about the model of operation; members of the corporate sector booking the show for capacity-building and staff morale enhancement; as well as members of the public desperate to secure a ticket. This project allows Kabosh to take an entrepreneurial approach to meeting this significant demand by using the app as an exemplar to sell services. Kabosh view the Belfast Bred app as the first of many digital products. The company is uniquely placed, with a variety of suitable shows and tours to continue to develop similar innovative approaches in the future.

what I’ve learned:

• Once you’re in, you’re in, and you have to see it through. For us, this meant company investment that hadn’t been anticipated in order to ensure the app made it to market and was the quality we wanted.
• If the partnership is genuine and established from the offset then the ownership is truly shared – the app is the result of a lot of love from The Design Zoo and Kabosh equally and without their commitment we wouldn’t have the product we do.
• Apple’s walled garden is very pretty, but it’s a walled garden none the less and I would never underestimate the hoop jumping required to get an app on the store.
• That the value of a product is not always easy to calculate – sometimes you have to trust your instincts and allow the value to emerge over time (or not, as the case may be)
• That the simplest things are often the best – to trust my experience as an app user and accept that one clear, simple function is more effective.
• Gamers know what they’re talking about!

The Belfast Bred app is available for free on the app store

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I’m on the hunt for other examples of research, development and innovation projects by Arts Organisations in Northern Ireland. If you or your organisation would be interested in writing a blog post, or taking part in an interview to share your experience you can email me hello@oonaghmurphy.com or say hello on twitter @OonaghTweets

1. Games we play

A lovely video that reminded me how much, as an adult I still play games most days

2. Playtimes: a century of children’s games and rhymes

This is a great resource filled with videos, and descriptions of street games from years gone by. It made me want to take down my washing line and go skipping like they did way back when

3. MoMA Century of  The Child

This is the micro site for the ‘Century of The Child’ exhibition which is currently on show at MoMA. It’s a really stunning website, filled with lovely things.

4. Lego Festival of Play

5. National Trust. 50 things to do before you 11 3/4

The 50 Things to Do Before you’re 11 ¾ is a website that lets you record your progress as you try and complete 50 tasks. The aim of the campaign is to get kids off the sofa and outside. Each challenge also has a ‘how to video’ on youtube
Helpfully you can view a how to video for each activity, here’s how to build a den

Need to justify play to your boss here’s a nice Forbes article for you

Want to be more creative? Pull a Prank at the Office

so in conclusion … 

Go Play!