Dear MCNers, You may recognise the name of our keynote speaker...
There are just 2 weeks to go before museum technologists 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 address is checked daily
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