[MCN-L] Job Opening @ Seattle Art Museum: Product Manager, Online Experiences

[Tim Rager]

Apply To: product...@seattleartmuseum.org
Or Online: http://visitsam.org/careers

JOB TITLE: Product Manager, Online Experiences
DEPARTMENT: Technology
SUB-DEPARTMENT: Digital Media

OVERVIEW: The Product Manager manages the full development and production cycle 
of the online experience for the Museum visitor. This position will manage 
creation of content for and evaluate the success of the online roadmap, 
assessing the experience at all steps of their online interaction: from the 
moment a potential visitor receives an email, or uses search to find out when 
SAM is open, or clicks on an online ad, to their experience with our web site 
and all the way through to a ticket or membership transaction and then to the 
integration of their data into our database for future outreach and engagement.

This position will actively collaborate with other departments (Curatorial, 
Education, Membership, Development, Marketing) to develop an online roadmap to 
educate, excite, and engage. A successful product manager, will be hands-on 
initiating and integrating web and email initiatives with strategic goals. This 
individual will also assess the Museum’s public-facing online needs, manage 
budgets and timelines, work with internal and external designers and 
developers, and develop metrics for success. This is a strategic project 
management role; not a technical one.

FLSA STATUS: Exempt 
REPORTS TO: Director of Technology
ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS:
1. Provide a website roadmap for continual development and execution of the 
museum’s online digital engagement strategy and managing the tools and 
applications needed to execute this strategy.

2. Provide an e-communications roadmap, utilizing email for content strategy 
development. Analyzing the success of all e-communications initiatives, 
ensuring increased engagement and revenue from this channel.

3. Research and manage the email calendar, web analytics, metrics and usability 
studies to drive admissions, membership and funding efforts.

4. Serves as a project team leader, working with content creators and editors, 
designers, media specialists, external contractors, editors, and internal 
clients to define goals and develop creative solutions.

5. Oversees and iteratively manages, from conceptualization to completion, new 
web and online digital initiatives, make strategic recommendations, develop 
plans, specifications, budgets and metrics for success.

6. Work closely with content providers (curators, educators, and, communication 
managers) to ensure content deliverables are on track as well as consistent to 
SAM’s brand.

7. Supervise and lead SAM’s SEO efforts.

8. Oversee and provide QA testing on all web and public digital media to verify 
content is properly functioning on multiple channels as expected.

9. Oversee, coordinate and manage external vendors, agencies and consultants as 
related to online digital media.

10. Perform other duties as assigned, such as managing and fulfilling requests 
in the digital media queue; modify and update online web pages; create and 
manage online assets and media.


QUALIFICATIONS, KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND ABILITIES REQUIRED:
1. 5+ years of experience (or equivalent) in interactive digital media or web 
project management.

2. Strong project management skills and experience: must be organized and 
detail-oriented and have strong partnership-building skills,
decision-making abilities, and problem-solving capabilities.

3. Excellent communication, collaboration skills, and critical thinking and the 
ability to effectively communicate (written and speaking) at the group and 
executive level.

4. Experience in mobile web and mobile application capabilities, trends, and 
customer behavior across devices.

5. Solid understanding of analytics reporting tools and web analysis measures.

6. Ability to drive multi-project scheduling, budget, and cross team meetings 
and communication.

7. Experience working with Web Content Management Systems, SharePoint and 
WordPress experience preferred.

8. Demonstrated expertise with Microsoft Office, Project, Visio, and video and 
web publishing tools.

9. Strong understanding of web technologies and coding: HTML, CSS, JS/JQuery 
required.

10. Strong understanding of digital graphics production required.

11. Experience with Adobe Creative Suite, especially tools such as Photoshop 
and Illustrator are required.

12. Expertise in dealing with ambiguity, a positive, can-do attitude, and the 
ability to quickly ramp up on new concepts and tasks is required.

13. Demonstrated ability to work professionally and tactfully with donors, 
members, the public and coworkers, represent the Museum with a high level of 
integrity and professionalism, adhere to Museum policies and support management 
decisions in a positive, professional manner.

WORKING CONDITIONS:
1. Work areas are inside, in a climate-controlled environment with light 
background noise.

2. Work is occasionally 

Re: [MCN-L] OCR Software

[Jim Salmons]

Mark,

Mia is "spot on" about ABBYY being the 900-lb player in the room on the 
commercial software side of things. And the Transkribus project is an 
interesting choice when moving your requirements more into the handwriting 
recognition/transcription area.

The first helpful thing is to understand that despite their similarity; OCR of 
print documents and handwritten documents (and the systems that handle them) 
are very different. So an important thing to know to better answer your 
question is how "massive" is massive? And given that total, what is the 
breakdown between typewritten and handwritten source material.

You may find that thinking about and processing your collections will be best 
served by keeping these workflows separate in both the technical and human 
process that you develop.

For OCR of typewritten source material, even if your project will be scanning 
thousands of documents, a good question to ask is how many human scanners will 
you have working at any one time? If the actual number of scanners is low and 
you just want to "get it done" and move on, you can't beat the "prosumer" ABBYY 
product, FineReader. It is available in both Mac and Windows version. 

The biggest gotcha using ABBYY's excellent FineReader product is that it does 
not generate the abbyy.xml file that is provided by the ABBYY OCR Engine (an 
separate "enterprise"/developers product). This file is essential if you need 
to derive any metadata from the information generated by the process of OCRing. 
But if the lack of this "hardcore" OCR metadata is no problem, you may find 
that FineReader is a good choice.

While automated handwriting recognition is possible and getting better all the 
time, systems to digitize handwritten source material is almost exclusively the 
domain of human transcription workflow, like Transkribus.

The closest thing I have found to a "sweet spot" of a tool to handle both print 
and handwritten workflows is PRImA's desktop Aletheia (and its WebAletheia 
version).

As you research your options, you may find some of my recent writing useful:

* a 5-part series on Transkribus culminates with a piece that looks at the 
Transkribus Recognition Platform as a Social Machine and envisions "raising the 
bar" on crowdsourcing Citizen Science (https://goo.gl/ALTJYY - each article has 
a set of links to the other parts)

* these three "Ground Truth &..." articles are about PRImA and Aletheia: 
"Ground Truth & Softalk Magazine" (https://goo.gl/JwAKwr) and "Ground Truth & 
the Internet Archive" (https://goo.gl/ZSM6n2) and "Ground Truth & the Knight 
Prototype Fund" (https://goo.gl/YR70Yf)

The third of the Ground Truth articles is about our current FactMiners 
collaboration with PRImA and eMOP (the Early Modern OCR Project out of Texas 
A's IDHMC). For "going to the source" of what is doable with regard to the 
intersection of OCR and document transcription, you will want to scour both 
their websites at:

http://www.primaresearch.org/ and http://emop.tamu.edu/

Hope this helps.

Happy-Healthy Vibes,
-: Jim :-

Jim Salmons
Twitter: @Jim_Salmons, @FactMiners, @Softalk_Apple
www.FactMiners.org 
www.SoftalkApple.com 

> -Original Message-
> From: mcn-l-boun...@mcn.edu [mailto:mcn-l-boun...@mcn.edu] On Behalf
> Of Mia
> Sent: Thursday, November 19, 2015 9:51 AM
> To: Museum Computer Network Listserv 
> Subject: Re: [MCN-L] OCR Software
> 
> Abbyy (http://www.abbyy.com/) seems to be the market leader for OCR. I'm
> sure others will have examples of training OCR packages on their material and
> building OCR into their digitisation workflow. Platforms like the Internet
> Archive also produce OCR texts from uploaded files, and other tools are listed
> at http://www.digitisation.eu/tools-resources/demonstrator-platform/
> 
> We've been experimenting with Transkribus (
> https://transkribus.eu/Transkribus/) for handwritten text recognition.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Mia
> 
> 
> Dr Mia Ridge
> Digital Curator, British Library
> 
> 
> http://openobjects.org.uk/
> http://twitter.com/mia_out
> Check out my book! http://bit.ly/CrowdsourcingCulturalHeritage
> 
> I mostly use this address for list mail; my open.ac.uk address is checked 
> daily
> 
> On 18 November 2015 at 17:53, Locker, Mark  wrote:
> 
> > Hi,
> > We are beginning a massive digitization project in which we will be
> > scanning thousands of documents. Most will probably be typewritten but
> > definitely will have handwritten documents as well. Anyone out there
> > using OCR software, especially anything that manages handwriting
> successfully?
> > Thanks,
> > Mark
> >
> > Mark T. Locker
> > Data Manager, DNA
> > Office: 503.532.3280
> > Cell: 503.810.2461
> > dna.nike.com
> >
> >
> > ___
> > You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the 

Re: [MCN-L] Projector of choice?

[Patrick Davis]

We have 100% standardized on the Panasonic PT-RZ470 series projectors. They
are only rated at 3000 lumens, but because of being the LED/Laser hybrid
they actually are much brighter. I would guess around the 4000 range. They
are rated for 20,000 hours of use before needing any sort of factory
service for the light source. I would guess I'm over 50 of these units in
the building now or on the road with our traveling shows.

The newest version the PT-RZ670 series gives you interchangeable lenses and
a 6500 lumen rating. Again the rating system is for lamps and doesn't
translate directly to the laser models. I saw a demo of this unit last week
and it looks great. Another benefit is that they have a HDBaseT receiver
built in to the projector so you can do control and video via a single CAT6
cable.

My only complaint about them is that they don't have a filter. The light
source is sealed so it doesn't impact the output, but in a museum setting
they can build up with dust and overheat. We just make sure to have a
regular cleaning schedule set for them.

---
Patrick Davis | Exhibitions AV Specialist | The Field Museum
1400 S Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL 60605
312-665-7968

On Thu, Nov 19, 2015 at 11:05 AM, George Scharoun  wrote:

> Given the unique requirements of museum projectors, (reliability and
> excellent image quality, often in less than ideal lighting conditions), I
> find online projector reviews leave me with questions.
> I would rather hear from all of you what projectors you use, and what you
> think of them.
>
> I’ll go first. At the MFA we use:
>
> Panasonic PT-DZ570U (white)
> This model is our work horse. Easy to install, built-in on/off schedule,
> good image quality, but being a 1-chip DLP there’s a slight rainbow effect.
> We have three and have had to send two out for repairs (luckily under
> warranty). Blanking (image crop) and good manual lens control make it
> pretty easy to line up the projector with custom built projection screens.
> 4000 lumens means a big image (9’ wide) looks very good in a darkened room.
> We recently had to install one in a gallery with lots of ambient light from
> a skylight, and the image is of course washed out even with high contrast
> Screen Goo, so don’t expect any miracles.
>
> JVC DLA-X30 (black)
> This is a large, heavy projector, but has excellent image quality. It’s
> designed for home theaters, so at only 1300 lumens it needs a very dark
> space. In a light-locked, black room though, you will be amazed at the
> contrast ratio. These have also been very reliable, even for 12/7 use, and
> lamps are affordable. Unfortunately there is no built-in on/off schedule.
> Used four of these for our Ori Gersht exhibition and we were all very happy.
>
> Mitsubishi WD380U-EST (white)
> This has been our ultra short-throw projector for a few years. The colors
> have faded and the screen-door effect is noticeable. Also given the
> intensely short throw distance, and affordable price, it’s to be expected
> that the optics aren’t perfect. I found that the image isn’t PERFECTLY
> square, so you definitely want to paint to fit the projection, not the
> other way around. Really long bulb life though, (4000+ hours) and they’re
> cheap. There are many more options available now, and while this one has
> served us well, I wouldn’t recommend it.
>
> Looking to buy:
> High brightness projector for large scale video artwork projection in
> galleries with other spot-lit objects. Wondering about Epson’s 3LCD and
> Canon’s LCoS projectors.
>
> Hope this is useful to some of you. Again, I’d love to hear whatever you
> have to say about the projectors at your museum or gallery.
>
> Thanks,
> George
>
> (Please don’t contact me with unsolicited offers or services)
>
> ––
>
> GEORGE SCHAROUN
> Technical Producer, Gallery Media
> Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
> gschar...@mfa.org | 617-369-3512
> http://www.mfa.org
>
> ___
> You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer
> Network (http://www.mcn.edu)
>
> To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l@mcn.edu
>
> To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit:
> http://mcn.edu/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l
>
> The MCN-L archives can be found at:
> http://www.mail-archive.com/mcn-l@mcn.edu/
>
___
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Network (http://www.mcn.edu)

To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l@mcn.edu

To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit:
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Re: [MCN-L] OCR Software

[Mia]

Abbyy (http://www.abbyy.com/) seems to be the market leader for OCR. I'm
sure others will have examples of training OCR packages on their material
and building OCR into their digitisation workflow. Platforms like the
Internet Archive also produce OCR texts from uploaded files, and other
tools are listed at
http://www.digitisation.eu/tools-resources/demonstrator-platform/

We've been experimenting with Transkribus (
https://transkribus.eu/Transkribus/) for handwritten text recognition.

Best regards,

Mia


Dr Mia Ridge
Digital Curator, British Library


http://openobjects.org.uk/
http://twitter.com/mia_out
Check out my book! http://bit.ly/CrowdsourcingCulturalHeritage

I mostly use this address for list mail; my open.ac.uk address is checked
daily

On 18 November 2015 at 17:53, Locker, Mark  wrote:

> Hi,
> We are beginning a massive digitization project in which we will be
> scanning thousands of documents. Most will probably be typewritten but
> definitely will have handwritten documents as well. Anyone out there using
> OCR software, especially anything that manages handwriting successfully?
> Thanks,
> Mark
>
> Mark T. Locker
> Data Manager, DNA
> Office: 503.532.3280
> Cell: 503.810.2461
> dna.nike.com
>
>
> ___
> You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer
> Network (http://www.mcn.edu)
>
> To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l@mcn.edu
>
> To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit:
> http://mcn.edu/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l
>
> The MCN-L archives can be found at:
> http://www.mail-archive.com/mcn-l@mcn.edu/
>
>
___
You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer 
Network (http://www.mcn.edu)

To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l@mcn.edu

To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit:
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The MCN-L archives can be found at:
http://www.mail-archive.com/mcn-l@mcn.edu/

Re: [MCN-L] LAM interoperability SIG?

[Sarah Clark]

I am also interested in interoperability.  Since we have a very small staff,
I work with artifacts, photographs, books, archival collections--just about
anything you can think of, as well as digital images, associated metadata,
and online database records.  Juggling different systems and standards is a
challenge!  We use PastPerfect software to manage all our different kinds of
collections.  I can't always follow all the technical discussion here, but
I'm very interested.  Please try to keep us smaller institutions in mind in
your discussions.  Thanks!

Sarah Clark
Curator
Historic Richmond Town, Staten Island Historical Society
441 Clarke Avenue, Staten Island, NY  10306
718-351-1611, ext. 272
www.historicrichmondtown.org

Explore our collections at:
http://historicrichmondtown.org/treasures/online-collections-database 



-Original Message-

Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2015 19:07:31 -0500
From: Brian Wilson 
To: mcn-l@mcn.edu
Subject: Re: [MCN-L] LAM interoperability SIG?
Message-ID:

Re: [MCN-L] Touch screen monitors

[hoplist]

I’m a big fan of Planar Systems. They are a very personal company in an 
impersonal business whose product lines target the exhibition market. US based 
with great personal support and their products are world class.

http://www.planar.com/products/large-format-displays/

I wrote this a few weeks ago in response to a similar question. It does not 
directly address securing a browser running HTML, but I hope it’s helpful.

> There is no one-size-fits-all answer because the needs and circumstances of 
> each installation are different. It requires a multi-layered approach. First, 
> define the threats. Prioritize them, then look for the mitigations of those 
> threats. There are so many potential failure points and they can’t all be 
> addressed with one approach.
> 
> Here are some strategies to consider off the top of me head. I am currently 
> securing two Windows 7 exhibits.
> 
> I think of exhibit application security in three layers.
> 
> 1) The App. First, make your foreground app stable as you can. If your 
> foreground app never crashes or gives up focus, the user can only do what it 
> allows. Make sure you’ve disabled all possible options for closing or 
> crashing the app. Let it run for long periods of time and see what happens. 
> For instance, the Windows 10 update blindsided me on this install. A totally 
> new problem!
> 
> 2) Peripherals and Connections. Isolate the system and strip all unnecessary 
> “tools” away from the user especially those that might allow them to crash 
> the foreground application!
>  - Take away the keyboard and mouse and disable unnecessary touch functions 
> and don’t forget the Windows 7 virtual keyboard. Attach a keyboard for admin 
> as needed but don’t leave it accessible to users.
>  - Disable all "network" connections and functions that are not absolutely 
> necessary: ethernet, wi-fi, bluetooth, DNS, DHCP, etc… Most interactives 
> don’t NEED a full time network connection. Even if you do, say for remote 
> admin or a backend system, you will only need narrowly defined functionality. 
> Disable everything and then open only what you need.  Firewall all 
> communications not explicitly required. 
> 
> 3) The System. Make the system as lean and stable as you can.
> - run your app on a “limited” user and strip all needed functions from that 
> user. You can use parental controls on many systems to disable a lot of 
> functionality. And make sure all admin user is password protected! 
> - Disable everything that runs in the background, especially any kind of 
> updating. Turn off all automatic updates and all “alerts.” Remove every 
> background app and function. 
> - I like to automate a periodic restart. This helps with long term stability. 
> Windows simply can’t run for long periods without eventually crashing. It 
> just can’t. Macs too. 
> 
> Those are just highlights. Many threats can be eliminated en masse using 
> security apps and application design, but you still need to think about all 
> the possible undesirable consequences and make sure you are guarding against 
> them. If you keep a close eye on your existing installations, failures will 
> reveal threats that you never anticipated.
> 
> Some other things to consider:
> 
> If the app crashes, what does the user see. I like to clean off the desktop 
> and put a “restart” icon right in the middle. Most users don’t want to hack 
> your system and will happily restart your app for you if it’s obvious how 
> this is done.
> 
> You can also purchase app monitors that will check the run state and restart 
> the app if it crashes. If you have good  monitoring though, this is probably 
> more trouble than help though. It’s a background app. ;)
> 
> Can your user get to physical buttons on your monitors or systems? You can 
> often disable them via menu controls.
> 
> Can users access the power? This allows them to reboot. What happens when the 
> system reboots? Does it automatically load the correct user and application? 
> 
> What happens when power fails? Does the system automatically reboot when 
> power comes back? 
> 
> Etc…
> 
> I’m considering writing a longer more formal “how to" so I’d love to hear 
> anyone’s horror stories or specific configuration tips.

Cheers,
  tod

Technical Director
Hillmann & Carr Inc
202-342-0001


> On Nov 18, 2015, at 2:28 PM, Tamsen Young  wrote:
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> We are looking into purchasing a touchscreen monitor for a web-based
> interactive component to our exhibition. We are looking for one
> approximately 50". We'd also need to lock-down the "website". For iPads I
> do this with a combination of KioskPro and Guided Access. But these are
> Apple apps. Is there equivalent software for large touch monitors?
> 
> Does this list have any brand suggestions and/or specification suggestions
> such as: LED/LCD, output/input must-haves, what to avoid, what must be
> included?
> 
> From scanning the MCN archives I only 

[MCN-L] Projector of choice?

[George Scharoun]

Given the unique requirements of museum projectors, (reliability and excellent 
image quality, often in less than ideal lighting conditions), I find online 
projector reviews leave me with questions.
I would rather hear from all of you what projectors you use, and what you think 
of them.

I’ll go first. At the MFA we use:

Panasonic PT-DZ570U (white)
This model is our work horse. Easy to install, built-in on/off schedule, good 
image quality, but being a 1-chip DLP there’s a slight rainbow effect. We have 
three and have had to send two out for repairs (luckily under warranty). 
Blanking (image crop) and good manual lens control make it pretty easy to line 
up the projector with custom built projection screens. 4000 lumens means a big 
image (9’ wide) looks very good in a darkened room. We recently had to install 
one in a gallery with lots of ambient light from a skylight, and the image is 
of course washed out even with high contrast Screen Goo, so don’t expect any 
miracles.

JVC DLA-X30 (black)
This is a large, heavy projector, but has excellent image quality. It’s 
designed for home theaters, so at only 1300 lumens it needs a very dark space. 
In a light-locked, black room though, you will be amazed at the contrast ratio. 
These have also been very reliable, even for 12/7 use, and lamps are 
affordable. Unfortunately there is no built-in on/off schedule. Used four of 
these for our Ori Gersht exhibition and we were all very happy.

Mitsubishi WD380U-EST (white)
This has been our ultra short-throw projector for a few years. The colors have 
faded and the screen-door effect is noticeable. Also given the intensely short 
throw distance, and affordable price, it’s to be expected that the optics 
aren’t perfect. I found that the image isn’t PERFECTLY square, so you 
definitely want to paint to fit the projection, not the other way around. 
Really long bulb life though, (4000+ hours) and they’re cheap. There are many 
more options available now, and while this one has served us well, I wouldn’t 
recommend it.

Looking to buy:
High brightness projector for large scale video artwork projection in galleries 
with other spot-lit objects. Wondering about Epson’s 3LCD and Canon’s LCoS 
projectors.

Hope this is useful to some of you. Again, I’d love to hear whatever you have 
to say about the projectors at your museum or gallery.

Thanks,
George

(Please don’t contact me with unsolicited offers or services)

––

GEORGE SCHAROUN
Technical Producer, Gallery Media
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
gschar...@mfa.org | 617-369-3512
http://www.mfa.org

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