Wednesday, May 08, 2013

This is why I love and hate Wikipedia.

Salad

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Salad is a non-runny, ready-to-eat dish made of heterogeneous ingredients in a wet or once wet base served chilled or at a moderate temperature. Many people use the word "salad" to describe light, savory leafy vegetable dishes often served with a sauce or dressing but the category usually additionally includes dishes made of such ingredients as fruits, grains, meats, seafood, and sweets. It has been pointed out that is difficult to define what is meant by the term "salad" - many salads use raw vegetable, but some salads use cooked ingredients, and most salads use vegetables, but such things as fruit salads (which use fruit rather than vegetables also exist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salad

It seems clear that the List of Salads page is likely written by someone who may never have actually made a salad. Highlight salads include Arab salads, Cheese slaw, Crab Louie, Eggplant salads and appetizers, and the Snickers salad.

The nice person would jump in and help the drowning people, but I'm just going to stand on the edge and point and giggle, because THAT'S THE TYPE OF PERSON I AM.

A lovely addendum from my friend Karl:
"In case you would not know, in French, the expression:

Quelle salade! (what salad)

means 'What a mess!', a confusing situation and

Raconter des salades. (Telling salads)

means 'Telling cracks.'"

Posted at 3:08 pm

Monday, April 22, 2013

#mw2013 notes, 4/20

Closing Plenary What can museums learn from immersive theater? with Diane Borger, USA, Seb Chan, Suse, Ed

In which a incredible-sounding production called SLEEP NO MORE by PUNCHDRUNK in NYC was discussed as an alternative device for exhibition design.

"I'm not sure I liked it. I'll have to go again." #mw2013

— George Oates (@stamenglo) April 20, 2013

Stick a bar in your museum. Profit! #mw2013

— George Oates (@stamenglo) April 20, 2013

Scarcity, not inclusiveness, as marketing approach. We all like to crack a secret, and to feel special. #sleepnomore #mw2013

— George Oates (@stamenglo) April 20, 2013

Respect, but not distance. #mw2013

— George Oates (@stamenglo) April 20, 2013

A dark, poorly-lighted museum. #mw2013

— George Oates (@stamenglo) April 20, 2013

(Sorry, that should have been "a dirty, poorly-lighted museum," with apologies to Hemingway.)

Posted at 2:33 pm

Sunday, April 21, 2013

#mw2013 notes, 4/19

Museums & The Web 4/19/13

What is a Museum Technologist?
Rich Cherry, Rob Stein

• "I'm a museum person."
• "We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be." Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
• Survey results
• "Post-technology"

+++++++

Avoiding Icebergs While Steering the Titanic

• Erin Coburn formerly @ Met, consultant in digital strategy
• Tim Hart, Jonny Brownbill @ Museum Victoria
• Carrie Barratt, Ryan Donohue @ MET
• Leo Bayarte (1996), Chad Coerver @ SFMOMA
• Dana Mittroff-Silvers, consultant

Chad

• SFMOMA on the edge of tremendous change. Building closing on June 2nd.
• New space 3x its current space
• "White thing lurking at the back there."
• Museum+, Hong Kong
• Content Strategy + Digital Engagement; in Curatorial Affairs Department
  • Web + Digital
  • Community Engagement
  • Interpretive Media
  • Publications
  • Design Studio

Erin + Carrie

• Digital Media Department formed after Tom Campbell became director, to enhance the scholarly experience
• Carrie responsible for dept.
• Project by Project or according to strategic initiatives? Or both?
• Conscious of when technology is appropriate in the gallery - when does a screen or device help us convey richer content?
• Funding is one of the key challenges
  • Met Publications - all back catalog - partnered with Google; connected to CMS
  • Guitar Heroes app
• Rolling wave of work for "clients" within the museum
• If we do it right, each group in the department should be involved in all digital media project

Tim/Jonny

• 3 museums
• Since 2003, there's been a network management model
• 3 divisions - services, front-of house, collections
• Tensions between Collections and everyone else
• "Capacity Group"
• Museums Leadership Group meets monthly, not really a decision-making group
• Executive Group meets each week
• Concentration on "in-sourcing" - cheaper to grow skills than buy them
• Digital transformation is about workflows, structure, and people
• Systems, experience, content and transaction
• Whole of organization digital strategy. Don't want it to be personality-based. Try to change everyone, make them understand why its important.
• Technology isn't the issue anymore. There are great plumbers, but now its coming back to the audience, and people in the museum. Bring staff along with ideas.

Discussion: Why, How, and Impact of Org Structures

1. Why did the institution decide to change and what were the motivations?
2. How did they do it?
3. What is it like to be part of a new structure/program?

• Production-oriented department
• Collaborative project structure
• Museums tend to overthink things. Look for internal entrepreneurship. Dana/Chad
• Machine with lots of wheels going at different speeds. Tim
• Look at drawing practice around media and publishing from the for-profit sector. Look for tools. Ryan
  • Real opportunity is drawing inspiration from colleagues in models and work progress. Ryan
• "It's going to be modified, and it's going to be wonderful." Carrie
• Is the end goal always efficiency? Sometimes restructuring creates inefficiencies
• Distributed content creation model. Create a hub that people know where they can go to solve a problem.
• "Slow is our DNA." Ryan
• Think about when digital doesn't matter to people too. Things might take 10 years.
• What is the technical debt? (Should we build this in isolation or do something more sustainable?)
• "People don't come to work to be bastards."

+++++++++

Digital Strategy from Europe to the US

• Digital Strategy from Europe to the US.
  Chair: Koven Smith
• Communicating the Museum: From Digital Strategy to Plan of Action – Two Years Down the Road
  - Kajsa Hartig, Sweden
• Utopia Then, Reality Now: (Re)considering the Wiki Model in Museum Culture 
  - Sarah Hromack, USA
• Destination Success: Sustaining your digital strategy
  - Carolyn Royston, United Kingdom
• Tate Digital Strategy: Digital as a dimension of everything
  - John Stack, United Kingdom

John

• Published a digital strategy for 2010-2012. A list of everything that's wrong.
• No need to get consensus to tear website down and rebuild it.
• Unlocked funds internally.
• Spent 2 years rebuilding the site.
• Dormant potential of digital begun to emerge.
  • Other departments began to ask John for help.
  • Departments would incorporate digital into their own strategies independently.
  • Digital roles started appearing.
  • Become a concern of each department.
• New strategy doc released, 2013. Publishing it in a couple of weeks
• Interviewed staff. Discovered very different levels of maturity about digital, but ambitious.
• 6 themes emerged from interviews
  1. Distributed authorship. Looking for tools/guidelines. Needs co-ordinations
  2. Issues bigger and more complex than they used to be. E.g. wifi in the gallery etc. "You just spent $100,000 in the last 5 minutes."
  3. Editorial content produced through exhibitions etc. Brand moving to having many voices.
  4. Dialogue/Discussion; Community Management
  5. Audience-Centered Approach needed. Lots of assumptions being made about audience, not based on analysis of needs.
  6. Revenue Generation. "Digital is just a money tap."
• Content, Community, Revenue, Organizational Change

Sarah

• "What is the digital media department?"
  • What does it mean for the field and for institutions?
• Does digital even need its own department? Why fetishize/gettoize it?
• Persistent question of the validity of digital. So the department becomes a political statement about being part of the conversation.
• Tried in 2008/2009 to be more dispersed in the org. Dispersed content management structure. Production in the hands of many.
  • Helped develop an active daily conversation around the digital space.
  • Too many cooks, not a unified front in terms of voice or design.
  • Actually very interesting and fitting facade that speaks to the Whitney, if ugly
• Got a digital media department, launched 2012. Now can make stronger cases for funding/support.
• Is the all hands on deck approach worth it?

Carolyn

• Wrote digital strategy in 2009, published in 2010, largely about creating a department
• At the end of 2012, it needed an update.
• Now increased financial pressure, but some infrastructure.
• New sense of urgency. Build on what we'd already done.
• New focus on developing the confidence, initiative and digital capability of staff, embedded in the organization.
• 4 key areas:
  1. Transformational Projects (get us there quicker)
  2. Transformation of the department itself. No longer just about project delivery, but now about coaching and facilitation, building in sustainability. There will only be so much growth in the department
  3. Better integrate technical systems
  4. Develop digital capability of staff.
     • "Computer Club." Informal, for all staff. Every director is coming. Hands-on, with staff. Nothing that will be done will be museum-related. It's about fun.
     • Digital leadership will emerge across the organization.
     • Stickers!

Kajsa

• Largest historical museum
• Largely analog until 2009
• New Media Department created 2011
  • Supports the rest of the museum. IT, Digital Producer, and Kajsa, the Digital Navigator.
  • Every museum should have a digital navigator.
  • Parallel to marketing
  • Communicate digital resources; use digital tools for communication
• Has budget, staff, can initiate projects.
• Digital hasn't moved out into the org yet.
• Producing the new website has slowed us down, but should lead to new efficiencies.
• Questions
  • Do we need more staff?
  • How do we create a digital museum?
  • Should we scrap our strategy and infect the org?
• Swedish ad agency - removed "digital" from everyone's title

Discussion

• What's the difference between a strategy and plan?
  • Tech projects (ticketing?)
  • These are our priorities, these things need funding, etc
  • This won't happen without the whole org participating
  • Encourage staff to come to digital with amazing ideas. Direction should be set from all sorts of directions.
• Normalization of digital media is interesting
  • Idea now is how do we incubate these ideas then turn them into normal practice
  • Putting a process around content production and use the department as locus for conversation about digital strategery. Department as conduit. Consolidate and be strategic about effort. Keep an eye on duplicated effort
  • Skunkworks - jet engine on fighter plane at Lockheed Martin made by best brains in the company. Now all planes have jet engines. Outputs high quality; very tightly co-ordinated; totally unscalable; alienates the rest of the org. Doesn't work if you're trying to expand things.
    • Workshops, consensus, training etc
  • 2010 -> 2012 now a mentoring role. Can't plan for 10 or 20 years. Must be much more agile in thinking and planning.
• Q: How are you dealing with multiple digital strategies from the various departments across the org?
  • IWM is starting to pull out some priorities recognizing that we need to raise digital literacy. Should start to be seeing these various strategies integrate (with the same priorities across the org). Complicated where the strategies would meet. Need much more fluid org structures (people use that as a blocking mechanism).
  • Set of digital competencies for staff integrated into job descriptions/job ads. Directors, heads of depts and staff have them too.
  • What is the role of a digital leader at those different levels?
• Q: In the 90s marketing was the new kid on the block.
  • Should there be a digital literacy trainer in HR departments?
  • Some staff don't use computers as a position.
• Digital media departments needs to stay at the front of the curve on behalf of the organization. It's not OK for the department to own those skills because it sends an implicit message to the rest of the staff that they're not useful in digital [Ed sorry, missed that point a bit.]
• Q: What can we learn from the audience?
  • Audience analysis is critical.
  • Where TATE has failed is where we haven't considered the audience. John is ashamed.
• Q: "Digital Mole in the education department," acting as a bridge in the department, using a network model at TATE.
• Q: There is digital illiteracy in my org. Tiny IT team. Outpaced by other departments. How can I harness that energy but not hold people back?
  • "I feel you."
  • "This is a fantastic idea." Don't lose the idea. It's PR.
  • Define your governance. Anyone can submit a question, but only one can pull things out of the pot.
    • These are the things we're already doing, so yes.
    • That's coming down the pipe soon, so we'll get back to you.
    • We've got no idea about that, so, go for it and we'll see what happens.

Posted at 8:36 pm