James' graveyard shift

Here are the slides I gave at the event. I've tweaked one or two, added my notes and of course got the image credits up. Hopefully my notes will go someway to compensating for a stuttering live performance which I can only believe is because my slides were put together 10 mins before I took the floor :) I suggest you watch the slideshow as full screen otherwise my notes my not be legible. If anything is still unclear then pls email me or comment here. Thanks to Dave and Jane for inviting me along. James :)

Alan Greenberg's podcasting talk

Alan Greenberg, from Apple Europe, talked about some of the ways in which museums could use platforms like iTunes to deliver educational content.

Here are some of the references that Ted mentioned:


* Ted Talks - a really rich resources of inspirational presentations.
* The Persee project (can't find a good link for this yet)
* The Long Tail concept coined by Chris Anderson, and elaborated upon in his book of the same name.
* Andrew Keen's book The Cult of the Amateur, which disses the ubiquity of user-generated-content.

A Future Antenna brainstorm

On the first day of the workshops, Dan Evans and Natasha Waterson outlined the state of the Antenna gallery and website, and presented a sketch for what a future Antenna might look like.

I'll leave Dan and Natasha to post more about their vision - but thought I'd post up some of the questions they led the brainstorm with, and open up a space to discuss some of the responses.

1. How would the website be represented on gallery?

There was some discussion in my group as to whether a website (or web content) on gallery should look like a website, and if it doesn't, how do you make gallery visitors aware that there is a website? (marketing vs content delivery needs)

2. How can the website represent the gallery presence?

3. What's the crossover between the gallery and the website?

3. What should the Antenna 'voice' be?

4. What should the moderation be?

5. How much audience involvement should there be?

There were other question asked to, and that arose. I'll dig out the notes later, but feel free to add comments below...

Opening presentations

We've just had two very interesting (and well received) opening presentations, from Carol Lynn Alpert, who reflected back on her experiences at the Museum of Science, Boston, and from Bryan Kennedy, who talked about how the Science Buzz project at the Science Museum of Minnesota.



I'm going to ask Carol Lynn and Bryan to each post a brief entry about their presentations, perhaps including their slides or a short summary, so I won't try to repeat it all here. However, one of the key points (for me at least) from Carol Lynn's presentation, was the need for innovator (such as those delivering contemporary science issues in new ways) to have a level of autonomy within an organisation, in order to overcome institutional inertia.



Carol mentioned a book (or article?) on this topic, for further reading (which I'll try and get the reference for), but I wondered what the experiences are of other colleagues in this area? One observation I note is that several organisations seem to be partly tackling this problem by engaging with a wider community in order to foster innovation, either through developer communities (of enthusiastic amateurs), or by employing external agencies. Is this a useful way forward for museums, or should be be doing more to foster innovation in-house?

Workshop aims

Well, day one of the workshops starts in just under an hour. Before we get going, I've just stopped to post up some of the aims of these two days.

"We'd like to give everyone here a chance to look at, think about and discuss some of the technological opportunities and challenges that museums face over the coming years. In addition, we'd like to look at the challenges and opportunities in building large scale collaborative partnerships."

To meet these aims, we'll be covering four main areas over the course of the two days:

• Converging the real & virtual


• Mobile technologies


• Multi- site collaboration


• Future technologies

The two days will consist of talks, presentations, demonstrations and brainstorming sessions, to help us shape a bold new future in interactive development in exhibitions. We will be discussing how best to use mobile technologies within exhibitions, personal technologies, what the next generation of user generated feedback will be like, large scale collaborative projects and multi-user interactivity.

Participants list

External delegates

Bryan Kennedy - Science Museum of Minessotta
Marie-Christine Hergault - La Cite des Science
Ben Tomlinson - ICO
Dan Sutch - Futurelab
Orando Mathias - AllofUs
Durrell Bishop - Luckybite
Tom Hulbert - Luckybite
Carol Lynn Alpert - Museum of Science Boston
Emily Bottis - Museum of Science Boston
Fiona Cameron - University of Western Sydney
Kevin Walker - Institute of Education
Tobi Schneidler
Ian Duffy - BP
Alan Greenberg - Apple
Terry Braun - BraunArts
Martyn Ware - Illustrious company
James Boardwell - Rattle Research
Patricia Austin - St Martins
Ben Gammon - Ben Gammon Consulting
Andrea Bendelli - Consultant
Ian Smith - CogApps
Ben Rubenstein - CogApps
Fiddian Warman - Soda
Sissel Tolaas - IFF re_searchLab


Science Museum staff

Chris Rapley
Heather Mayfield
Tim Molloy
Jo Quinton Tulloch
Dave Patten
Mel Burns
Julian Payne
Anne Prugnon
Flavio Ferrari
Jo Saull
Dan Evans
Natasha Waterson
Frankie Roberto
Jane Audas
Hannah Redler
Julia Pitts
Kate Steiner
Alex Burch
Charlotte Stone
Rachael Bowden
Jean Franczyk

National Media Museum staff

Joe Stock Brook
Joe Savage

Workshop agenda

This is the agenda for the workshop.

Wednesday 12th October

09.30 - 10.00 tea and coffee
10.00 - 10.30 Welcome, house keeping, introduction, scene setting for 1st session
10.30 - 10.45 Carol Lynn Alpert - CS&T in Boston
10.45 - 11.00 Bryan Kennedy - Science Buzz in Minnesota
11.00 - 11.20 Tea & coffee
11.20 - 12.00 Daniel Evans & Natasha Waterson - A Future Antenna
12.00 - 13.00 Brainstorm
01.00 - 01.50 Lunch
01.50 - 2.10 Brainstorm feedback
02.10 - 02.40 Alan Greenberg - Podcasting
02.40 - 03.10 Marie-Christine Hergault - Exhibitions at the Cite des Science, Paris
03.10 - 03.30 Tea & coffee
03.30 - 04.00 Fiddian Warman - Soda demonstrations
04.00 - 04.30 Ben Gammon - Mobile & Handheld technologies
04.30 - 04.50 Brainstorm
04.50 - 05.30 Feedback and discussion

Thursday 13th October

09.00 - 09.30 Tea & Coffee
09.30 - 09.40 Introduction & housekeeping
09.40 - 10.00 Durrell Bishop & Tom Hulbert - Luckybite demonstrations
10.00 - 10.40 Dan Sutch - Mobile technologies
10.40 - 11.20 Brainstorm (with tea and coffee at 11.00)
11.20 - 11.40 Feedback & discussion
11.40 - 12.00 Heather Mayfield - Collaborative Projects
12.00 - 12.20 Carol Lynn Alpert - Collaborative Projects NiseNet
12.20 - 12.40 Bryan Kennedy - Collaborative Projects NiseNet
12.40 - 01.20 Brainstorm
01.20 - 02.15 Lunch
02.15 - 02.45 Dave Patten - Future technologies
02.45 - 03.15 Bryan Kennedy - Future technologies
03.15 - 03.45 James Boardwell - Social networks and designing experiences
03.45 - 04.00 Tea & coffee
04.00 - 04.20 Martyn Ware - 3d audio
04.20 - 05.00 Brainstorm
05.00 - 05.30 Feedback, discussion & next steps