Informal learning session

I have Tim's ppt slides and hopefully will upload them when i can figureb out how to! The film shifthappens is here.
A reminder that my paper is on my wiki.
Glad it's over - i think i need this!

Social media conference: Friday 29th February

Here we are at the Museum of Sydney getting ready to speak, argue, engage and have fun with a packed house of 125 people or so.

Kevin Von Appen: What are we doing is communicating, collaborating, connecting, collecting, co-creating, colonising. Noted websites that I already uploaded links to in my earlier post.

Also remembered the post I did on what is Web 2.0 which you can access here.

Some other sites he mentioned (I'll upload the links later):

Climatexchange, questacon

Collection x, Canada

instructables.

Brooklyn museum

Tech.org

Need to think about impact: what do we look for and how do we measure it, what should we value.

Seb inspired us all to remember that social media is hard – the technology is not. It takes a mind-shift across the whole institution (I think we're all going to be saying the same things today! We need to make strategic choices – the right choices. Social media is a website strategy. Social media strategy includes other websites you don't have any or little control over. Hopefully I have capture the major slide in this foto. Seb also talked about the stuart site – he has blogged about it here.

Social media conference special presentation: Kevin von Appen and Caroline Payson

Today we were fortunate to have Kevin von Appen, Ontario Science Centre, and Caroline Payson, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, talk to a group of staff about what they do. These are my very rough notes.

Some points from Kevin’s talk:
• Social nature of Australians makes us prime candidates to uptake social media
• 1 in 6 teens in Australia has their own blog (I suggest this figure is higher give that MySpace and Bebo have their own blog function)online experiences are rooted in the physical (i.e. the stuff we have – I found this strongly when talking to students at e-kids’ college)
• Museums – we’re all in this together
• Web allows museums to react quickly to big issues (and invite others to collaborate I would suggest)
• One way to get content out there is to colonise virtual communities (e.g. YouTube and Facebook)
• Video is an increasingly popular tool (more downloads of videos from their site than everything else put together)
• Operated in a skunkworks kind of approach – created sites outside of the corporate site in order to experiment – challenge now is to bring these all together
• Rapid idea generator (RIG): process to generate lot of ideas around a specific topic, challenge or opportunity and to physically manifest ideas in unexpected ways to create unexpected dialogue
Websites presented:
• SFMOMA podcasting and Vox Pops
• steve.museum
• Ilikemuseums
• Science buzz (Science Museum of Minnesota)
• Redshift Now

Caroline’s points:
• Had to think about conjunction between physical presence and web presence – how to make the best of both?? Used a problem-solving approach to come up with ideas and approaches
• They do have access to great people
• Can’t be all things to all people all the time – this is unachievable
• They decide to focus on one group and branch out from there
• 9 online visitors to 1 physical visitor – mostly clicking on the educational aspect
• Teach teachers how to think like designers to take back into classroom to go through processes of design – design as a process is a great way to work together and create knowledge and is relevant across other disciplines apart from just design
• Site focusses on process not objects – they consciously made this decision
• Design for the other 99% exhibition had a bigger life after the physical exhibition closed
• Emphasised the casual nature of the blog – it’s not an academic treatise
• Their Director made them work differently – you won’t have three specialist meetings each week, you’ll have two and spend the other time on your blog
• There’s’ a community out there no matter what you’re interested in (even knitters who watch Law and Order and have cats ... umm, I tried to find this blog but got led on an merry adventure by Google, can’t say any more than that!)
• Caroline’s “butt rule”: should be able to get everything you need (i.e. resources) without moving your butt
• The Educator Resource Centre site is well worth a good look and play
• Conversation strand – has become the place for design teachers across US to talk about design education, also searchable and can upload fotos and video
• Did a lot of user-testing with teachers
• Have paid teachers to post, write materials and moderate (in future)
• Online visitation has increased 9-1, more visitors than the museum shop
Web philosophy – embrace collection and get more online, everything online supports the mission, reach other audiences, one site will meet the needs of all areas of the museum.

Overall an exhausting, yet highly productive and stimulating day. Kinda looking forward to another full day tomorrow!

Social Media and Cultural Communication Conference 2008: preamble

Well, it's almost time for the Conference and Masterclasses to happen. All the overseas speakers have arrived safe and sound and ready for action. I have finally finished my paper and have uploaded it to my wiki. It's a bit rough around the edges but you'll catch my drift. Basically the argument is:

• the principles of informal learning, constructivism and social media match very closely,
  
• museum visitors use these tools,
  
• visitors want to have more two-way interactions with museums, and
  
• the physical and on-line experiences are very closely linked.
  

So, why then hasn't social media been taken up in greater numbers by museums??

I'll keep posting as the conference progresses, when I upload depends on whether there's wireless available so expect some time lags.

Australia says sorry

On Wednesday 13 February the Australian Government will say sorry to the Stolen Generations. This is an historic occasion in Australia and one that many people feel very strongly about.

Do you want to know more? Here are some useful links:

• GetUp! Campaign Actions – contains a useful Mythbusters Fact Sheet
  
• reconcile - National Apology – lists where to view the live broadcast and has some background information
  
• ABC Online – will be streaming the apology live. They will probably have a separate webpage which I'll upload when I find it
  
• Indigenous Australia – the Museum's site with information and links

Organisational change, Web 2.0, etc etc

As many of you know, I have been posting and thinking lots about this issue.
Having had a lovely, three-continent conversation with Martin Stewart Weeks and Paul Johnston from Cisco tonight, we got talking about how we deal with this thorny issue. Paul and Martin pointed me to this wonderful paper The Neuroscience of Leadership:
“Why do people resist change so stubbornly, even when it’s in their own interest?” wonder CEOs like Mike. Changing the way others go about their work is harder than he has expected. New advances in neuroscience provide insight into why change can be so difficult, and there are several key findings." and so it continues. Well worth a read.
Me? I'm still wondering if we should take the Gordon Ramsay approach to organisational change - for those of you on Facebook check out this post. For those of you that aren't - tune in, 9.30pm EST Thursdays (warning - its addictive!!).