Category: Museums

This week was I got up to:

• Explored research collaboration with University of Bath – if anybody has £8,000 kicking around to give us to have a PhD student you know where to find me!
• Ran a 30min introduction to using twitter for Natural Sciences. It’s important we give the keys to our social efforts to the curators and I look forward to what they cook up
• Discovered which path of “accountability” I need to tread to use various online services
• Met with two of our student groups to have a demo of their projects. I was blown away by their progress and both could be used as they are quite nicely
• Sat with our exhibition designer Simon to see what contribution our team needs to make for Moved by Conflict which opens in October.
• Gave an update to the wider management team about the new website and using online tools for managing projects
• Found out i’m very curious about records management
• I’ll be contributing to a HLF digital bid we hope to put in – funny as I co-wrote the digital guidance back in 2012 and now i’m on the other side of the desk
• Reviewed some tenders
• Discussed with two curators about how we can blog and use our tools to build interest for an exhibition next year
• Started to think aloud about our content strategy

Coming out of the haze of two substantial bids this week felt like light work in comparison:

• Finally submitted the Nesta digital r and d bid
• Agreed how we’d use our Nexus 7 tablets for the English Magic exhibition. Finally get to make an ebook!
• Waved goodbye to Mark who has been supporting our moving image digitisation programme
• Shared my ideas with our interim director about online tools for running projects
• Sat with marketing to discuss their input on the new website
• Mark P took me on a tour of the M shed kiosks as we work to switch over from using umbraco to run them to our collection management tool eMU
• Started to use basecamp for an internal project to showcase the benefit for the service. I suspect the Council has plans for project management across the landscape but no doubt it will something different…
• I have taken on a lot of the evaluation and performance role functions so had a positive session with Fay to look at the essentials
• Really enjoyed meeting an English Heritage  contact to find out how they are going to be approaching digital and I’ve offered to lend a hand if they need
• Reviewed some tenders for a local partner. Please note that if you use public money we expect open practices and sharing of the outputs. If you don’t want to play then get off our court
• Shared the first visual designs of the website with a fairly wide group and was excited to see the design language work.

 

This week was tiring and well over those 37 hours:

• Attended the Council budget training for the second time – the user experience and user interface are so poor that please note ‘user acceptance testing’ is not the same as user testing from the beginning
• Met up with a local business wanting to pitch us selling audio services
• Showed our new website progress to the central comms team and got some helpful tips
• Spent A LOT of time on our Nesta Digital r and d application only for the website to crash on submission day. A HUGE thanks to Gail Boyle for carrying me to the finish line
• Met with fffunction to get a first peek at the website visual design
• Spoke on Thursday evening at museumshowoff
• Discussed what the next steps were for the British empire and commonwealth collection from a digital view

This week I managed to get up to:

• Switched from an intensive and antiquated system for organising our exhibition ‘private views’ to using eventbrite
• Enjoyed an event to officially launch our inclusive audio guide ‘DiscoveryPens‘ which Paul organised
• We submitted our major Arts Council bid which is a huge deal for the future of the service, wish us luck!
• Got the news that several great folk will be taking voluntary severance
• Switched my brain from the ACE bid to the Nesta digital R and D fund for the arts bid
• Started to outline key objectives for 2014-15
• Enjoyed the Pervasive Media studio lunchtime talk about using ibeacons which I hope we can begin to experiment with
• Outlined plans for several talks I’ll be giving soon

Roll on next week.

By the end of this week I could see the light at the end of the tunnel for two of our major project bids. I still managed to get up to some mischief:

• Had a great chat with future cities to see how we may be able to work together. The museum should have a strong role to play, being one of the few free public indoor spaces left…
• Dipped in and out of Arts Council bid stuff
• Met with the University of Bristol and aardman to develop our joint Nesta bid. Great to have folks to bounce ideas off
• Discussed what the folks at the L Shed needed from me to help them – scanning equipment, staying out of their way and putting in some wifi were the main areas of focus
• Chopped it up with David from the Watershed to find out all about their digital work
• Attended bathcamp 44
• Attended a lunchtime talk at the pervasive media studio from Daniel Meadows
• Two post-doc students from the University of Bristol demo’ed a prototype combining motion tracking and a clever way of interacting with objects. I really hope we can test this approach soon
• Fought bravely for a digital budget…

Pretty hardcore work due to the pending major bid deadline BUT still managed to keep these little plates spinning:

• Attended day two of the No Boundaries conference
• Neck deep in final Arts Council bid work…80 percent of my week
• Got permission to purchase replacement IT kit
• Discussed how IT and digital might support the Moved by Conflict exhibition. Particularly the use of sensors for interaction
• Discussed how I could contribute to our third and final year Paul Hamlyn Foundation project
• We conducted a half day user testing session for the new website with real visitors.

Luke Wright, Poet

Wednesday 26th February, Watershed

I attended day two of a packed house for the no boundaries conference #nb2014. I stumbled across some great folks and made a few loose notes. If you want the detail then check elsewhere as these are just random bits that interested me. Any errors about what was said is entirely my bad translation.

Simon Meller, Arts Council, spoke about the case for public investment:

• Need to improve engagement and inequality of access
• Lots of potential for partnerships with higher education – need to measure impact and support continuing and lifelong learning
• Show the links between arts, the creative industries and employment
• We need longitudinal study to show impact
• We can work globally by opening up our collections
• Four key themes are Culture (insights, citizens, identity), Education (Primary/secondary, continuing, higher education), Society (wellbeing, health, engagement), Economy (Creative industry, regeneration, tourism)
• Question from the audience making a plea for arts to focus on the “outside” where folks are e.g. Primark

Tom Morris, Bristol Old Vic said:

• spoke of the power of narrative
• Listening to the stories the public want to tell as its happening with or without u
• Trust our artists

George Ferguson, Bristol Mayor said:

• spoke about the arts being able to bring the City together and its our duty to give a sense of belonging
• Need to sell ourselves better to the public and the politicians
• When asked what kept him awake at 4am he said it was the need for us to “provide a catalyst

York Council boss said:

• we needed to foster the creative potential
• Internationalism and diversity go together

Walter Richard Sickert prints and drawings in need of digitising

This week was pretty busy:

• More Arts Council bid work…
• Skype chat about how we can use tablets to improve the visitor experience
• Discussion of how the new website can support the learning team
• How we can take online bookings – hoping we can use shopify for the heavy lifting
• A visit to M Shed to see how we can combine a tablet and flat screen to enable interaction with our ‘contributing wrap’
• Got permission to spend some external grant money to purchase a portable audio recording setup
• Visited the Office of National Statistics to give a talk on how we deal with intellectual property, make digital media, and make use of a digital asset management system (DAM)
• Hosted the monthly Social Media South West meetup and gave a talk with Claire Royall called “Reasonable doubt – how the museum us getting social”
• Helped Paul Sullivan get blogging over at www.pauldsullivan.com which let me see that wordpress has some poor accessibility quirks
• Briefly joined Trevor and David discuss digitisation requirements for 2014 which includes digitising a bunch of Walter Richsrd Sickert and Bristol Suspension Bridge prints and drawings (see above photo)
• Chopped it up with Adam about the progress of the new website navigation
• Rolled the dice on budget requirements for 2014-2015

Next week I really hope I can find somebody to help us take online payments…

This week was slightly less hardcore than the previous few weeks:

• Community support by taking on a student for his  year 10 work experience for a week
• Moved from discovery to alpha phase for the website project
• Agreed how we’d do advanced ticketing for the next temporary exhibition online
• Got to grips with eventbrite
• Came up with way to start getting digital in the houses
• Met with Ian from aardman to discuss our full proposal for the Nesta Digital fund
• Reviewed another draft of our Arts Council bid
• Discussed how marketing and PR would help with the website project
• Confirmed my apprentice into the post – she has been a real asset
• One of our collaboration partner teams from the University of Bristol gave their beta demo of the volunteer database they have been making for us
• Started to get excited about our wikimedia proposal with the Bristol Record Office
• Swore that next year’s budget will be ruled with an iron fist ha!

 

 

This week was primarily focused on meeting internal teams to update them on the website project. I’ll have a student on work experience next week and dealing with the Arts Council bid so this week I tried to clear the decks.

• I met with members of the Natural Sciences team who are keen to build their team online activities. This won’t make phase 1 but anticipating future needs is vital. I’m assuming the BBC Nature History Unit will be a good baseline to start with
• The Public programme team’s needs are straightforward but the devil is in the detail. Their user needs will be met in the ‘plan your visit’ user journey. Also they need the website to deal with online ticketing.
• I met someone keen to volunteer for archives. We need hands at the pumps in that area so hopefully we can work together very soon
• The World cultures collections team are eager to blog for the new website. They were receptive to being user focused too
• The Development team are responsible for fundraising so we met to iron out possible user needs. We spent time reviewing other museum journeys and think we have a direction.
• I met 6 students from the University of the West of England (UWE) we photography students who will be snapping away between now and may. Although we have lots of marketing images I think there is lots of scope for ‘behind the scenes’ and documentary style photos. They help us do this and in return we act as a real client.
• We have started to see if a raspberry pi computer can replace some aging mac mini computers that are showing their age.
• We have a lot of kit in need of replacing so me and Zahid spent half a day preparing the list. This need to go to a panel to agree.
• Dan from fffunction wrote about his website research review for the website project
• In two weeks i’ll be talking with Claire Royall at Social Media South West so had to start on our talk
• Wrote a blog post about IT Services and my frustrations that will stay in the vault for now!