Category: Notes

As we hit the final month of the year there was quite a lot of flipping from the past to the future in my talks.

• Agreed our retail approach for Hogarth exhibition which includes sending a brief to local artists for bespoke items
• Trained 15 or so people on hte basics of using Trello for task management
• 1:1s with my digital team who are working on breaking down Moved by Conflict, prototyping our digital signage (due April-May), website phase two and more besides
• Researched exhibition charges so that we could agree the charges for Nature, Camera, Action! exhibition
• Met the local arts audience group for a catch up and to meet Ann from Audience Agency who gave us an update on the Audience Finder project. The general vibe is that things have changed and we may need to strike out on our own for the kinds of insights we’ll be needing. Using Audience Finder to meet our finding agreement.
• Explained the new internal room booking system during the all staff meeting which basically uses Outlook calendars
• Reviewed progress with our catering and venue hire partner Levy, going over the finances and issues
• Grabbed a post work drink which is always nice
• Talked Finance and benefits realisation with Kevin from the central service
• Had a progress review of the website phase two project which is coming along nicely
• Partly agreed the budget situation for 2015-16
• Attend the MemoryScapes Tea party at Knowle West Media Centre which was a project to capture memories and objects. The interaction chest was fun.
• Sat in on a meeting with the ops team and Otis to hear about what is needed to get our 1930s good lift back in action. I learned about lifts which is actually a nice mechanical setup
• Attended First Friday meet up hosted by Watershed
• We published two blogs posts about the Hidden museum project – using ibeacons and our first user test

Busy.

• Reviewed what data we collect across the service so that we can implement better performance measurement. Fay did a great job of bringing this together so that we can use a KPI benchmark spreadsheet for staff and our partners Birmingham and Tyne and Wear.
• Hosted Peter Holloway for his second retail diagnostic visit. We still have posters from the 1980 in stock…
• Marketing catch up
• Met my student as producer group to see their visitor counter prototype again which looks slick
• Toured The Bottle Yard Studios to find out what goes on
• Visited Exeter to join the South West creative forum quarterly session. Heard about two projects and the upcoming No Boundaries conference
• Sat with Rosie from Visitor services to see how our teams can better work together
• Workshop session with fffunction and the learning team to plan improves to their web offer, including online booking.
• Chopped it up with Claire from Situations about my role, their work and working together

Half term this week which meant a VERY busy museum service and quiet offices. Our visitor services did an amazing job.

• Desktop research of image licensing service Bridgeman – they haven’t emailed me back though so not the best start
• 1:1’s with the fundraising team so I can better understand the opportunities and challenges on a personal level
• CMT manager meeting
• Showed World cultures how to use trello
• Attended team meetings
• Agreed to use outlook for room bookings with Fran
• Took the events manager into our ‘transformation’ area
• Agreed with Jim from The Audience Agency how we’d chop up our exit surveys so that we can segment our audience
• Planned the schedule for our retail manager interviews
• Started to collect our “data” together so that we can get better insights into a whole bunch of stuff!

There is only so long you can dodge HR work. This week:

• Agreed a way forward for our ‘project sign-off’ process
• Worked in the BaRAS office all afternoon to see and hear about life at the unit – where i squeezed in some HR work
• 1:1s of various kinds
• Final budget forecasting of the year
• Met Claire Zammit from Tessitura to talk all things CRM
• Talked about our how our digital signage would actually work and agreed to do paper prototypes – our screens are currently on the Arula ship in the Pacific
• Talked about collecting and using audience data which will be a hot topic for 2015
• Looked at how we can implement a performance dashboard
• Showed the fundraising team our audience work and how we can use it together
• Wrote a thank you to our electrician for all his great recent work

Ice or no ice i’m biking to work people so I could:

• Waved farewell to our retail manager Ollie Rees
• Did several staff briefings for our visitor assistants about website phase two
• Enjoyed coffee with Bonnie who works in strategic planning to learn more about both of our areas
• Interviewed and recruited to one of our vacant retail assistant posts – well done Nicky
• Took part in the first of many sessions about our service ‘vision’ and 10 year ambitions – survive and thrive
• Finances, finances and more finances
• Telephone interview with Museums Journal about our use of Tripadvisor for an upcoming edition
• Gave my ‘first thoughts’ to my direct reports in our transformation wing of the service
• Gave Laura the low down on our statistic collection
• 1 to 1 session with marketing
• Sat in on our website phase two session dealing with improving our venue hire
• Literally pulled the doors open for the relaunch of our Gallery four refurbishment
• My copy of The Really useful edtech book arrived through the post – exciting
• Played with our prototype hidden museum game for the first time

I end January feeling like the pieces are falling together:

• agreed to house two setups for Bristol is Open a technology project between University of Bristol and Bristol City Council for four experimental types of internet connectivity
• Went out to a field in Clutton just outside of Bath to see Simon from BaRAS in action doing a dig
• attended an evening event talked about HTML5, ARIA and the open web hosted by accessible Bristol group at Engine Shed
• Monthly meeting with our catering and venue partner Levy restaurants to see how we’ve been doing – great with room for further improvement
• Sneak peek into the refurbished gallery 4 at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery which opens next week
• Weekly management team review which has now moved to a public trello board to help us and for staff to see what we’re focusing on
• 1:to:1 with Laura
• Bailed trip to Cardiff for Core Cities

This week like my job started proper. I got up to:

• Met with Gavin and started our first of many conversations about our services working together. Got to see Temple Street where lots of staff have moved to recently. Interesting uses of tech such as wireless phones so you can sit anywhere. Would take a lot to convince me open offices are productive though – the noises and phones ringing!
• Spent half a day with our outgoing retail Manager Ollie to better understand our historic retail profit/loss sheets and get the low down on key issues
• Went to my hang out with Bristol & Region Archaeological Services for an afternoon to meet the team and look at “quick wins”
• After missing several trains to London I finally got to Museum Association “Lets get Digital” seminar day. I spoke about how we made our website and really enjoyed the question and answer session at the end. Always a pleasure to get invited to speak at events and Rebecca Atkinson and co did a fantastic job running the day. Rebecca wrote about the day.
• I gave my personal view to HR about performance management within the organisation to aid their new performance management process due out this year.
• Met Scott and Meagan from Play Nicely who helped us deliver the tech for Moved by Conflict
• Monthly meeting with documentation and digital teams
• Had our first proper management team meeting to hear Laura’s first thoughts on our service. One outcome is to move to using trello for all staff to see what burning issues management staff are working on to help be transparent
• Budget review
• I often half joke that we don’t want our very senior management at the council to know our names as it probably means we messed up. An “incident” not of our doing caused our Service Director to know my name this week. Awkward. I better get used to curve balls. I’ll be “ensuring” this particular issue can’t happen again. As long as you learn right?
• Got featured in Bristol 24/7 about my Bristol top fives

Next week i’ll be onsite in a field with a member of BaRAS to see a project they are working on, sorting out our retail manager paperwork and getting into the detail of team costs.

This week :

• Spent the day walking our retail shops and talking to staff with Peter Holloway who was here to provide an initial diagnostic  on the current state of things
• Budget review with our accountant took the whole afternoon and is far from ideal situation so lots to improve for 2015-16
• Reviewed our marketing and made suggestions to tighten up the process
• Wrote earlier in the week that there will be tough days
• First team meeting with my new team Modern Records
• First proper meeting with Ian who runs BaRAS
• Digital team catch ups
• Lunch one day with wife and kid then another with mum – NICE
• Budget forecasting
•  A morning looking at the 2016 public programme