Category: Uncategorized

I’ve been on a well earned holiday in the south of France this week!

This was a mighty week of grinding that probably saw me tipping towards the most i’ve had to work in a single week thus far in this role.

• On Monday I headed to London with my two Nesta partners from University of Bristol and aardman respectively. We had a one hour interview to explain our proposal for the £125,000 Nesta R + D Fund for the Arts. We find out on the 1st July. Everything crossed.
• Much of the mid week was spent writing for the website, reacting to bugs and comments from all angles.
• Tuesday afternoon was a great break to pop along to the University of Bristol student project showcase. We had three groups making us digital projects so it was not only good to show our support but to be amazed by the other projects.
• Met with a Watershed sandbox project to hear how they might use RFID for a test in our “stuffed animals” gallery. It was a shame we couldn’t be involved in the planning and design of the project…
• At 2pm on Thursday 15th May we quietly slipped our new service website onto the web http://www.bristolmuseums.org.uk/ an achievement I will write about soon but it marks a major milestone for my team and the service.
• On Friday we played host for the Museums Computer Group Museums Get Mobile Conference. We had around 70-80 people from all across the UK meet to hear about everybody’s challenges, big wins and frank honesty about how hard working with mobile can be. We had a few week earned beers that evening!

This week was nicknamed the calm before the storm, due to the hardcore schedule that will be week 47. There may only be a few bullets listed below but this was a long work and a critical point on the website delivery plan. Anyway this week:

After the bank holiday, Tuesday onwards was dedicated to making sense of our content audit and then mapping what pieces of content were required for our 70 or so key new website pages. I met hourly with various people required to contribute to writing for the web. We used a content table to plan each piece of content. We nervously laughed, we nearly cried, we wrote and rewrote. We signed off content and moved on!

With the bank holiday it was a four day week in which I mentioned to:

• Planning how we’ll progress our service delivery strategy with the Arts Council Audience segments at the heart – which of the 13 choices would you be?
• Contributed to an expression of interest for the Heritage Lottery Fund
• Reviewed our reporting and evaluation methods with Fay and have a new direction, particularly in light of losing a member of staff to voluntary severance
• Reviewed our existing Marketing and Branding efforts and began to look at how ‘digital’ will begin to affect our plans
• Received my six month personal review  which the Council call a PMDS and got twos and threes (three is two thumbs up)
• Announced that our website phase one soft launch will be Thursday 8th May and the official launch is Thursday 15th May.
• Planned how we’d achieve going live on the 15th by breaking the tasks into weekly sprints
• Showed off our beta website prototype to the central design team and web communications. Tony is a great sounding board for my ideas and time will tell if our logo style navigation is right or wrong!

I’d also now like to plug the Museums Get Mobile Conference that I’m hosting – come along on Friday the 16th May AND/OR come out for a drink on the Thursday evening!

A different type of week with a conference out of town and the service getting caught up in the latest banksy story”

• I spend a few days in Harrogate for the 37th annual UKSG conference. I went to find out where the publishing industry is at the moment, seeing at the museum service is a publisher without even really knowing it. I also had the pleasure of speaking twice about the future of publishing, how it affects the museum and how you can make your own ebook
• We heard that our application to the Nesta RnD digital arts fund was successful to the next round
• I met with our funder, Arts Council to explain what the service got up to in the last quarter. The overarching message for me was to show and tell – ship stuff!
• The new service website has continued to evolve and i’m expecting us to move from alpha to beta in the next few weeks. For now see the mockup and read the GDS service manual details on the beta phase
• The museum agreed to house the latest Banksy ‘Mobile Lovers’ and I had the slightly out of my remit task of carrying the art work into the building from the police van! I did ask if I could wear a police hat but…

This week being able to progress taking online payments continues to be an itch I can’t seemed to scratch.  With that being said I mentioned:

• Met two UWE students to explain how we currently make use of interaction onsite
• Discussed how we will approach the AV requirements for our Moved by Conflict exhibition
• Reviewed our social media guidelines and changed all the passwords!
• Had a great catch up with most of the team to look at our 2014-2015 plans
• Contributed to our 2015-2018 service plan
• Got a request for licensing 214 seconds of video footage – was nice to pop to films at 59 where they work until 2am and turned our recording around super quickly
• Learned how I’ll need to report official stats back to the Council
• Some University of Bristol students showed us their improved prototype for interacting with objects in a case. Very clever use of gestures
• Wrote a one-page business case for dealing with our online revenue (we get money, we pay the council, no?) as there is a large untapped opportunity
• Sat with our education team to look at their needs on the new website