Conference RoundupOctober 2010

Douglas HegleyThe Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum Computer Network Annual Conference

• Museum technology professionals are BUSY

• So many great conferences, meetings, organizations, consortia, publications, etc.

• How can you possibly keep up?

Goal of this session:

• Presenters share highlights from a variety of relevant conferences/meetings

• We hope this will be informative and thought-provoking

Format:– Part One:• Rapid-fire reports from 10 of your colleagues• Time-limited (5 minutes maximum for each)

• Hopefully less …

– Part Two: • Analysis, trends, etc. by our two Panelists

– Rob Lancefield– Richard Urban

• Audience participation, Q & A

The Line-up Card (in order):– Bruce Wyman - MW– Erin Coburn - CIDOC, ICOM– Rob Lancefield - AAM– Rachel Varon - NMC– Ruth Ann Rugg - TAM– Richard Urban - "Research Roundup" (DCMI, ASIS&T)– Ted Forbes - Tate Handheld– Beck Tench - Design4Mobile– Nancy Proctor – Design4Mobile, continued– Paco Link - SXSW

Bruce WymanSecond Story

Reporting on:

Museums and the Web

Museums and the Web 2010April 13 – 17

Denver, Colorado

Attendees

• International participation– 500+ people– 20+ countries

Description

• Program built from the bottom up– based on what people are working on and thinking about now

• A meeting of people really doing stuff – with plenty to time to talk to other people and share solutions

• Flexibility in formats– Different kinds of sessions for different things – Responsive (e.g. intro of unconference sessions last year)

Highlights

• Social media activities highlighted

[this year's social media elephant plenary]

Resources / Backchannel

• Use media ourselves --> twitterfall / sponsor backchannel display @ MCN– @museweb for updates and other interesting stuff

• Online papers + searchable bibliography– To learn from others, document developments

Next Year: 15th Annual Museums and the Web Conference

• Program live before end of Nov., including sessions on– Organizational strategy– Organizational change– Collaboration – Outcomes + process– Tagging, searching and collections online– Open source developments– Wikis for content management– Mobiles– Research results [5 min. presentations]

+ unconference, crit room, usability lab, demonstrations, professional forums, good food and drink ...

April 6-9, 2011, Philadelphia, PA

• Still opportunities for participation @ MW2011– Demo proposals due December 31– Unconference sessions proposed on site

• Future MW Conferences:– April 11-14, 2012 in San Diego, California, USA– April 17-20, 2013 in Portland, Oregon, USA

Erin CoburnThe Metropolitan Museum of Art

Reporting on:

CIDOC - ICOM

Rob LancefieldDavison Art Center, Wesleyan University

Reporting on:

AAM Annual Meeting

Conference Review Report: American Association of Museums

Rob LancefieldManager of Museum Information ServicesDavison Art Center, Wesleyan University

With some background content from Douglas Hegley’s MCN 2009 report on AAM 2009

MCN 2010, Austin, Texas 29 October 2010

• Widely known as AAM• Founded 1906• Membership across entire scope of museums includes more than:

17,000 individuals, 3,000 institutions, 300 corporate members• Helps to develop standards and best practices, gather and share knowledge,

and provide advocacy for the entire museum community• Represents all types of museums: art, history, science, military, maritime, and

youth museums, as well as aquariums, zoos, botanical gardens, arboretums, historic sites, science and technology centers….

• Website: http://www.aam-us.org• MCN is an AAM Affiliate Organization, as are many other such free-standing

organizations with shared areas of interest regarding the communities and people we serve. Affiliate organizations are not part of AAM, but we seek alignment from both sides wherever possible and useful in our service to the community.

American Association of Museums

AAM Media and Technology SPC

• AAM has Standing Professional Committees• Media and Technology (MAT) SPC is one• MAT overlaps with MCN in membership and

topics, but with somewhat different focus• For more than 20 years, MAT has presented

annual MUSE Awards for excellence in media produced by or for museums: http://www.mediaandtechnology.org/muse/

Theme: Museums without Borders

Key soundbites from advance information sheet:

“The young 21st century is about connectivity.”

“Connectivity has helped to dismantle borders—social, cultural and geographical..”

“Can we be a community of museums without borders?”

Annual Meeting: AAM 2010

AAM 2010 Program

• Large and diverse program including:– 160 sessions on a wide range of topics– Networking opportunities– Keynote and “thought leader” speakers– Huge vendor expo with more than 300 exhibitors– Numerous committee and business meetings– Popular “Career Café”– Onsite events at Los Angeles museums and more

AAM 2010 Attendees

• Over 6,000 attendees this year, despite the challenging economic environment

• AAM members and conference attendees span the full range of museum occupations:– directors, curators, registrars, educators, exhibit

designers, art handlers, conservators, marketers, development people, security managers, trustees, volunteers, technology and information workers (some familiar faces from MCN!), and on and on.

AAM 2010 Highlights

• Great discussions about social interactions in home institutions between people with quite different levels of comfort with technology

• Lots of dialogue (also in and out of sessions) about the uses and implications, for museums, of social networking and other technologies

• Key sessions this year included:— “Demystifying the Mighty I.T.”— “Beyond the Shiny Object”— More!

Annual Meeting ValueOne person’s very subjective take, in a nutshell:• AAM includes virtually all museum topics, so…• Can be diffuse, unless you focus yourself, but:• Premier venue for serendipitous conversations

with other museum people who work in very different institutional roles and settings, as well as for learning from formal presentations on a similarly wide gamut of subjects. That is…

• Knowledge-sharing and community-building across the museum field’s diverse subfields.

Backchannel / Durable Traces

• Twitter (hashtag #aam10, some used #aam2010)

• Session audio recordings (sold for fee)

• Website seems to be partially swept over, or to be rendered navigationally obscure(?), by subsequent/upcoming conference content

2011 AAM Annual Meeting

Theme: The Museum of Tomorrowhttp://www.aam-us.org/am11

Houston, May 22–25, 2011

Come back to Texas!

Rachel VaronNew Media Consortium

Reporting on:

NMC Summer Conference

NMC Conference Roundup Report

2010 NMC Summer Conference

• Held in Anaheim, California• Hosted by the University of Southern

California• Over 75 sessions offered• Attended by faculty members in new

media disciplines, mid- to upper-management personnel, and senior technologists at colleges and universities

Highlights

Keynote speakers: –Mimi Ito– John Sealy Brown

http://www.nmc.org/2010-summer-

conference/highlights

Pre-Conference and Hands-on workshops by Apple & Adobe

Five Minutes of Fame

2011 NMC Summer Conference

Learn more at:

www.nmc.org

Ruth Ann RuggTexas Association of Museums

Reporting on:

TAM Annual Meeting

Conference Roundup ReportOctober 2010

Texas Association of Museums (TAM)

Ruth Ann RuggExecutive Director

Texas Association of Museums

Texas Association of Museums (TAM) http://www.texasmuseums.org

• TAM is a non-profit 501C3 museum service organization founded in 1975 • Supports professionals working in Texas museums, historic sites, and other

arts, cultural, and community organizations • Provides professional development opportunities, skills training, and other

educational resources • Promotes national standards and best practices for museums and

museum professionals, working closely with AAM and AASLH • Works to keep membership informed of museum-related news,

challenges, trends, programming, advocacy avenues, and funding sources• Includes 700 individuals and institutions in TAM membership, each

representing diverse subject matter and cultures • Headquarters in Fort Worth and employs two full-time staff members

2010 Annual Meeting Theme “All Aboard: Museums on Track”

March 16-19, 2010Bryan-College Station

Texas museums are facing many challenges in these uncertain economic times. In addition to weathering a slower economy, many of our museums in Texas are also recovering from devastating weather conditions and are busy at work restoring their institutions. …

Our 2010 TAM Annual Meeting will focus on ways that museums can pull together and ‘stay on track.’ Let’s explore resource sharing, collaboration on restoration projects, creative and innovative fundraising, and ways to motivate and inspire the ‘engines’ in our museum communities.

TAM Annual Meeting

• Attracts 500 museum professionals, volunteers, trustees, and other colleagues from the cultural community for:– Sessions, panel discussions, and workshops– Keynote speakers and “Feature Speaker” forums– Tours of local museums and historic sites– Exhibit Hall and Vendor demonstrations– Affinity Group Meetings– Regional Museum Association Meetings– Networking opportunities

2010 Annual Meeting Highlights• Keynote speaker Nina Simon, Principal of Museum 2.0, addressed

opening luncheon of 250 and presented a follow-up session with 150 participants

• Keynote speaker Barbara Bush, former First Lady, addressed the closing luncheon of 250

• Feature speaker Ford Bell, President of AAM, addressed opening luncheon of 250 and lent expertise in small groups

• Feature speakers Beth Merritt, Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums, and Peter Bishop, Futurist and coordinator of the graduate program in Futures Studies, University of Houston, directed a working group on scenario planning for the future of Texas Museums

More Highlights

• Offsite behind-the-scenes-tour of the Conservation Research Laboratory at Texas A&M University working on the LaSalle Shipwreck Project. Q&A with nautical archeologists.

• Over $6,000 in scholarship money provided by Affinity Groups and Regional Organizations to assist accessibility, including first-time GLBT scholarship award

• Mitchell A. Wilder Publication Design Awards Competition honored 21 winners at 14 institutions

• Participants included over 40 university students • Participants included 10% first-time attendees

TAM Affinity Groups

• AMAG Art Museums Affinity Group• CMC Collection Managers Committee• HSHAG Historic Site/House Affinity Group• TAMEC TAM Educators Committee• MIC Multicultural Initiatives Committee• MELTMuseum Emerging Leaders of Texas

Pro & Con: TAM Annual Meeting

• TAM seeks to improve technology and availability of online meeting facilitation tools

• Discussions need a forum for follow-up• Balance is often a challenge (small/large)• High-value opportunity for job seekers• High-value opportunity for collaborations,

resource sharing, development leads• Relaxed environment

2011 TAM Annual Meeting

• 2011 Theme: A Place to Discover• Irving, TX, August 4-6, 2011• Host Chair: Irving Arts Center• Conference hotel: OMNI Mandalay,

Las Colinas (TAM rate $105 per night)• Registration opens online May 2011

Richard UrbanUniversity of Illinois

Reporting on:

“Research Roundup”

• @dublincore• #dcmi10• Proceedings Available

http://dcpapers.dublincore.org/ojs/pubs• Attendance

– Library, information science– Industry– International

• Conference rotates between Asia, North America & Europe– Next Year, Europe TBA

• DCMI Highlights – Community is actively struggling with the

necessity of the DC Abstract Model and its relationship to RDF

– Implications for the DC Application Profile specification

– Focus on “linked data” and implications for DCMI recommendations

• Papers– The Case for Implementing Core Descriptive Embedded

Metadata at the SmithsonianChristensen & Dunlap

– The One to One Principle: Challenges to Current PracticeSteve Miller

– Building Metadata Application Framework for Chinese Digital Library: A Case Study of National Digital Library of ChinaYunyun Shen, Long Xiao, Ying Feng

• Posters– Towards a Premodern Manuscript Application Profile

Sheila Bair, Susan Steuer – Universal Access to Cultural Heritage Material: The

Europeana Resolution Discovery Service for Persistent IdentifiersLars G. Svensson

– Creating Collection-Level Metadata: A TELDAP Case Study Hsueh-hua Chen, Chiung-min Tsai, Ya-Chen Ho

• American Society of Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T)– http://www.asist.org– Established in 1968

(formerly the American Documentation Institute)• ASIS&T and MCN have held a joint meeting in the past

– Conference proceedings published by the Association of Computer Machinery (ACM) Digital Library (but many can be found in individual authors’ websites)

• @asist2010 – #asist2010– In conjunction with:

• the International Conference on Knowledge Management (ICKM)– Workshops like Getting Started with Business Taxonomy Design

• Dublin Core Metadata Initiative

• Four tracks:– Information User/Behavior– Information Retrieval– Information Systems, Interactivity, Design – Knowledge Management (industry)– Information in Context (economic, cultural, policy)

• Museum Highlights– Beyond Size and Search: Building Contextual Mass in Digital Aggregations for Scholarly

UseCarole Palmer, Oksana Zavalina and Katrina Fenlon

– Digital Cultural Collections in an Age of Reuse and RemixesKristin R. Eschenfelder and Michelle Caswell

– Exploration of Adoption of Preservation Metadata in Cultural Heritage Institutions: Case of PREMISDaniel Alemneh and Samantha Hastings

– How Historians use Historical NewspapersRobert Allen and Robert Sieczkiewicz

– ImageSieve: Exploratory Search of Museum Archives with Named Entity-Based Faceted BrowsingYiling Lin, Jaewook Ahn, Peter Brusilovsky and Daqing He

– Rule Categories for Collection/Item Metadata RelationshipsKaren Wickett, Allen Renear and Richard Urban

• Papers (con’t)– Katz Out of the Bag: The Broader Privacy Ramifications of

Using FacebookShannon Oltmann

– How and Why Scholars Cite on TwitterJason Priem and Kaitlin Light Costello

– Triggering Memories with Online MapsS. Tejaswi Peesapati, Victoria Schwanda, Johnathon Schultz and Dan Cosley

– Questions are Content: A Taxonomy of Questions in a Microblogging EnvironmentMiles Efron and Megan Winget

SIG-CON

Future Events

• ASIS&T Information Architecture SummitMarch 30 - April 3, 2011Denver, COhttp://iasummit.org

• Annual MeetingOctober 7-12, 2011New Orleans, LA

• Also check out regional chapters for eventshttp://asist.org/sigschapters.html

Ted ForbesDallas Museum of Art

Reporting on:

Tate Handheld Conference

Beck TenchMuseum of Life and Science

Reporting on:

Design4Mobile

The J

Nancy ProctorSmithsonian Institution

Reporting on:

Design4Mobile, continued …

Truisms

• Mobile phones are Borg-like tech: Every new technology they encounter, they absorb (video, camera, gps…) @justlikeair

• Great mobile products are created, never ported. @justlikeair

• "Web content management systems are the mainframes of the mobile era.” @grigs

• Next gen CMS systems separate content from the style presentation layer: single content entry, many devices display @justlikeair

Audiences

• Who is your audience? Focus on audience as well as hardware

• Users often misbehave, and they don’t follow the path you expect

• "If someone runs into a poll using your mobile product it's their own damn fault!”

• 3 minute rule: what were users doing 3 min before & 3 min after?

• 3 motivations for mobile: I'm micro tasking, I'm local or I'm bored

Contexts

• What role does mobile vs tablet play, integrated cross-platform with technology & artifacts

• In-room or lobby experiences

• Car dealership as museum

• How can visitors to IBM briefing center influence the experience, give mobile info as they are coming in…– Co-discovery, figuring out people’s tacit knowledge – how

do we discover that manipulating objects

– eLearning: can people come together to create a world-wide museum?

People• Itai Vonshak: @vonsh

– iPhone demo from Auntie Kath, aged 91: http://bit.ly/9Fr3Rk– "Everything's amazing and nobody's happy" http://bit.ly/199gT1

• Cory Pressman @exprima• Josh Clark @GlobalMoxie: see his book Tapworthy on designing

iPhone Apps from oreilly.com • Jason Grigsby @grigs• Luke Wroblewski @lukew see blog post Mobile First:

http://bit.ly/aIKxMs• Oliver Weidlich @oliverw• Rod Farmer @rodfarmer• Shane Pearlman @justlikeair

Notes & Resources • http://bit.ly/aLVzNr• http://bit.ly/cBKFYh• http://bit.ly/cqZyTo • http://bit.ly/9J7NNd• http://www.mobileactive.org – global mobile for social • good@designcaffeine: Slides from my #d4m2010 talk:

Designing Resourceful Mobile E-Commerce Search http://slidesha.re/d2Yshv

Paco LinkThe J. Paul Getty Museum

Reporting on:

SXSW

Part Two:Commentary, Analysis, Trends, etc.– Panelists• Rob Lancefield• Richard Urban

Audience Participation

Comments? Questions?

Thank you

Reminder: please fill out a conference evaluation form at: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MCN2010

This presentation will be available on Slideshare athttp://www.slideshare.net/event/museum-computer-network-2010