This week was heavy on spinning some tiny plates for 2014 activity. From next week onwards I’m hopefully returning to the present and kicking off with digital skills training and ‘the website’. Rather than go day-to-day this week here is a list of activities which mostly follow Monday – Friday.
- Great evening talk by Matthew Postgate from the BBC Better than being there – Being there better, How technology is shaping the future of media which included wallpaper thin TVs, contextual content and personalisation. Much of which will affect the museum sector in the next twenty years
- Ran a Twitter training session for the good folks at Blaise Castle House Museum
- Went to introduce myself to Bristol and Regional Archaeological Services and looked at bringing the website back into the fold
- Had a tour of the services that Calvium offer for mobile development
- Briefly chopped it up with Tom Metcalfe about being involved in the REACT objects sandbox projects
- Sat with Alastair Somerville to see what work he doe’s in the sector. This is regarding to ‘bringing the collection’ out to the public around our digital engagement focus.
- Found out more about what possibilities we have with improving our website offering centrally. There are big changes afoot which may or may not work to our advantage. One of our questions which I hope to hear back on soon is if we can have an AB test effectively driving 50 percent of visitors to an ‘alpha’ website and seeing if there is a positive change in usage. Why spend time, money and resource if effectively folks are happy.
- Began to wrap my head around opportunities for licensing some of our media such as images. Across the sector there is an assumption that our digitised collections have bags of cash waiting to be unlocked. Yet many museums are now giving away thousands of images for free. Lots to unpack in this area.
- Understanding audiences wants and needs on-site and ‘out there’. Add in stakeholder demands, throw into a pot and make magic in 2014…
- Confirmation that we’ll soon start work with three University of Bristol Student project teams from the Computer Science department. They’ll be working on three of our problems as part of their coursework. The projects are around databases, making collections playful and showing objects in space and time
- Budgets