Category: Museums

This week I have been:

• Doing the six month PMDS for all the team – review of last six months and looking ahead to the next 12 months
• Doing the Arts Council end of year return
• Handover with fffunction for phase one of the website project
• Checking the M Shed kiosk move is working to plan
• Met with the BBC to discuss how we can support one of their community projects around ‘Bristol sounds’
• Welcoming Ray Barnett to twitter
• Had our first staff meeting with the new teams that are now being rolled into the service, we have expanded to include events, film and festival teams
• Chopped it up with Phil about what my team could do to support the public programme team
• Explained to conservation what types of blgo post i’d love from them
• Met with the central comms manager to agree how to reduce our presence of their main website
• Fired the starter gun on the learning team using mailchimp for their teachers newsletter
• Got to sit with our IT account manager to agree how we can best work together to ensure both sides have a happy marriage!
• Decided that we should implement the use of tablets for getting visitor feedback
• Penciled an outline of my work plan for the next 6-12 months which involved a few surprises

A four day week due to a bank holiday made coming back to work easier:

• This week the new proposed service structure was released
• Produced and released our first ebook internally for use by our visitor assistants. The ebook covers all procedures for our current exhibition English Magic, background information on the artist and an introduction to ‘what is contemporary art?’
• Worked out all the old website traffic redirects that we’ll start to place in place throughout June
• Took hold of some ibeacons for a citywide app that we agreed to be part of
• Met with Isla from the collections team to look at how we can start to use 3D printing
• Reviewed our exhibition evaluation plan with the programming team
• Agreed what stuff I needed to get ready for the Arts Council end of year report
• Reviewed and tweaked the Bristol Record Office web pages

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