@ UKMW2006 in Leicester: 7. Summing up

Mike Lowndes synthesizes... museums still don't know users, who they are and what they want.... and just when we think we've got them pinned down, they change, and the way that we reach them changes. Now, users themselves will be generating content in their own sites, and own spaces. "Our users are going to be in our face." -- we won't be able to hide from the re-use of museum content.

When people are empowered they are surprisingly creative and can invent new ways of looking at things. Users, like good teachers, need to be able to take the parts of the content that they need to illustrate the point that they need to make. We need to put bits of our content in their context.

jt: so when will museums wag their long tail!  it's time to "loose the fear" as Mike Ellis said,  start to use the tools and see what happens.