conferences

Hi all, have been posting my notes to my Audience Research blog

I had some excellent conversations today at the Exhibitors Reception about Twitter and its application in the arts field.

Personally, I think Twitter is best used in conference settings, so I was hoping people could comment here and share their Twitter usernames so we can all follow each other during the conference and beyond.

My Twitter name is BStephenson. Follow me and I'll return the favor! 

As a *budding* young professional in this field, I've noticed a particular concept that is tossed around here and elsewhere in the field, and that is: once this last generation of conservatives literally dies out of the museum, we will all accept technology, we won't have to fight for our websites anymore--our curators will accept it too. This concept comes out in different situations. For example, an audience member says in response to a discussion on social media that his work at the history museum does not reach out to that kind of audience, so this model won't work for him. The response is that "well that won't always be the case, because eventually those people will go away and your new audience [of the same demographic] will be tech savvy."

Really?

Although yesterday was chock full of workshops and welcomes, the MW2008 Conference official kicked off this morning with Michael Geist as the Plenary Speaker. Geist, from the University of Ottawa, Canada, describes himself as a Law Professor and “trouble-maker.”

His thesis is that we need to have an engaged and active Hands On the Internet Policy.

He began with a look back at the web in 1997, and some of the prevailing ideas of that time:

government and policy needed to stay away from the web,

and

leave it to the industry and community that could self regulate as they go along,

but the truth is that this was a myth.

I've just arrived at the Delta hotel in Montreal. It must be close to 25 years since I was here before.... as part of a music festival - sang with the Harmonic Choir on a barge or maybe it was a little island.  The Harmonic choir was (is) a group of 5-6 singers singing multiphonics - overtones...

  It's great to be back and I'm really looking forward to the conference.  After attending or helping to run something like 15 orchestra conferences, it will be so interesting to make a foray into the museum world. 

I'm particularly interested in how cultural groups use the web and social media, so its going to be a busy time.  Now to pour over the schedule. 

There was quite a timely piece in C|net today about backchannels at tech-related conferences. See "How to survive the next-gen confab . It comes at a time when we're close to wrapping together a set of on-line venues for MW2008.

This will be the third year we've had an on-line space for MW while it was taking place, and afterwards. it seems that this might be the year that it takes off a bit more. If you're out and about on the Web, check out the following

So one of the places I always check out before I go on a trip is the discussion boards at Chow.com. Not only do people post reviews and questions, but the discussions that often pop up are really insightful and help round out your perception of a place.

http://www.chowhound.com/boards/22

I've just updated the Local Information Page for Museums and the Web 2008 to include an embedded interactive map from Schmap.

I first heard about this site when they asked to use some of my flickr pictures, first for the San Francisco and later for the Montreal guides. I felt a bit ambivalent about the terms of their offered license, but decided the only way to see what was what with this kind of use was to follow the advice of Gail and Shelley and just participate.

It's interesting to see how this kind of aggregation gives you a different view than the traditional travel guide, where illustrations are much more rationed.

What do people think? is it worth keeping on the local info page? is this mashed together melange of user photos and reviews the future of travel info?

[from electronicmuseum]

I’ve put together an idea for people who run conferences or events. It’s called OneTag (www.onetag.org). It’s very simple conceptually, although as I’m discovering, a complete *dog* to code… - the idea is that it aggregates all the “buzz” about a particular (live) event and then provides the means to view this in different ways. Find out more at http://www.onetag.org/ot/about.asp.

Usual “it’s a beta” disclaimers apply…

I’m at a conference hosted by the Taiwan eLearning & Digital Archives Program (http://www.digitalarchives.tw). I’m not going to blog every session (program here) but here are some highlights from the first morning's sessions.

In a recently published article in the EDUCAUSE Review (http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Review/RepatriationReconstr... ), Clifford Lynch, Executive Director of the Coalition for Networked Information, grapples with the complex issue of repatriation of cultural artifacts from museums and argues that the responsibilities of stewardship extend to capturing and distributing high quality digital surrogates that can ensure continuing scholarly access to artifacts of disputed ownership and morally ambivalent provenance.

We look forward to having Cliff at the 2008 Museums and the Web conference, where he has agreed to sum up the meeting and react to it in the closing plenary. His opinion and expertise in matters of higher education networking is internationally respected and over the years, Clifford has been an interested and sympathetic observer of the affairs of museums. Occasionally, as in the planning for the Art Museum Image Consortium, Clifford has become directly involved in museum matters. I am excited that we are going to re-engage him in thinking about strategies for museum networking at what I consider a crucial time.

Announcing the 2008 AAM MUSE Awards

Recognizing outstanding achievement in museum media, the AAM Media and Technology Committee announces the 19th annual MUSE Awards competition.

The 2007 MUSE Awards competition received nearly 200 applications from a wide variety of museums in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. Entries included audio, cell phone, and interactive handheld tours, interactive kiosks and multimedia installations, podcasts, blogs, games, Web sites, online collection and image databases, videos, and e-mail marketing campaigns. This year we are expecting another exciting round of projects that reflect innovation in the museum media community.

Visit http://www.mediaandtechnology.org to enter your project.

We look forward to your participationWe will accept online applications on the AAM Media and Technology Web site from December 3, 2007, to January 11, 2008. Only $25 per entry.

The International Program Committee has completed their review of Museums and the Web 2008 proposals, and this weekend David and i sat down to put together the conference program.

Per usual, all of the proposals came in right at the last minute (see the graph). We wondered if not mailing a physical "Call for Papers" postcard this year would have an impact (Did you notice that you didn't get it?).

There were fewer proposals this year (~150 instead of ~180 last year), but we can't negate the 'San Francisco effect'. MW2007 was a bigger meeting all around.

We certainly didn't see any change in quality. If anything, some of this year's proposals seemed a bit stronger, more well reasoned.

Program Review is always very challenging. There is a lot of good work, and many more proposals than we can include on the formal program. As we struggle to put together the schedule, we're balancing a number of factors, including the:

discussion in the image licensing session is re-hashing a number of issues we've been thinking about for a long time: