Tag: Museums and the Web

MW2013 reflections on emerging and collapsing museum roles

Well I’ve been hanging out in America for the last week with a mind full of thoughts in the aftermath of Museums and the Web 2013… and computer problems. It’s been frustrating, but it also provided the perfect excuse to upgrade my laptop after years of slow technology. Hooray! Truly, a new computer is a pleasure.

Now that I’m back online, I thought I’d start a series of quick posts on the issues that really caught my attention during the conference (a kind of belated version of what Koven Smith was doing in his live-blogging from Portland). In the meantime, if you’re feeling less patient and just want an overall summary of the themes and discussions that came out of the conference, check out the great reads by Danny Birchall, Susan Edwards and Ed Rodley.

So, theme no. 1: the fluctuation of museum jobs, and the impact that has upon the sector
On Day 2 of the conference, Rob Stein and Rich Cherry presented a plenary session that asked what is a museum technologist anyway? During the questions that followed, Liz Neely asked how many people in the room had made up their own job at some point in their career. I was surprised to see  the number of hands waved in response. It was probably close to half the room, all of whom had created a job for themselves.

As someone who has never known where I would fit within existing career paths in this sector, I was pretty excited by this. But then I started thinking further on the implications. When a job is created for someone, rather than created to fill a particular pre-identified need or purpose, then that job will be necessarily built around their individual strengths and weaknesses, maybe even more than the institution’s actual needs. So what happens when that person leaves the organisation? Does the museum then look to fill that position, or to craft another one in concert with the person who comes next into the role? I know I’ve created at least one job for myself in this sector, and it’s now something my museum will always need to have someone doing… but the opportunity came up because I identified the gap, not because they did. How often does this happen?

Sitting next to Michael Parry in one session, I had a discussion about the frequency with which museums should revisit their digital structure and strategy. Given how quickly the technological and work context change, should a museum rewrite its digital strategy and organisational chart regularly? And what are the benefits of doing so very regularly (maybe every three years) versus waiting longer; of making foundational instead incremental change? Two critical issues here become the value of adaptability vs stability, and the potential loss of corporate knowledge (not to mention staff morale… do people want to work in an environment where they position is always up to be questioned?). But it is something worth considering in the frequent discussions we have about writing a digital strategy; getting beyond the how and looking at the when.

These were just some of a series of questions that started to come up about the fluctuation of museum roles. In the session on digital curation that Danny Birchall and I were a part of, Danny looked at different curators who have influenced the sector to show just how diverse the notion of a “curator” is, even in the museum sector in order to demonstrate what museums could teach those who now seek to curate the digital world (one of these being Iris Barry, founder of the film department of the Museum of Modern Art, who herself created her own job based on her own skills and interests), while I looked at what museums could learn from some different types of curators of the digital world. In response to this session, Koven got to the heart of the matter and asked whether the discussion was indicative of the need for a new kind of role within the museum; that of the curator of the digital. Are we witnessing the birth of a new museum profession in these discussions? Do we now need someone who curates the digital world for stories and information as they relate to the collection and/or mission of the museum, in addition to more established curatorial roles?

In the unconference session that followed, Seb Chan pointed out that many museum, archive and library roles were beginning to collapse onto themselves as the differences that defined one from the next became less distinct in the digital realm. All of which makes me start to wonder just which roles within the museum will stand up as they currently are, and which other roles (like digital conservators) will begin to emerge as more and more critical in the coming years? Just how fluid is the museum’s institutional and organisational structure, anyway?

And, finally, what happens if you design yourself out of a job? There is a tension between wanting to create efficiencies and do things better, and wanting to maintain your job and an organisation’s need to employ you. Given that the positions needed in and by this sector appear to fluctuate more than I had previously imagined, I’m interested in how this tension plays out in career paths, and whether institutions can or do support those whose once-essential skills are now only peripherally useful.

This is where my relative newness to the sector starts to really get in the way, because I cannot look back at institutions and their history to know how these kinds of questions play out. But I am sure some of you can.

I’d love to hear more about your experiences and what you’ve seen in your own careers. Do the roles that museums need filled fluctuate significantly over the course of years? And what impact does that have on the museum? How often should a museum actively revisit its structure and strategy to ensure a fit for purpose?

Announcing Museopunks – a new podcasting project

One of the themes that emerged in day one of Museums and the Web was a question of how museums can work at web scale; how their practice has to shift in order to curate the digital world or to deal with the rare becoming commonplace. It’s a super interesting question, and one that I’ve been lucky enough to delve into a little deeper in recent weeks in some conversations with Mike Edson (Director of Web and New Media Strategy at the Smithsonian Institution) and Paul Rowe (CEO of Vernon Systems).

The cool thing is that these conversations were actually recorded as the very first episode of a new podcasting project that Jeffrey Inscho (Web and Digital Media Manager, Carnegie Museum of Art) and I are kicking off, launching today.

Museopunks is a podcast for the progressive museum. Each month, we’ll invite passionate practitioners to tackle prominent issues and big ideas facing museums in the modern age. With innovation, experimentation and creativity as focus points, Museopunks features forward-thinking people and projects that push the sector into new territories.

In the inaugural episode of the Museopunks podcast, we chat to Mike and Paul about museums in the Age of Scale. How can museums rethink their practices to work at web scale, from the smallest institutions up to the biggest?

This is a project that Jeffrey and I are super excited about. We’re both keen to hear from different voices and get into subjects that maybe deserve a little more focussed investigation. So we’d love to hear what you think about the podcast, or ideas for future shows or guests that we should dig into. It would also be great if you wanted to get involved with the discussion about scale that we’ll have over at the Museopunks website.  How do you think museums should tackle the complexities – and opportunities – that come from trying to scale up digital (and even non-digital) operations?

You can subscribe to Museopunks via iTunes.

MW2012 + breaking musetech conversations out of the bubble

The other day, when following up on the responses to misconceptions about museum technologists, I happened upon on a 2009 post by Nina Simon regarding what she termed the ‘participatory ghetto’. She wrote (emphasis mine):

…In most museums, technologists are still seen as service providers, not experience developers. They live in well-defined (and self-protected) silos. There are stereotypes flying in many directions—that curators won’t give up authority, that technologists don’t respect traditional museum practice, that educators are too preachy, that marketers just want to get more live bodies in the door.

How are we going to bridge this divide? Many of the technologists I met at Museums and the Web never go to regional or national museum conferences. When I asked why, people said, “no one there understand what we’re doing,” or “it just reminds me of how far behind the rest of this field is.” I understand the desire to learn from and spend time with people in your part of the field, but I was surprised at the extent to which people had no interest in cross-industry discussions. I’m teaching a graduate course at University of Washington right now on social technology and museums. Four of my students were at Museums and the Web. None are attending AAM (the American Association of Museums). They don’t see it as relevant to their future careers. This worries me.

We need to do a lot more talking across the aisle, working hard to adapt our specialized vocabularies to a common discussion about institutional mission and change.

So after attending MW three years ago, Simon’s takeaway was that people in musetech had no interest in cross-industry discussions. This is precisely opposite the sentiment I’ve been picking up on lately, as right now this question seems to be at the heart of what many musetech people are interested in. How do we bridge the divide and communicate the value of what we do to the museum community more broadly?

In the comments on misconceptions about museum technologists, Bruce Wyman offered this thought:

Technologists need to leave their home turf and talk to other disciplines in their language and with their needs in mind. They need to show understand of the goals and how to improve those *specific* core needs not only through technology but also the overall program.

This could be an interesting unconference discussion for Museums and the Web 2012 (this week!). What can we – as individuals and a sector – do right now to start bridging the divide between musetech and the rest of the museum?

I’d really love to explore this idea whilst at the conference this week, so if you are at MW2012, come and find me. I am giving a demonstration on Saturday (although I am demonstrating a conceptual art piece, so there isn’t all that much to see… this means it’s a good opportunity to work through the ideas behind the project, and seeing where such conversations might lead.). Otherwise I am likely to be around where ever there is karaoke or good conversation.

How can we break museum technology conversations out of the bubble? How can we as musetech professionals become better translators, and better speak the language that others in the field are using?

I’d love your thoughts.

geek speak with Erika Taylor

This month’s culturegeek is museumgeek’s first curator and first Australian. Erika Taylor is the Curator of Science, Technology and Industry at the Powerhouse Museum, and she is one of a whole collection (boom tish) of passionate museum tech people who work at the institution. Before I met Erika, I kept seeing her name pop up on Twitter – and always in interesting conversations – so I thought I would try to find out just how a science curator ended up so interested in the digital world. As always in geek speak, I’ve asked Erika to write a post responding to the question “How on earth did you end up here?” Enjoy her story.

Erika Taylor - Curator of Science, Technology and Industry at the PHM - being awesome.

First and foremost I guess I am a science nerd. I grew up wanting to know how stuff works, I went to uni and found out how much I could drink stuff works, and I discovered a love of teaching other people about how stuff works (except magnets).

After I finished my science degree, I wandered the world for a while working in backpackers hostels, drinking, eating, and visiting museums, until I returned to home to look for a prestigious, well paid, and stable job in science. Shockingly that didn’t work out.

So what could I do with my love of science, learning, teaching, and museums? Masters in Museums Studies fit the bill, so off I went to learn about the history of museums, how to do paperwork, how to dodge bureaucracy and red tape, and that you must wear gloves when touching old things. The best part of the course was the opportunity to do two internships. My first internship was project managing a website build for a special interest group of Museums Australia. My supervisor was none other than the wonderful Ms Lynda Kelly at the Australian Museum. My second was at the Powerhouse Museum, which eventually led to them hiring me as a science curator.

I did what “curators do”. I researched, published, interpreted material culture, put on exhibitions, and gave talks and presentations. This was at a time when museums were just starting to discover social media, and experimenting with its uses, it was also a time when the Museum’s 300,000+ collection had been digitised. I started to become interested in curators and the digital world, and concerned at the growing gap between the two.

I found mentorship under two of the most influential people thus far in my professional life, Seb Chan, and Paula Bray, and began working in that gap between curatorial and digital practice. I wrote a paper about the current state of play between curators and social media and presented it at Museums and the Web 2010, in Denver. I was inspired by some of the most amazing digital and web people from all over the world, learnt that Dutch really is the language of the future, and became Chief Curator in Charge of the Spinny Bar Historical Society.

I was the only curator there. Why? Why were museums doing such cutting edge and amazing things on the web, yet curators were so disconnected from it all?

Since then I have been working at getting curators involved in everything from blogging, basic web editing, using social media for things other than posting photos of yourself drunk on the weekend, making iPhone and iPad apps, and everything in-between.

So that’s me. I work in the gap. I am passionate about finding creative ways to use digital mediums to tell stories and interpret collections. I am specifically interested in how the future will shape museum curators, and plan to be an active participant in its evolution.

Erika Taylor is the Curator of Science Technology and Industry at the Powerhouse Museum. When not developing exhibitions on climate change, historical plastics, or strange medical implements, you can find her teaching someone to write blog posts, making iPad games, or user testing mobile walking tours.