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Fast, Open, and Transparent: Developing the Smithsonian's Web and New Media Strategy

Michael Edson, Smithsonian Institution, USA

3/31/2010

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Abstract

This paper describes the unusual process used to create the Smithsonian's Web and New

Media Strategy. The strategy was created through a fast, transparent, public-facing process

that included workshops, the Smithsonian 2.0 conference, Twitter, YouTube, and ongoing

collaboration through a public wiki. Transparency, openness, and speed were used to

overcome obstacles and gather the input of hundreds of people inside and outside the

institution.

Keywords: strategy, Smithsonian, wiki, collaboration

This paper was first published in the proceedings of the Museums and the Web 2010 conference,

organized by Archives and Museum Informatics:

Cite as:

Edson, M., Fast, Open, and Transparent: Developing the Smithsonian's Web and New Media Strategy. In

J. Trant and D. Bearman (eds). Museums and the Web 2010: Proceedings. Toronto: Archives &

Museum Informatics. Published March 31, 2010. Consulted April 6, 2010.

http://www.archimuse.com/mw2010/papers/edson/edson.html

Table of Contents

Overview ....................................................................................................................................................... 1

I. Why Strategy Matters ................................................................................................................................ 2

Strategy prioritizes tactical decision making ............................................................................................ 2

Strategy is portable ................................................................................................................................... 3

Strategy is a tool that performs work ....................................................................................................... 3

II. Pain Points ................................................................................................................................................. 3

Pain point #1: decentralized content, technology, and standards ........................................................... 3

Pain point #2: unexpected rivals ............................................................................................................... 4

Pain point #3: brand identity .................................................................................................................... 4

Pain point #4: relevance ........................................................................................................................... 4

Pain point #5: thermocline issues ............................................................................................................. 5

III. The Strategy Process ................................................................................................................................ 8

Strategy, version 1.0 ................................................................................................................................. 8

Strategy process, version 2.0 .................................................................................................................. 10

Smithsonian 2.0 conference ................................................................................................................... 12

Strategy 2.0 process defined .................................................................................................................. 12

Running the Wiki ..................................................................................................................................... 15

IV. Benefits of the Open Process ................................................................................................................. 16

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................... 18

References .................................................................................................................................................. 19

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Overview

The Smithsonian's Web and New Media Strategy is pretty self-explanatory: two diagrams, three

themes, eight goals, 54 specific tactical recommendations, all written in plain English and hosted

on the public wiki on which the strategy was created: http://smithsonian-

webstrategy.wikispaces.com.

The strategy talks about an updated digital experience, a new learning model that helps people

with their "lifelong learning journeys," and the creation of the Smithsonian Commons – " a new

part of our digital presence dedicated to stimulating learning, creation, and innovation through

open access to Smithsonian research, collections and communities."

We developed our strategy through a fast and transparent process that included a public wiki,

Twitter, a YouTube contest, workshops, and the Smithsonian 2.0 conference. This is not the way

strategy is usually made. I work for a particularly large museum and research complex – the

Smithsonian Institution has 137 million physical objects, 6,000 employees, and $1.2 billion

dollar annual budget – but that doesn‟t mean our challenges are unique or that we‟re any better

prepared to cope, adapt, and change than smaller organizations – far from it! I‟ve talked

strategy with colleagues all over the world in the last two years. I‟ve been surprised by how

common our challenges are in organizations big and small, young and old, rich and poor. The

ideas in this paper should be applicable to just about any size organization or work group.

Fig 1: "Education" Web and New Media strategy workshop, 4/21/2009. A few pictures from the

workshops are in a Flickr set at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/46758972@N00/sets/72157617124661021/

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This paper is organized into 4 short sections.

Why Strategy Matters

What strategy is and the job it should perform in an organization

Pain, Fear and Opportunity

Why a strategy was (and is) necessary

The Strategy Process

What we did

Benefits of the Open Process

Some good things that happened as a result of transparency and openness

I. Why Strategy Matters

Strategy prioritizes tactical decision making

Good strategy helps you prioritize tactical decision making. Today, a teenage intern can harness

more technology and reach a larger audience with free cloud-based applications and a little

moxie than an army of Unix system administrators could ten years ago. It's easier to do stuff

now, and that makes choosing what you do, and what you don't do, even more important.

Organizations without good strategies tend to pursue disconnected opportunities – short-term

successes – that give the illusion of progress, but which aren't aligned along a strategic path and

don't add up to much in the long run. This is like a junk food diet that feels satisfying at the time

but leaves you hungry 30 minutes later and gives you long-term health problems.

Fig 2: Strategy helps you prioritize tactical opportunities

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Strategy is portable

In most organizations only a handful of people understand the nuances of digital strategy, and

they can't be in every meeting of every department. A well written strategy makes an

organization's thoughts and decisions about digital strategy portable. The strategy and its

supporting data and arguments are self-contained, rational, and coherent. They can be pulled out,

scrutinized, and acted upon regardless of who has come to work on any given day.

Strategy is a tool that performs work

Good strategy isn't just a bunch of pretty words: good strategy should help you get things done

by clarifying what's important, what's not, and why.

II. Pain Points

Leo Mullen, CEO of Navigation Arts, a Smithsonian 2.0 conference attendee, and my

collaborator on the Smithsonian Web and New Media strategy project, told me that in his

experience "most organizations don‟t get serious about making strategy until they‟re either afraid

or in pain." This section describes the points of pain and fear that motivated us to initiate a Web

and New Media strategy process.

Pain point #1: decentralized content, technology, and standards

In the context of an overarching discussion about Web and New Media strategy, it's important to

understand that Web and New Media production at the Smithsonin is done in a mainly

decentralized environment. The Smithsonian Institution is comprised of 28 separate museums

and research centers, plus the National Zoo, and the central Office of the CIO is funded to

provide the Institution with a basic Web infrastructure and a handful of support staff, but

practically everything on the Smithsonian's Web sites is produced by the decentralized business

units. These unit-based Web teams can be very small, sometimes consisting of just a single part-

time content-coordinator.

There are a lot of great things about the decentralized model, and there is a lot of visionary,

award-winning work going on in the units. Web magic truly happens when collections (or

research data), experts, and the public are in close proximity. And it certainly beats what, from

the unit perspective, is presumed to be the alternative: dictatorial standardization from a central

authority.

But with those 137 million objects, a dynamic and increasingly Web 2.0-savvy workforce, and

the mission to increase and diffuse knowledge, the Smithsonian leaves a lot of value on the table

by working in silos.

Search and findability across the Web properties is poor. Usability and branding are incoherent.

Web 2.0 patterns underutilized. And the units can‟t afford to establish, maintain, and refine the

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platforms they want on their own, never mind that if they could, the repetition of effort or the

devastating effect on end-users would be calamitous: Imagine 30 separate e-commerce, event

ticketing, or personalization system. Nobody would rationally design the online operations of a

world-class Institution this way. The sum of the individual parts of the Smithsonian don‟t add up

to more than the whole, and they should.

Pain point #2: unexpected rivals

Imagining a Smithsonian Commons (Edson, 2009) describes multiple pain points facing the

Smithsonian Institution's Web and new Media programs in toto, mainly as a result of a lack of

coordination, strategic direction, or operational coherence.

Unexpected rivals in search Important Smithsonian initiatives can be dramatically less findable (via external search

engines) than efforts by small or seemingly obscure organizations. For example, shortly

after the launch of a major ocean initiative, relevant Smithsonian Web sites had low

visibility on major search engines when compared with a variety of similar organizations

and niche content providers

Unexpected rivals in reach The free Alexa tool (http://www.alexa.com) revealed that small or obscure organizations

can have greater on-line reach than the Smithsonian. (Alexa defines reach as a measure of

Web site traffic compared to total Web traffic worldwide.) For example, Enchanted

Learning (http://www.enchantedlearning.com), a two-person Web team providing

homework support for elementary school students and their families, has greater on-line

reach than the Smithsonian Institution, the world's largest museum and research complex.

Competition with Flickr/YouTube/Wikipedia Crowdsourced and crowd generated content can provide compelling alternatives to the

Smithsonian's curated information. For example, user generated content related to

Spaceshipone (the first privately financed craft to launch a person into orbit and an

accessioned Smithsonian object) seems to offer a dramatically more complete description

of Spaceshipone than the small amount of curatorially approved content on the

Smithsonian's Web site.

Pain point #3: brand identity

The vaunted Smithsonian brand may not mean as much onl-ine as we think it does. The clever

and revealing (but not scientific) Brand Tags Web site (http://brandtags.net/battle) subjects well-

known brands to head-to-head competitions. Currently, the Smithsonian is rated as the 569th of

957 brands, just above Weight Watchers and just below Odwalla.

Pain point #4: relevance

Smithsonian Web sites not used by museum visitors Candid interviews with visitors in and around Smithsonian museums told us that they've

never used our Web sites. This statement was echoed by many users: "[your Web site] is

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not user friendly, it's very complicated…" (See Quick Study: Have You Ever Visited a

Smithsonian Web Site?

http://www.youtube.com/group/SmithsonianVision#p/a/2/N5x4Sga0d1s.)

Fig 3: Screen capture from the video Quick Study: Have You Ever Visited a Smithsonian Web Site?

(Answer: No, these Smithsonian museum visitors, and many others, had not)

Demographic changes Shifts in the habits, ideas, and perceptions of traditional museum audiences are making

old business assumptions obsolete. Lee Rainie, President of the Pew Internet and

American Life Project, says:

Everything we hear from people we interview is that today‟s consumers draw no distinctions

between an organization‟s Web site and their traditional bricks-and-mortar presence: both must

be excellent for either to be excellent.

Mr. Rainie adds that “the real fun will come with the next generation AFTER the Millennials

[our current „digital natives‟] come of age." (Rainie, 2008)

Pain point #5: thermocline issues

The thermocline is a metaphor for a host of issues that develop when Web and New Media

practitioners are isolated in an organization, and as a result have a dramatically different

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understanding of New Media related issues than the management and leadership teams that set

budgets, priorities, and strategy.

In Oceanography, a thermocline is a condition in which an invisible barrier forms between cold,

dense water at the bottom of the water column and warm, light water on top. The gradient

between the two layers can become so pronounced that cold and warm water areas support

separate ecosystems, and the thermocline itself distorts sonar signals so much that submarines

can use it to escape detection from surface ships.

Fig 4: The Digital Strategy Thermocline. Management and practitioners sometimes operate in different

ecosystems of knowledge and methodology

The Thermocline is an apt metaphor for the situation faced by many organizations in which the

practical knowledge, communication habits, and action models – ways of getting work done –

are dramatically different between senior managers and typically younger staff. (Note that this is

not just an issue of age. A non-ageist way of thinking about this divide is provided in The

Generation M Manifesto: "Generation M is more about what you do and who you are than when

you were born ." Harvard Business Review, 2009)

The digital media thermocline presents enormous challenges to Web and New Media

practitioners as they try to catalyze change within organizations. I first noticed how pronounced

the divide is between senior managers and Generation M employees during discussions with

executives about Twitter: practitioners saw Twitter as a critical part of their work and a rising

public meme, while executives saw Twitter as a baffling distraction, or at best, they understood it

as a broadcast medium rather than a social network tool. In addition, many Generation M

participants in our Web and New Media strategy workshops seemed to show up with a fully-

formed understanding of how the wired, 2.0 (and post 2.0) Smithsonian should function.

Organizational and policy issues that stopped seasoned employees in their tracks seemed to be

non-issues for them. (See the discussion thread at http://smithsonian-

webstrategy.wikispaces.com/message/view/Tell+the+Secretary/11917153#12088885.)

The difference between a New Media savvy management team and a less savvy team makes a

difference in the kind of strategy that gets produced. This is highlighted in Wikipedia Founder

Jimmy Wales' critique of the Associated Press's digital strategy in November, 2009: " Nothing in

this document couldn't have been written by someone actually savvy in the Internet culture five

years ago " (Meyers, 2009).

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Below is a brief list of disconnects across the New Media strategy thermocline (The

Thermocline metaphor is further illustrated in The Digital Strategy Thermocline,

http://www.slideshare.net/edsonm/michael-edson-brown-university-digital-strategy-thermocline)

Issue Old construct Current thinking

What is the

Web?

The Web is a bigger

megaphone for broadcasting

what we do to a bigger

audience

The Web is a fundamentally new way of getting

work done.

"We are living in the middle of a remarkable

increase in our ability to share, to cooperate with

one another, and to take collective action, all outside

the framework of traditional institutions and

organization …Getting the free and ready

participation of a large, distributed group with a

variety of skills has gone from impossible to

simple." (Shirky, 2009)

What is the

Web?

The Desktop Internet 3.5 billion mobile subscribers (ICT Statistics

Newslog, 2007)

What is the

Web?

Fixation on the superficial

aspects of Web 2.0 and

social media

Web 2.0 and social media are just part of the stack.

"There's no such thing as social media, it's just

doing stuff with a computer. Everybody go to bed."

(Harmon, 2009)

Mission Focus on

innovation/discovery inside

the Smithsonian Institution

Focus on catalyzing innovation/discovery outside

the institution. Joy's Law: "No matter who you are,

the smartest people work for someone else." Bill

Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems (via Lakhani

and Panetta, 2007)

Mission Museums are for curiosity

and enlightenment

Museums should do work to benefit society

Change

model

We can get ahead by doing

more of the same thing

No we can't. John Kotter, Harvard Business School's

Konsosuke Matshushita Professor of Leadership,

Emeratus makes the case that we are in an era of

inexorable cultural, technological, and economic

change that requires urgent, ongoing action. (Kotter,

2008)

Change

model

Manufacturing change

model – Pursue Web and

New Media with the same

design/build methodologies

as books, exhibits, building

construction.

Gardening change model – continuous iterative

design, build, testing, refinement. (Credit to Josh

Greenberg of the New York Public Library for this

metaphor.)

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Change

Model

Institutions built on the

"model of enduring wisdom"

(i.e., we don't have to change

quickly, because wisdom is

meant to endure. Credit to

Peter Schwartz of Global

Business Network for this

metaphor)

Institutions built on the model of social

entrepreneurship (i.e., think big, start small, move

fast)

Governance Manage technology and

content separately

The most interesting ecosystems are in "border

habitats" between the two

Governance Govern New Media through

the existing org chart

Establish New Media as its own area of

responsibility at the top of the organization. (See

New Media, Technology, and Museums: Who's in

Charge, http://www.slideshare.net/edsonm/new-

media-technology-and-museums, Edson, 2009)

Business

model

Make Money Now Build an ascendant brand by "doing work that

matters" (see Tim O'Reilly, "Work on Stuff that

Matters: First Principles"

http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/01/work-on-stuff-that-

matters-fir.html. Also, Carl Malamud's tweet during

our business models strategy workshop, " Once [the

Smithsonian] has increased user base 100x or more,

many other [revenue generating] possibilities open."

Intellectual

Property

Control access and reuse

through restrictive policies.

Protect the brand and

notional income/revenue

Encourage unrestricted access and reuse as a

fundamental part of the mission

Table 1. Thermocline issues represent a rift between old and new ways of thinking about New Media

III. The Strategy Process

This section describes the structure of the Smithsonian's strategy-creation process.

Strategy, version 1.0

In the summer of 2007, seven Smithsonian units and the Office of the Chief Information Officer

(OCIO) commissioned a high-level assessment of the Smithsonian‟s strategic position on the

Web. Accenture Consulting conducted 26 interviews with project sponsors, unit-based Web

teams, and key stakeholders throughout the Institution in the fall and winter of 2007.

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Accenture delivered 130 pages of meeting notes and a 40 page summary report which offered

findings and recommendations in the areas of vision, value drivers, brand consistency, shared

services, relationship management, Web 2.0 and social collaboration, and analytics. The report

summarized the current state of organizational vision and strategy for Web and New Media

programs: "The Smithsonian lacks a clear vision, strategy, and business model for its Web sites

and public-facing new media technologies" (Accenture Consulting, 2008).

Though a handful of actionable recommendations were extracted from Accenture's deliverables,

the strategy assessment project failed to catalyze a sense of urgency or lasting change for several

reasons.

The project had ambiguous ownership within the Smithsonian

Key stakeholders were not interviewed

There was a long gap between stakeholder interviews and when interview notes were

circulated

There was a general sense that note taking did not reflect what was said during

stakeholder interviews

There was no mechanism, team, or resources in place to translate recommendations into

action

Smithsonian sponsors did not sufficiently scrutinize draft recommendations or challenge

the consultants to prioritize or justify recommendations

The final strategy was written and delivered several months after the first round of

interviews

Stakeholders couldn‟t directly see how their input shaped recommendations

Few participants had experience in the development of organizational strategy.

In the end this work did not adequately address the concerns of stakeholders, nor did it provide a

realistic road map for implementation. Because of these shortcomings, the initial strategy project

bred a certain amount of cynicism among the Web and New Media teams in the Institution, but

the project's failures did provide valuable insight when it came time to pick up the pieces and

create a process for strategy 2.0. The initial deficiencies and how we chose to mitigate them in

the subsequent strategy process are listed in the table below.

Strategy 1.0 project flaws Mitigation in Strategy 2.0 project

Ambiguous ownership Grant authority and define roles-and-responsibilities and governance structure in advance

Key stakeholders not interviewed Ask stakeholders to identify themselves and encourage them to participate in workshops and via a project wiki

Notes not circulated quickly Post meeting and workshop notes in real time via public wiki

Stakeholders felt meeting notes were inaccurate Display meeting notes in real time (via projector) as they're being taken. Allow stakeholders to update notes any time via public wiki

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No mechanism to translate recommendations into action

Focus on creating an actionable strategy, and emphasize governance and resources requirements throughout

Draft recommendations not scrutinized sufficiently Emphasize the process of scrutiny and synthesis during the formulation of the written strategy

Too long to write and distribute report Design a fast, compressed process

Stakeholders couldn't see how their input influenced the process

Highlight the input of participants and provide feedback and discussion via meetings, wiki comments, and discussion

Inexperienced participants Work with an experienced technology strategist and facilitator .Open the process up to outside experts via public wiki.

Table 2. Flaws in the initial strategy project and how we tried to mitigate them the next time

around

Strategy process, version 2.0

On September 23, 2008, I outlined a 90-day strategy-creation process on the internal

Smithsonian Web and New Media Strategy blog, a follows.

Kickoff Hold a kickoff meeting with senior management

Workshops Hold a series of workshops, open to all practitioners, about the top 5 or 6 issues facing us.

The workshops will be facilitated by a leader (probably the head of a New Media

agency/group), a Business Analyst, and a note taker. The facilitator will bring outside

perspective and expertise to the table and provide an impartial point-of-view (and also

provide some resources to move writing and research along.)

Internal Wiki As the meetings are taking place, use an internal wiki to take notes and record decisions.

Show the note taking in real time on a projected computer-screen that everyone can see.

The real-time wiki process ensures that participants see and understand what's being

recorded, eliminates the process of circulating and approving minutes, gets the output

immediately into a collaboration space, and helps drive participants towards useful,

enduring ideas.

External Wiki As soon as possible (hours, not days), review and migrate meeting notes and discussion

to a public-facing wiki. The public-facing wiki will accomplish three things. First, it will

help us engage outside experts early in the process when things are fluid and input can be

utilized, rather than at the end when things get rigid and we'll be grumpy. Second, we

need the help - our brain-trust here is wonderful, but small. And third, what stronger

statement could we make about what we want our relationship with the public to be in the

era of Web 2.0 and collaborative knowledge creation? We've been pilloried in the past for

being secretive and Web strategy is the ideal venue to demonstrate a new way of doing

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business. [Note: the Internal wiki was not used in the actual strategy process. All

production was done on the public-facing external wiki.]

Validate, Release, Repeat The strategy should emerge through the workshops and wikis, and because we're doing

all this in written form out in the open - when we're done, we're done! The wiki is the

strategy.

After posting this outline I received 13 comments from internal Web and New Media

practitioners, which I summarized in an internal blog post titled "Web Strategy: What I Heard

and What to Tell Sr. Management" (10/1/2008). Excerpts from the blog post are shown in the

table below. (For this paper I've used the initials of the commenter instead of their full name.)

Plan area Comments from Smithsonian Web and New Media practitioners

Urgency I think a core team driving this project is essential and there needs to be a sense of urgency motivating said team. (W.B.)

The Wiki I very much like the idea that the Wiki becomes the strategy. That approach is both more efficient and ensures that the strategy will be a living, growing document that can adapt to our changing needs over time. (N.P) …the more inclusive and transparent the process, the more it's likely to succeed but also the more internal buy-in it's likely to inspire. I see no reason not to move forward with it. (M.M.) This approach seems to be an excellent way of creating a strategy in a transparent fashion. The steps seems logical and I agree the wiki tool and the process it would allow could appeal to the larger SI community, outside experts, and the Secretary. (D.M.)

Fatigue Many of us are burnt out by the process of creating documents that don't result in any actual product or process. I too…am tired of looking for a strategy, when we should just get started and see what we come up with. (L.S.) We already spent hours this year working with the Accenture consultants only to end up with a sloppy final product that seems to have produced nearly universal disappointment. (S.S.)

Governance and ownership

Is the initiative given adequate authority, independence, and resources? To my mind governance is a critical enough question as to merit being one of the top issues that we try to address in the plan itself. (M.M.)

I definitely believe in bottom-up/edge-based innovation and inspiration, but ultimately, someone has to have some say in the enforcement of what (hopefully) will be new (and probably somewhat uncomfortable) ideas (isn't this the definition of innovation?)… (D.M.)

...We, here at SI, have problems actualizing the strategy, putting form to the excitement and the ideas. Generally what works is: the smaller the team, the more specific the product, the greater the likelihood of development success. (L.S.)

Executive skill/focus

What I am concerned about is the lack of tech knowledge among 'senior management'. I am faced with this constantly and either get a 'yeah-yeah, move along' buy-in with it cause they just can't be bothered with what I'm telling them, or I'm met with opposition and resistance because they can't be bothered by what I'm proposing to them. How do you plan to deal with this? I see you being met with blank stares when talking about new media initiatives like Web 2.0...I hardly think they can grasp that concept. (Anonymous)

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It sounds like many of us may have to participate in the process without the clear support of our directors or supervisors … That is, UNLESS this process is seen as piece of Clough's SI-wide strategic planning process, which was just officially announced today via email. If the commitment to this process comes from the very top, it sure would make selling the idea to our supervisors easier. (S.S.)

Synthesis The page comes across as a straightforward project plan: Kickoff, stakeholder input, validate, publish…What's missing in my mind is the synthesis. Synthesis should come between input and validation. What's to keep this from being another Accenture type product, but from a topical angle. The Accenture report didn't synthesize thoughtfully, didn't digest and recommend beyond the patently obvious. Another one of these will severely wound our faith that a change is a-blowing. (R.F.)

Table 3. Comments on the initial "workshop-to-wiki" strategy creation proposal

These comments on the proposed strategy process show the insight and commitment of the

Smithsonian's internal Web and New Media practitioners, and some of these comments proved

to be prescient, particularly those related to executive skill, governance, and oversight. It was

critically important to have this input, direction, and validation early in the process, and I put

these ideas in the forefront of my thinking as the process evolved. The strategy process (and, of

course, the strategy itself) was shaped by comments like these.

Smithsonian 2.0 conference

The Smithsonian 2.0 conference was a two-day gathering held in January, 2009 to explore "how

to make SI collections, educational resources, and staff more accessible, engaging, and useful to

younger generations (teenage through college students)." (See A Gathering to Re-Imagine the

Smithsonian in the Digital Age, http://smithsonian20.si.edu.) Keynote speakers were Bran Ferren

of Applied Minds, Inc.; author Clay Shirky; George Oates, founder of the Flickr Commons; and

Chris Anderson, author and Editor-in-Chief of Wired. Their keynotes and a full list of

participants are on-line at the conference Web site link above.

The conference was inspiring and created a palpable sense of excitement and possibility around

the Smithsonian. The invited participants were almost unanimous in their advice to the

Smithsonian: embrace change, work quickly, use crowdsourcing and the tools of social

networking and "Web 2.0" writ large, and share the incredible resources and expertise of the

Smithsonian as widely and aggressively as possible. But as with the "Strategy 1.0" process

discussed above, there was no organizational mechanism through which we were to take this

advice, scrutinize it, and synthesize it into a plan for change. Change management, post

Smithsonian 2.0, was a bit of a vacuum, into which we inserted the Web and New Media

Strategy process that eventually delivered a working strategy to the Institution. In addition, the

event was initially conceived as a closed event with only a handful of participants, and members

of the Smithsonian Web and New Media practitioner community worked hard to make the event

more open, both to Smithsonian staff and the world at large via Webcasts.

Strategy 2.0 process defined

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As noted above, the enthusiasm and sense of possibility generated by the Smithsonian 2.0

conference provided a natural lead-in to a focused strategy creation process, and the

shortcomings of "strategy 1.0," as well as the advice and involvement of the Smithsonian Web

practitioners, gave us insight into how to structure a successful process.

The process, reviewed and validated by Smithsonian Web and New Media practitioners,

revolved around a public facing wiki and five workshops for Smithsonian staff.

The workshop topics were

Education

http://smithsonian-webstrategy.wikispaces.com/Education+Workshop+Real-Time+Notes

Business models

http://smithsonian-webstrategy.wikispaces.com/Business+Models+Workshop+Real-

Time+Notes

Operations and technology

http://smithsonian-webstrategy.wikispaces.com/Technology+and+Operations+Real-

Time+Notes

Curation and research

http://smithsonian-webstrategy.wikispaces.com/Curation+and+Research+Real-

Time+Notes

Directors

(This session was set aside to gather input from directors of Smithsonian museum and

research units, but as with the other workshops it was open to all staff and real-time notes

were posted to the public wiki)

http://smithsonian-webstrategy.wikispaces.com/Directors'+Workshop+Real-Time+Notes

(The URLs above point to the session's notes page. Links to each session's discussion guide and

post-workshop evaluations are at the top of each page.)

All Smithsonian staff were invited to participate in any or the workshops directly, and to follow

or contribute to the workshops via the public wiki.

The workshops were two hours long and were facilitated by Leo Mullen, CEO of Navigation

Arts, and Nikki Pampalone, a Navigation Arts Information Architect. Leo‟s deep experience

with corporate and institutional technology strategy and his sensitivity to the internal

machinations of large institutions proved to be invaluable. Leo was a brilliant collaborator on all

phases of strategy development, and Nikki provided outstanding support and insight throughout

the process.

Real-time notes, shared publicly

At the beginning of each workshop, participants were told that the main intent of the workshops

was to "move relevant information to the wiki where it could be openly evaluated, sifted,

weighed, and considered by all." (See Smithsonian Institution Web and New Media Strategy, V.

1.0 2009, Process at-a-Glance, http://smithsonian-webstrategy.wikispaces.com/Process+At-a-

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Glance.) The rooms where the workshops were held were set up with large screens on to which

the note taker's laptop display was projected so attendees could see what was being written, as it

was being written. Information Architect Nikki Pampalone was the note taker.

During the course of each workshop, Leo Mullen led participants through a series of discussion

points outlined in discussion guides that were given to participants and posted to the wiki. (See

links to the discussion guides on the workshop pages listed above.) Leo and I worked out the

discussion guides in advance to help organize our thinking around the various workshop topics,

but in the actual workshops we generally let the conversation take its own course.

Fig 5: Workshop notes were taken in real time and posted every few minutes to a public facing wiki.

Notes were displayed to workshop participants on screens in the front of the room as the notes were

being composed

The workshops were held between April 29 and May 6, 2009. Two hundred and ninety-four

Smithsonian stakeholders from 55 museums, research centers and business units participated in

one or more workshops. Over 29,000 words of notes were taken and shared on the wiki.

Between January 29, 2009 (the day the first page was created on the wiki) and January 31, 2010,

the wiki received 65,625 page views and 31,913 unique daily visitors: 2,166 edits have been

made (but by only 184 unique daily editors, probably representing under 30 individuals). The

wiki currently has 153 registered members with editing rights. (See Running the Wiki, below, for

a discussion of user rights.)

The process of synthesizing a strategy from the input and conversations of the workshop process

began almost immediately after the first workshop. Leo Mullen and I outlined the structure and

content of the strategy and presented draft outlines and business requirements (things the strategy

had to address) to an advisory group of practitioners on May 12, just 6 days after the last

workshop. (This group of practitioners helped write the strategy and provided guidance,

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oversight, and support during the strategy-creation process. Group members are listed in the

strategy appendix at http://smithsonian-webstrategy.wikispaces.com/Strategy+--+Appendix.)

Following the philosophy of openness and transparency, meeting materials and notes were

posted to the public wiki (http://smithsonian-webstrategy.wikispaces.com/Notes+from+5-12-

09+meeting+with+advisors) . The strategy was essentially complete the first week of June, six

weeks after the first workshop.

Fig 6: Illustration from the completed Smithsonian Web and New Media Strategy. Theme II describes

an updated Smithsonian Learning Model. http://smithsonian-webstrategy.wikispaces.com/Strategy+--

+Themes#experience. Illustration by Nikki Pampalone, Navigation Arts

Running the Wiki

We decided to host the wiki in an externally hosted environment (http://wikispaces.com) for

several reasons.

It was easy and fast to set up

It was inexpensive ($50/year)

The site we chose had a good suite of intuitive editing and back end tools

Since we wanted to run the wiki without moderating comments or changes before

allowing them to be published, we used a hosted service to establish some separation

between the Smithsonian brand (on the core http://www.si.edu Web site) and the

branding for this wiki. In the unlikely event that inappropriate/offensive content was

posted to the site, damage would be contained to the wikispaces.com domain.

To ensure ease of access, we set up user permissions on the wiki so that anybody could view the

site without requiring registration or login, but to encourage responsible participation, only

registered members could make edits or comments. To date, everyone who has requested an

account has been granted one, and there have been no incidents of abuse or misconduct. Changes

to the site are monitored via RSS and e-mail notifications.

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A common complaint about group-edited wiki pages is that it is difficult to know who has

written what when viewing any particular version. We attempted to avert this problem by

encouraging contributors to follow a very simple style guide when editing pages or making inline

comments. The style guide asked editors to put their comments and modifications in brackets

with their initials and the date when changing a page. This convention was developed through

previous work on an internal wiki, and it seemed to be mainly successful. The style guide is at

http://smithsonian-webstrategy.wikispaces.com/Style+Guide.

Fig 7: This grab below shows an example of the bracketed-comment style used in a back-and-forth about

Web technology investments. From the Business Models workshop notes at http://smithsonian-

webstrategy.wikispaces.com/Business+Models+Workshop+Real-Time+Notes

IV. Benefits of the Open Process

Transparency, openness, and speed defined the strategy-creation process and created an

environment that was conducive to the creation of a strong strategy. Below is a list of some of

the beneficial effects of this way of working.

Extended inquiry In two hours, each of the workshops could only skim the surface of deep and challenging

strategy topics. Real-time note taking on the public wiki was a way to acknowledge the

limited nature of the workshops and invite participants and other stakeholders and

interested parties to extend and deepen the inquiry over time.

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Participant input mattered Workshop participants told me they felt that their input "counted" because they could see

that their ideas were being heard and recorded – and would be remembered and have an

impact after the workshops adjourned. (Many participants shared their frustration with

committee style meetings in which discussions, thoughts, and ideas just drifted away after

the meetings adjourned.)

Breaking out of the "back room" mentality

Organizations need to confront "unspoken truths" in order to change. The open wiki

format enabled us to openly discuss and analyze difficult topics in a productive way. For

example, see the strategy's description of the current overall end-user experience on

Smithsonian Web sites: "We are like a retail chain that has desirable and unique

merchandise but requires its customers to adapt to dramatically different or outdated

idioms of signage, product availability, pricing, and check-out in every aisle of each

store. This needs to be addressed to realize the full potential of the Smithsonian‟s digital

initiatives." (http://smithsonian-webstrategy.wikispaces.com/Strategy+--

+Themes#experience)

Edit while it's fresh Real-time notes on the wiki allowed participants to edit and make comments as soon as

they returned to their desks, while the ideas were still fresh in their heads. Changes and

comments could be made and published instantaneously, without waiting for a document

of notes and minutes to be circulated and changes reviewed and compiled. (Such a

process would have taken weeks given the number of people involved.)

A bigger brain trust People outside the Institution, and Smithsonian staff not able to attend, were able to

follow and the discussions and contribute to strategy development via the Wiki, Twitter,

and eventually YouTube.

Sharing and linking Written notes on Wiki pages allowed for linking and URL sharing in a way that an audio

recording or Web cast would not. (Referencing a spoken passage in a podcast or Web

cast is challenging and tedious.)

Trumping bureaucracy

Gathering support and momentum for new ideas in a supportive public forum before

subjecting them to the withering scrutiny of bureaucratic processes was a way of

inoculating the process against a bureaucracy's natural tendency to say no to things.

Efficient problem solving

Open, iterative development is an efficient way to find and solve problems. Or, as they

say in open-source software development: "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow"

(Raymond, 2000). In one stark example of this, an attorney at the Creative Commons

spotted a typographical error in a "final" strategy page that negated the intended meaning

of a whole section of content: instead of saying "we will not unnecessarily restrict

content" we had written "we will unnecessarily restrict content." This error had eluded

internal detection until a highly motivated outsider focused on the intellectual property

statements in the strategy.

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Speed

Working directly on a wiki is a faster way to collaborate and develop ideas than a

traditional committee-driven process. Smithsonian practitioners expressed a preference

for asynchronous collaboration through the wiki for most activities.

Promises made in public are not easily forgotten

Saying that we intend to create a free content commons to a group of internal bureaucrats

is one thing: making that commitment in public is quite another. The assertions and

direction of the strategy are less likely to be forgotten or ignored because there are more

witnesses.

Fig 8: Real-time workshop notes "wiki-cast" to a public wiki enabled and encouraged a number of

beneficial activities. The Web page pictured is for the April 30, 2009 Technology and Operations

workshop, http://smithsonian-webstrategy.wikispaces.com/Process+At-a-Glance

Conclusion

Throughout the process I was mindful of the admonitions of my colleagues who told me that past

failures had left them wary of strategy projects, but those of us who worked on this project were

united by the conviction that a strong Web and New Media strategy was required to prepare the

Smithsonian Institution to succeed in the 21st century. I was also mindful of the extraordinary

potential of the Smithsonian – the affection felt towards it even by its critics – and the talent

and dedication of the its staff: I did not want to fail them! I tried to use transparency and

openness as a tool to make difficult but necessary assertions about opportunity, our strengths and

weaknesses, the urgent need for systematic change.

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References

Accenture Consulting (2008). Smithsonian Institution Web Strategy and Assessment, Volume I.

Edson, Michael (2009). The Digital Strategy Thermocline.

http://www.slideshare.net/edsonm/michael-edson-brown-university-digital-strategy-

thermocline. Consulted 2/4/2010.

Edson, Michael (2009). Imagining a Smithsonian Commons. First presented at the Gilbane

Boston conference in December, 2008, and subsequently updated and presented at several

venues, including the 2009 Computers in Libraries conference: text version:

http://www.slideshare.net/edsonm/cil-2009-michael-edson-text-version, PowerPoint version:

http://www.slideshare.net/edsonm/cil-2009-michael-edson-powerpoint, video version:

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/1327813. Consulted 1/30/2010.

Edson, Michael (2009), New Media, Technology, and Museums: Who's in Charge,

http://www.slideshare.net/edsonm/new-media-technology-and-museums. Consulted 2/4/2010

A Gathering to Re-Imagine the Smithsonian in the Digital Age (Smithsonian Institution Web 2.0

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"Global Mobile Phone Users Top 3.3 Billion By End-2007." ICT Statistics Newslog. 5/26/2007.

http://www.itu.int/ITU-

D/ict/newslog/Global+Mobile+Phone+Users+Top+33+Billion+By+End2007.aspx.

Consulted 11/11/2008.

Harmon, Elliot (2009). Quote is from a twitter message,

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Haque, Umair (2009). “The Generation M Manifesto”. Harvard Business Review. July 8, 2009.

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Kotter, John P. (2008). A Sense of Urgency. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Press.

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Myers, Steve (2009). Jimmy Wales: AP's 'Landing Pages' a Good, if Late, Idea. Pointer Online.

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Rainie, Lee (2008). E-mail to the author, 4/21/2008.

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Raymond, Eric S. (2000). The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

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Shirky, Clay (2008). Here Comes Everybody. New York: Hyperion, 2008.

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webstrategy.wikispaces.com/Strategy+--+Table+of+Contents. Consulted 1/30/2010. This

URL is the home page for the strategy, as well as the strategy-creation process.

Cite as:

Edson, M., Fast, Open, and Transparent: Developing the Smithsonian's Web and New Media Strategy. In

J. Trant and D. Bearman (eds). Museums and the Web 2010: Proceedings. Toronto: Archives &

Museum Informatics. Published March 31, 2010. Consulted April 6, 2010.

http://www.archimuse.com/mw2010/papers/edson/edson.html