Preparation for making a technology leap or change

• Know your business Process– Business flow– Data inputs/outputs

• Think about maximizing your data– Get from data to ‘wisdom’

• Establish requirements– Software– Hardware

• Maximize your resources

Visitor arrives

Member?

Purchases?

yesno

Update Mailing List &Attendance List

Update Attendance

Store Data

Store Data

Update financials and Inventory

Store Data Done

yes

Done

no

Understand your Business Process

Data Inputs & Outputs – Sample ‘Gift Shop’

Input System Output

Employee Timesheets

(define format)

Personnel/HR

Financial

Employee cost by activity

Payroll

Guest Book/Ticket, etc.

(define format)

Mailing List

Attendance Record

Attendance Data

Communications

Gift Shop Receipts

(define format)

Financial

Purchasing

Update Inventory

Sales

Heat/light by department

(define format)

Financial Operating Costs

Postage, printing Financial Mailing Costs (combine with employee cost by activity)

Etc, etc., etc., …

Move from Data to Information

• What is Data?– Can be numbers (as in a simple spreadsheet)– Can be lists (as in lists of names)

• Data must be processed to be useful• Processed data becomes ‘information’

– The processed spreadsheet – monthly receipts– The processed list – membership information

• From information you can now begin to ask/answer important (wisdom) questions.– Who, what, when, where, why, how

The Move from Information to Wisdom

• Information/knowledge are about the past.• Wisdom is about the future.• You can now begin to ask questions which may lead to

new decisions.• Information systems can be paper based:

– Manually maintained member/user lists– Manually updated inventory or financial spreadsheets

• Technology can take you to the next level.– Ease of data entry and maintenance– Processing data from multiple areas (or systems) in order to gain

additional insight (wisdom)– Greater use of historical information

Simple Walk-through

• You have the following data:– Mailing list– Membership list– Sign-in book, tickets or attendance – Financials for printing/postage– Office Staffing, timesheets, cost per hour

• You can ask the following questions (information):– How many members & non-members have visited?– How many are return visits?– How many times have we communicated via mailing list?– How much does the average communication cost?– What is the average cost of communication per household?

Simple Walk-through, Continued

• The ‘wisdom’ question:– Our communications cost x% of our membership fee; our

members are visiting only once per hear on average. Are we getting enough business from our current communications?

• A next ‘wisdom’ loop will follow this first question.– How much per visit does an average person spend?

• You need to determine the data and systems from which you can gain the information to answer this question.

• What other questions can you ask?– How many of our visitors are out of state? Do we need to

include them on our mailing list?– How can we get ‘satisfaction’ information from our visitors?

Technology supporting the quest for Wisdom

• Plan for technology BEFORE investing.– Your technologist should be part of all planning activities.

• Plan for gathering your information.– What do you want your information to look like?– Where/how will you collect your data?

• Plan for moving from data to wisdom.– How/where will you store your data?– How will you merge multiple data sources?– How will you maintain your data/information?– Will you be able to add or change your information format if new

questions arise?• How will you communicate your ‘wisdom’

– Board/policy, clients, associations.

You must remember this!

• Technology is more expensive to maintain than to buy.• Multiple systems need to ‘talk to’ each other.• Flexibility in data is important for future planning.• Information systems need to be designed BEFORE they

are purchased or implemented.• Do not depend on an external product to define your

requirements.• Be mindful of internet pitfalls:

– 24 by 7 support required; downtime if frustrating to clients.– Do not use for internal communications – they can be ‘mined’.– Security of client information is paramount.

You must remember this!, Continued

• Be careful of using multiple or proprietary databases. Your data needs to be accessible across functional areas.

• Stick with the tried and true … new start-ups or new products are often not long-lasting.

• Maximize external resources for evaluation.– Reference accounts, colleagues, etc.– On-line sources for specific evaluation of nonprofit software

Your Technology Support Staff

• Even with technology, human error is likely.• Volunteers bring unique considerations.

– Volunteers supporting technology need training and a formalized commitment … things do go bump in the night!

• Purchase/maintenance agreements are important. – need to be thought out and maintained for maximum efficiency.

This should be part of a technology job description.

• Document, document, document …– Processes, tools, software need to be documented– Ease of change/support– Training of new employees/volunteers– Ease of automation!

Technology Support Staff, Continued

• Be careful of the ‘Lone Ranger’ in a key position.– What if he/she leaves suddenly?

• Beware of the ‘hot shot’ who doesn’t like structure.– A responsible leader must know/understand what is going on …

• Someone on the technology staff must be accountable.– along with someone on the business staff must understand your

systems (business and technology) end-to-end.

The ‘Big Rules’ for Changing Systems

• Do not make a change unless you know how to back it out.

• Both the installation and the back-out must be tested.• Changes need to be documented and

communicated/agreed in advance.• If you don’t understand the risks, … don’t make the

change.• Keep track of your changes/approvals/success/failures.

– Essential for trouble-shooting problems.– Historical problem patterns must be corrected.

Additional Resources

• Arizona Humanities Council, ‘Cultural Tourism Study’:– Food for thought regarding wisdom questions.

• www.webcpa.com/ato_issues/2009-7/-50175-1.html– Great article on nonprofit business software

• Idealware, 501C specifically for nonprofits– laura@idealware.org … ‘Candid Information about Nonprofit Software’: Software

Costs and Usage: Findings of a nonprofit Sector Survey, September 2005• National Council of Nonprofits• www.techsoup• Foundationcenter.org• CNET

– General product reviews and pricing. Not specific to nonprofits

– www.cnet.com

Wise Technology and the Creative Business of Museums

A Museum Educator’s Perspective

Anne Thwaitsathwaits@gmail.com

June 3, 2010

Charles Willson Peale The Artist in His Museum 1822

The National Constitution Center, Philadelphia, PA, is filled with high-tech exhibitions, artifacts

and interactive displays.

Wise Technology and the Creative Business of Museums

Be wise by…

• Choosing technology that supports learning theory

• Knowing what visitors want and expect

• Using existing hardware (yours or visitors’), software, and online services whenever possible

Museum Learning Theories

Three common contemporary theories:• Theory of Multiple Intelligences• Constructivist theory• Socio-cultural theory

John Dewey, Experience and Education, 1938

All genuine education comes from experience, but not all experiences are genuinely or equally educative

Museum Learning Theories

Theory of Multiple Intelligences

• There are nine different types of intelligence: • visual/spatial• verbal/linguistic• logical/mathematical• bodily/kinesthetic• musical/rhythmic• Interpersonal• Intrapersonal• naturalistic• existential

• Strengths and weaknesses in various intelligences vary from person to person, so teaching methods should also vary

Museum Learning Theories

Constructivist theory

• Learners construct knowledge, educators provide the tools

• Learners make personal meanings based on prior experience, existing knowledge and interests

“Rather than learners being empty vessels into which information can be poured, they come… with a wealth of knowledge already organized. It is upon this knowledge structure that learners hang new information, creating new links to their pre-existing knowledge.”

K. Jeffery-Clay

Museum Learning Theories

Socio-cultural theory

• Learning is a socially mediated process

• Learning occurs in the context of interaction and collaboration with other people, where a wide range of levels of understanding and interests meet

• Communities of learners/communities of practice

What Visitors Want

Surprisingly, technology is not a high priority

What Visitors Want

Pre-Baby Boom Baby Boom Generation X Generation Y Millenials

1946 1965 1977 1992Birth year

2030 Vision: Anticipating the Needs and Expectations of Museum Visitors of the Future: A 2007 report by the Smithsonian Institution Office of Policy and Analysis

What Visitors Want

Pre-Baby Boom Baby Boom Generation X Generation Y Millenials

1946 1965 1977 1992Birth year

Want stimulating exhibitions and interactives that will help them stave off dementia and maintain brain function

Good family activities to do with grandkids

Assistive technologies to help compensate for loss of hearing, vision, motor function, etc.

What Visitors Want

Pre-Baby Boom Baby Boom Generation X

Generation Y Millenials

1946 1965 1977 1992Birth year

Most educated generation yet

Want to be more involved parents than their parents were

Want to get their kids away from screens for real, active learning experiences

What Visitors Want

Pre-Baby Boom Baby Boom Generation X Generation Y

Millenials

1946 1965 1977 1992Birth year

Attached to the constant communications and info-gathering power of new technology tools

Social experience is important – want constant connection with others

Want to create, contribute to, comment on, manipulate, remix, and share content

Want immediate access to info from many sources

interactions with technology in daily life outside of the museum shape the amount of involvement visitors want to have with their learning, their preference for social or collaborative learning experiences, and their expectations of rapid response and quick turn-around and refresh in museum programs and activities.

Museums must think of audiences as active participants and not passive consumers of information.

“If the museum can emerge as a convener of cultural events rather than an arbiter of cultural truth, it will benefit from the Web more than be threatened by it. What the museum can contribute is an authenticity rooted in its integrity as an institution rather than the authority of its voice.”

-David Bearman & Jennifer Trant(Museums and the Web 2008)

Social Media

• Disseminate information (Facebook, Twitter, institution websites)

• Create communities of learners/communities of practice (Facebook, Twitter, Ning, wikis)

• Create and comment on content (YouTube, Flickr, Google Maps mash-ups, tagging, folksonomies)

The Black List ProjectBrooklyn Museum

Two Macbook computers, and instructions for their use, used to capture Community Voices to YouTube in The Black List Project, an exhibition of portraits by photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders that explores being black in America.

The Black List ProjectBrooklyn Museum

World Beach ProjectVictoria and Albert Museum, London

World Beach ProjectVictoria and Albert Museum, London

Emily Düwel Interpretive Planning

Exhibition Development

ThinkSense studioswww.thinksense.org |

eduwel@gmail.com

Co-Design, Technology and the Museum

Paradigm

• With the rise of technology, the desire to involve audiences in the museum process – first articulated in 1960s – has been increasingly realized, as evidenced by two important museum trends:

– Democratization of Museums

Accessibility

Relevance

Changing Ideas of Representation and Voice

Creating Open-ended Learning Experiences

– Participatory Design or Co-Design

Bringing the audience or community into the design process

Re-thinking separation of author vs. subject vs. visitor

Distributed Authority

Encouraging Open Dialogue and Critique

Technology Re-shaping the Museum Paradigm and vice-versa...

Co-Design in Practice ...visitors contribute scientific research and become environmental stewards, through complementary on-site and

online activities... Conservation Trust of Puerto RicoLa Esperanza Nature and History Reserve

On-site Citizen Science Visitor Activities include bat counting and bird monitoring

Cornell Ornithological Lab PartnershipCitizen Science / Wildlab

Online Citizen Science Visitor Activities include tracking bird migration and pathology.

ASU Museum of AnthropologyVisiones Sagrados / Sacred Sites

Room for the Dead

(both museum and online exhibits)

Visitors created altarpieces for loved ones or favorite icons, as well as contributed interpretive texts.

Oracle Historical SocietyFamily Histories: Día de los Muertos 2007

School kids conducted oral history interviews with family members and created altars commemorating a particular past relation.

Visitors create and/or interpret art for museum display, producing a form of visual ethnography

Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico. La Esperanza Reserve – Manor House Visitor

Center Interpretive PlanA Place Over Time: Photos and

Memories

Community stakeholder life stories will be interwoven with images of La

Esperanza sugar-cane workers by WPA photographer Jack Delano.

Visitors contribute their experiences of history

and its interpretation....

Architecture of SegregationProposed Traveling Museum

Exhibition

Dynamic Oral History Website Component

People contributing both stories and photos documenting their

experiences of segregation in the United States ... from both sides

of the fence.

National Museum of the American IndianWashington, DC

Native American nations determine how their culture and history is represented and participate directly in curation. This effort represents the most seminal instance of co-design shaping a museum from the ground up.

ApachesTellTheirStory.orgApaches of Aravaipa Canyon, Inc.

Website Project Goals:

1. Establishes institutional presence and communicates its core mission.

2. Shares new scholarship that – for the first time – attempts to incorporate an Apache point of view.

3. Invites stakeholder participation in helping to shape the future form of an interpretive center.

Integrating scholarship

with co-design...

Museum / Technology Parallels• Structuring data to make it relevant, meaningful and

accessible • Visitor way-finding; non-linear navigation• Interactivity and free choice• Visitor evaluation vs. visitor bread crumbs• People sharing, curating and critiquing the events of

their lives, their communities and the larger society, in real time via a spate of different social media

• Creating collections, storehouses; situating objects, lives and places within a specific if open-ended past or landscape or context; drawing parallels, making associations (keywords)

MUSEUMS and MEMORY...

Memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theatre. It is the medium of

past experience, as the ground is the medium

in which dead cities lie interred.

Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)

Museums and Websites serving as universal repositories of both public and private

memories...

Memory Archives as vehicles for co-design...

Sawad Brooks and Beth StrykerDisseminet (www.disseminet.org)

A non-linear keyword-based investigation of accounts of the disappeared in El Salvador.

Hippo CampsPublic Memory Project

The as yet unlaunched version of a new collective memory application

City Design CenterChicago Database

Future goal is to incorporate city plans and documents with individual experiential accounts of different urban sectors.

Some Big Questions in regard to Co-design and Technology...

• How can we ensure that programs impart meaning?

• Is the curator – now a meta-curator – placed in the role of puppet master or play director? To what degree is that role transparent?

• Is the voice of the author now a mere conduit for the voice of the many?

• Is everything now to be given equal value? For example, is the digital copy as valuable as the original?

• Digital interactivity versus engagement with the real ... how does technology enhance or divide us from meaningful experience

• What happens when we let the rabble in the gate...

What It Means to Storm the Museum:

Machine Projects – L.A.“Etymologically speaking, “machine” is any means of doing something. Our explorations at Machine Project reflect this by investigating everything from knitting techniques to ideological frameworks for the construction of reality. ...”

LACMA InterventionA few of the many ideas governing the idea of visitors being given opportunities to take over and re-interpret the museum...

“Garden on top of the elevator. Student driver parking valets. Child docents. Clap-activated lighting. Boat puppets. Laser eyed statue heads—please guard your eyes. Beware of pie toss. Saint Bernard with brandy neck-cask wandering around the landscape paintings. Abandoned luxury items. Preparator workshop. Can we drill into the floor? Whoopie cushions, everywhere. A voice hidden inside a pedestal occasionally shouts out a comment or interjection....”www.machineprojects.org

A Few Key Technology Planning & Design Tips

• Keep your institutional mission front and center. Revisit it as you progress.

• Look at – and articulate – your needs, purpose and goals.

• Define your team. Be inclusive .. curatorial, design, evaluation, education, engineers/programmers, architects and even stakeholders should all have input during the creative brainstorm process.

• Come up with a list of “allies” i.e. additional partners, advisors, technical gurus etc.

• Think about the audience perspective. Ask yourself “How can the visitor help this project?”

• Talk to visitors and community members. Consider using formative evaluation to find out the questions you don’t even know to ask.

• Hold BRAINSTORM sessions with your full team. Let everyone bounce their ideas around.

• Dream – engage in word play and free associate, think about metaphors, doodle and sketch, read poetry, wander, look around ... play.

• Synthesize and pare down ideas into a clear and concise CONCEPT STATEMENT. This is the edifice upon which everything will hang.

• Devise a few solutions in keeping with your concept statement .. not just one.

• Look at existing freeware platforms and see if they can’t be adapted. Be careful of existing modules i.e. determine research/design/development and maintenance costs. Think about project/technology lifespan.Create simple prototype/s or representative sketch/es, evaluate in terms of initial resource outlay, ongoing maintenance costs and impact or benefit (see matrix). Discuss and make a selection.Draft the project parameters into a written plan. Spell out the purpose and goals, overarching concept, evaluation, interpretive strategy, project scope, team, work plan, outreach/marketing, timetable and budget.Develop schematics or a flow chart representing the information architecture or framework, i.e. demonstrate how the parts relate to the whole and incorporate into plan.

• Using the above, create a framework or outline. This framework will then help ensure that all project aspects are unified and integrated, as well as ensure a smooth transition from stage to stage (e.g. from plan to research to content to design to engineering/programming to fabrication to installation).

All of the above will prove invaluable to writing convincing grant proposals to help fund the project.

Strategic Planning Matrix(Borrowed and adapted from John Durel, Organizational Coach, QM2/ Durel Consulting Partners)

Resource Levels(staff, time, funding, space, etc.)

Little #7 #3 #1

Some #8 #4 #2

Huge #9 #6 #5

Little Some Huge

Impact

Projects falling under Nos. 1through 3 are good.

Projects falling under Nos. 6 through 9 should be avoided.

For many museums (unlike for-profits), No. 5 may proportionally outweigh all others in terms of benefit (e.g. the “blockbuster”).