I’ve always had self confidence issues, forever shy and I still firmly believe that I’m not intelligent, I just work hard, and a serious of lucky events of being in the right place at the right time has led to be being where I am today.

I often get told about Imposter Syndrome, which is basically characterised by the belief that you have somehow fooled everyone into thinking you are clever, and soon someone is going to find out that you shouldn’t really be here and you are a fraud. I feel like this on a daily basis. Apparently it’s very common in female academics. For about a year I have been bluffing this feeling with bravado. Getting excited by digital museum geekyness and pretending everything is fine. But since I’ve damaged my shoulder I have had a lot of time for procrastination and the fear of being discovered as an academic imposter has returned with a vengeance.

No matter how many times I hear the words imposter syndrome; it doesn’t seem to fit how I feel.  Why? Because it sounds like something other actually intelligent people suffer from.  Whereas I really am quite stupid (I am blonde after all) and it is fluke that I’m attempting to complete a PhD, and work with incredibly clever people. It’s only because I get excited by everything that I managed to bluff my way through so far.

This post is an attempt to understand why I feel like this.  To be honest I don’t know if it has helped. But according to all the Imposter Syndrome posts I’ve read they point to sharing how you feel and discovering other people who feel exactly the same.  So I ask you this, am I an imposter? And more to the point are you?

Culture24's new project for Museums at Night, Connect10

Many of my readers may have noticed my unadulterated love for Museums at Night.  Museums at night time! Brilliant! You can’t not love it.   I’ve just discovered that Culture24 have a new and exciting Museums at Night project called Connect10.  So you know connect4 the game where you have to outsmart your opponent to get 4 yellow discs in a row? Yes? Well its nothing like that.   Connect10 matches ten contemporary artists with ten museums and galleries for a series of special one-off Museums at Night events over the weekend of 18th, 19th and 20th May 2012.

The ten artists Culture24 have lined up are absolutely brilliant! And what’s really exciting is that any museum can pick an artist, and what they would like that artist to do in the museum!  Some of the most exciting artists in the UK let loose in museums sounds like messy paradise to me.  There’s even a couple of my favourite artists on the list; Bompass and Par! They have made  chocolate fountains willy wonky style in a shopping centre, a jelly lake on top of Selfridges and did some amazing stuff for the Wellcome Collection’s Dirt exhibition.  Not to mention they made a walk in cloud of gin and tonic. Oh yes they did!

Can you imagine them in your museum? Making some wonderfully weird collection based culinary concoction? Yes? Then apply! Apply now (and invite me!).  Or if they aren’t your thing what about  taxidermy? Or short stories? Or photography? Or how about an inspiring sculpture or installation?  The options are endless.
There’s more details on the Culture24 site but here’s a list of all the artists; have a peak and see which artist you would like, and think “hmm… what would be fabulous is if they could do THIS in my museum”.  Please apply, Please please please. For me.  It looks like its going to be excellent Museums at Night 2012.

• Claire Barclay, futuristic Scottish sculptor whose carefully balanced installations have been exhibited in Tate Britain and Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery.
• Bompas & Parr, the Jellymongers, create spectacular culinary experiences ranging from architectural jellies to lakes of cocktails.
• Ryan Gander, provocative installation artist whose Artangel commission in a Hoxton warehouse provided clues for visitors to solve a mystery.
• Jon McGregor, award-winning novelist and short story writer, author of If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things and Even The Dogs.
• Polly Morgan, contemporary taxidermist whose poignant installations have been collected by Kate Moss.
• Terry O’Neill, fashion and rock photographer renowned for iconic images of Hollywood stars and bands like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
• Martin Parr, Magnum documentary photographer whose pictures tell stories of leisure, consumption and communication.
• Simon Roberts, landscape and documentary photographer who spent a year crossing Russia and was Official Artist of the 2010 General Election.
• Bob & Roberta Smith, sign-painter, activist and installation artist who uses text on recycled signs and floorboards.
• Susan Stockwell, creator of beguiling installations, drawings and films commenting on globalisation and colonisation, often using recycled materials.

Chris Unitt’s blog

Dr Charlotte Frost’s blog (this clever lady has fantastic nails)

Museums at Night

Museum Commons

NESTA Digital R&D fund blog

Pattern London

The Uncatalogued Museum

Thinking About Exhibits

UCL Museums and Collections blog

Again, if there are any more blogs that you think I should be following, ping me!
Also this never fails to make me smile. Baby sloth!

Sky Mirror by Anish Kapoor a hidden gem in Nottingham. It draws people in and it reflects people back a good way to start the year I think

This time last year, as the days shuffled towards the start of 2011, and then hurried into January, I was full of nervous excitement about the coming year.  I had quit my job and was about to start my PhD.   I had very few expectations for what the year would bring, or what the change from staff to student would mean.   2011 was a time for change and flux for me, so it seems apt that I try to reflect on the year what was.

It is only now that I have realised what I busy year I have had, fuelled by excitement and inspiration and surrounded with passionate, creative, intelligent people. Sometimes I still pinch myself that I work with awesome people: I laugh every day, continually find out new things, and I am always astounded by the wealth of knowledge that surrounds me.  I really do love what I do.

It has been a whirlwind year; my PhD research took a back seat at the beginning, when I was still adjusting to being a student rather than an employed staff member.  But during that time I worked on some brilliant projects including Europeana and QRator.  QRator brought me into the realms of things I never thought I could possibly understand: Science.  Zoology, Spatial Analysis and Programming all had their part to play, and it has been this experience and the brilliant people at CASA and the Grant Museum who have opened my eyes to new ways of thinking.  It is fascinating to see how my ideas have transformed over the past year, and what milestones have influenced my PhD research.  I am now pursuing a different tangent entirely.  One which focuses very heavily on impact. Impact and visitor experience.

I have travelled the world, and met wonderful people who share my passion for museums, technology and all the exciting possibilities they bring. There are too many people, places and projects to mention, but you all know who you are.  Thank you for making 2011 an exuberant mess of brilliance.

And what of this year? Well so far, I’ve fallen down the stairs so I’m a bit battered and bruised. But again it’s a busy one, what with my PhD upgrade, some heavy duty data collection and analysis and the ups and downs of agile project work and user centred design of Social Interpretation with IWM.  It’s going to make for an ambitious, hectic and exciting year. Brace yourselves chaps.

Photo UCL, Grant Museum of Zoology / Matt Clayton

I’ve been undertaking some open coded analysis of visitor contributions to the QRator iPad’s in the Grant Museum for my PhD.  It is fascinating to assess the contributions and try and create categories based on the types of visitor comments.  At the most basic there three key categories; comments about the museum, comments about the topic discussed on the iPad and associated specimen cases, and then there’s Spam (not as much as you would expect).  But then there are comments like this one:

“This museum make no sense! Everybody kn[o]ws that GOD created man and beasts and that there is no such thing as evolution. You should be ashamed!!”

I don’t quite know how to categorise this.  This is one of the big problems with analysing textual data, without having any background information on the visitor who provided the comment.  I don’t know if this is a true belief or a joke.  It is really hard to remain neutral and not create researcher bias when a comment like this comes up.  If it is a visitor’s honest opinion, then how cool is that?  It is something that I haven’t really seen reflected in a Science Museum before, that I am aware of anyway (other than the creationist museum).  How do you deal with concepts from religious beliefs when working with zoological or in fact any biological collections?  Should there be an alternative interpretation to that of the scientific?  I’m a firm believer in the idea that there are multiple interpretations to objects, as every visitor brings their own interpretation, whether it is based on ‘fact’ or not, it is always based on previous experience.  So should museums be encouraging more religion based labels in their interpretative programming?  But then again, if it’s a joke, how do I categorise it? Should I take it as face value and class it as a visitor opinion about the museum? Should it count as spam as it isn’t really relevant to the topical discussion? How would you categories comments like this?

Regardless of how to categorise it, comments like this one highlight the usefulness of digital content creation between visitors and the museum.  It’s changing the way people think, not only visitors and curator but researchers like me. I love it when interesting visitor comments make me think differently about how to categorise, how to interpret and how to represent objects in new ways.  Gotta love digital technology for opening up the conversation.

Museumy Goodness

Audience Research

Electronic Museum

Engaging with Social Media on Museum 3

Fresh + New

IWM Social Interpretation Project blog

Musematic

Museum 2.0

Museum 3.0

Museum Cultures

Museum Madness

Museumgeek

MuseumNext

Museums Computer Group Blog

oonagh murphy’s blog

Open Objects

Rhiannon Looseley’s blog

The Attic

The Museum of the Future

We are culture 24

DHy Goodness

butterfly hunt

dm.ncl.ac.uk/courseblog/

Claire Warwick’s Blog

Dan Cohen’s Digital Humanities Blog

Digital Urban

Anne Welsh’s Blog

Melissa Terras’ Blog

sociablephysics

UCLDH Blog

Brilliant People

Dan Zambonini’s blog

Frankie Roberto’s blog

http://jennnelson.com/

http://occamstypewriter.org/athenedonald/

Mar Dixon’s blog

Making Strange

Shelfappeal

Beautiful Things

How about Orange

Project provenance

The Sartorialist

What Katie ate

What Katie Wore

If there are any more blogs that you think I should be following, ping me!

Yesterday I took part in a panel session at the Digital Strategies in Heritage conference, or DISH for short, in Rotterdam.  I was quite honoured a few months back to be approached by Wendy Earle from the BFI to take part in a panel about digital learning strategies, or lack of, and start thinking really strategically about what digital learning means in the cultural sector and where exactly digital learning practitioners sit in cultural institutions.

The panel consisted of some fabulous digital divas; Rhiannon Looseley from the Museum of London, Shelley Mannion from the British Museum, Wendy from BFI, Bridget McKenzie from Flow Associates and a token chap Steven Stegers from EUROCLIO. Oh, and me.

It was a really interesting panel that raised more questions than answers, but I think that it was really quite telling that we all had questions about the jobs we do, the experiences we provide, and the roles we play in the wider institution, and how there really aren’t any best practice guides or key institutional guidelines of how digital learning should be approached.  Or in fact evaluated.

Despite Learning being increasingly acknowledged to be a core function of museums, and the multitude of digital and online museum learning resources being produced there is still a lot of confusion about what all of that really means. As we stated in our panel abstract museums ‘have embraced the transformative possibilities of the digital realm. However, introducing digital initiatives into learning raises interesting questions that have not yet been fully discussed.’

On a practical level there are questions about responsibility and job roles; for example who is responsible for creating digital learning content within heritage institutions, and where do they sit within organizations? Tech, learning, curatorial, marketing?

But we raised other interesting questions:

• How can non-technical educators manage digital projects successfully?
• What partnerships have been established? Do they work efficiently? Do these partnerships include non-heritage partners?
• What kind of learning is encouraged?
• How is the impact measured?
• Is a learning framework used?
• Which audiences are addressed and how?

Then we raised more  strategic questions, including ‘what do we mean by learning in a digital context?’, ‘what kind of learning do we want to encourage?’ and how do we know if learning is taking (or has taken) place?

I was really interested in questions about digital learning and the institutional mission and where does digital learning fit in with senior management policy decisions? Also issues of how do you get institutional support for digital learning research projects, particularly if you are doing something really new? Does that fit with institutional aims?  Also talking about whether or not personalised digital learning can be implemented in siloed museum departments? Is there collaboration and transparency required to do so efficiently?

The big question for me looked at whether focusing on the user, and whether or not we can create meaningful digital learning experiences with the visitor rather than for the visitor.

Overall  the panel were talking around how museums are rethinking how we engage with our audiences, and there are shifting ideas about learning becoming about active production and participation, and now museums increasingly expect projects to include some kind of digital learning element.  But there are challenges in demonstrating the impact of these on audiences and learners.  But it is important to have a sensible discussion about how these are impacting on the educational practice of heritage organisations.  And really as a panel we came to the conclusion that this hasn’t really been done yet, and perhaps this can be the start of proper discussions about this, and how dealing with digital technology and learning can become more strategic in its approach.

you can see my presentation above, and Shelley’s is below.  I’ll link too the others when they are uploaded.

The preamble:  We put in a 250 word summary of what we thought we would talk about in a Getting it right from the start session and came up with this:

Social Interpretation and (SI) explores how social media models can be applied to museum collections and interpretation, offering new frameworks for engagement and social interpretation.  By applying successful social media intellectual and technical models SI is developing a platform that provides accessible, extensible, and open technology to aggregate, share and augment cultural data and social interpretation. The SI Project, Led by IWM, KI and UCL, utilises Agile project management principles and a user centred approach  to provide museum objects with profiles, social circles, crowdsourced comments, and community moderation tools: creating truly social, shared objects. This approach guarantees appropriate solutions by embedding users, stakeholders and the entire project team at every point of the development process, leading to advocacy and ownership.

This paper presents the progress of SI so far, highlights the collaborative project process and user centred development activities, its opportunities, challenges and provides an outlook on the next steps of the Project.  This paper aims to stress the necessity in including users, stakeholders and the project team into a systems design process.  Although this paper will concentrate on tools and the development of the SICE project, issues of user led design, agile project management and collaborative working are applicable to the development of cultural technology projects by any institution.

Sounds like we know what we’re talking about right?

The presentation:

This was presented at the Museum Computer Groups, UKMW11.  Many thanks to the MCG committee for thinking it was interesting enough to be included! a brilliant day, my take aways are here.

We were told that the presentation had to be “Shit hot” (I don’t think I’ve sworn on the blog before or in fact in any digital space.  This is a quote. Honest).  Pressure was on. Right. So out came the IWM collections search for some pretty awesome slides.  IWM has some truly beautiful photographs in its collection, as well as some brilliant figurines, honey jars, and pandas.  If all else failed, there would be pretty pictures to look at.   Now because the slides have a lot of pretty pictures, and not much text, in fact no text, just titles. I’ve attempted to capture everything we said in those very fast minutes we spoken for.

It started with explaining Agile, breaking it down into 4 core values and 12 principles. We have taken an agile approach quite naturally, because well look at us, we’re like puppies, we like doing things the exciting, scary way, whilst giggling childishly to ourselves.  Tom then went on to explain, the project.  Tom is a really engaging speaker, very eloquent too. I can’t express myself without huffing and puffing and urming.  My dad points that out to me every time I do a podcast.  I think it’s because my brain and my mouth don’t really work at the same speed.  Tom, however, none of that.  Straight down to business.   Social interpretation happens anyway in person, it’s not new, you share stuff with other people all the time, whether it’s you mother, brother, partner or cat- we are  just using new digital platforms to facilitate it.

The aim of the project is to increase Engagement with IWM content and Spread of collections and we are going to utilise social media methods to develop three applications, in gallery, mobile and online which hopefully facilitate social interpretation. Tom pointing out that as soon as the idea that visitors will be allowed to voice their opinions in any kind of permanent space (in gallery or online) museums freak out, Tom framed this conversation quite nicely, with swear words and Nazis.

So, yes we are giving visitors carte blanch to swear (there will be an obligatory filter however) and for them to express their Nazi sympathising tendencies. But giving visitors a voice, the ability to do ‘naughty’ things, doesn’t mean that they will! AND if they do it is not a disaster, because we can post moderate if necessary, and we are also working on the concept of social moderation, where the visitor community will itself self moderate any depravities.

We then broke down the presentation into how using agile project management principles have helped us get it right from the start from application to outlook:

Agile in application: collaboratively writing the application form for the project using google docs.

Agile in Management: Each key deliverable will be broken into separate work-streams, partitioned amongst the project team there is clear delineated responsibility ensuring that hiccups in sub teams don’t affect overall delivery, then there’s the project board and a wider reaching advisory board, who will inform formative concept generation and ongoing development.  Traditionally on R&D projects, they have been internalised.  Only discussed with the sector once the project is delivered. And only if they have been successful. We are doing things differently: with external researchers and dissemination via the NESTA R&D blog, the IWM Social Interp blog and talking with the wider sector.  This isn’t an internal project, it is for the whole sector to comment and contribute to and hopefully to learn some interesting things from. Whether they be good or bad.

Agile in Design: One of the main principles of Agile is to delivery frequently, from prototypes to working software, in iterative runs and the shorter the timescale the better.  We have a fail faster attitude. So we can learn from our mistakes.  Talking face to face is also really important, it’s the most efficient way of team working, and a great way to keep everyone dynamic and engaged, especially when you have scattered project partners involved. There is commitment of the team is to produce at each phase, moving project forward in baby steps each time a cycle is completed and as the design progresses, all design iterations, even post it note sessions, will be tested quickly with users. A major aspect of the project is User Centred Design. Embedding users at every point of the development process, Evaluation Isn’t a Party at the End, it should be a continuous process right from beginning.  Focusing on users will (hopefully) enable us to deliver appropriate solutions, owned by the users

Agile in Outlook: Management of any project is difficult, particularly when faced with an ambitious project on a tight schedule with multiple project partners.  We believe working collaboratively and using agile principles, will help us to work together, quickly and efficiently and most of all create a system which works well for its users.

And we are going to do all of this by:

Welcoming change

• Welcome changing requirements even late in development
• Respond to change quickly
• Plan with what you know, and if what you know changes. Go with it.

Reflecting regularly

• Always look at the bigger picture
• Thing about what has gone previously
• Re-focus on the user
• Reflect on how to become more effective
• Adapt to change and adjust the process accordingly

By Keeping calm and carrying on

• Being agile means sustaining your output
•  steady, not stalling

And finally (and my favourite) by eating more Cake

The aftermath: lots of Tweets, particularly about Tom swearing on stage and my advocacy for eating more cake. Apparently as a duo, we are cute, energetic, puppy like, and are bound to be pains in the backsides to project managers everywhere.  Whether that means we are going to contribute to an excellent project, or are good at presenting our ideas, is unclear.

We really do want to know what you think (of the project not our cuteness) so if you have any comments about the project do let us know.

Starting off the day was Ross Parry.  It is always a pleasure to listen to Ross, he oozes calm intelligence, and takes the listener on a journey of quiet enthusiasm.  Quiet enthusiasm is always the most captivating.  I bet his lectures are amazing. Anyway.  Ross explained that the day was about innovation, resetting and overall a brighter future.

So here are my take aways:

• What’s the difference between museums and Ikea? (meatballs) From Mark O’Neill, Head of Innovation and Delivery, at the Government Digital Service.  I quite liked Mark’s key principles for transforming public services to digital because well the digital user experience of mandatory public services is pretty crummy.  Principles:

• Digital by Default
• Putting users first
• Learning from the journey
• Building a network of trust
• Moving barriers aside
• Creating an environment for technology to flourish
• Don’t do everything yourself.

Some principles that are worthy of any digital project, whatever the sector.  It is always interesting bringing in a keynote from left field from outside the sector, just to shake us up.  But If I’m honest, I think he was already preaching to the converted.  Oonagh Murphy has a more comprehensive synopsis of Mark’s presentation over on her blog. I don’t know if his comparison to online searching on Ikea vs the Getty Museum was intended to provoke or inspire, so I’ll just leave it at that.

• Pallant house has a really nice website. Peter Pavement, Surface Impression and Marc Steene, Pallant House Gallery were up first in the Getting it right from the start section.  I was up next, so unfortunately missed most of this talk from sheer panic.  But they have a very nice website, and the idea about intensive collaboration between all partners sounds ace.

(Tom and I were next; I’ll blog about that separately.)

• Action research is awesome.  Even if it is about Metrics. Jane Finnis, Chief Executive of Culture24 spoke about ‘Let’s Get Real: How to Evaluate Online Success’ and that to succeed in the future Jane advocated that museums have to embrace both agile working, and failure.

• If the answer is an app……What was the question? Nuff said.

• Building solid foundations for inter departmental digital projects from Alex Bromley, Rhiannon Loosley and Matthew Rose, Museum of London.  I really like both of case study applications they discussed in their presentation (the picture bank and pocket histories) because they are lovely. But more than that I really like that MoL were working with sustainability and future proofing in mind, whether it was from getting support from senior management early on or integrating data management cross departmentally, future proof thinking was key.  Then there is the awesomeness of the ability to re-purposing and re-using the same content in different departments.  A magic box indeed is the CIIM (did I get the acronym right Rhi?)

• IWM is basically awesome. Carolyn and her New Media team are doing some spiffing stuff when it comes to digital projects (both present tense and forthcoming). Luke Smith and Giv Parveneh, IWM, spoke about the insanely good ‘Lives of the Great War.  Despite working on a project with IWM, I’m actually terrified of War Museums, mostly the content, rather than the people who work there; but projects like this one are making me suppress my deep rooted fears.  Lives of the Great War aims to piece together the life stories behind thousands of names on war memorials in Britain.  Luke and Giv explained the rich stories that have come from crowdsourcing across digital platforms and across archives.  Its amazing the information you can find, when you ask for help.

• Become a meta data liberator. Genius. I’ve never really got metadata. I’m a mucky pup, and an impatient one of that, the idea of categorisation and data cleaning, and lots and lots of meta data, will normally bore me, and then irritate me.  Its ten times worse, because its really important, which makes me more irritated that I can’t do it properly.  However. Seth van Hooland, Max De Wilde, and Ruben Verborgh from Free your Meta Data  are awesome. They made meta data interesting!  Watch the video! Watch the video!

• Create beautiful things to view beautiful things.  Joesph Padfield from the National Gallery talked about using IIPImage to manage high resolution images.

all in all a pretty excellent day.

squander is something we're not doing over at SI! (Image IWM EPH 4611: Squander Bug (a cartoon character to persuade people to avoid waste) air rifle target, 1940s)

A while back I announced that we had been awarded part of the NESTA R&D fund for a joint project with the Imperial War Museum(IWM), Knowledge Integration and our friends over at UCL CASA well we have well and truly started and are knee deep in agile project management, user centered design and puppy dog enthusiasm. So much so we have started a blog over at IWM Blogs, so all the project comings and goings whether they are good, bad or downright ugly will be posted in one spot from all of the project partners.  It should make a good read, and if not there are lots of pretty pictures, like the Squander bug!

I’ll post on here when there are updates, and will put a more personal spin on some of the posts.

For the past couple of days, I have been down on the gallery floor, hiding behind tanks and rockets whilst observing visitor behaviour, to get an idea of what type of behaviours we need to design for in the social interpretation applications.  What I really liked was that my feet, back and brain were sore by the end of each day, not because it was difficult, but because all the visitors were really engaged and did their best to fully explore the gallery space.  It was hard to keep up with them sometimes.  I can’t begin to imagine what I would have been like if I followed the visitor through their entire visit rather than just one gallery!

I’m in the process of writing up the findings from the observation sessions, which I will then post on the Social Interpretation blog, already there are some brilliant themes emerging.

Bring on the focus groups next week!