Digital Transformations: Scholarship vs Passion

N.B.  My notes from the Digital Transformations event, they might not make too much sense; I’ve padded bits out here and there. It might be worth looking at the tweets from the day which are in a handy document here.

Final notes  from the Digital Transformation event. Neil Cummings, artist, and Professor at Chelsea College of Art and Design, discussed Critical practice and on student’s wiki breaking down boundaries between leaner and lecturer Neil then went on to discuss what is public? Public ness. What does it mean to say public space?  Neil highlighted the labour needed to successfully assemble ‘a public’ & host an open event using milk crates.

Daniel Nathan, chairman, totallyradio.com.  discussed radio DJs and curation  The word ‘curator’ gets used sprinkled about quite a lot to talk about stuff people do on the web.   Is digital curation an acceptable term? What does it mean? Is the term curator devaluated? Is what someone does on Facebook comparable to the  training and knowledge which goes into curating collections in museums and galleries? Digital curation involves maintaining, preserving and adding value to digital research data throughout its lifecycle.  dj’s aren’t curators just because they pull music together.

Daniel then went on to discuss Public Radio Exchange. PRX in US is online exchange bringing radio stations, listeners, producers together. Daniel discussed whether or not a public radio exchange would work in the uk.

One thing that came out of this was the idea that in online environments passion is a core criteria for adding most value as dj /curator/editor vs scholarship route to ‘expertise. My instant response was is scholarship not a form of passion? I think they are exactly the same thing. Arent they?

All in all lots of ideas, presentations and discussions to think about.

Digital Transformations: Being Playful. Content provider to Creative lifecycle

N.B.  My notes from the Digital Transformations event, they might not make too much sense; I’ve padded bits out here and there. It might be worth looking at the tweets from the day which are in a handy document here.

Frances Taylor from the  British Library,  talked about being playful at the British Library and her responsibilities for connecting the British Library with creative industries.  Merging collections and creativity at the British library, it’s very different from serving academic researchers, different type of support is required. The transformation of BL from a content provider to supporter of whole creative lifecycle. Frances talked about celebrating creativity fashion, designers and makers.  The BL Spring Event was used as a case study for opening up collections and being playful. Letting exploration happen.  Its about facilitating interactivity &creativity via offline and online environments and those that are “loose around the edges”

I can sum Frances talk up in the brilliant video she showed us.

This one is my favourite. I’m gutted that I couldnt attend.

Digital Transformations: The Museum of the Future is…

N.B.  My notes from the Digital Transformations event, they might not make too much sense; I’ve padded bits out here and there. It might be worth looking at the tweets from the day which are in a handy document here.

Jim Richardson discussed the main themes which came out of the MuseumNext conference proposals.

Audience expectations are changing and museums just weren’t keeping up. That’s why Jim  kicked off @MuseumNext.

Jim discussed a visit to Seven Stories  in Newcastle. Which has a brilliant Gruffalo exhibition on, but you weren’t allowed to take photos.  Why?

Jim also discussed social media to empower your audience to advocate on your venues behalf.

• The museum of the future is….open.
• The museum of the future is…co produced
• The museum of the future is… Personalised
• The museum of the future is… Beyond the venue
• The museum of the future is… Measured.

I agree with all of those statements bar the measured.  Is the museum of the future measured? is it? I don’t really agree. The website is. But it’s only numbers. I know metrics are important. But really what do they tell us about the visitor experience?  (I don’t like numbers but my point still stands).

What put me on edge after Jim’s presentation was one of the questions from the floor about Crowd-sourcing.  There seemed to be a belief that crowd sourcing is actually uncomfortable in current society and even exploitative.  Katie Smith has already blogged about this here

This is what I meant about having some interesting discussions.  Normally when I attend Digital events, it’s like the speakers are already preaching to the converted.  It wasn’t the case here.  There were a range of views.  It was interesting to hear how perceptions of crowd sourcing could be so extreme. Which made for some interesting discussions in the breakout sessions, particularly when discussing the nature of audience and participation.  Lots of discussions about whether audience is a useful term, as well as ‘authority’ ‘critical thinking’ and ‘expert’ and where should they all be situated in the creative industries.

Digital Transformations: Informed Bewilderment and Ignorance

N.B.  My notes from the Digital Transformations event, they might not make too much sense; I’ve padded bits out here and there. It might be worth looking at the tweets from the day which are in a handy document here.

Next up at Digital Transformations was John Naughton, I couldn’t really hear most of John’s talk, there wasn’t a microphone, and I was sat at the back. So most of my notes come from jotting down stuff of his slides.

• John quotes Castells with the belief that we are “entering, full speed, the Internet Galaxy, in the midst of informed bewilderment. What is informed bewilderment? An assumption that we have good idea of what stuff is about & make mistake that others do to.
• ‘We are living in the biggest period of transformation since the invention of the printing press’ – nobody knows where it’s all going just as Germans didn’t know where Gutenberg’s invention would take us”
• John suggested that the majority of society has “Sheer bloody ignorance about what is going on” when it comes to digital things, particularly the internet. Suggesting that some people think the web is the internet and others who think Facebook is the entirety of the web. I took umbridge at this, are ‘other’ people really as ignorant as all that? I know we shouldn’t make assumptions about what people know. But is ignorance the right term? is it not up to us to educate? Is it ok to accept that ignorance exists? Should we try to combat it?
• Certain generations were shaped by broadcast tv and now moving to different medium – Internet. How should we deal with this? Has abundance overwritten scarcity in terms of ‘content’, prevails in economies of attention?
•  Convergence and complexity
• Convergence delusion.
• What is our emerging media ecosystem
• Complexity and viable system theory
• Does the Internet have a surprise generation machine is at its heart? Are unpredictability and abundance permanent features? How do you design for this? we’ve always had surprises, it’s just digital code copies more effectively
• Biodiversity: More biodiversity equals more system productivity. Overall, not specific to certain areas.”
•  permissionless innovation
• Intelligent filtration. Do we need instructions for checking quality? Can people no longer produce measured criticism?
• People have always complained about information overload and society has created tools to deal with it. This will continue.

8 Principles for Digital Transformations

Last week I attended the first of four Digital Transformation events. This event focused on Production and Creativity. Digital transformations mean that cultural and media organisations now find themselves in a new environment in which communities of participants interact to create, curate, organise and support cultural experiences.

It was really interesting to see the mixture of people speaking and attending this workshop. The audience ranged from Media practitioners, cultural heritage professionals, artists and academic researchers and this of course produced some surprising discussions about digital participation. And in my mind not all of those discussions were positive. One of the things that hit me during the day and the break out discussions was the term digital. Does digital just mean online? Lots of discussion during the day was about online elements rather than mobile and situated digital tech. Despite mobile becoming more pervasive in daily life, it doesn’t seem to have continued over into the critical conversations being held in the workshop.

This workshop considered three key things:

• How can the creativity of interested communities be unlocked for maximum benefit?
• To what extent can the creativity of enthusiasts be channelled and organised to achieve specific goals?
• What is the role of the professional producer as they find themselves in a community of enthusiast producers, fans, and other practitioners?

Here my notes from the day. The might not make too much sense; I’ve padded bits out here and there. It might be worth looking at the tweets from the day which are in a handy document here.

David Gauntlett kicked us off by discussing the usefulness of the metaphor of platform in transformation of ‘audience’. With a lot of Lego model metaphors. Brilliant stuff. David used the example of Tate Beta, and how cultural online presence has evolved from an online brochure to a channel to a platform.

8 principles

1. Embrace because we want to.
2. Set no limits on participating
3. Celebrate participates
4. Support storytelling
5. Some gifts – exchange stuff.
6. Let them show off
7. Reinvent learning on/offline.
8. Foster genuine communities

Two key points for me came out of David’s talk. Firstly the idea of Celebrate participants, not the platform
This is something I really try to hit home in my user centred design and user evaluation work. It doesn’t matter how fantastic the technology is, it’s the opportunity and the input by the public, users, community that makes any digital project interesting.

Secondly a point made by Jim Richardson on twitter in response to the 8th principle. Jim tweeted;
“Most online communities aren’t really communities… #digitaltrans”
Begging the question are online communities actually communities? How do they form? Can online communities be classed as a community of practice? If not why not? Should we be placing physical terms and characteristics in an online world? Lots to think about on that one.