@ UKMW2006 in Leicester: 5. what are the effects of the new online technologies -- the new social software?

jt chairs John Pratty, Mike Ellis, and Lena Maculan

Jon Pratty: clusters of ideas... thoughts and ideas that are reactions to what we've seen today in the context of the re-design of the 24-hour museum.
- rss / xml = neural network that supports new activities and opportunities: simplicity, ubiquity, connectiveness.
- search engine environment has changed sense of audience (70% of activity starts with search); mass audience of a large scale. "every page is a home page"
- nov 2005 report from international telecommunications union: on the threshold of unanimous objects, bots and data transactions dominating the web. "the internet of things" how do they communicate? how do we interact with them? rfid?
- 'curators of meaning' that operate in a space independent of specific objects and collections: is interaction a poetic intervention?
- interactions that are surprising and engaging; that use our content in new ways in new places.

segue: surprise, personalization, my view of web2.0. We may not all like surprises...

Mike Elllis: why museums are scared and excited at the same time?
How do we begin to integrate web2.0 into our activities and instituitons. It's perceived as hard: conceptually hard. How do we get past the 'but...'

"radical de-centralization";

to check: http://tinyurl.com/pmf38 -- movement from reactive consumption, to proactive consumption, to private production, to sharing

excited because... traffic, recognition, buzz, we've got great content: holding on to the long tail, willing to get it out there.

How to get past the fears:
- moderation takes time --> but well designed tasks, systems and policies keep it under control
- what about our reputation -->  users get it, and can distinguish where content comes from washington post comment http://www.tinyurl.com/mjply/
- we've spent years making it, why should we give it away --> because that proves they're interested in it; they ARE using it.
- surely we can sell it --> no real market for this
- how do we measure it --> we'll learn, we have to do it to learn what we want to measure
- just because we can do it ... gaping void ven diagram
- hooks are in selfish needs of users

- get the funding on the wave
- use the tools internally to build sites

lina: museum podcasting
does connectivity equate with accessibility?
does podcasting help make collections more intellectually accessible?

where do people listen to podcasts (70-80% on a desktop computer); she assumes that these people have 100% of their attention on the podcast...

MMA Van Gogh podcast; kevin bacon reading vincent's letters --> new kind of context
lecture series MoMA;

questions: how can podcasts be used to integrate visitor opinions and reactions.

-