#MW19 Takeaways: Very Late Edition
I recently attended the MuseWeb 2019 Conference in Boston that occurred April 2nd to 6th, 2019, and while I’ve had to let the ideas from the conference simmer in my mind while coping with re-entry, I have finally settled on sharing some of my key takeaways from the experience.
I’ll first say that in considering the conference, one would be remiss not to visit the recaps by Koven Smith, Seema Rao, Helen Adams, and Art Processors. I hope that this recap adds to those to add to a more holistic view of this dynamic conference.
My reflection on takeaways from the conference is that they fell into two general buckets: 1) Things that are instantly applicable; that you can take back today and get moving in your organization, and 2) Philosophy; reflections on the field, where it is, and where it should be going. This is a short list, there are many examples I could draw from, but here are a few of the highlights.
Instantly applicable ideas:
QR Codes Are Back! For a long time I’ve been passing around the following “helpful flow chart” whenever anyone mentioned the use of QR Codes in exhibitions:
But now, things have changed. Carlos Austin-Gonzalez from the British Museum presented the lighting talk “Digital Necromancy: Does the QR code yet live? An empirical look at what QR codes can still do for us” which highlights the fact that the latest operating systems on smartphones include QR scanning in the camera. The traditional arguments that QR codes are only used for promotional purposes, that one has to have a smart phone and must download an app to scan QR codes, are losing their footing now that QR scanning is enabled in native phone apps. So go ahead, use QR codes again!
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Simple Tangible Interactives: Todd Bereth from North Carolina State University presented “Simple Tangible Interaction: An Illumination of Trajan’s Weapons Frieze and Open-source Models For Exhibition Development And Hands-on Storytelling” wherein he showed how museums can create a simple tangible interactive by some simple fabrication and some programming of a Raspberry Pi and some open source hardware. Since some visitors feel isolated in experiences like Virtual Reality, he sought to make an experience of tangible interaction. He provides directions on exactly how museums can make this simple tangible interactive (can even make it in different sizes) and provides a FreeCAD template for fabricating experience here.
Designing Mobile Experiences: Daffyd James and Graham Davies from Amgueddfa Cymru — National Museums Wales presented “Awe or Empathy, Fast or Slow? Articulating impacts from contrasting mobile experiences” and handed out some excellent takeaways for their own project that I think we should consider when we all develop mobile experiences in our own museums 1) Promote the experience throughout it’s life, 2) Onboard staff so they can have ownership of the experience, 3) Build trust with users, and 4) Get the right group of people (team) together to develop the whole project.
Philosophy:
Gold in the lightening talks: Mia Smith (p/k/a) Loving brought up the notion in her lightening talk “Cultivating the Genius of the Self-Made Artist: Working Self Made Artists & Arts Collectives to Increase Diversity and Community Engagement” that “Nonprofit is a tax status, NOT a business model. Nonprofits are businesses. Not having any knowledge of, or understanding of how to run a business successfully is one HUGE issue with many….” Since I teach about Nonprofit Arts & Cultural Management, this is something that I talk about a lot, and it’s great to hear it echoed in the museum sector.
Clare Blechman was, as many would attest, on fire with her lightening talk “Everything Is On Fire: How to Advocate for the Arts With Your Elected Officials.” She brought up the evergreen notion that “a budget is a moral document — show me your budget, I’ll tell you exactly what your organization values. Do you pay your interns? Does the museum pay for a penthouse suite for your Director?” Everyone should take those thoughts (budget is a moral document) back to leadership in their museums.
A theme echoing through the sector: “We need an ethical framework for design.” Seb Chan, in his conversation with Damon Krakowski brought this thought up and I noted in a tweet that he was echoing the Museum Computer Network 2018 Theme: Humanizing the Digital. Keynote speaker Hiroshi Ishii also discussed Mark Weisers notion of tech that “disappears”, which harkens back to Amber Case’s keynote at MCN 2018. There is a transformation happening in the sector from building tech projects when we can, to building tech projects when we should.
We need to rethink systems: Erin Canning presented her Master’s Degree research and presented her CDOC-CRM Model for mapping affective reponse of aesthetic experiences, as well as the outcomes of her study. The ultimate point to her talk was that we need to consider listing affect in collections management systems. Somebody please do a PhD in this!
Digital as Preservation requires planning: Ishii’s Keynote also brought up digital as a preservation method for storing identity of his mother in a twitter bot, saying that he could do this for himself and he would be there long after he had died. I tweeted that digital as preservation for short term could be useful, but longer term digital preservation requires obsolescence and disaster planning.
I should add that I also presented a lightening talk about making 360 degree video accessible for those with low or no hearing (https://bit.ly/2uppgoY), and I presented the results of an evaluation of Augemented Reality at the MSU Museum that is leading to Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion planning (https://bit.ly/2GC5LAE). I’m hopeful that those projects can be inspirational for other attendees in their planning for digital experiences.
I’ll likely still have other thoughts from reflection on notes and tweets that will emerge even months after the conference, which is a great part about the MuseWeb experience. I’m looking forward to LA in 2020!
