Thought I’d jump back in here folks because I’ve just returned from a wonderful, engaging, enlightening, and highly entertaining AAM 2012. As always the MUSE Awards, ably kicked off by that man-about-town Jack Ludden, was a highlight. You can find all the MUSE Award winners here.

But the real reason I thought I’d post today is I had several opportunities to listen to comments and constructive criticisms of the 20122 Horizon Report>Museum Edition. And it occurred to me that some of you out there might have some comments too, or a project that you want to share, or you might be interested in participating as part of this year’s advisory board.

Here at NMC/MIDEA We welcome your input and here are a couple of ways you can connect with us:

Two ways to Tag Resources hzk11
http://delicious.com/tag/hzk11
http://horizon.wiki.nmc.org/Tagging

Or you can nominate yourself for the 2012 Advisory Board

There’s also a MIDEA facebook page–friends us and share comments–or leave us a comment using twitter #NMChz #MIDEA

Oh…and one last item. A shout out to Nik Honeysett’s recent post “How To Pitch Technology To Your Board” using Present Me, his current favorite presentation technology.

Museums and the Web 2012 finished up yesterday, with a closing plenary called Epic fail – a forum on failure and ‘failing forwards’ with Seb Chan, Jane Finnis and Bruce Wyman. For two hours, we heard about 5 failed technology projects, discussing what didn’t work and why, and any positive outcomes. Maybe that’s why I woke up this morning thinking about the Bump app for iPhone.

So here’s my top 10 list of failed technology initiatives. I’m not going to discuss specific failed projects, but those technologies we, as a community, thought were worth pursuing and, for some reason or another, just didn’t end up becoming an integral part of our musetech landscape. I also want to stress that this list in no way is intended to dismiss the very real value of these technologies, or diminish the efforts of those who saw that value and tried to get programs off the ground. And sometimes, it takes a while for technology to come around again. 10-15 years ago, ebooks were the laughingstock of the failed technology Top Ten lists. But who’s laughing now??

#10 – Bump for iPhone

Phone sex?

Bump is an an iPhone app that was supposed to streamline the way we shared information ourselves, like swapping electronic business cards. Two iPhone users (Android wasn’t really around at the time) with the app installed could gently “bump” their phones and the app would input your Bump partner’s information into your contact list. Bump had a lot of hype, and every lucky bastard with an iPhone was trying to Bump their phone with everyone else. There would be meetups and professional gatherings at museum openings, with rampant Bumping. But Bump at the time turned out to be premature technology – it rarely worked, and not everyone had an iPhone. And if you were at an event and someone was impatiently waiting to Bump you, the wifi or 3G connection would invariably fail. Moral – implementing technology while someone is waiting is embarrassing.

#9 – foursquare

Huh? Why is foursquare on this list? It has like 10 20 million users! And 3 million people around the world use their service per day! In 2010, it experienced growth of 3400%! In the past 5 months, it grew by 5 million users. CRAY-ZEE. And location-based interactions and check-ins aren’t going away anytime soon. So… why is it on the list?

Museums followed the hype crest for a while, then made the mistake of assuming that the public would do our work for us. In 2010 and 2011, there was a brief flurry of chatter and excitement about our new Foursquare marketing efforts, with prizes and benefits for check-ins at our events and exhibitions. So… why’d we stop doing that? Seriously – when was the last time you saw a museum website with a foursquare badge, or marketing materials with foursquare promotions? Moral – removing technology from the rotation too early is like wearing zeitgeist blinders.

#8 – Prezi

I’ll admit it right off the top: I hate Prezi. Done well, it’s a beautiful alternative to the expected, stale, familiar PowerPoint. It enjoyed a two-year period in 2010-2011 where museum professionals were Prezi-fying their conference presentations. Then it stopped. Why?

First of all, there’s a learning curve to Prezi. Unlike the linear PowerPoint, it takes time to learn how to use effectively, and a good Prezi will also have some thought about the design in advance. And how many presenters start working on their presentations a month in advance? I think I see about five hands in the back of the room…

Second, well, the above is considered a good example of a well-produced Prezi. Here’s an example of a bad Prezi:

Moral: don’t make your audience seasick

#7 – Laserdiscs

Way back in the 1970s, Laserdiscs were considered to be the NEW new media. They were about the size of a medium pizza (12″, thin crust, hold the cheese), and were considered to be a superior medium for art media and sound. They were also believed to be “archival” – unlike magnetic tape media, Laserdiscs were optical, like DVDs and BluRay disks today, and therefore considered to be less-vulnerable to the elements. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case, and, like compact disks, suffered from bit rot. Their size also meant there was more surface area to get damaged. And you could only fit 30 minutes of material on early Laserdiscs, so the user would have to eject it from the player and flip it over to view or interact with more content. Think of it like a cross between an LP and a CD.

Bit Rot: The Phantom Menace

Unlike magnetic mediums, Laserdiscs enjoyed the advantage of being interactive, which made it an attractive option for early gallery interactives. Due to their perceived durability, they were also used to share collection catalogs with other organizations, and as backup storage for media art and collection databases. Laserdiscs never really gained traction in the United States, though, and other playback and storage formats quickly overtook it as the media of choice. Moral: size matters.

#6 – RFID tracking, CueCat, and QR codes

RFID tags, barcode readers (such as CueCat), and QR codes are examples of attempts to bridge visitors of physical exhibits to expanded information in our websites or databases. The philosophy’s a good one: there’s too much information to put on a wall label, so let’s direct the visitor to a virtual resource where they can followup and learn more. Or, let’s use the physical-virtual bridge as a way to continue our impact after the visitor has left the museum.

RFID tags suffered from negative media hype and public perception. In the case of The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, visitors would be handed an RFID-embedded strip that they would wave over an exhibit and they could be emailed with more information, or results and scores from gallery games. Unfortunately, RFID tags also suffered from some recent media scares that they enabled spying and identity theft. RFID = creepy.

and who wants to wear an awkward paper tag anyway?

CueCat was the early 2000s version of QR codes. Visitors could use the cute little barcode reader to scan a code next to an artifact, then when they plugged it into their computer, it would bring up the urls it had read from the barcodes. It was, however, bulky to carry around, and many museums simply didn’t have the time, funding, or infrastructure to develop content that would sufficiently entice visitors to use it.

Cue Cat in the Computer History Museum

It’s really too early to predict its demise, but QR codes may follow the same path. Content needs to be there before adopting the technology, or incorporated as the project is being developed. For some organizations, they’ve already got some fantastic content on their websites, optimized for mobile devices, that works well for QR code use in galleries (and they have solid wifi and a tech-savvy visitor base). Just as crucially, QR codes suffer frommarketing abuse and dubious uses of QR codes that leads to the public believing that the codes are stupid.

Moral: Sean Cummings -

People will not adopt a technical solution that serves to replace a manual task, if that solution is less efficient than the manual task it replaces.

Stay tuned for Part II, in which I take a look at websites, VR, and learning communities, amongst others…

Pew Research Center posted yesterday that ownership of tablets and e-reader’s among adults went from 18% to 29% over the holiday period. As museum and technology nerds we’ve all been waiting for the coming wave of these personal devices. Is your institution ready for this boom? I know mine isn’t! I don’t even have a tablet yet, but that’s because I spend all my money on fresh sneakers.

It’s too bad the findings aren’t able to break this down into the devices people have. Fortunately, it does shed light on the people most using them: ages 30 to 49, college educated, and makes more than $75,000 a year. How does that compare to the visitors and program participants at your museum?

Pew Research Center: “Tablet and E-book reader Ownership Nearly Double Over the Holiday Gift-Giving Period”

It had to happen: the app as social protest tool.

“Armchair activists now have a tool that can transport their SOPA protestations into the real world: Boycott SOPA, an Android app that scans barcodes and tells you whether an object’s manufacturer/publisher is a supporter of the much maligned Stop Online Piracy Act.

…You could even take it one step further and make Boycott the one-stop-shop for all of your political needs. Imagine if you could scan a cereal box and find out that the company’s CEO likes to hunt rhinos, ride elephants, and eat shark fin soup — at the same time. Imagine if you could scan a video game box and immediately see all of the active legislation, the Representative sponsors and supporters, and how much money they’ve received from industry lobbying. You could even go as far as equipping the app with facial recognition, so that you can point your phone at a Senator’s face on the TV and quickly find out whether what he’s saying actually jibes with his real world behavior and voting record. This isn’t a futuristic concept; we could do this right now with the tech we have.

This is my last regular blog for Musematic.net. I’ve had a great time thinking out loud in this location beginning with my very first post, about Madonna, on Wednesday March 15 2006 but it’s time to pass the torch to the bright, young, talented generation doing fantastic things for museums and technology.

As I’ve returned to being primarily an art historian I don’t have a whole lot that’s relevant to say in the Musematic arena anymore. What prompted me to write this post in the first place is I currently find myself in a situation where technology cannot help me–and I’m not talking about computers, Ipads, or GPS. For the first time in years I’m stuck and can’t think of a technology to save me–and mind you I’ve been in some tight places before.

There was the time I was in Egypt, traveling as resident art historian for Eastern Michigan University’s European Cultural History Program. Half the group had gone to the pyramids where, after viewing the monuments, they would jump on camels and meet us at the Step-Pyramids of Djoser. My group had headed for the Step-Pyramids and was caught in a sudden sandstorm and would have been completely lost had it not been for compass.

And then there was the time a group of us decided to spend the night in one of the caves near the cave monasteries in Cappadocia, Turkey. What saved us that evening was a technology that has been around for eons–a piece of flint and some metal to strike a spark.

The phones at the Post in Rome enabled me to complete my dissertation. The monks at the Church of the Aracoeli in Rome refused to let a woman into the Bufalini Chapel in the 1980s and so you might say that a large pocketful of gettoni enabled me to reach a friend with connections at the Cleveland diocese, who made connections in Rome, who got me an audience with the Pope’s Confessor, who made a phone call to the Fransicans at the Aracoeli and told them to let me in to see the painting cycle I needed to see. And, six months later, I was on top of the world because I had my very own dot matrix printer to print out my completed dissertation–of course it took several hours and was loud and annoying but what an improvement over carbon paper and white out.

But tomorrow folks I’m invited to a Debutante Ball! As the mother of her “Escort,” the “Deb’s” parents have kindly invited me to sit at their table. My son will be resplendent in his tuxedo, head and shoulders better looking than any handsome prince I’ve ever seen. I’ve got a dress and a carriage (okay so it’s a used Audi but let’s not quibble over the details). So what’s the problem? This event lasts for 8 hours and the grand total of my experience with balls comes from Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer novels–and I’m pretty sure things have changed since the Regency period. E-how offered me the following suggestions when I typed in “How to behave at a Debutante Ball.”

I’m off the grid tomorrow night and to tell you the truth, I’m scared. E-how offers this particularly frightening piece of advice:

The simplest way to remember how to behave at a debutante ball is to make sure that you don’t do or say anything that you wouldn’t do or say in front of your grandmother, your first grade teacher and your minister.

Wish me luck. It’s a brave new world. And, in the words of the immortal Douglas Adams “So long and thanks for all the fish!”

From the always-worth-reading Nicolas Carr (author of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains), an interesting view on the “appification” of media.

“Not only has the net left its Wild West days; it’s entered the era of the gated suburban subdivision. As part of this trend, the open, html-based website is being replaced, or at least supplemented, by the proprietary app. In app stores, the already blurry line between software and media disappears altogether. Apps are as much content-delivery services as they are conventional software programs. Newspapers, magazines, books, games, music albums, TV shows: All are being reimagined as apps. Appified, if you will.”

An issue I’m currently struggling with…

To CIO, or not to CIO – that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of mismanaged data
Or to take arms against a sea of piecemeal information decisions
And by strategizing, end them. To define, to plan –
A CIO – and by define to say we end the heartache
of our audience once and for all,
be it one or be it one thousand?
‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.
To define, to plan – a CIO – perchance to dream
Of ending battles of lord and master
Of our information; ay, there’s the rub,
Where for art the strategic IT plan?
That ‘tis obsolete when ‘tis writ? For in that plan
What dreams of organizing information
And content deployment may come? When
We have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of integrating
One trickery app twixt another.
And in the end, to grunt and sweat
With that ticketing app from who’s reporting
I.T. know not how. And in the end to grunt
And sweat with that collection information system
That puzzles the will, and dread our weary days
With it, and ne’er call the desk that is helpless,
Because that does make cowards of us all.
So, soft you now, the fair museum technologist!
Be all your sins remembered, dread of time is here
When we need a plan or decision of
Great pitch and moment to organize these things
Lest we get hit by a bus, and all our sins forgotten.

Just wanted to announce that the 2011 Horizon Report>Museum Edition has gone to press (and was officially launched at MCN in Atlanta last week). Follow this link to a page where you can a) download the report, or b) watch a >4 minute video which gives a brief overview of the six technologies featured in this year’s report.

Meanwhile, as always with Horizon Reports, you can view all of the work of the advisory board leading up to the publication of the report (including lots of great resources) on the project wiki:

Thanks to Nancy Proctor and the MCN Program Team for facilitating the launch of this year’s report at MCN 2011 in Atlanta last week.

For those of you that made it to Atlanta, I did a brief presentation at MCN2011 about collaboration to create digital interactive exhibits. Some people noted that my presentation contained references to the hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan. Why the Wu? I choose them because they are an extraordinary example of the benefits of working on projects as a team. Here are seven tips from the Wu-Tang way of working that we can learn from.

 You Gotta Have a Crew

Wu-Tang clan is made up of eight rappers (nine before the death of ODB). When you have this many collaborators in one group, you have lots of creative minds working together to reach the same goal. Having a team of people work on a project means you have better and faster results because the responsibility is shared. However…

 There Must Be A Strong Leader

In Wu-Tang, RZA runs the show. Sure, there are a lot of strong personalities contributing to the product, but RZA chooses the direction they go, and he has final say. On technology projects, someone has to take responsibility for setting the goals to reach. Committee doesn’t make great projects. Have a leader, have a vision, and take the expertise of each group member and put it where it can enrich the whole.

 C.R.E.A.M.
(Cash Rules Everything Around Me) 

Maybe not all of you are familiar with the term, but it’s applicable to all of our work. Technology projects are expensive. The costs of the devices and the hours of labor to develop and implement them add up quickly. Focus on the outcomes, divide labor between the members of the group, and have deadlines for each project.

 Work With What You Have

The first few Wu-Tang albums sound like they were recorded in a basement. That’s because they were recorded in RZA’s basement. You have to use what’s available to you, and you have to maximize that to your advantage. It’s not going to be perfect, but if you are doing something original that has engaging content, most of your audience won’t mind.

Have A Network

Wu-Tang is not just a group of rappers, they are also collaborators with a number of other groups. Their willingness to share what they learned and their success has opened doors for other artists. Your institution can’t work in a void. Find other organizations to share knowledge and information with. Everyone benefits.

 Innovate, Don’t Recreate

Wu-Tang is influential because they took their interests, 60′s and 70′s kung-fu cinema, and put it in the framework of hip-hop music. They didn’t reinvent the genre, just spun it in a way that highlighted their strengths. You don’t have to create something brand new for your museum. Take what you have available to you and put your mark on it.

The Museum of Photographic Arts was fortunate to receive a large grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to implement a multi-touch screen device and interface for an upcoming exhibition. Through our partnerships we were able to get two students from the University of California, San Diego to develop the interface for us. We wanted to test the interface with various audiences before we put it into the public, but we ran into a problem in that the UCSD students were not able to be on site when we ran the tests.

There ended up being a free and elegant solution to this problem. We downloaded a screen capture program called HyperCam. This software allowed us to record users touching the interface, as well as the audio during the session. We brought in small groups of people of various ages and asked them to use the interface without any guidance. As they reached points where they did not know what to do, we would give them instructions on next steps. After they were done, we asked them to give us feedback about their experience. All of this was recorded onto the computer as a video file that we could send to the students working on the project.

This process became essential to the development of the interface. We ran three different rounds of testing as the interface was built, which gave the students working on the project a lot of material to work from. The students were able to go back to the recorded files and pinpoint trouble spots and create guidance cues for the users.

Free tools such as the HyperCam screen capture software and others enable an institution like ours to work in ways we have not before. In this case, it gave us an opportunity to refine a project based on user feedback rather than our assumptions.