Larry Johnson, the CEO of NMC had invited me to kick-off the workshop and I so I offered the group some reflections upon the history of museums in United States, common aphorisms, and audience satisfaction.  And much to my delight Rachel Smith was visually recording the session and posted the following photograph condensing what I said into the image below.  Thanks Rachel.

The best thing about the day was listening to the presentations and ideas and commentaries of the really bright young people who are working in museums today.  They are transforming the landscape and we (who are bowed at the shoulders, with creaky bones and joints) should take advantage of their enthusiasms and allow them to show us  museums and audiences through their eyes much more often.   A big shout out to Lillian from the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts.  You rock girl!

And…swallowing my words….

Lo many moons ago in this blog I declared my intention (in musical parody) never to tweet.  But today, June 30, 2010, I take it all back.  I’m tweeting–but sparingly–one tweet a day, an object from a museum somewhere in the world.  You can follow me on twitter as @hwitchey.

Huzzah for the Digital Jump-Start Unconference Co-chaired by Sharon Leon and Michael Edson

Kudos and a special champagne toast to the entire Media & Technology Board, and the many volunteer judges and jury members for a tremendous jump-start to the conference last Sunday evening with the MUSE Awards, and continued to power-house through the week with tutorials, an online conference, and the most successful M&T lunch ever.

And speaking of the MUSE Awards–congratulations to the 2010 MUSE Award Winners.

Special shout out to the winners in the new (and newly named) Honeysett-Din Student Award (to be known henceforth as the HD Student Award).

Three cheers for Herminia Din and Nik Honeysett, both of whom, retired from the Media & Technology Board this year.  They were rewarded for their tireless efforts with action figures made in their own likeness and the new award named in their honor.  Fantastic idea JackDaddy Ludden, new M&T Board Chair,  and all of team M&T.

Raise the roof for Douglas Hegley, Jack Ludden, and Rob Stein who gave fantastic presentations and presented themselves as the very models of modern i.t. professionals–thoughtful, challenging, intelligent, and witty–in the Demystifying the Mighty I.T. session yesterday.

Another round of applause for new AAM Board of Director Nik Honeysett who took over the responsibility for museum’s role in the Joint National Committee for Archives Libraries and Museums (CALM) and, without his hands ever leaving his arms, gave a stellar and useful presentation on mid-career resume building (get that pdf and presentation online soon Nik!)

These are just a few of the American (Association of Museums) Idols — no voting any of them off, ever–they are too, too talented a group of people.

In terms of full disclosure, Nik and I go way back, I’ve known him since he was a singularly gifted programmer at Cognitive Applications in the mid-1990s. It has been a pleasure to watch his steadily meteoric career after his shift from the vendor world to museums in 2000. Nik’s appointment is a terrific thing for museums, not just for technologists–although admittedly it is great to finally have someone at the board level at AAM who came up through the ranks.  It is fantastic to have someone, like Nik, who understands and has an impressive track record in the strategic implementation of new technologies.

Nik knows how important success is and he knows that failure can sometimes be the best teacher.  He is clear-sighted and he does the right thing.  He raises the bar and invites and inspires others to do their best.

I didn’t start out to write an encomium on Nik Honeysett, okay, maybe I did.  As a friend and colleague I am proud of his success and proud of my professional organization for having the good sense to appoint him to the Board of Directors.

Get the champagne chilled in Los Angeles there is cause for celebration.

Congratulations Nik.

In case you don’t know TED, which stands Technology Entertainment Design, is a conference and a community. Its grown to include many disciplines and global and political themes. The annual conference by which it is most widely known by, is held in Long Beach California, gets 1,000 attendees and is normally sold out a year in advance – something most conference organisers would give their left nut for. The conference is a four-day event, with 50 speakers who each get 18 minutes. There are filler pieces of performances, comedy and poetry, but the real draw is the visionary talent that speaks there.

There is also TEDGlobal which is TED’s twin annual conference now held in Oxford, UK – Jolly Good. It has the same format but a more international theme. TEDIndia, a one-off conference “celebrating and exploring the beckoning future of South Asia” just wrapped in Mysore, India.

The annual TED conference is an expensive conference weighing in at $6,000, some say its elitist, including TED, if you check they’re website.

If you’re poor, or just not up to TED’s standards, you could attend the TEDActive conference which is the pauper’s version of the annual conference. Its a live simulcast of the Long Beach conference, its intended to give you the same content of the conference, at the same time, but it keeps the riff raff away from the important people. Watching the conference on T.V. will set you back $3,750, but it is at the Riviera Hotel in Palm Springs. TED’s parent organisation, the Spalding Foundation, is a 501(c)3 which means your membership is tax-deductible.

TED have franchised out their conference format calling it TEDx. Like the Starbucks franchise, they’re on every street corner, 80 are planned before the end of next year in the U.S. alone. I think that makes the MCN conference much more elitist.

If you really are in the poor house and have 10 equally poor friends, you can become a TED Associate Member for less than $1,000. That allows you and your 10 poor friends to watch the live conference webcast from the comfort of your own PC – assuming you’re not too poor to own one.

But even if you have $6,000 that doesn’t get you into the conference. You have to apply to register, then they’ll invite you to the conference, assuming you have correctly filled in your Assistant’s details on the application form and answered some ego-deflating questions such as What have you achieved? Other questions include, What are you passionate about? and Can you share a memorable anecdote that will tell us what makes you tick? Funny you should ask, I was once near a TED conference…

So, is TED worth $6,000 to attend? The only reason for going is to network, because you can watch it all from the comfort of your own home on your expensive PC that you were able to afford from not going to the conference. And even if you did go, don’t think you’ll be able to get close to any of the affluent, intelligent and important people, because they’ll spot you a mile away.

I highly recommend these 18 minute presentations:

• Pattie Maes/Pranav Mistry MIT MediaLabs Fluid Interfaces Group
• Tim Berners-Lee on the next Web (anything that starts “When I invented the Web…” has to be compulsive viewing…)
• Hans Rosling: Let my dataset change your mindset
• David Merrill, Inventor of Siftables, interactive mini-PC tiles
• Ed Ulbrich: Digital Domain, How Benjamin Button got his face

Not from this year’s conference but one of my favourite TED videos:

• Ken Robinson: Schools kill creativity

Among the distinguished panelists were past MCN conference speakers Jonathan Band and Wendy Gordon

http://blog.librarylaw.com/librarylaw/2009/10/d-is-for-digitize-day-1.html

Full video of the conference is now also available:
Links are on our program page at: http://www.nyls.edu/centers/harlan_scholar_centers/institute_for_information_law_and_policy/events/d_is_for_digitize/program

By AOIFE WHITE (AP)

BRUSSELS — The European Commission said Monday it may revise copyright law to make it easier for companies like Google Inc. to scan printed books and distribute digital copies over the Internet…

Under Europe’s current patchwork of copyright laws, rights are now managed separately in each of the European Union’s 27 nations, making it difficult to seek permission to republish or digitize content, especially when the rights holder is hard to find.

The European Commission said it would start work next year, with the goal of encouraging mass-scale digitization and suggesting ways for compensating copyright holders. Any suggested changes to European law would have to be approved by EU governments and lawmakers.

The commission said the move was partly triggered by a hearing it held in September where European authors, publishers, libraries and technology companies spoke out about how they would be affected by a deal Google is negotiating in the U.S.

Google has been scanning millions of books still under U.S. copyright. Under a tentative settlement with U.S. authors and publishers, that will cover all books unless the copyright holders object. A judge still needs to approve the settlement after the parties make changes to address U.S. Justice Department concerns. EU antitrust authorities are not examining it.

The real kick-in-the-pants is this:

The European Commission, the EU executive, said that deal would create a situation where “the vast number of European works in U.S. libraries that have been digitized by Google would only be available to consumers and researchers in the U.S. but not in Europe itself.”

Absurdities like this just might prompt the breaking down of copyright walls. Google in the role of Superman is nothing new, but always debatable. In this instance, Superman seems to be doing some good.

At MCN 2009 in Portland, Oregon, next month, Paula Holm Jensen will discuss the Google Book Settlement and how it affects us, not only as individuals but as museums. “More from Less: the e-Book Revolution and Mobile Evolution” will happen on Nov. 14. Peter Brantley of the Internet Archive and Cheryle Robertson from LACMA will round out the roundtable, so to speak, but you the audience will be an important part of the discussion.

All are welcome.

Congratulations to:

• Kathy Amoroso, Director of Digital Projects
  Maine Historical Society
• Dr. Tatyana Bogomazova, Chief of the IT Department
  Russian Academy of Sciences
• Tiah Edmundson-Morton, Reference, Instruction, and Outreach Archivist
  Oregon State University Archives
• Alyssa Glass, Web Producer
  Adobe Systems
  and museum studies graduate student at JFK University
• David Lockwood, Museums Manager
  Dumfries and Galloway Museum Service
  (Scotland)
• Emily Pfotenhauer, Outreach Specialist
  Wisconsin Heritage Online
• Sivia Sadofsky, Technology Program Manager
  Museum of Anthropology at
  the University of British Columbia
• Andrea Thomer, Lead Excavator
  George C. Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits

The Museum Computer Network conference is November 11-14 in Portland,
Oregon. For more information visit http://www.mcn.edu.

If you have no idea what the f*** I’m talking about (see previous post on my recent desire to use swear words in my blog and presentations), good, please read on. If you do know what I’m talking about, good, please read on.

For the last six years New Media Consortium have released a report on emerging technologies for higher education. A panel of experts convene to make a valued predication on what technologies will be influential over three time-to-adoption horizons: 1 year, 2-3 years and 4-5 years.

To gauge the value of this report programme, here’s what the 2004 technological view of the next 5 years is, or “was”? (2004 Horizon Report)

1 Year Out – 2005
Learning objects – assemblies of audio, graphic, animation and other digital files and materials that are intended to be reusable in a variety of ways, and easily combined into higher-level instructional components such as lessons and modules. The primary purpose behind the development and use of learning objects is to increase access to quality content, and to avoid wasteful replications of effort by making that content usable in a variety of contexts.

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) - uses XML for describing two-dimensional graphics, holding the information needed to draw an image in a text file. Scaling is smoothly achieved without jagged edges. Graphical objects can be styled, transformed, grouped, or placed into previously rendered objects. Text is searchable and selectable. SVG is an especially powerful tool for instructional developers on college and university campuses, with potential applications in virtually any discipline, but especially the sciences and engineering.

2 to 3 Years Out – 2006-2007
Rapid Prototyping – refers to what amounts to 3-D printing, e.g., building three-dimensional physical objects from digital data files. These files may be created in a variety of ways, such as computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided tomography (CAT), or even X-ray crystallography, then output to a rapid prototyping machine that creates a physical model of the object. This technology already is widely used for a variety of manufacturing, design, and engineering applications, but as cost decreases, is finding new applications in the arts and the classroom.

Multimodal Interfaces – provide ways for humans to interact with computers beyond the traditional mouse and keyboard, using inputs and outputs that target not only each of the five senses, but also take advantage of nonverbal cues common in human conversation. Considerable development is taking place in simulations that use multimodal techniques (haptics or force feedback, for example) to great effect.

4 to 5 Years Out – 2008-2009
Context Aware Computing – refers to computing devices that can interpret contextual information and use it to aid decision-making and influence interactions. Contextual cues may include what the user is attending to, the user’s location and orientation, the date and time of day, lighting conditions, other objects and people in the environment, accessible infrastructure in the immediate vicinity, and so forth. Context-aware applications can make decisions based on such information without the need for user input.

Knowledge Webs – is a term that describes a dynamic concept of individual and group knowledge generation and sharing, with technology used to make connections between knowledge elements clear, to distribute knowledge over multiple pathways, and to represent knowledge in ways that facilitate its use. Work in knowledge webs overlaps considerably with that going on around communities of practice, and holds the potential to help such communities share, create, analyze, validate, and distribute existing and emerging knowledge.

So, is the horizon report as useful as a Swiss Army Knife or as useless as a Chocolate Teapot?

I’m trying to figure out whether the earlier predicted technologies are so embedded now as to be hidden from view, while the later technologies seem curiously more accurate or at least in more obvious view. Maybe Multimodal Interfaces (think Wii), Context Aware Computing (think Google) and Knowledge Webs (think wikis) are much more visible today but will just become part of the furniture in a few years time.

The following year, the 2005 report predicted Social Networks and Knowledge Webs in 2009-2010. Summarizing it as

… supplying people’s need to connect with each other in meaningful ways, social networks and knowledge webs offer a means of facilitating teamwork and constructing knowledge. The underlying technologies fade into the background while collaboration and communication are paramount.

In the event, it happened faster, but definitely a Swiss-Army-Knife moment for the team.

But here’s the rub. Is it a useful tool or just a useful read? If you had known about Social Networks and Knowledge Webs in 2005, what would you have done with that knowledge? Would it have influenced any of your strategic plans? Would you have done anything different? What would you have wanted to know in 2004 about the next 5 years, technologically speaking?

So this brings me to a request. In preparation for the panel, I’m interested in a straw poll of your view of the horizon report as a tool. While the current six years of reports are targeted to education, the forthcoming report is targeted specifically at museums, will you read it? Will you use it? Do you need to know what technologies are coming down the pike? Even if you’re not familiar with the report, I’d like to capture that fact too.

Just six easy multiple choice questions, taking moments of your time while you visualise pouring boiling water into a chocolate teapot or tinkering with the mother of all swiss army knifes…

plokta.com

swiss-army-knife-wenger.co.uk

Here’s the link: Horizon Report for Museums – Survey.

I’ll present the results at the session and post them here afterwards – many thanks.

Announcing the 2009 AAM Muse Awards

Recognizing outstanding achievement in museum media, the AAM Media and Technology Committee announces the 20th annual Muse Awards competition.

The 2008 Muse Awards competition received nearly 200 applications from a wide variety of museums in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia. Entries included audio, cell phone and interactive handheld tours, interactive kiosks and multimedia installations, podcasts, blogs, games, websites, online collection and image databases, videos and e-mail marketing campaigns. This year we are expecting another exciting round of projects that reflect innovation in the museum media community.

We will accept online applications from museums and producers on the AAM Media and Technology website from Dec. 1, 2008, to Jan. 31, 2009. The cost is $25 per entry.

Visit www.mediaandtechnology.org to enter your project. If you have any questions, please contact us via muse@mediaandtechnology.org

We look forward to your participation!