Smithsonian 2.0

Rapid Development at a 162 Year Old Institution: What I Learned This Summer

 

OneWeek | OneTool Development Team Pod (Missing in the picture are Julie Meloni and Patrick Rashleigh), by Effie Kapsalis, 2010

I recently took a weeklong break to go to camp - developer camp. No mosquito bites or arts & crafts, but lots of late nights and good stories to tell. The camp was OneWeek | OneTool, “a unique summer institute, one that aims to teach participants how to build an open source digital tool for humanities scholarship by actually building a tool, from inception to launch, in a week.”  Hosted by the Center for History and New Media (CHNM) and funded the National Endowment for the Humanities, Office of Digital Humanities, I was sequestered in the CHNM offices with eleven other “digital humanists” to “build something useful,” our one of few directives from CHNM Managing Director, Tom Scheinfeldt.

Well, the result was summed up perfectly by Doug Knox, a fellow Team Outreach member:

“What 12-18 people can get done in a week with loose coordination and a common goal is remarkable.” 

And you can now see and experiment with what we built, Anthologize.  It’s not a tool with a big scope - it does one thing well (although it is an alpha, so there are known issues). It enables researchers, curators, writers - and bloggers in general - to compile, edit, and publish anything available through RSS feeds. From Anthologize, you can send out your compile work as an eBook, paper publication, or TEI (an open XML format for storage and exchange).

The website text and information architecture brainstorm whiteboard from Team Outreach, by Jana Remy, 2010

However, I’m not here to talk about what Anthologize is (even though it will have many useful applications in the library, archive, and museum world). I want to talk about how it was done and how we can incorporate some of the ideas behind rapid, interdisciplinary technology development into the Smithsonian’s process.

Here was a brief recap of the OneWeek schedule:

Day 1: Meet & Greet/Learn about Open Source Development/Brainstorm
Day 2: Decide on project/Divide into teams/Start Work
Days 3-5: Build/Refine/Check-in (over and over again)

And before I go on, I’ll dispel the OneWeek myth. We actually spent the few nights (and for some of us, days) after OneWeek ended, fixing and testing. So, One Long Week. There were some key ingredients that made it possible for us to build a meaningful, open-source tool in a week:

1. First, we were a group of “do-ers and schemers,” which apparently is par for the course for digital humanists, as I learned from Meagan Timney, one of our test users.
2. We had a common goal which put our end user at the center: Build Something Useful. And as Steve Ramsey on Team Dev pointed out, it didn’t hurt at all that most of us would eventually be end-users ourselves.
3. Trust. Period. Even though I have worked in User Experience (UX) and Information Architecture, my role on OneWeek was Outreach. I trusted Teams UX and Dev to do what they do well. We met twice daily as a group (for no more than a half hour!) to discuss what each team had accomplished and the next to-dos. We did give feedback, but final decisions were essentially up to the teams.
4. There were no milestones, timelines, technical requirements, and other technology project management-y things. We had a google group where we posted final products. When it was all said and done, we had documentation and FAQs for the Anthologize website. The development process was organic and largely "do what needs to be done.” This happens to be very much the management style of CHNM (no surprise here). Tom Scheinfeldt summarizes this approach in his insightful post about the project here.

 Voting on OneWeek | OneTool Ideas, by Jana Remy, 2010

Now I’m not proposing that we work day & night at break-neck speed. Life, relationships, and hygiene cannot be put on hold forever. But I am hoping, and proposing, that we can do more inter-disciplinary team-based development to "build something useful." I’m certainly going to try to do more of this at the Smithsonian Institution Archives.

Anyone familiar with technology development in a large federal government and cultural institution knows that the OneWeek picture is very different from our reality. There are things that would have to be adjusted in the OneWeek process to make it work here. However, there are many things we can do now (trust, small interdisciplinary teams, etc.) irregardless of where we are. We really can’t afford not to.

Effie Kapsalis recently joined the Smithsonian Institution Archives as the Head of Web and New Media.To read an overview of how Anthologize could be used at libraries, museums, and archives, visit THE BIGGER PICTURE, a blog about visual archives and the Smithsonian.

Smithsonian Commons Prototype

 

 

Image: screen grab from Smithsonian Commons Prototype Story 2: Visitor
  
The Smithsonian Commons Prototype is now public. Check it out and help us move forward by leaving us a comment on this blog or with the simple vote and comment form.[Commenting is closed, but you can see all the comments we received via our wiki. Thanks!]

The Smithsonian Institution  Strategic Plan (.pdf) describes four grand challenges:

 

• unlocking the mysteries of the universe
• understanding and sustaining a biodiverse planet
• valuing world cultures
• understanding the American experience

This is urgent and important work. Difficult work! And work that requires us to find new ways to collaborate, form partnerships, engage with the public, and develop our global network of ideas, resources, and expertise. This job requires something new.

Thus, the centerpiece of the Smithsonian's Web and New Media Strategy is the creation of the Smithsonian Commons—a new part of our digital presence dedicated to stimulating learning, creation, and innovation through open access to Smithsonian research, collections and communities. 

This project is just starting, and depending on who you are and how much you follow digital culture, the idea of a digital commons, let alone an institutional strategy based on building one, can be hard to grasp. What is this commons? What will it look like and do? How will it help us achieve our goals? What needs to change in order to do this?

To understand and address these questions we decided to build a prototype in the form of four animated vignettes—four stories to show the attributes and benefits of the Smithsonian Commons as seen through the eyes of our users. We built the prototype through a rapid research-and-development process this winter, and in the months since then I've been meeting with colleagues inside and outside the Institution to understand what the Smithsonian Commons means to people and how to move it forward.

 

We think there are four things that, together, will make the Smithsonian Commons a unique and powerful tool. The Smithsonian Commons will be vast, findable, shareable, and free.

Vast

Anyone in the world can have access to the whole Smithsonian, including access to deep collections and the vitality, curiosity, and creativity of our staff, visitors, partners, and our extended global community. The Smithsonian is shown at the center of an amazing network of ideas, collections, and people. 

Findable

Vastness and findability go hand-in-hand. The vastness of the Smithsonian can be discovered because search, navigation, and overall user experience design enables people to find the content they’re interested in, in the ways they expect to find it, including through recommendations and comments by staff and visitors, external search sites, and social networks.

Shareable

Sharing is the foundation of collaboration and learning. The Smithsonian’s impact can be greatly amplified if what we have and what we do is easy to share. The Smithsonian Commons will encourage use and re-use for work and pleasure, in social networks, on mobile devices, and in the classroom, workshop, and laboratory.

Free

The Smithsonian is built on the idea that the tools of discovery and knowledge creation should be available to all. The Smithsonian Commons will be built on the premise that free, high-quality resources will spread farther and create more opportunities for discovery and creation than those that are restricted by unnecessary fees and licenses. Free does not have to mean unprofitable: a popular and thriving Smithsonian Commons, built with revenue-generation in mind, will open up new business opportunities and drive increased traffic to our core e-commerce and membership offerings.

From the feedback we've gotten so far, "vast, findable, shareable, and free" seems to resonate with people's expectations of the Smithsonian in the digital age. The commons concept also seems to successfully embody many of the goals and values articulated in the Smithsonian Web and New Media Strategy: 

 

• the importance of search, findability, and community engagement across the Institution's websites
• the enormous thirst for the Smithsonian's trusted content and expertise
• the benefits to be gained by balancing expert opinion with crowdsourcing and user generated content
• the potential of the Smithsonian as a platform for knowledge creation, invention, and learning 

At this point in the process we would love to get more feedback from outside the Institution to validate or adjust our assumptions, figure out what we've missed, and learn what to emphasize. Do you want to see the Smithsonian build a commons? What would you want to find there? What should we do first? How can the Smithsonian Commons help you succeed in your work, for pleasure, or in your lifelong learning journey? 

Do you like the Smithsonian Commons concept?

Check out the Smithsonian Commons Prototype and make a comment on this blog post or with the simple vote and comment form. [Commenting is closed, but you can see all the comments we received via our wiki. Thanks!]

Thanks!

Related links:

• Smithsonian Commons Prototype
• What is a Commons? (on SlideShare)
• Prototyping the Smithsonian Commons (on SlideShare)
• Smithsonian Web and New Media Strategy
• Smithsonian Institution Strategic Plan (.pdf)
• Smithsonian institution Digitization Strategic Plan (.pdf)

Smithsonian Web and New Media Strategy v 1.0

We've just posted Smithsonian Web and New Media Strategy, Version 1.0. The strategy talks about an updated digital experience, a new learning model that helps people with their "lifelong learning journeys," and the creation of a Smithsonian Commons—a new part of our digital presence dedicated to stimulating learning, creation, and innovation through open access to Smithsonian research, collections and communities.

This strategy was created through a fast and transparent process that included workshops, the Smithsonian 2.0 conference, Twitter, YouTube, and ongoing collaboration through the wiki. It's a work in progress, and we welcome your comments, questions, and input, via this blog or through any discussion tab on the strategy wiki site.

This strategy will feed into the Smithsonian’s comprehensive strategic plan, currently under development.

Evaluating Value

 
[Word Cloud of Survey Responses: "How would you describe this game to friends or family members?", http://www.wordle.net]

We have been running a module version of the "Ghosts of a Chance" Alternate Reality Game since December 2008. More than 900 children, teens, and adults have played. They look like they are having a good time, they tell us they are, and we certainly have a good time running the program. However, the biggest question I have been asked since starting this entire project, is how do we know that the game has value? It is not strictly educational, it does not fulfill any specific curricula, but it DOES get teenagers and children excited about being in an art museum. Isn't that enough? A seventeen-year-old told me that he had never visited the American Art Museum before, because he thought we "just had old portraits." He spent his free time at the Hirshhorn, instead. He didn't even really want to play the game, though I convinced him and his friend to give it a try. After almost two hours of "running around in circles" (which he saw as a good thing) he told me that he couldn't believe how awesome our collection was, and he would definitely be back again to see more. (Note to Hirshhorn: You're still his favorite!) On another occasion, a fifteen-year-old complained because the game had taken her "past the artworks far too quickly." She was conflicted because she wanted to look at the art more closely, but she also wanted to race her friends and finish first. We have been thinking about ways to solve this, and may create a scoring system based on how well the players complete the tasks, rather than how quickly. But what a great complaint to get! A teenager, wishing she could spend more time pondering the art! I was happy, yet I wanted more concrete data to support these wonderful anecdotes. At the end of June, we conducted a small survey to see if we could start to truly evaluate the game's value. You can see the results here. I think it's a great start and would love to hear what you think.

You & the Smithsonian's Web and New Media Strategy

This awesome call-to-action on YouTube was produced for us by npampalone and strangeredfilms, on their own initiative and their own dime, just because they thought it was a good idea. Humbling, that is. I submit that the Smithsonian's future greatness will be measured more by how we inspire our fans to go out and do creative things like this than by the things we choose to build ourselves inside the walls of the Institution.

A related highlighs reel mashes up man/woman/child-on-the-street video with the call-to-action (also by npampalone and strangeredfilms), a few of the video responses that have been submitted, and Jesse Dylan's Science Commons video, which I've added to drive-home some thoughts about the notion of a Smithsonian Commons. 

So submit your video to the Voice Your Vision group on YouTube and tell us what you think. We'll be uploading our vision to the strategy wiki in the coming weeks.

Brainstorming a Federal Alternate Reality Game

I’d like to invite Government Web practitioners (educators, marketers, and content developers, and leaders) to attend an informal workshop/brainstorming session to explore the idea of producing a Federal multi-agency Alternative Reality Game (ARG). The general idea of a multi-agency ARG would be to use game play as a way of engaging citizens in an exploration of democratic ideals. It would also be a way to discover new connections between Federal agencies, and new ways of connecting citizens to their government.  (Some background on ARGs is below.)

The workshop will be held Monday, June 22, from 1pm to 3pm, in offices near the National Air and Space Museum on the mall in Washington, D.C.

(RSVP info below)

Agenda:

• Overview of Alternate Reality Games, what they are, who plays them (you’ll be surprised), how they wor
• Drivers for a multi-agency ARG: why do it, and what might come of it
• Brainstorming over possible game scenarios, themes, outcomes, logistics, constraints
• Define next steps and action items

My co-hosts are:

• Chris Testa: Acting CIO an Director of Outreach Technology, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Georgina Goodlander: Manager, Luce Foundation Center for American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum
• John Maccabee: President, City Mystery

Some background about ARG’s

• Wikipedia article about ARGs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game
• Paper about the Smithsonian’s recent “Ghosts of a Chance” ARG (Designed by John Maccabee and run by Georgina Goodlander at the American Art Museum’s Luce Foundation Center for American Art): http://www.archimuse.com/mw2009/papers/goodlander/goodlander.html
• Ghosts of a Chance home page: http://www.ghostsofachance.com/

If you’re interested in attending or have any questions please drop me a line: edsonm [at] si.edu.  I'll confirm attendees via email COB Friday, June 19th. Space is limited so act now!

Opposing viewpoints laid out at Smithsonian 2.0 Forum

Earlier this afternoon I attended the Smithsonian 2.0 Forum, a follow-up event to January's Smithsonian 2.0 Gathering. The Forum, webcast from the Smithsonian 2.0 website, presented three points of concern and opposing arguments for each point. The three points of contention: Access to Everything versus Controlled Content; Structure versus Freeedom; and Free Access versus Fee-based Access, where less contested than I expected. A couple comments stuck with me and are making me re-think my own opinion (which is that we can make our collections and our knowledge infinitely more accessible and sustain that access without being reckless in either our approach or our choices.)

First comment: knowledge is increasing at such a rapid pace that keeping web-delivered content up to date is an extremely challenging and expensive task, perhaps too much so. Wow, so true. We could try to address this reality by ourselves, or we could collaborate with other centers of expertise to do so. The former is very costly. Frankly, I think that knowledge is moving forward more and more rapidly specifically because the knowledge creators are collaborating more deeply and more often, using the Internet and 2.0 type technology. If the pace of knowledge development is driven by the collaboration and sharing of expertise via the Internet, should we be looking at a similar model to get the word out about the breakthroughs and new developments we are part of? Maybe others who find themselves in the same shoes?

Second comment: we (one of the museums) asked teachers what they wanted and they replied that what they really wanted was a space to meet up with other teachers, to collaborate with each other and find ways to incorporate the knowledge and content we had available on the web. This, I think, should be a core strategy. To create spaces where content-seekers can connect with our collections and with other content seekers. Where motivated individuals can work together to come up with innovative and effective ways to apply SI's content knowledge and expertise in ways we haven't thought of yet..

Both of these ideas are about "how." It seems that somewhere along the way, whether or not we use 2.0 tools to acquire and disseminate knowledge has been decided and that we are moving into the realm of "how" and "how much". Check out the webcast for yourself and comment back.

Moving beyond us vs. them

Recently one of our curators at NMAH came to me to discuss the aftermath of the Smithsonian 2.0 conference.  “You have an image problem,” he told me.  According to him, the buzz among his colleagues is that the conference was mostly a dump on curatorial authority, despite my protestations to the contrary.

Rethinking the role of credentialed expertise in a “crowdsourced” Web 2.0 world was certainly one of the subtexts of the weekend, and indeed of conversations in the larger online museum community.  And yes, some questioned the monopoly that credentialed experts have traditionally enjoyed over interpretation and allowed uses of our collections.  Dan Cohen and his crew over at the Center for History and New Media produced an excellent podcast on the subject as a follow-up to the conference that is well worth listening to for an informed outsider’s perspective on this topic.  On the podcast, Tom Scheinfeldt provides some useful historical context, reminding us that the question of who gets to interpret museum collections is as old as museums themselves, and periodically gets raised as museum practices change and evolve.

This is an area that really interests me.  I am convinced that as we continue to dialogue as a museum community, and collaboratively examine and experiment with new technologies to see how they might be of benefit, we will make progress toward solutions that threaten no one and benefit everyone.  Our NMAH blog is a good example of this.  When we started it last summer, it had a handful of advocates and contributors and many skeptics.  Now, it is really starting to blossom as more staff members come on board and use it to share their work and interact with the public.  Of course we hoped it would be an instant success, but in this instant-everything world, sometimes good old-fashioned persistence pays off (and Obama agrees with me on this...).

Speaking of sharing our work on the blog, I have started an effort to carry this very conversation to our blog readers and solicit their input on the role of the digital museum.  In response to an embedded survey about museums and trust, over 75% of our unscientific sample were of the opinion that museums would become even more important as trusted sources of online information (curators, take heart!).  Only 9% felt that museums’ role would diminish.  We will be using these responses to continue the conversation – please join us and follow along!

In addition, for anyone who will be at the AAM meeting in Philadelphia, I will be conducting an Idea Lounge discussion on the topic “Digitizing Museum Expertise.”  As museums continue to produce increasing amounts of digital data, how can we similarly expose our wealth of human talent by facilitating creative connections and/or collaborations between museum experts and online audiences?  Look for it on Sat., May 2 at 8 a.m.

Gorilla Marketing

This video—a marketing piece for the Grapes with Apes event at the National Zoo (tickets still available!)—brought to mind some advice we got from the experts invited to the Smithsonian 2.0 event in January.

They quipped that we could do more good distributing 100 video cameras to boots-on-the-ground staff than we could do with 100-times the money spent on consultants and systems. This is not to say that consultants and systems are unimportant, but the assembled digerati were amazed by the experts and collections they encountered here and were shocked that we weren't making more of each accessible.

The Grapes with Apes video was produced on a cheapo Cannon miniDV and iMovie by the Zoo's Rachel Meskin Jordan Watts. Rachel said "Just a little bit of creativity goes a long way."

Courage to go Open Content

Two recent stories may help give the Smithsonian courage to pursue an open-content strategy.

Item #1, MIT faculty votes for open publishing

Last week, MIT's faculty voted unanimously to mandate open access distribution of their scholarly articles. Other universities have open access policies within individual departments (Harvard, Stanford, and Boston University), but this is institution-wide. Their Office of the Provost will have authority and governance over the systems and business processes, in consultation with something called the Faculty Committee on the Library System. The policy allows faculty to opt-out on a publication-by-publication basis by submitting a request and justification to an as-yet defined review process.

MIT Faculty Chair Bish Sanyal is quoted as saying that the vote is "a signal to the world that we speak in a unified voice; that what we value is the free flow of ideas."

MIT's Web site says that "MIT's policy is the first faculty-driven, university-wide initiative of its kind in the United States."

I think it's especially encouraging that the faculty chose to go this direction since they do so from a position of experience - -  the remarkable MIT Open Courseware project.

More from Open Access News, and a very thoughtful/informative story on MIT's site.

Item #2, U.S. Representative Mike Honda (D-San Jose) blogs on open content and crowdsourcing

Last week, U.S. Congressman Mike Honda (D-San Jose) wrote a guest article on the O'Reilly Radar Blog,

"How can Congress take advantage of web 2.0 technologies to transform the relationship between citizens and government? Instead of viewing the public as a customer for services, I believe that we should empower citizens to become our partners in shaping the future of our nation."

He continues,

"Websites like [stimuluswatch.org] only become possible when government data is re-purposed to enable public participation. Until more government databases become available, however, the full potential of web 2.0 technologies will remain unfulfilled. A dramatic shift in perspective is needed before that need can be met."