Smithsonian 2.0

Washington Post Discovers Smithsonian 2.0

The Washington Post did a story on the Smithsonian 2.0 event.

Condensing the two plus days of activity into a traditional print journalism article with limitations of space, coming out two days after the event, etc., was a difficult task. Already, readers have been providing some feedback on the WPost website, so that will help expand the coverage. So, for those of you who were at the event, particularly our invited guests, please do take a look at the piece and add some first hand impressions to supplement the story!

From Lee Rainie, Director, Pew Internet & American Life Project

At Saturday's plenary session, I read from a document that offered a shrewd critique of the current state of play at the Smithsonian and a vision for moving towards a "Smithsonian Commons." At the time, I said it was a document came from inside the Smithsonian staff. I didn't identify the author because I hadn't asked his permission. Now I have and I'm pleased to say that the analyst is Michael Edson.

Here is a somewhat longer excerpt than I read from his presentation and paper Imagining a Smithsonian Commons -- a document that I understand has been circulating for some weeks in various external and internal forums:

"... with those 137 million objects, a dynamic and increasingly Web 2.0-savvy workforce, and the mission to increase and diffuse knowledge, we're leaving a lot of value on the table by working in silos.

"Search and findability across the Web properties are poor. Usability and branding are incoherent. Web 2.0 patterns underutilized. And the units can't afford to establish, maintain, and refine the platforms they want on their own, never mind that if they could, the repetition of effort or the devastating effect on end-users would be calamitous: Imagine 30 separate e-commerce, event ticketing, or personalization systems.

"Nobody would rationally design the online operations of a world-class Institution this way. The sum of the individual parts -- the individual wildflowers -- don't add up to more than the whole, and they should. And it's hurting us....

"I assert that reshaping our digital identity around the concept of a Smithsonian Commons is the way to move forward -- it's the game changer: a low risk, high reward proposition that addresses the fundamental challenges of the Institution in terms of brand, audience, operations, speed, governance, integrity, education, research, revenue generation, leadership and legacy."

My point was that there is amazing wisdom and commitment inside the Smithsonian ready to implement all the ideas that the outside advisers were promoting -- and then some.

Ideas for Smithsonian 2.0 from Bruce Wyman, Director of Technology, Denver Art Museum

1. Turn the Museum inside-out

• reveal the inner workings of the museum

• show the creative process and solicit feedback -- it's not a case of relying on crowdsourcing and pandering to the lowest common denominator, but it's part of making the museum accessible and relevant to a much broader audience.

2. Use social media to connect with people

• remember that new technologies and social media in general are about people, not the actual technology
• reinforce making the museum accessible
• it's a two-way conversation
• the museum needs to go to where the conversation is taking place, not wait for the conversation to come to it
• create conversations, don't just slap up content

3. Separate content from distribution

• museums are fundamentally about sharing stories and ideas, creating content
• don't create content solely for an intended distribution, create an ongoing resource & library of information
• content should be a constant steady drumbeat of low-level effort as opposed to infrequent monolithic efforts
• all of this lets you take advantage of new tech & opportunities as they arise rather than having to ramp up.
• when you make content not specific, it lets useful repurposing happen and you can enter into the long tail of content pretty quickly over time

4. Embrace multiple voices

• the museum should offer different voices of the institution in different contexts and settings
• the 'authoritive' voice of the museum isn't compromised in any way. People are judging you based on what you say not nearly so much how you say it.
• the museum potentially becomes more transparent, especially as the multiple voices talk more often about more things.
• it's important to add signal vs noise, but trust staff to deliver

5. Use the museum as a stage for engagement

• create frameworks that let people engage and create beyond whatever the museum may imagine (Simcity was incredibly successful in this way)
• you can't be sure when the tipping point of engagement will happen for someone -- it's different for everyone, but you need to be ready to capitalize on it
• technology in galleries should be part of the firmament of the experience, not an extra, standalone kiosky thing, but simplify those as much as possible. 
• alternative interfaces.

6. Present the Smithsonian as a whole, customize extensively

• The museums should be more interconnected -- things / events / content at one venue should drive things / events / content at another
• Digital efforts are very loosely spread across all of the individual museums without learning from their partners nor pooling resources to be effective
• create a high level position that drives every museum out of their comfort zone and encourages new efforts
• treat as an internal foundation if need be, submitting ideas and granting
• drive towards individualized experiences based on user's path (figuratively) through all of the museum's assets
• remember visitors and build upon their previous experiences

7. Create a culture of experimentation, failure, and iteration

• museums spend far too long trying to make things perfect before they deploy.
• some experimentation is fine in public, but you absolutely have to be prepared to iterate
• build failure into any effort and how to learn effectively to deliver end-results
• distribute experimentation but do it so the partner museum can effectively learn or adapt to their own situation
• build a skunkworks that has wide authority to try new things and develop new technologies, always with a mind towards widespread adoption and possible revenue streams
• Smithsonian 2.0 should be a byproduct of aiming for Smithsonian 3.0: aim farther

8. Allow content to emerge quickly and from all levels

• allow visitors voices to be part of the experience

9. Embrace open source, create a 'museum API'

• lead and contribute to open-source projects rather than narrowly defined proprietary solutions
• for any system, expose the data and content
• this doesn't need to be just software / data but can also be behavior / people / content
• expose all of the content of the organization
• concentrate not just on the points of data themselves, but rather what exists between them
• when possible, use existing technologies rather than rolling your own (youtube for video content)
• work closely with the startup / vc community and as a source of ideas

10. Creative Commons Licensing

• use it for everything, change the museum world

Cool Old People

This came up in one of our breakout sessions today and I just can't seem to get it out of my head. Turns out, teenagers want to talk to cool old people, and they don't currently have very good access to them. I think this really sums up one of the core things that the Smithsonian has to offer the world. We have a lot of cool old stuff, everyone knows that, but what they might not realize is that we have a LOT of cool old people. The experience of speaking with someone who has a passion for what they do and a lot of information to share, is a wonderful one. We need to figure out how we can translate this into an experience that anyone in the world can have. Tied to this is an idea that came up at the Plenary, which is that we need to digitize our people. Get them on the network and get them talking (and listening) to everyone else. Oh, and somehow give everyone in the world the chance to hold a meteorite, because apparently that experience blew folks away (how many do we have?)!

Lunch 2.0

Having a great lunch at the National Museum of the American Indian. Sitting at a table with some fellow SI staff, some of our 2.0 guests, and some Smithsonian National Board members.

Talk turned to Twitter and how the Smithsonian is using it. The Board members were interested in trying it, so I helped sign them up.

Try following ABlossomK and Orcase2009!

What next?

The Smithsonian 2.0 meeting is a great success and building up a lot of energy. Right now, I'm thinking what next?

Quick thought: the Smithsonian needs to hold quicker, shorter, and cheaper versions of this on a regular basis, think Foo Camp, Bar Camp, etc.!

Get 10 or so highly connected social networkers at the Smithsonian for a few days and have SI staff to the "Web & New Media Fair" to expose them to our cool projects. Grab those highly networked people in various specialities and let them loose to Twitter, blog, and get leverage of people with vast  2nd and 3rd degree connections (go play with Twinfluence: http://twinfluence.com/)

(photo above: Clay Shirky infront of the Smithsonian Flickr Commons tag cloud)

Idea Overload!

My head still reeling from everything that Bran Ferren had to say, we had to run immediately into the Discovery Theater to present at the Web and New Media Fair. I was presenting on "Ghosts of a Chance," the Alternate Reality Game (ARG) that the American Art Museum ran last year. Condensing the concept/story/planning/goals/results into SEVEN MINUTES was difficult enough, but I hadn't stopped to think about the fact that this was not going to be a one-way conversation. Fortunately I'd brought along a colleague - Bridget Callahan - and she was able to scribble notes as every single person that I spoke to had a different idea about how we might build upon/extend/improve/take advantage of the game. At some point soon, we will hopefully be able to sit down, take a deep breath, and absorb some of these wonderful ideas! Can we take it pan-institutional? Can we have the players create the next version? Can we turn the module non-ARG game that we're now playing back into an ARG and have the students and teachers continue to play once they are back in the classroom? How do we continue to measure success? Yes, Ghosts of a Chance was successful, but this was pretty easy to determine because of all the great feedback we received based around how unusual, new, and surprising it was. The next one won't be the first anymore, so how can we keep it fresh and exciting? How do we measure its value? Right now I have no idea, but I cannot wait to find out. Today was a whirlwind of ideas and inspiration, but the two things I plan to shout from the hilltops (or perhaps the Castle turrets) are that the Smithsonian's core competency is storytelling (from Bran) and that we should embrace messiness (from Chris Anderson). Hurrah for the messy, user-generated, visibly-corrected, artifact-inspired STORY. Bring it on.

Behind the Scenes Smithsonian Site Visits: Smithsonian Libraries

Smithsonian staff and guests gather at the Easter Island statue in the National Museum of Natural History before heading off for a tour of Smithsonian Libraries' Cullman Library and Biodiversity Heritage Library Mass Digitization Scanning Center.

Smithsonian Libraries, situated at the center of the world's largest museum complex, the Smithsonian Institution Libraries (SIL) forms a vital part of the research, exhibition, and educational enterprise of the Institution.

The group were able to visit the Smithsonian’s world-class Cullman Library collection of rare books in anthropology and the natural sciences where collections stand alone as objects of great aesthetic interest as well as serve ongoing scientific and research needs. Also tour the Biodiversity Heritage Library scanning center which has digitized over 11 million pages of text in the past 12 months.

(below - top - Keri Thompson in the Biodiversity Heritage Library Scanning Center; below - Daria Wingreen-Mason with a selection of rare materials from the Cullman Library)

Who doesn't love whiteboards?

Just love whiteboards don't you? The smell of the erasable markers? Maybe some of the older of you will have the same feeling for overheads!

But, well, there's something about whiteboards that is really fun.

Today, at the Smithsonian 2.0 meeting, Brad Ferren ("PowerPoint is evil") took advantage of the stage spanning whiteboard of the Lecture Hall of the Smithsonian's Ripley Center to give Smithsonian staff and guests and mini lecture on the Pantheon, Gothic Cathedrals, and the hope for a future for museums in general and the Smithsonian in particular.

Bran gave us six points to think about ... any guesses as to what they were?

Give it Away

The thing I can’t seem to get out of my head from today’s talk with Bran Ferren is an idea he threw out to us, perhaps as an illustration, or perhaps with serious intent:

Give away our collection to the American people. 

The concept is this: using social security numbers or some similar system, give one item from our collection to one citizen. The Smithsonian would retain the stewardship of the item, but that citizen would accept the responsibility for the online dialogue about that object. They would, in a new sense, perhaps a 21st century sense (?), own it.

The reason this idea, this concept seems to fit is that it emphasizes, in a tangible way, the idea that the collection of the Smithsonian is not a private collection, not meant to be held back and reserved for private viewing in a setting we think is appropriate, but rather it is the public collection of the people of the Unites States of America.  Our citizens already own the collection. The facilities they are stored in, the curators that care for and study them, the staff and equipment used to digitize them are paid for with federal dollars.

How can we, in an ethical sense, as well as a legal one, hold back, “be stingy,” as Bran said, with our collection?

We can’t.