eri on the interweb

back row snap of the event

I first saw Sebastian Chan speak at Web Direction on 2007. He presented on social tagging (“folksonomy”) projects at the Powerhouse museum. The first of these projects was the digitisation of electronic fabric swatches. After that the entire collection was digitised and published available for public classification. Recently I saw him present and got an update on these projects.

When I first saw this case study presented in 2007 the stats amazed me:

• 95% of all available objects were visited at least once in the first 10 weeks of the collection being published online
• 86% of tags created by users were not found in museum (curatorial) descriptions
• 88% of tags were assessed as useful by museum staff

Sebastian Chan on Museums for the Next Generation

The Powerhouse Museum and the in-house digital agency Chan has been heading within it have liberated the collection and extended the museum experience beyond exhibitions and museum walls.  Sebastian Chan is head of Digital, Social and Emerging Technologies at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. I first saw him talk at Web Directions in 2007. Then he case studied social tagging projects and it was great to here how the initiatives have grown.

Amongst the strategies, tools and technologies discussed on the night were:

• Open APIs to enable sharing of collection data
• Geo coded images enabling data mash-ups of historical photos
• Social tagging enabling richer descriptions of collection items
• Keyword search tags enabling ‘frictionless tagging’ and driving improvements in how items are catalogued by examining how people describe them
• Online exhibitions (such as the Australian Dress Register) encouraging learning and cataloguing amongst smaller collectors

An interesting thing happens when the speakers at Social Media Club don’t hit their mark. The speakers were talking about engagement but they weren’t getting any. The error they made was misjudging their audience as amateurs who needed to be shown how it’s done. They should have known that this is an audience of social media marketers and consultants with years of experience under their belts.

Somehow the disappointment was energising. The speakers showcased relatively intimate projects. The conversations amongst the crowd, many of whom work for advertising and digital agencies were pointing out the difference of executing a social media campaign for a small boutique client versus a big brand. People were talking about dollars, and where budgets for this work should come from when companies don’t devote staff to voice and participate in campaigns. What the crowd had questions about, and what they wanted to hear were the lessons learned. Before a palette of wine was sold off the back of one tweet-up how many mistakes were made and what were they? Endless success stories and figures about the application of social media just didn’t ring true without the war stories.

The panel: Mark Pesce, Keir Winesmith, Matt Moore and Julian Peterson

It was a quality panel at the 10^th Digital Citizens event moderated by the talented James Fridley @fridley:

• Mark Pesce (@mpesce) inventor, writer, entrepreneur, educator and broadcaster
• Keir Winesmith (@drkeir) Development manager and technical lead for SBS
• Matt Moore (@engin_eer) intellectual capital consultant to corporates, government and NGOs
• Julian Peterson (@JulianFPeterson) former TimeOut marketing boss

There’s a quandary right now which we are all well aware of. Everyone loves content—film, music, books, software but people are becoming less prepared to pay for it. Content may be king but businesses have to not only contend with people wanting it for free but other businesses pilfering and benefitting from it with no permission.

“It’s not piracy, it’s audience driven distribution” – @mpesce

Tshirt: "Copyright infringement is your best entertainment"

Creative Sydney is about the people who make stuff, and make stuff happen: artists, designers, technology types, engineers, teachers, entrepreneurs, musicians, festival organisers and the list goes on. It had a mix of design, art, business and technology and was about the ideas that take off because they find an audience they resonate with.

There were events over 2 weeks. I went to just a handful:

• Are you experiential?: on the latest in arts and advertising using augmented reality technologies
• Future Smarts: how education is beginning to innovate to teach the “Digital Natives” generation in the 21^st century
• Hands on: Makers show their wares a showcase by artists, designers and design businesses
• DIY World—The rise of citizen engineers about art inventors and 3d printing technologies and the market places that are emerging from them
• Group Think about the power of collaboration

The first Service Design Conference was held earlier this month in Sydney, organised by Steve Baty and Donna Spencer – the team behind UX Australia. It was one stream with 7 presentations in scenic Darling Harbour. It was nice to not have to scurry between rooms for multiple tracks and good to know I wasn’t missing out on anything. The attendees were a UX crowd, and all seemed to be practitioners within the service design space. There was only a brief mention about the differences between service design and experience design. Everyone there wasn’t about to be held up on semantics. All the speakers dove straight in to describe how they work and deliver as service design practitioners.

Anyone who visits this blog often may have noticed I go to a lot of industry events. I love hearing talks, I always get something out of it, but even meet-ups without guest speakers
are an opportunity to learn from your peers. So if you’re too shy or too busy to fit an event into your calendar – maybe you’ll find a reason to finally go below.

1. Get to know people in your industry
   New to town? Need a job? New to the industry? You will be surprised how happy people are to talk, offer advice, help you out and put you in touch with others. Talking to others also gets you an understanding of where you are at and where you want to be.
2. Understand the industry landscape
   Which companies specialise in what, who claims to specialise in the new thing, whose been doing it for real.