Tag: overview

A seriously incomplete retrospective of what I got up to in 2013… For PhD updates, check my PhD.

Highlights of the second half of 2013 included presenting at Speaking in Code at UVA’s Scholars’ Lab, organising the MCG’s Museums on the Web 2013 conference at Tate Modern with the Museums Computer Group, collaborating on 'Let’s Get Real’ with Culture24, the publication of two peer-reviewed articles – From Tagging to Theorizing: Deepening Engagement with Cultural Heritage through Crowdsourcing for Curator Journal and Creating Deep Maps and Spatial Narratives through Design with Don Lafreniere and Scott Nesbit for the International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing, based on our work at the Summer 2012 NEH Advanced Institute on Spatial Narrative and Deep Maps: Explorations in the Spatial Humanities – and last but absolutely not least, creating Serendip-o-matic with 12 other wonderful digital scholars at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media’s One Week | One Tool institute.)

In November 2013 I presented at Sustainable History: Ensuring today’s digital history survives and at the Herrenhausen Digital Humanities conference.

In July 2013 I chaired a session on Digital Transformations at the Open Culture 2013 conference in London on July 2, gave an invited lightning talk at the Digital Humanities Oxford Summer School 2013, ran a half-day workshop on Crowdsourcing at the Digital Humanities 2013 conference in Nebraska, and had an amazing time making what turned out to be Serendip-o-matic at One Week, One Tool in Virginia (my posts on the process).

In May 2013 I gave an online seminar on crowdsourcing (with a focus on how it might be used in teaching undergraduates wider skills) for the NITLE Shared Academics series. I gave a short paper on 'Digital participation and public engagement’ at the London Museums Group's 'Museums and Social Media’ at Tate Britain on May 24, and was in Belfast for the Museums Computer Group’s Spring meeting, 'Engaging Visitors Through Play' on May 30 and then Venice for a quick keynote (with Helen Weinstein) for the We Curate kick-off seminar at the start of June. I also gave another full-day workshop on Crowdsourcing at the British Library.

In April 2013 I gave a paper on my PhD research at Digital Impacts: Crowdsourcing in the Arts and Humanities, and a keynote on 'A Brief History of Open Cultural Data’ at GLAM-WIKI 2013 and did another workshop on 'Data Visualisation for Analysis in Scholarly Research' for the British Library’s Digital Scholarship Training Programme.

In March 2013 I was in the US for THATCamp Feminisms to do a workshop on Data visualisation as a gateway to programming and gave a paper on 'New Challenges in Digital History: Sharing Women’s History on Wikipedia' at 'Women’s History in the Digital World' at Bryn Mawr. My talk notes are posted on my blog as 'New challenges in digital history: sharing women’s history on Wikipedia – my draft talk notes’.

In February 2013 I gave a keynote on 'Crowd-sourcing as participation’ at iSay: Visitor-Generated Content in Heritage Institutions in Leicester and ran a workshop on 'Data visualisation for humanities researchers’ with Dr. Elton Barker for the CHASE 'Going Digital' doctoral training programme.

In January 2013 I taught all-day workshops on 'Data Visualisation for Analysis in Scholarly Research’ and 'Crowdsourcing in Libraries, Museums and Cultural Heritage Institutions’ for the British Library’s Digital Scholarship Training Programme.

An incomplete retrospective of what I got up to in 2012… For PhD updates, check my PhD.

In November 2012 I chaired a session on 'digital strategy’ at the Museums Association conference in Edinburgh and chaired the Museums Computer Group’s annual Museums on the Web conference at the Wellcome Collection on November 30.

In October I was in London for the Museum Ideas conference, Brighton for a Culture24 workshop on museums and web analytics then I headed off to Taiwan to give a keynote about open cultural data at the 'eCulture & Open Cultural Data Forum’ then lead a day and a half of seminars. I was also on a panel for Oxford ASPIRE on Living in the Digital World: Horizon Scanning for Museums and collaborated on a Guest post: Center for the Future of Museums blog.

In September I was in London for the AHRC Commodity Histories Project Networking Workshop 1, running a rather experimental session to come up with and verify the information architecture for the Commodity Histories site.

In July I was at Engaging digital audiences in museums, 11 July 2012, University of Manchester then in Hamburg for Digital Humanities 2012, where I ran a workshop on 'Learning to play like a programmer: web mash-ups and scripting for beginners', chaired the 'Methods’ session at another pre-conference workshop 'Here and There, Then and Now – Modelling Space and Time in the Humanities' and presented a short paper, 'On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a historian: exploring resistance to crowdsourced resources among historians' based on some early results from my PhD research. I was also interviewed for Museum ID magazine as part of a series of interviews with the 'alternative museum establishment’.

In June 2012 I spent a week as 'Scholar-in-residence’ at the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York, then two weeks as a Fellow at the NEH Summer Institute on Deep Mapping and Spatial Narratives in Indianapolis.

In April I gave a Keynote: 'From Strings to Things’ at the Victorian Cultural Network Capacity Building LOD-LAM workshop in Melbourne, and was invited to give talks in Wellington (Te Papa) and Auckland (Auckland Museum) on 'What’s the point of a museum website?’ and 'Inspiring connections with collections’.

In March 2012 I was in Australia. I spent a week as geek-in-residence at the Powerhouse Museum, and I was in Canberra in late March for Digital Humanities Australasia 2012: Building, Mapping, Connecting to give a paper based on my PhD, called 'Why look a gift horse in the mouth? Exploring resistance to crowdsourced resources among historians’. I’ve posted summaries of the conference at Quick and dirty Digital Humanities Australasia notes: day 1, Quick and dirty Digital Humanities Australasia notes: day 2, Slow and still dirty Digital Humanities Australasia notes: day 3.

In February I ran a 45 minute workshop on 'lightweight usability testing’ at dev8D.

Blog posts for Open Objects included:

• Can you capture visitors with a steampunk arm?
• Brochureware, aggregators and the messy middle: what's the point of a museum website?
• Report from 'What's the point of a museum website' at MCN2011
• 'I see, I feel, hence I notice, I observe, and I think'
• Sunrise to sunset on the day of digital humanities
• How things change: the Google Art Project (again)
• What are the right questions about museum websites?
• Designing for participatory projects: emergent best practice, getting discussion started
• '…and they all turn on their computers and say 'yay!" (aka, 'mapping for humanists')
• Museum Computer Network 2011 conference notes
• Museums and the audience comments paradox
• Frequently Asked Questions about crowdsourcing in cultural heritage
• Halfway through 'deep maps and spatial narratives'…
• 'Engaging digital audiences in museums' conference
• Both technologist and humanist in the academic digital humanities?
• Messiness, museums and methods: thoughts from #DH2012 so far…
• Museums, Libraries, Archives and the Digital Humanities – get involved!
• Confluence on digital channels; technologists and organisational change?
• 'Behind-the-themes' at the UK Museums on the Web conference – UKMW12 'Strategica​lly Digital'
• Is it time for museums to go public about the impact of funding cuts?
• 'War, Plague and Fire' and 'Bootstrapping Innovation in Museums' at 'Museum Ideas 2012 – Museums in the Era of Participatory Culture'
• Why museums matter: 'Museum Ideas 2012 – Museums in the Era of Participatory Culture'
• 'Go digital' at Museums Association 2012 Conference
• Reflections on teaching Neatline
• Some personal highlights from UKMW12: Strategically Digital

An incomplete retrospective of what I got up to in 2011, apart from 'quitting my job at the Science Museum to start a full-time PhD in Digital Humanities'.

December: Interview: issues in museums and technology

I was in Atlanta in November 2011 for MCN2011 (my 'Hacking and mash-ups for beginners’ workshop is a highlight, woo!) and a panel discussion on 'What’s the Point of a Museum Website?'. I also debated the question “There are too many museums” in the 'Great Debate' for MCN’s closing plenary. Then it was back to London where I chaired a session at the MCG 'Museums on the Web’ UKMW11 conference and was elected as Chair of the Museums Computer Group.

October: I was one of two keynotes at Europeana Tech in Vienna, with a paper titled 'Open for engagement: GLAM audiences and digital participation’. The next day I was back in London for LODLAM-London October 6 (with the Open Knowledge Foundation). A few days later I was on a panel on the Digital Humanities at the Open University – my talk notes are at Notes on current issues in Digital Humanities. I was also interviewed for the Microtask crowdsourcing blog, 'Games at the museum: Mia Ridge interview'.

September: I went to Edinburgh to chair a session on 'Entrepreneurship and Social Media' for the Museums Galleries Scotland conference 'Collaborating to Compete'. I was asked to present on my work in my introduction, my notes are ‘Entrepreneurship and Social Media’ and ‘Collaborating to Compete’. I was also interviewed for BBC Outriders.

July: Katy Beale and I ran a workshop on 'hacking culture’ at the V&A Museum.

June: I gave a presentation for the International Training Programme run by the British Museum for museum professionals from around the world, on 'Changing contexts: museums, audiences and technology', and talked about 'The future of museums and learning to love change' at OpenCulture 2011 in Birmingham.

May 2011 – I was invited to Stockholm to give a talk on 'Museum Crowdsourcing Games: Improving Collections Through Play (and some thoughts on re-inventing museums)'. I gave a presentation called 'Everyone wins: crowdsourcing games and museums’ for MuseumNext in Edinburgh and a presentation on 'Museum Games and UGC: Improving Collections Through Play’ for 'UGC4GLAM – Joint Workshop on User-Generated Content for Galleries, Libraries, Archives & Museums', Vienna.

April: my chapter on 'Crowdsourcing games: playing with museums’ for 'Museums At Play: Games, Interaction and Learning' (edited by Katy Beale) was published and I presented at Museums and the Web 2011 in Philadelphia.

March: I taught a class on 'The possibilities of Web 2.0 for cultural heritage institutions’ for the course Arch6056: Multimedia Methods in Archaeology at the University of Southampton. I also submitted my MSc dissertation and started my PhD.

Blog posts written for Open Objects included:

• Can ugly babies save museums?
  Why do people rally to save libraries but not museums?
• On releasing museum data and the importance of licenses
• Notes on current issues in Digital Humanities
• Usability: the key that unlocks geeky goodness (after running some usability tests for the Pelagios project)
• The rise of the non-museum (and death by aggregation)
• 'Share What You See' at hack4europe London (I met Owen Stephens at hack4europe London, we wrote a WordPress plugin together and won a hackday prize)
• Notes from Gamecamp 4, London
• Define your purpose or others will define you (and you may not like the results)
• Thoughts towards the future of museums for #kulturwebb
• Thinking aloud: does a museum's obsession with polish hinder innovation?
• Emergent themes from (my) MW2011
• Sharing hard-won wisdom about museum games – introducing 'Lift your (museum) game'
• Founding visions (and learning from the past for the future of museums)
• Rockets, Lockets and Sprockets – towards audience models about collections?
• Notes from Culture Hack Day (#chd11)
• Interview about museum metadata games and a pretty picture