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Cosmic Collections: Creating a Big Bang

A paper for Museums and the Web conference in Denver, April 2010.

Cosmic Collections: Creating a Big Bang

Abstract

'Cosmic collections' was a Web site mashup competition held by the Science Museum in late 2009 to encourage members of the public to create new interfaces with newly accessible collections data prepared for the Cosmos & Culture exhibition. The paper reports on the lessons learned during the process of developing and running the competition, including the organisational challenges and technical context. It discusses how to create room for experimentation within institutional boundaries, the tools available to organise and publicise such an event on a limited budget, the process of designing a competition, and the impact of the competition. It also investigates the demand for museum APIs.

Keywords: experiment, collaboration, mashup, API, social media, exhibition, collections

My slides are also available on Slideshare and below. As in 2009, I helped facilitate the Museums and the Web 2010 Unconference.

Cosmic Collections: creating a big bang?

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2009: an overview

An incomplete, retrospective list of work, talks and more in 2009…

February – I did a talk: "Happy developers + happy museums = happy punters" at JISC's Dev8D; I blogged a transcript.

At some point in early 2009 I started the Museum API wiki, which still exists at http://museum-api.pbworks.com.

In April I was inspired by the Museums and the Web international conference to setup 'the MW2009 challenge' – 'take something from all the conversation at Museums and the Web 2009 and do something with them. So – pick one task.  To keep the momentum going, you should do it while it's still April 2009.'

In June I gave a talk Bubbles and Easter eggs – Museum Pecha Kucha at the British Museum in London. In July I repeated Bubbles, icebergs and Easter eggs at the Melbourne Museum Pecha Kucha.

September – I had an article published on the Museum-iD website, Learning lessons from a decade of museum websites. It was based on a paper I gave at the Museum-iD seminar on "Museum as Media Company: Social Media, Broadcasting & The Web” about ‘the role of the web at the Science Museum’.

November – the 'Cosmic Collections' crowdsourced web mashup competition I ran got some press on two web developer sites! Yahoo Developer Network: A new API and hack competition – this time not from a tech company but by a museum! Programmable Web: Science Museum Opens API and Challenges Developers to Mashup the Cosmos

December – I was invited to Oslo to give a lecture on Social Media in the ABM (MLA) Sector: Opportunities and Challenges and curated a session at the UK Museums on the Web conference on ‘Sensory’. I also spoke with Elizabeth Lomas and Benjamin Ellis on Continued Communication: maximising your communications in a Web 2.0 world at the Online Information 2009 conference. The paper I wrote with Elizabeth and Ben is online at Continued communication – maximising the business potential of communications through Web 2.0.