What's the point of a museum website?

During the Museum Computer Network conference (MCN2011) I was part of a panel discussing 'What's the point of a museum website?' with Koven Smith, Eric Johnson, Nate Solas and Suse Cairns.

I've written a report of the session at Report from 'What's the point of a museum website' at MCN2011 and blogged some of my thinking about the point of museum websites in Brochureware, aggregators and the messy middle: what's the point of a museum website?.

Workshop: Hacking and mash-ups for beginners at MCN2011

I ran a three and a half hour pre-conference workshop (abstract below) at MCN2011 on Hacking and mash-ups for beginners at MCN2011slides below, and I'm happy to share the exercises on request.

Have you ever wanted to be able to express your ideas for digital collections more clearly, or thought that a hack day sounds like fun but need a way to get started with basic web scripting? In this hands-on workshop you will learn how to use online tools to create interesting visualisations to explore a cultural dataset and create your own simple 'mash-up'.

The workshop will be a fun, supportive environment where you will learn by playing with small snippets of code. No scripting knowledge is assumed.