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
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