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 'Strategically 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