lego beowulf and the web of hands and hearts, for the danish national museum awards :: michael edson

“When it comes to dealing with the big problems we face, are we just going to be a crowd of voices, or are we going to be a crowd of hands?”

Jennifer PahlkaCode for America

{About this talk}

• A full text version, with footnotes and links, is online at http://www.slideshare.net/edsonm/michael-edson-lego-beowulf-and-the-web-of-hands-and-hearts-for-the-danish-national-museum-awards-13444266

• The video will be online soon…

{About this talk}

• This was the keynote at the Bikuben Foundation Danish National Museum Awards (Bikubenfondens Museumpriser) in Copenhagen, Denmark, June 11, 2012 (http://www.museumsprisen.dk/)

• The audience was directors and executives from Danish museums, The Danish Heritage Agency, the Association of Danish Museums, and other invited guests

• Special thanks to Tobias Golodnoff, Nina Hviid, Charlotte S H Jensen, Miriam Lerkenfeld, Merete Sanderhoff, and Jacob Wang for their help and guidance with this talk

—Michael Edson, @mpedson

Prelude

[Play video] http://youtu.be/1SGJS0VN0hE

Washington D.C.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rcsj/5087028899/sizes/s/in/photostream/

Washington D.C.

These museums set an important example for me about citizenship and participatory democracyas I was growing up

Washington D.C.

But that was before the Internet

These museums set an important example for me about citizenship and participatory democracyas I was growing up

Washington D.C.

How shall we get this work done in society, now?

I’m very impressed with the professionalism, quality, and sense of purpose in theDanish museum community

But here’s how we’ve traditionally thought about getting achieving meaningful outcomes…

ResourcesOutcomes

Trust, money, real estatecollections, staff,

attention… Something really good forsociety

ResourcesOutcomes

Museums

Something really good forsociety

Trust, money, real estatecollections, staff,

attention…

ResourcesOutcomes

Broadcast

Broadcastwe do they consume

The broadcast idiom is the traditional 20th century way museums accomplish our

jobs in society

Broadcast

The broadcast model gave us great things in the 20th

century…

Automobiles The Hoover Dam Baywatch

BroadcastBut something is missing here.

The Internet is the dark matter in this equation of how to get work done.

The Long TailJoy’s LawCognitive surplusMoore’s Law & MobileEvery user a hero…

More on these themes in Come, Let us go Boldly Into the Present

Global audiences formingaround niche interests

“Extraordinary Individuals”

“No matter what business you’re in, most of thesmart people work for

someone else”

One trillion hours of free time available every year from

educated, Internet connected people on earth

(Clay Shirky)

In 12 years this device will be 1,706 X more powerful than my

desktop computer

Billions of connected mobile users. Voice, data, cameras,

GPS, sensors…

These are not new ideas anymore

Broadcastwe do they consume

Broadcast is great, but it’s not a complete model for getting

things done

Digital Strategy Workshop 2012

More on these themes in Come, Let us go Boldly Into the Present

http://www.flickr.com/photos/invattur/4013772522/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Digital Strategy!

We must useNew Media!

Digital Strategy!

Yes, we must..!

We’ve got a yearto decide…

Blah blah blah broadcast

This organization is stuck

Digital Strategy Workshop 2011 ExampleFrom a real

museum strategy workshop

“Become the preeminent placefor engagement and dialogue

about national identity and the accomplishment and

experience of citizens”

Strategic Goal of the museum

“Build an online collectionof 10 million portraits ofcitizens and their stories,created and uploadedwithout official curationby members of thepublic.

Proposed Strategic Initiative

“Build an online collectionof 10 million portraits ofcitizens and their stories,created and uploadedwithout official curationby members of thepublic. Build acommunity around thisinitiative to fuelengagement withnational history,biography, and artisticcreativity.”

“Do a website about family portraits”

Adopted

You can’t get this with broadcast

thinking

Proposed Adopted

Resources Outcomes

Are you usingthe best tools to turn resources

into outcomes?

Does the broadcast idiom deliver the best outcomes

for society?

How does this work in a traditional organization?

http://smithsonian-webstrategy.wikispaces.com/Strategy+--+Table+of+Contents

http://smithsonian-webstrategy.wikispaces.com/file/view/20090729_Smithsonian-Web-New-Media-Strategy_v1.0.pdf

On the Wiki:

Business Model

“The Smithsonian’s basic business model is to create social and economic value through the increase and diffusion of knowledge…Ultimately, the most valuable business asset we can cultivate—and the one that is most fundamental to our core mission—is a community of engaged and committed Smithsonian enthusiasts.”

Update the Learning Model

“This strategy is based on the growing understanding of learning as a hybrid of formal education and self-directed discovery that can be brought together and enhanced by online tools and communities…. that allow our audiences to be our partners in the increase and diffusion of knowledge.”

No Yes!

We assume this is usin the middle,

the official museum running the show

museum

Hundreds, thousand, millions of connections between people with

expertise, perspective, abilities, passion, curiosity…

But these connections are the most important, the most powerful for

generating big outcomes

museum

Maybe the most powerfulplace for us is here

museum

Maybe the most powerfulplace for us is here

Examples

The Smithsonian owns SpaceShipOne, the first privately financed rocketto take a human into orbit

Spaceship OneHere’s the collection page on our website.One picture. Curatorial text.

http://airandspace.si.edu/collections/artifact.cfm?id=A20050459000

On Wikipedia you get…Hyperlinks!!

Translated into 26 languages

(by users, with no centralcoordination or control)

Almost 400 editors

Flickr is a picture sharing website. People upload, share, and tag their photos

There are over 9 billion photos on Flickr

A search on “SpaceShipOne” returns 2,592 photos of the rocket ship, taken, uploaded, and tagged (cataloged) by users, with no central coordination or control

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pvogel/110579166/in/set-72057594079211111

Stunning images, multiple points of view across the history of the project

The image belongs to many thematic sets

Curation!

Video from spaceship one

http://youtu.be/FNXahIoXMw8

On YouTubeyou can see it fly

Which website would you use to understand

SpaceShipOne?

Who hasauthority and trust

in the eyes of the public?

Where do people go tofind out about the world?

Where do you goto find your news?

Question asked at a focus group of young adults for the newspaper industry…

“If the news is important enough,it will find me.”

Answer :

This is a great homepage.

http://natmus.dk/en

But does it really function as your

home page?

Or, given the abundance of different ways to find out about the world, is thisyour homepage?

Solvongen

The Solvongen—the Trundholm Sun Chariot—is one of the most iconic museum object in Denmark.

How would we learn about it?

An experiment

The Sun Chariot

Horrible images!

(We could make them better. Ask the Riksmuseet about the

Problem of the Yellow Milkmaid)

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Trundholm-sun-chariot/135441099821236

With some help, I found the canonical collection information page for the Sun Chariot on the National Museum website

http://natmus.dk/en/historisk-viden/danmark/moeder-med-danmarks-oldtid/the-bronze-age/the-sun-chariot/

Small image windowwith zoom feature

http://natmus.dk/en/historisk-viden/danmark/moeder-med-danmarks-oldtid/the-bronze-age/the-sun-chariot/

2,845 views

Through a Google “Discussions” search, I found a brief discussionabout the Trundholm Sun Charioton the Skadi Forum

http://forums.skadi.net /

The Skadi Forum has40,000 members

300 topics700,000 posts

http://forums.skadi.net /

Google Books search found this

http://books.google.com/books?id=g15MdNvO5ngC&pg=PA55&dq=trundholm+sun+chariot&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ciHTT4yLA4Hh0QHWwvWYAw&ved=0CEMQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false

“The Trundholm Sun Chariot could easily have been carried in someone's arms. It was found in a peat bog in 1902, deliberately broken into little pieces and carefully placed there about 3,500 years ago.”

(Lovely, human voice)

Don’t get me wrong, I love this homepage!

http://natmus.dk/en/

But I love this one too, on

http://pinterest.com/nationalmuseet/

Pinterest is akind of image collecting site

Search for“Sun Chariot”

9 National Museum Sun Chariots collected by users

This one was collected by Sunnifa Heinreksdottir…

…In a collection calledBronze Age

http://pinterest.com/pin/32369691041944044/

http://pinterest.com/harrasteora/bronze-age/

Images from the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

British Archaeology

“The History Blog”

National Museum of Denmark

There’s theNational Museum’s Sun Chariot

But it doesn’t link back to the National Museum!!!

http://people.hsc.edu/faculty-staff/maryp/Core/western_culture_101_studylinks.htm

Western Culture 101Beginnings to900 C.E.

Sunnifa has 40 collections on Pinterest

http://pinterest.com/harrasteora/

Anglo Saxon

Willow

Spinning

Spindle Whorls

Bronze Age

Iron Age

Weaving

OMG!She’s curating

her own museum!

Sunnifa has collected 1146 images

http://pinterest.com/harrasteora/pins/

Linking, sharing, metadata and community“by default”

She follows 41 people

http://pinterest.com/harrasteora/following/

London

Portland, Oregon

Kansas

Cape Town

Antwerp

Dorset, UK

Ireland

“little village of 20 houses in the North of Germany”

1,927 followers!

“little village of 20 houses in the North of Germany”

And they each curate and collect, follow people, and are followed by people

The 41 people Sunnifa follows have 16,090 followers.

And they follow 12,485 people.

Sunnifa’s immediate social network has 28,485 people in it.

AND THIS IS JUST A RANDOM USER I FOUND!!!

And they do all kinds things

http://www.flickr.com/photos/monsted/487105795/

http://youtu.be/0eLJcUIxRz4 http://youtu.be/jGB1l8iuPg8

Tribute videos!

http://www.flickr.com/groups/historical_lego/

Historical Lego Group

778 members7,157 photos

http://www.flickr.com/groups/historical_lego/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shadowviking/3399432262/in/set-72157616011592049

Fan Fictionengagement, curiosity,

creativity…

http://www.flickr.com/people/shadowviking/

Holland MichiganUSA

Would your marketing department know that there was an audience for Viking history in Holland, Michigan?

http://www.flickr.com/people/shadowviking/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thorskegga/4941989896/in/pool-371955@N24/

http://www.brickforge.com/store/product.php?productid=16217&cat=252&page=1

Attention to detail: people manufacture historically accurate accessories!

http://www.brickforge.com/store/product.php?productid=16217&cat=252&page=1

A Viking was a member of the Scandinavian seafaring warriors who raided and colonized wide areas of Europe from the 9th to the 11th century. If you are looking for a more historic alternative to the iconic horned Viking Helmet - look no further. The BrickForge Viking Helmet is based on the more traditional 'Spanglehelm' design and features a spectacle guard around the eyes and nose. Fits most standard minifig heads.

http://www.flickr.com/people/thorskegga/

“Middle age eccentric woman living in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England”

http://www.flickr.com/people/thorskegga/

She’s in the same Flickr group as the person fromHolland, Michigan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SGJS0VN0hE

202,297 views!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SGJS0VN0hE

[Play video] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zuxv510dh6w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zuxv510dh6w

162,549 views!!

Compare with 2,845 views of the Sun Chariot video from

the National Museum of Denmark Site

162,549 views!!

Compare with 2,845 views of the Sun Chariot video from

the National Museum of Denmark Site

Does that mean this video is 57 times better than the National Gallery video?

Not necessarily, but…

• It is not easy to achieve thiskind of scale

• How many times have we put up a video or a blog post and wondered why nobody cared?

• We should have much higher ambitions for scale and impact

How do I learn more?

Search the National Museum site?

You can’t be the authority on everything

“Knowledge is a Mashup”http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/08/the-smithsonian-commons-projec.html

“Wikipedia is a great place to start research, but a terrible place to end it”

A Wikipedian

Coordinates

http://toolserver.org/~geohack/geohack.php?pagename=Battle_of_Maldon&params=51_42_55_N_0_42_3_E_type:event_region:GB

GeoHack links to dozens of free maps for the site of the Battle of Maldon

“OpenStreetMap is a free worldwide map, createdby people like you”

Hundreds…thousands of edits to this map by a community of volunteers

“Harmonized tagging of Ways of St. James…Fixed some little

minor stuff”April 28, 2012

“Updated ownership of bakery”April 24, 2012

In Google Street Viewwe can see the landscape and imagine what it might have been

https://ssl.panoramio.com/photo/2127892

Panoramio lets us see photos that have been uploaded and positioned on the map by users

(A battle monument)

https://ssl.panoramio.com/photo/7753503

We tend to dismiss the notion that “users” can create outstanding content

But users—people—love your museums, and they create and share remarkable content…

…they do remarkable things while exploring the world

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thioboy/6154940942/in/set-72157627512718617

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thioboy/6153423014/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/46758972@N00/7420524502/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thoughtbrain/4941565885/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jingqunluo/3666546703

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jrgensen/4422340062/in/set-72157623466859743/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/spinello/256239150/lightbox/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/48561129@N04/4793799631/in/set-72157625550929974/lightbox/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/larspind/2750488537/in/photostream/lightbox/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/larspind/3376421237/in/photostream/lightbox/

ResourcesOutcomes

Museums

So, what should this equation look like?

“When it comes to dealing with the big problems we face, are we just going to be a crowd of voices, or are we going to be a crowd of hands?”

Jennifer PahlkaCode for America

Let’s make the future together

Mange tak!Thank you!

lego beowulf and the web of hands and hearts, for the danish national museum awards :: michael edson

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