I am delighted to announce the launch the BETA version of one the most exciting websites our company has produced, History of York. The project brings together Museums & Heritage organisations from across Yorkshire to create an educational resource and a marketing tool for York as a destination for those interested in History.
The project was led York Museums Trust and funded by York City Council.
Chosen by Karl Lagerfeld to create the Mobile Art CHANEL Contemporary Art Container by Zaha Hadid, Zaha Hadid is one of the most talented architects of our time, awarded the Pritzker Prize, considered to be the Nobel Prize of architecture, in 2004. Each of her dynamic and innovative projects builds on more than thirty years of revolutionary experimentation and research.
The Mobile Art Pavilion for Chanel, initially inspired by Chanel’s signature quilted bag and conceived through a system of natural organization, is also shaped by the functional considerations of the exhibition.
This toilet sign from the Science Fiction Museum, Seattle made me smile.
I will be speaking at the Future Trends conference at the Wellcome Collection, London in April.
I’ll be talking about how the cultural sector is using Web 2.0. technology to connect with audiences in new and exciting ways. Other confirmed speakers include Dave Patten, Head of New Media, The Science Museum.
Tickets and info from Heritage 365 (They currently have a bring a colleague for free offer)
Brooklyn Museum have created ArtShare, a cool little widget for Facebook. It lets you select pieces of art that you like and displays them on your Facebook page.
Though I think it’s an impressive little widget, I think it has a major drawback. Facebook visitors don’t tend to visit each others profiles in the way that you would on MySpace, so who is going to see the ArtShare widget?
On the plus side, any venue can join Brooklyn Museum in adding their collection to Artshare, and several have already.
Read more about it here
I was reading an interesting piece about placing Widgets in to popular social networking websites MySpace and Facebook in a magazine yesterday, and it made me think that a widget for Tate Modern (or any other gallery) which I could insert into my Facebook profile and which would display a different picture from their collection to all of my virtual friends every day would be an interesting viral marketing tool.
Much more interesting then throwing sheep at each other.
In December I wrote about Museum Widgets and Gadgets and the possibilities that these have for the cultural sector. I was keen to find out how easy they are to make, so I tasked out development team with creating a widget which would display a new picture from the Powerhouse Museum picture of the day blog every 24 hours.
The picture above shows the result, a Powerhouse picture of the day widget for Windows Vista (we also made a mac version). The widget is coded to automatically pull information from the Powerhouse website, so once the widget has been developed it requires no administration.
The widget itself didn’t take more then a couple of days to create, so they should be relatively cheap to develop.
I will be presenting a seminar at the Museums & Heritage Show on Museums & Web 2.0, am also writing a paper on the subject for Heritage 365 magazine.
Museums Web 2.0
Web 2.0 refers to a perceived second generation of website, one where the users are not just spectators browsing information created for them, but can participate by creating, sharing and curating content.
Web 2.0 is more then a buzzword. Websites like MySpace, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube are changing how people use the internet and what the public expect from your website. This seminar explores how Museums are developing the next generation of websites, and how the public are engaging with them in new and exciting ways.
I have been asked to speak about Museum Branding at the Wellcome Collection this summer:
The Emergence of Super-Brands: The Changing Role of Marketing in Modern Museums
Wednesday 18 June 2008 | Wellcome Collection | London
More details soon.
