Museums and the Web 2012 and digital leadership

It’s that time of year when Museums and the Web fans start to get excited as MW 2012 (April 11th -14th in San Diego) looms into our immediate consciousness. This will be my third (I was at MW2009 in Indianapolis and MW2011 in Philadelphia).

Each MW has an informal theme which either becomes apparent in the blogosphere before the conference or during the conference itself. 2011 was clearly about mobile platforms. And if there is one that I can spot for 2012 it is going to be around digital leadership.

Rob Stein’s paper is already being widely commented upon. Rob is a key person in this debate and we are all watching to see what he does in his new role in Dallas as the Dallas Museum of Art’s Deputy Director, where he has been head hunted by Maxwell Anderson. Max is the Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art, and has enticed Rob from Indianapolis Museum of Art where he is the Deputy Director for Research, Technology, and Engagement. Max was formally the Director there. It was in that role that Max gave the opening address at MW 2009 in Indianapolis, an eye opening moment for me as there was a live twitter feed being displayed behind him to which everyone was glued at the expense of his presentation. The Indianapolis Museum of Art has been pioneering the role of museums in the digital age, and presumably Dallas will now lead the next stage of the journey.

But all this is particularly relevant to Rob’s paper which essential posits a new view of the type of leaders that museums need. This has prompted a wave of comment, from The Art Newspaper to Susan Cairns writing in the Museums Association UK comment page (‘Can a technologist get ahead in museums?’) saying “If we have museum directors who understand museums but do not understand (and commit firmly to) the altered technological landscape, how can museums possibly adapt to changing expectations”

I would suggest that the problem is not unique to the GLAM sector – witness the latest survey of PR agency Eurocom Worldwide which showed that 57% of CEOs had no idea how to quantify the effect of their social media presence (and more worryingly that 1 in 5 job applicants were failing to get hired because of content in their social media profile! - cited in BRW March 22nd 2012 edition).

But I would also suggest it is not the problem that Susan thinks. Maxwell Anderson has shown convincingly that you do not need to have encountered computers after formal schooling still to be able to get what current technology can do for the GLAM sector.

Julian Bickersteth
Managing Director
internationalconservationservices

Tracking visitor numbers – metrics rule

‘Metrics’ seems to be the new buzz word around town. Metrics are everywhere. It is increasingly with them that we decide what to read, what stocks to buy, which poor people to feed, which athletes to recruit, which films and restaurants to try. The once-mysterious formation of tastes is becoming a quantitative science. Check out a rather cynical article about their pervasiveness in the New York Times November 20th 2009 edition.

Like almost everything, such matters seep through eventually to the museum and galleries sector. By the way, I used to refer to this as the ALM sector - for Libraries, Archives and Museums with museums of course covering art museums otherwise known as galleries. But the acronym increasingly in vogue seems to be GLAM - for Galleries, Museums, Archives and Museums. I like it and will run with that form from now on.

So where is the GLAM sector on metrics? The answer is two part, as the level of metrics varies enormously between the real and the virtual. Let me tackle each in turn.

On the real, namely how many visitors come through the physical doors, where they go and what they do once inside the institution, there is an embarrassing lack of knowledge. Almost all museums have some form of counting system, either through ticketing, or in the case of free entry museums, through counting systems. However even these are invariably inaccurate. There are many stories of attendants with hand clickers clicking away at random to ensure the visitor quota is achieved. Automatic counting systems give better accuracy, but still have difficulty distinguishing between visitors and staff ( and indeed inanimate objects like strollers or boxes). And once inside the institution there is no tracking of visitor paths, establishment of time spent within the institution or dwell times in front of exhibits quantified. One friend of mine admits that the closest he gets to this is sending staff out with a felt pen and a floor lay-out of the galleries, and tracking the route visitors take by hand. When they dwell in front of a particular exhibit, the felt pen is left on the paper in that spot, leading to a bigger splodge of ink. See my blog from June 2009 on the issue.

On the virtual, things are a little more advanced. We all know the power of Google Analytics, which is giving considerable granularity to web site metrics. But the Powerhouse Museum is now doing great work and mining more deeply into what their visitors do on the Museum’s web site. Read Seb Chan’s most interesting latest thoughts on the matter. Seb reports particularly on the issue of repeat visitations to web sites and understanding who is coming back, how often and why.

All is not lost on the real side of things however. We are looking at a mobile phone technology which allows tracking of visitors (all within privacy requirements) , with the added benefit it can reveal how long each visitor stays in the museum, where they dwell, whether they have been before, and, in the case of international visitors, which country they come from. We need to catch up fast to the same level of understanding that Google Analytics can provide for those web site visitors, and in due course work out the crossover.

Museums in the UK and Australia – is the scene that different?

One of the publications that I always look forward to is the monthly UK Museums Association Museums Journal. It is a much easier read than the rather densely packed American equivalent, Museum produced by the American Association of Museums. And the Australian equivalent produced by the Museums Association of Australia I am afraid to say is downright boring. One of the issues I find intriguing is where we are as a profession in Australia compared to the UK.

The immediate position is one of economic hardship big time in the UK, which at least in ‘avoiding-the-technical-recession’ Australia is not the present case. Councils across the land are laying off staff from local museums, the free admission to museums government policy is under threat (despite a massive impact on visits ranging from the Imperial War Museum up 75% to the V&A up 156% and the National Museums Liverpool up 240%) and the National Trust for Scotland is reducing its staff by one third. Overlaying all of this is also the cost of staging the London Olympics in 2012, which is sucking money out of the arts/culture sector. And then there is the problem of any spare cash being used to save art for the nation, the most recent being the serious money spent on Titian’s Diana and Actaeon jointly purchased for the small sum of £50 million by the National Galleries of Scotland and the National Gallery in London.
Against this of course are some great programs, one of the most successful being the Renaissance in the Regions which has had a massive impact on the regional museum scene.

So it is interesting to read the experience of Sara Holdsworth from the Manchester City Galleries who has just completed a three week exchange at the Art Gallery of NSW. In summary she found that:
· AGNSW was much better resourced (twice the staff and six times the budget for about the same size of collection)
· It was more collection focused and much less interested in diversity and audiences
· She couldn’t get over the cultural and social phenomenon of the Archibald and the amount of income it generates for the Gallery
Interesting stuff to ruminate on – we may be financially more fortunate at present but our horizons may also be more limited.