Are museums a dial that only goes to 5?
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Michael Edson (@ mpedson ) Director, Web and New Media Strategy Smithsonian Institution February 22, 2013
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For Social Media Week, Washington, D.C., "Defining and measuring social media success in museums and arts organizations." http://socialmediaweek.org/blog/event/are-you-remarkable-defining-and-measuring-social-media-success-in-museums-and-arts-organizations/#.US4XyOtARCQ
Transcript of Are museums a dial that only goes to 5?
Michael Edson (@mpedson)Director, Web and New Media StrategySmithsonian InstitutionFebruary 22, 2013
You can tell a lot about someone by what they choose to measure…and what they measure with
You can tell a lot about someone by what they choose to measure…and what they measure with
You can see thescale
of their dreams
Scale is a matter of perspective
Video: http://youtu.be/EbVKWCpNFhY
“These go to 11”
This is NASA’s Chandrax-ray observatory
(operated by the Smithsonian)
It takes pictures of the universe
“We won’t even consider a new project unless it
returns 10x better performance than the last one.”
A Chandra project astrophysicist told me:
10x farther back to the beginning of the universe.”
returns 10x improvement lets us see “Every
returns 10x better (simulation)
The Crab Nebula (composite) http://www.chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2013/w49b/
Let’s make some graphs
At this scale, each one of these represents 10 million people
Each one of these represents1 year
Annual attendanceNational Gallery of Art1978 through 2011
-1% growth over 33 years
Annual attendanceNational Gallery of Art1978 through 2011
People who don’t visit the NGA
People who do visit the NGA
How you feel about this dependsOn what you think your mission isand how you think about scale.But either way…
There’s a lot of room at the top--Business proverb
How you feel about this dependsOn what you think your mission isand how you think about scale.But either way…
“We won’t even consider a new project unless it
returns 10x better performance than the last one.”
Hypothetical Project X, starts where theNational Gallery of Art started, butgrows at 10% a year for 33 years
Let’s adjust the vertical scale(Zoom out to 500 million)
Now, each one of these represents 10 million100 million people
10% annual growth gives you 102 million more visitors/year after 33 years
Wikipedia Unique visits…
Wikipedia Unique visits…
Let’s adjust the vertical scale again(Zoom out to 6 billion)
Now, each one of these represents10 million100 million1 billion people
Oops! Wrong scale! This is actually Wikipedia Unique visits …A MONTH!
(Let’s adjust it to unique visits/year)
Wikipedia Unique visits(…extrapolated to 12 months, an approximation…)
2.4 billion Internet users(34% of world population)
2.4 billion Internet users(34% of world population)
4.6 millionNational Gallery of Art visitors
…A 2.395 billion person difference
A global “audience”of collaborators
(individuals, learners, fans, community) of this scale was not imaginable to an
organization 30 years ago…
But it is now
108.4 million viewers for 2013 Super Bowl
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mbk/2241960032/ (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) 2013 super bowl: 108.4 million viewers. http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-super-bowl-ratings-20130204,0,4439351.story
108.4 million viewers for 2013 Super Bowl
1,341,882,399 views of Gangnam Style
http://www.youtube.com/user/officialpsy
108.4 million viewers for 2013 Super Bowl
1,341,882,399 views of Gangnam Style
And
growing
http://blog.ted.com/2012/11/13/ted-reaches-its-billionth-video-view/
Wikipedia 1.7 billion edits
http://toolserver.org/~emijrp/wikimediacounter/
http://www.openstreetmap.org/ | http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Stats | http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/changeset/14947636
Over 900,000 registered usershave contributed 14 million edits
and 1.6 billion locations
http://www.kickstarter.com/year/2012
In 2012…2,241,475 people from 177 counties pledged $319,786,629 to support 18,109 projects
We love our museums, libraries, and archivesWe want them to be successful
We love our museums, libraries, and archivesWe want them to be successful
We need them to be super successful
• Put the tools of knowledge creation into more hands• Share the joy & meaning of artistic and cultural
exploration with more citizens• Deepen engagement with the challenges that face
our species and nurture the habits of civil andsustainable society
We love our museums, libraries, and archives
• Put the tools of knowledge creation into more hands• Share the joy & meaning of artistic and cultural
exploration with more citizens• Deepen engagement with the challenges that face
our species and nurture the habits of civil andsustainable society
This is our job in society!
We love our museums, libraries, and archives
• Put the tools of knowledge creation into more hands• Share the joy & meaning of artistic and cultural
exploration with more citizens• Deepen engagement with the challenges that face
our species and nurture the habits of civil andsustainable society
But…can we do this quickly enough
and at big enough SCALE to make a substantial difference in the lives of Individuals and the fate our our species?
This is our job in society!
Not if we’re onlycounting this…
1 23
45 6
7
Not if we’re onlythinking like this…
Scale can be confusingIf scale matters, are 1 billion TED videosbetter than 2.4 million museum visits?
Not necessarily, but the vast differencein scale is evidence that something significant—worth studying—is going on
There are more powerful ways of accomplishingmuseum missions thangetting people throughthe doors.
“Anything is scalable”http://www.wired.com/business/2013/01/ff-qa-larry-page/all/
Larry Page
http://books.google.com/books?id=L5zxn5JFIeQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Open communityWeb-centricBorn global
If you want scale
start with this
http://books.google.com/books?id=L5zxn5JFIeQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
1. Start with an open community• Built-in growth potential• Network effects• Joy’s law (the smartest people)• Minimize drag from unnecessary
intellectual property controls
http://books.google.com/books?id=L5zxn5JFIeQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
2. Be web-centricFaster, cheaper, more efficient
http://books.google.com/books?id=L5zxn5JFIeQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
3. Be “born global”• Everyone can be a collaborator,
developer, customer, learner,community member…
• Global scale, by default
http://books.google.com/books?id=L5zxn5JFIeQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Open communityWeb-centricBorn global
Every meetingEvery project
if you careabout scale
http://books.google.com/books?id=L5zxn5JFIeQC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
1. Start small2. Ask the users3. Adapt4. Experiment5. Seize the opportunity
at hand
http://books.google.com/books?id=mafZyckH_bAC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
1. Take cues from your lead users2. Build critical mass3. Provide infrastructure for
collaboration4. Take your time to get the
structures and governance right5. Make sure all participants
can harvest value6. Abide by community norms7. Let the process evolve8. Hone your collaborative mind
http://books.google.com/books?id=DVomiOeBg_YC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Museums can go to 11And when they do,
new opportunities present themselves…
…TO BE CONTINUED…
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