Transformations in Cultural and Scientific Communication

Transformations in Cultural and Scientific Communication is presented in collaboration with: Museum Victoria; Museums Australia (Victoria); Australian Museum; Museums & Galleries NSW; Museum & Gallery Services Queensland; ARC Centre for Creative Innovation; and Swinburne University. This event is supported by the Victorian Cultural Network through Arts Victoria and the Community Support Fund.

Main Conference Sessions
Friday 06 March 2009

Registration, 9.30am
Melbourne Museum, Carlton Gardens

Session 1, 10am to 11am
Culture 2.0
This session will explore how organisational initiatives are communicating with non-traditional visitors. It will showcase strategies for capturing new audiences. The session will be of value to public programmers, marketers, public relations and media representatives engaged in building brands in a digital cultural environment.

Cultural communication in the social media environment responds to the knowledge which audiences bring with them, proposing that future initiatives will require new models of interaction and participation. Drawing on commercial and cultural experts, the session explores the notion that creating cultural experiences is achieved by engaging in an act of co-creation between an organisation and participant, wherein the participant perceives value in the encounter and in the subsequent memory of that encounter. The creation of cultural interactive experiences will need to extend to not just interacting with audiences but engaging them in this act of co-creation.

Presenters:
Graham Durant, Director, Questacon
Colin McLeod, Australian Football League
Lyn Elliot Sherwood, Department of Canadian Heritage
Chair: Jerry Watkins, Swinburne University

Session 2, 11am to 12.15pm
Look Who’s Talking
This session will explore how audiences connect with each other through the development of immersive, experience environments using social media. It will discuss effective models for capturing and valuing cultural participation and using collaboration to improve products. This session will be of value to those involved in planning for the business of social media in their organisations.

How do social media create value for your audiences? What products and services can be developed to capture the phenomenon of social networking in cultural organisations? Your audiences are talking behind your back – online. How are they connecting with each other and learning through do-it-yourself media? How can your institution capture this unique resource and position itself to utilise cultural production to deliver your mission in a sustained way? How can these processes lead innovation and how do they impact on organisational editorial processes?

Presenters:
Shelley Bernstein, Brooklyn Museum
Seb Chan, Powerhouse Museum
Vivienne Waller, Institute of Social Research
Chair: Tim Hart, Museum Victoria

Session 3, 1.15pm to 2.30pm
Science 2.0
This session will explore how scientific knowledge is communicated to existing visitors. It will showcase multiplatform initiatives for creating and sustaining broad cultural participation. It questions how search engines, social networks, and Web 2.0 will affect science in knowledge institutions; will they will extend or submerge them? This session will be of value to scientists, curators, science communicators and educators.

What role do cultural institutions play in the development of general understandings of science? How is scientific knowledge framed, problematised, created and disseminated in the Web 2.0 environment? If the public knew more about scientific knowledge would they contribute to controversial debates in the general public? How might this change or challenge science policy in the cultural sector?

Panel:
Frank Howarth, Australian Museum
Andi Horvath, science communicator
Julian Cribb, Julian Cribb and Associates
Chair: Angelina Russo, Swinburne University

Session 4, 2.30pm to 4pm
Organisational Change through Social Networks
This session will explore how cultural collections are communicated within the organisation. It will showcase strategies including training and social media initiatives for encouraging organisational change.

In the commercial environment, value is shifting from products, to solutions, to experiences. This notion focuses on the centrality of the individual and the active role of organisations in providing access to resources; rather than guarded ownership of them. The development of engaging cultural experiences will necessitate new approaches to the development and dissemination of digital content. This shift will require new business models both within and beyond the institution to draw on emerging notions of distributed innovation in the creation and dissemination of cultural content.

Presenters:
Ross Dawson, Future Exploration Network
Anni Rowland Campbell, Fuji Xerox Australia
Mylee Joseph, State Library of NSW
Chair: Lynda Kelly, Australian Museum

Masterclass Program

Bringing the Community Home: incorporating social media into museum websites
Thursday 05 March 2009, 9am to midday, Activity Room A
This masterclass with Shelley Bernstein of the Brooklyn Museum will explore how to further engage an institution’s existing online audiences and continue to build an interactive web community. Shelley will describe how to utilize offsite Web 2.0 sites and services to: engage a younger audience demographic; extend the physical visit; and provide interactive tools for contemporary learning.

This masterclass focuses on bringing the community home; integrating sites such as Flickr and YouTube within a museum’s own website. Shelley will detail some of the Brooklyn Museum’s most successful social media projects, developments, and realizations made over the past year. These include blogging; electronic comment books; a Facebook application; a YouTube-based video competition; and an experiment with Twitter - all in an ongoing effort to link web and gallery interaction, both physically and virtually.

Serendipity and Strategy: using Web 2.0 tools to influence organisational change
Thursday 05 March 2009, 1.30pm to 4.30pm, Activity Room A
People can influence change in their organisations at all levels. Web 2.0 tools can be used strategically to build knowledge, skills and attitudes within organisations. In this collaborative masterclass, Ellen Forsyth and Mylee Joseph will share their experiences, and describee some strategic approaches that can be applied to your organisation. Key themes include: engaging a critical mass of staff and challenging the ‘culture of perfect’ in your organisation by valuing timeliness, innovation and learning from experience.

Ellen and Mylee co-lead a project which is providing Web 2.0 training for more than 1,000 public library staff in NSW. They are consultants based at the State Library of NSW working with local government and public libraries across the state to develop and promote services for communities in NSW. Their work also includes developing social media policies and Web 2.0 training for staff at the State Library.

Measuring Online Success
Thursday 05 March 2009, Computer Training Room
9am - midday session 5 PLACES REMAINING
1.30pm - 4.30pm session SOLD OUT
This masterclass with Seb Chan of the Powerhouse Museum will take participants through the emerging landscape of metrics and measurement in the world of the social web. Seb will begin by explaining the pros and cons of traditional measurement tools available on the web; before examining the new suite of tools needed to discover ‘actionable insights’ from your social media projects.

What is a ‘well-performing’ website? How might this differ from a social media project? How will you know your if social media projects are successful? What constitutes success and how might you benchmark it? What tools are available for free or at low cost? What combination of qualitative and quantitative results might you report back to funders? What are the implications of social media measurement for your traditional measurements?