For the past year we’ve been working with the Association of Science – Technology Centers in desiging and developing the ExhibitFiles, a community site for exhibit designers. (The image here is from the CB Radio exhibition which opened in 1978 and is part of the ExhibitFiles).

The concept behind the site is simple, too often the exhibit and exhibition development process isn’t recorded for future designers and developers. As a community, we sometimes redesign the wheel as there is no central place for us to find out about the best (and the worst?) practices in exhibit development. This issue is becoming more urgent as many of the exhibit designers who were active in the 1970s and 1980s are beginning to retire. Over the years, important exhibition development information is lost or stored within a museum where it can’t be easily shared with the larger community.

The ExhibitFiles site will allow any designer or developer to create a profile and to author case studies and reviews about individual exhibits or whole exhibitions. The software is completely custom. We developed it using the Ruby on Rails programming framework. The site has lot’s of interactive features beyond just authoring including the ability to favorite items, commenting, and even a Flash-based “thumbnail maker.” We’ll be adding the site to our portfolio soon with more details. In the meantime, the ExhibitFiles development blog contains lots of information and discussions about the design process.

Along with ASTC, we worked with Independent Exhibits and a great group of advisors. The site is just getting started and we will adding more features–but in the meantime feel free to join up and contribute. We’ll see you in the ExhibitFiles.

This week about 20 more photographs were added to the John Collier Jr. site on flickr (including this gem on the left taken in 1943 in Questa, New Mexico.) This is the first new set photos to be added since The American Image website went live back in January. (You can learn more about this project in our portfolio.) Our partners at the Maxwell Museum of the Anthropology will be adding more great Collier images over the next few months. The American Image site uses a flickr mashup, so as new photos are added they automatically appear within the Collection and inside the Shooting Script activity. Back on flickr, it was nice to see so many positive comments about the new photos. John Collier Jr. now has well over 100 contacts in flickr.

Along with the two photo mashups, the Propaganda Filmmaker a Flash-based online video editor that allows visitors to create their own short movies has been very active. (I posted more about the online video editor earlier this year.) Over 200 “propaganda films” have been made, with new ones appearing daily. Our visitors’ creativity in working with the 150 clips that are provided has shined through. An American Hero does a great job of telling a very literal story, while Oh! Irony! as the name suggests, conveys a very different message–all of this in less than 40 seconds! You can check out the Top Ten and the latest videos here, or make your own. It’s great to see what visitors will create when we develop interesting tools for them to use.

Yesterday, Seb Chan from Powerhouse Museum and I presented our paper, Radical Trust: The State of the Museum Blogosphere at the Museums and the Web conference. Following the presentation we had a lunchtime meet up and discussion about the future of museums and blogging. It was nice meet many of the folks beyond the blogs that I’m so familiar with. Here’s a round up of resources and posts from the session.

• Radical Trust: The State of the Museum Blogosphere (the paper on the MW 2007 site)
• Our presentation in PDF format radicaltrust.pdf (800k)
• Live blogging of the session by Nate Schroeder at the Walker Art Center’s New Media Initiatives Blog.

Following our lunch I was thinking that this will likely be the last time we can easily survey the museum blogosphere since its growth has accelerated so dramatically in recent months. A big part of our presentation focused on the changes we’ve seen just since the December survey! You can see for yourself over at MuseumBlogs where there are now 139 blogs listed. Back in December when we conducted our original survey there were 95. What’s next for the museum blogosphere? Perhaps we can continue that conversation on our various blogs.

(Update:  There’s a discussion underway on the Walker New Media Blog about the session and museum blogging in general. Questacon Online has a post about the session and bloggers meet up and more. There’s also much more about the Museums and the Web Conference at Fresh + New, I’m in Ur Museum Website…, and of course the conference blog has a number of posts about various presentations and events.)

Today I’m conducting two half-day workshops at the Museums and the Web Conference in San Francisco. This blog post contains the workshop description and the course materials for Real Science 2.0, there’s another post for Museum Mashups.

In case you’re wondering, the colorful image of the Pacific Ocean on the left comes from NASA’s SeaWIFS and MODIS/Aqua missions. The bright colors show chlorophyll concentrations in the water.

Workshop Description
Originally developed as tool to help scientists share information, the World Wide Web continues to be an important mode of communication for scientific inquiry. Rich scientific data-sets in a variety of fields are publicly available, and can provide a unique catalyst for learning. As the Internet continues to evolve, there are new opportunities for science centers to develop rich web resources which can connect visitors to scientific imagery and data.

Science Centers can act as mediators, organizing information across scientific disciplines and providing tools for understanding complex scientific research. Users can gain a unique insight into the scientific process and Science Centers can do what they do best – make science understandable and interesting to the public. With a new generation of interactive and social technologies available, Science Centers are presented with new challenges and possibilities.

Developing online resources that mine datasets from “real” scientific endeavors can help explain the scientific process with a unique relevancy. Furthermore these types of resources can provide a link, both actual and metaphoric, to the scientific community.

This half-day workshop will explore in technical, educational, and design aspects of incorporating datasets, with a focus on real-time images and datasets. We’ll explore some of the technical aspects of developing rich online experiences in Macromedia Flash, as well as other approaches that incorporate Web 2.0 technologies such as mashups, blogs, rss feeds, and community sites. We’ll present examples and discuss various technical approaches to incorporating these types of data and ways in which visitors can interact with and manipulate scientific imagery.

Beyond the technical aspects, we’ll look at the content questions and design considerations involved in utilizing these types of data in public websites and exhibits. After all, scientific datasets are produced for scientists, not for the general public. Through a rapid design exercise, we’ll explore some of the questions concerning how data are presented, mediated, and made available for public audiences.

Bookmarks (for this workshop and Museum Mashups):
http://del.icio.us/mw2007

The Presentation (the activity is not included):
realscience-2007.pdf (1.8 megs)

Today I’m conducting two half-day workshops at the Museums and the Web Conference in San Francisco. This blog post contains the workshop description and the course materials for Museum Mashups, there’s another post for Real Science 2.0: Interacting with Scientific Imagery and Live Data.

The image on left is a termite “catherdral” mound, an example of the theory of emergence in nature. I decided to use this image after rading Alex Iskold’s article on Yahoo! Pipes, where he talks about emergence (part of complexity theory) and its relation to Web 2.0.

Workshop Description
Perhaps more than any other approach or Web technology, mashups exemplify “Web 2.0.” These unique web applications draw on content from more that one source to create something new. With hundreds of open APIs (Application Programming Interface) to choose from, over 1000 mashups have been created in just the past two years. Google maps, Flickr photos, and many other data sources and services are now available to designers and developers.

Unfortunately, few museums have explored the promise that mashups present. While some of the APIs are commercial in nature, many are relevant to the museum world and could be used to create compelling interactive experiences for museum visitors. Mashups have the potential to allow visitors to access archives, collections, and scientific data in innovative and exciting ways.

As museums slowly begin to explore other Web 2.0 technologies such as blogging and social networking applications, the potential for tapping into these communities with mashups increases. Our visitors are already using mashups and many of the core technologies that open APIs are making accessible.

This half-day workshop will explore the technical and design aspects of mashups. We’ll look at some of the examples that are out there and discuss the technology behind them. We’ll explore some of the more popular open APIs and talk about the possibilities they present.

Finally, we’ll explore the design issues surrounding these unique web applications. Due to the complex nature of mashups and the fact that many are produced solely by programmers, usability and visitor experience is often compromised. We’ll look at what is emerging as “best practices” in the development on mashups with a focus on design. Through a rapid design exercise we’ll take a look at the conceptual, information, and visual design aspects of mashups.

Bookmarks (for this workshop and RealScience 2.0):
http://del.icio.us/mw2007

The Presentation (The activity is not included):
museummashups-2007.pdf (800K)

Three weeks from today the ExhibitFiles website will be publicly available. This National Science Foundation-sponsored Website will allow exhibit developers to “connect with colleagues, find out about exhibits, and share experiences.”

For over a year now we’ve been working with our partners at the Association of Science-Technology Centers and Independent Exhibitions to design this community site. We’ve had a great group of advisors and we’ve also received helpful comments through the ExhibitFiles Development blog. The site is being custom built with Ruby on Rails and represents thousands of hours of development time.

The ExhibitFiles will allow exhibit designers and others to share their experiences in the form of exhibit or exhibition case studies and to offer opinions through reviews and comments. A variety of media types (images, audio and video) will be supported. User profiles, favorites, and commenting will allow ExhibitFiles members to interact with other on the site. The development blog contains more details on the ExhibitFiles site and design process.

If you’re attending the Museums and the Web conference you can get a sneak preview in in the Usability Lab from 11:40-12:00 on Friday the 13th. We hope to see you in the ExhibitFiles later in the month!