On Monday, at the American Association of Museums (AAM) conference, I’ll be taking part in a panel discussion entitled, “Can and Should Small Museums Be Technological Leaders?” We’ll primarily be talking about Web-based technology and I will be drawing on some of the results of a survey we’re conducting for Open Exhibits, a proposal for the National Science Foundation.

In filtering the responses we’ve received thus far, there are some interesting findings with respect to computer-based exhibits at small vs. large museums.I filtered 90 responses by operating budget. Those with an annual operating budget of less than one million US dollars I’m considering small (29 responses), while large are those with a budget of more than a million (61 responses).There are some interesting preliminary findings with respect to the number of computer-based interactive exhibits produced at these museums and their overall capacity to develop them.

There is a dramatic difference in the number of computer-based interactive exhibits that small and large museums produce. More than half of small museums (56%) produce no electronic exhibits at all, while only 14% of respondents from large museums reported that their institutions produced no electronic exhibits. Interestingly, 20% of small museums produce computer-based exhibits in-house, a slightly larger percentage than large museums (18%). Most large museums (56%) use a combination of in-house and outside resources to develop computer-based exhibits, but only 18% of small museums use that combination of resources.

There were also some significant differences in small and large museums’ capacities to develop computer-based interactive exhibits. Most small museums rated their ability to produce computer-based interactive exhibits at either “no ability” (30%) or just one notch up the scale (30%). No representatives from small museums responded with a 6 or 7 (”very capable”). Those representing large museums, however, had more varied responses which were spread across our seven-point likert scale from “no ability” to “very capable.”

If you haven’t yet done so, please take the survey. We’re going to keep it open through May. It is open to museums, science centers, and other informal education venues of any size. We’ll share the complete results with you once the survey closes at the end of next month. If you’re headed to AAM, perhaps I will see you in Denver. You may also want to check out the complete AAM 2008 Media and Technology Committee Sponsored Program Schedule. Update: May 16, 2008 - The survey was closed on May 10, 2008.

The full program for the Museums and the Web 2008 conference is now available on their Website. For the first time in a couple of years, Ideum will be in the exhibit hall. Our exhibitor information can be found here.

Along with exhibiting, I’ll be offering two half-day workshops at the conference. Rather than repeat last year’s workshops (Museum Mashups and Real Science 2.0), I decided to explore some new topics this year. We’ll be exploring the future of Web video in a workshop entitled, Online Video Editing. The other workshop, Everything RSS, looks at how Web feeds are increasingly manipulated by a variety of online tools. The conference runs April 9-12 in beautiful Montréal, Canada.

Tomorrow, I am making a presentation at the Oakland Museum for Cultural Connections. The topic for the event is Technology: Connecting online and in-gallery experiences. This event is a precursor to the Western Museums Association (WMA) Annual Conference, which starts on Thursday. At WMA, I’m participating in a session entitled “An Eye on Design,” which explores preconceptions about museum design. I will be focusing on technology (of course!) and how it affects visitor experiences.

The image on the left was one I came across while putting together my presentations. It was taken in 1995 and shows the “Internet Rountable,” which was part of the Multimedia Playground exhibit at the Exploratorium. Back then, the Internet was novel enough to be an exhibit by itself.

On Friday, I’ll be taking part in the “Shake Out on the Emerging Web 2.0″ session. There, I’ll present a general introduction to the topic and then focus on the use of Flickr by the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology. I will follow up with a short look at two very different art museums in Second Life (this is based on my review in the ExhibitFiles).

On Tuesday of next week, I will be co-presenting at the “Web 2.0, the Sequel: What’s Now? What’s Next?” session at the Association of Science - Technology Center’s (ASTC) Annual Conference in Los Angeles. With so many presentations (4 in 7 days!), I haven’t been posting much to the blog lately. That will change by the end of this month as we have a few exciting projects that are close to launch. More to come.

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)