Transcript
Unknown Speaker 00:00
Um, thanks, everyone for coming. I know that there's a lot of interest in curiosity and sort of like question marks about what this project is and what it's about and why we're doing it. So hopefully, this session will give you some sense of what the museum technology charter is, why we're doing it. And help you to understand what it's all about and what's in there and give you some opportunity to help us figure out where the project goes next, and what things we need to still have yet to address. So oh, hey, that worked. Okay. So just by way of introduction, the museum technology charter is designed to be really a permanent online resource that identifies what effective practice in museum technology looks like. And to help also highlight exceptional or representative work that's being done in the field. But then in the process for us to really create this sort of complex object and in a way, defines what museum technology work is that is like, what makes this work distinct in the museum field versus other fields? And how do we prioritize certain decisions over others? And why? I'm so in the process, can everyone hear me okay, my is my mic. My voice being picked up by the mic? Could be better. Okay? Lean in casually here. Maybe we'll do this. There we go. Okay, was it that was better, this is a better, okay. So in the process, we hope to also help to provide a roadmap and a framework for museums of somewhat more limited means, who might not have technology staff available to them, or might be in a situation where, you know, they don't have enough people around with the expertise to inform decision making processes, to give them the information that might help to make better decisions, make more logical decisions and make more sustainable decisions. And this is particularly true in areas where you know, a museum may be may not have enough staff to make a decision. And therefore, that decision making processes often informed by vendors with a stake in particular outcomes. And that's really something we want to address as part of this project. So the long term goals of the project are really to produce an incrementally evolving, permanent resource. So this will be something that will always describe sort of whatever current practice looks like, in the museum technology space, and at the same time, providing a definitive bibliography of interesting sources and resources, a definitive list of representative case studies. But also, then, the the sort of internal parts of the project right now are focused on developing project governance, content development, editorial oversight, and technical production. And so we'll talk about the framework of the project that we developed in a few minutes. But one thing that we look towards as a long term goal of the project is that we'll be able to use the decision making frameworks that we've developed here as a way to assess and analyze new projects and new software as well. So when we're doing software evaluations for, say, collections management systems, that you might be able to use this framework to help inform your decision making process. And so with that, I will hand it off to Jennifer Foley.
Unknown Speaker 03:46
Um, so the first step for this project was that we hosted a convening the project, the convening part of the project was supported with funding from the crest Foundation, and also technical support from MCN. As well as support from the we're gonna get this name right, the Bob Bullock, Texas State History Museum, there's just so many words in that title, who physically hosted us and spa. So they, the convening was actually hosted at the museum in a large room that they had. So and as we were talking about earlier, it was oh, it was great to do a convening where every time we came out of the room, you were sort of in there with this group of people and talking about museums, but then the minute that you had to leave the room, which you did have to do to go to the restroom, you were reminded that you were in fact in a museum because it was completely full of children on school tours all of the time. So we brought together a group of people to kind of talk through the idea of this new tech charter, but then also think Think about what is the work of sort of digital in museums, what is encompassed with this? What are the key issues? What are the key concerns? What are key themes that we see in that work and starting to really map out how we could frame the discussion. And, again, as Kevin said, this idea of how we can support informed decision making for museums. So the group that we did have a list of everybody who came together in on the screen was a, I would say, great group of people really robust discussion. We do want to acknowledge that in this group. There is it is weighted toward larger museums, there are people who are included who are at medium and smaller size museums, but there it is weighted in a direction toward larger museums. And it is also weighted toward art museums, we did want to make sure that we were incorporating and including voices from museums that we're not art museums, and we're not larger museums. But there are definitely more people at larger museums and art museums, and there are other museums.
Unknown Speaker 06:12
So the the sort of methodology for the convening, it was a two day convening. And the first day was really kind of thinking about what our frameworks were even talking about digital work in museums. There were I think that day was sort of a lot of smaller group discussion coming back having larger group discussions working through how are we going to tackle this? And where are we ultimately got to on the second day, was really getting down into groupings and thinking about how do we break this very large field down into sort of smaller pieces that we can actually grapple with. And this ultimately turned out to mean putting a tape grid on the floor, which you can see in these pictures, and putting down sort of ideas and issues and themes and work practices into this grid. And every time that we had sort of, okay, this feels good. And then somebody would bring up something, it was like, we didn't cover this, and we'd add a row onto the grid. Sometimes it was, oh, this is already under here. And we take a row away from the grid. So it was a very organic process that happened over the course of the two days. And I would say that where we kind of got to at the end was that on many things, there was sort of a feeling of agreement and consensus, but not on everything. There were certain things that when we got to the end, not everybody felt as strongly about this is definitely covering exactly what needs to get covered. So I think with that, I'm going to pass it over to mimosa, who will talk a little bit about the the grid itself.
Unknown Speaker 07:57
Yes. So as we started to think about this massive topic of technology in museums, we determined that there will be functional practice groups, as well as practice lenses. So as you can see here, the practice groups are really, how are you going to know what you're doing? Right? So what are the things that need to happen in order for us to do the digital in our institutions, and then with the practice lenses, it is thinking about what checklist should we consider as we go through the things that we have to do? What are the things that are top of mind, and things that are not as top of mind, but should be considered in our practices more and more?
Unknown Speaker 08:58
So I think, here, one thing that's interesting is that when we look, when we look at the practice lenses, this is this is sort of in a way, what we consider to be a definite definitional, towards museum technology in the sense that the functional and practice areas, that's areas that a lot of organizations do, but that the way that work is approached the lenses through which it's viewed, is in fact somewhat unique and definitional to museums. Some some of these considerations are more unique than than others. But as we'll see in the previous chart here, you can see that we've we've organized this as a matrix. So as we start thinking about functional areas, when we think about digital engagement, what we're actually going to define in the charter is well, what across thinking about privacy and security, thinking about organizational transparency that we actually will actually encompass all of those lenses in a definition of a functional area. This is super abstract, but thanks for hanging in there with us so far.
Unknown Speaker 10:06
So what we're going to do now is we're going to go through each of the practice groups and the practice lenses and give a really brief kind of definition of kind of what we came to and, and the rationale behind each of these different areas. So I'm gonna first talk about digital engagement, online presence and content development. And how we kind of structured these three areas is content development is really more of the production of digital content. It may be content that is on the floor, or online. All three of these areas actually can be a Venn diagram that overlap one another. But content development is more of that editorial strategy. It can be stuff like educational content, it can be translations. Again, it's the production of the content. When it comes to digital engagement, and then online presence, this is more of the dissemination of that content. So how we talked through these two areas, which we talked through them a lot, there was a lot of discussion around these two, practice groups. digital engagement is more of the two way kind of communication with the audience. So that's more of the social media area. That's one of the big examples of digital engagement. That's not the only example that just one of the major ones. Online presence is one way more of the one way communication primarily. So an example of that would be an online publishing, something like that. Another thing that I wanted to define really quickly is evaluation and analytics. So this seems pretty obvious. But you know, this is an important thing to prioritize for your digital strategy, too. And really, what is helpful about all of these is that the lenses really should be what is inspiring you with each of the practice areas. So think about how the lenses could be inspiring what you are evaluating and reporting on.
Unknown Speaker 12:11
And continuing with the functional areas, the last two are foundational Systems and Business systems. So the way that the convening group defined these was that foundational systems really encompasses more traditional IT. So this is going to be servers, email, these are really systems that are necessary for the ongoing operation of the enterprise, but that are probably in most cases, not necessarily unique to museums specifically. And that business systems encompasses basically everything else that is in somewhat, in some way somewhat unique to museums. So and this was a somewhat controversial topic during the convening as well, because the group made a final decision to group this, this would include collections management systems, digital asset management systems, as well as membership systems, constituent management, systems, ticketing, etc, etc. So really, but this is these are systems that are going to maintain data and content that's very unique to the the museum itself.
Unknown Speaker 13:22
So I'm going to briefly talk about the first three practice lenses on this list, organizational transparency, decolonization and inclusion and equity. So as far as lenses and how we determined what would actually fit within these practices, we had a number of discussions. And we finally found that these particular areas lenses, rather, were what rose to the top and defined our work in museums. And with organizational transparency, we really are trying to better understand how processes we have for gathering information and data, or implementing decisions are known to others within the organization, as well as how we end up doing the thing that we do. There's a legacy of it because as people go from organization organization, they don't necessarily have that capacity built in. So keeping that in mind for your respective museums is is a boon. And then thinking about decolonization work and assessing how data and content and collections prioritizes certain nodes and modes of knowledge, and that knowledge production, it is inherent in all the ways that we approach our institutions, and then recognizing that there are people that are actively working to try to dismantle and decolonize and supporting that work. And then finally, with inclusion and equity. It's not only in terms of who is making decisions and how are those decisions being made and what are the impacts of those decisions, including, for example, how stories are told or how collections are categorized, but also around the staffing, recruitment retention of people who are involved in precisely the projects happening at our institutions.
Unknown Speaker 15:20
Moving on down the practice lenses list to accessibility, the separation of accessibility from inclusion equity was a big conversation at the convening. And where we landed was that inclusion, excessive inclusion and equity doesn't also include accessibility. And there's merit in giving it its own space. There, for example, concrete guidelines that we can follow to make sure that each of the systems that are listed in the practice groups meet as standard of accessibility. And keeping it separate. Prevents prevents a pattern of when you when we have a feeling that something is accessible, it doesn't automatically mean that we've also checked the inclusion equity box to keeping it separate for a few those reasons. Privacy and Security within the context of each of these systems, what information are we collecting from people and being really concrete and specific with ourselves and with people engaged with our systems about why we're collecting that information? And what, what are the best practices or suggested practices with how to keep that information secure with how to keep our systems secure as well? data stewardship and sustainability of systems is related to some degree, data stewardship, how do we store the information that we have in a way that ensures its longevity, whether it's a database, or a spreadsheet or other methods, so we might be able to store things electronically. And sustainability of systems speaks more to the systems around the data that we're collecting. Sustainability might mean being okay with saying goodbye to a system that doesn't serve its function anymore, or like making decisions about the systems that we do use? Are we using Storify to do digital interpretation is Storify maybe going to disappear one day? It has a footnote. So yeah, thinking about the decisions we make about the systems in each of the practice groups, with an eye towards what sustainability those systems means to us as museums, and then humans Centricity as sort of an overarching theme for each of the systems that we might be thinking about with our operations of our organizations, and making decisions based on people and not based on other technical aspects that might make some decisions easier to make, you know, if the database is structured a specific way making a decision as system because it's easier to conform to that structure, if we have skills and expertise in a certain area making decisions on a system, because some things might be easier for us to do have merit but aren't necessarily human centric. So taking into account who's using our systems, and who our systems impact with decisions are making as well.
Unknown Speaker 18:39
And so the way this all plays out will play out in the the actual charter publication itself is that effectively, let me go back to
Unknown Speaker 18:54
the the Matrix Model here, so you can see, we've got our functional practice areas along the x axis and the lenses along the y axis. And the goal for the publication is eventually to basically fill in each one of those intersections with a wide array of content. So there will actually be essay content that describes current sort of effective practices in those areas. There will be bibliographic resources associated there and, and Representative case studies as well. And so some of these intersections will be more robust than others, you know, for instance, you know, business systems, which encompasses collections and digital asset management and ticketing. You know, each one of those areas may have a separate essay devoted to what stewardship of data as regards ticketing systems looks like, as you know, which is a different consideration from what stewardship of data with collections might look like. So over time will that this will be the framework that kind of generates the content for for the document going forward? All right.
Unknown Speaker 20:17
So maybe while he's doing that, actually, if everyone who participated in that because I forgot to do this, if everyone who is here who participated in the convening, if you could raise your hand, that would be great. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 20:30
Y'all are champions, thanks for participating. So the the current next steps are, we are right now in the process of kind of finalizing this matrix. And that's part of what we're here to do today is to have you as participants kind of poke at some of what we've put together here to see if there are holes, things that we may have missed, particularly in light of some of the biases that that Jennifer identified earlier, you know, knowing that the project team, the EPA, convening was very, you know, Art Museum, heavy, larger museum focused. And so there are areas that we may simply be missing that we that we have not seen. And we're hoping to to identify those as necessary, but then also to poke holes in the structure itself. If if maybe the structure doesn't seem to make as much sense as we might think it does. If there are other ways of looking at this, that we may not have yet considered. But I think looking at long term, you know, as we're continuing to produce content for this document, or this publication, rather, what we're imagining will happen is that this same framework, that matrix framework can start to be used in a number of other contexts. So, for instance, I kept thinking back during the later stages of our convening, to the old collections management software reviews that the Canadian Heritage information network used to do and doesn't do any more. And how that actually gave museums all over the world a certain resource where it was like, in effect that they did the research for you. So if you didn't have the resources to do that, you you had that there as a as it was available to you. But using this framework to do that kind of analysis to say not only well, does this software that we're evaluating meets certain functional goals, but where does it land? You know, how does it think about stewardship of data? How does how does it contribute to or not to our organizational transparency? You know, how does it prioritize or not sort of dominant ways of knowing or modes of thinking? So we can imagine this, this framework, this matrix being used flexibility flexibly, in a number of different contexts, moving forward? Yeah, that's actually my next slide. Over there. So, so with that, that concludes our prepared remarks. So I'm curious if we can just open up the floor to questions at this point. As I'm sure there are probably a lot because there's a lot of like, what are questions or, or comments are acceptable in lieu of questions? And since we have a lot of participants in the project, also in the room with us, we may defer to some of those do we have?
Unknown Speaker 23:19
Just briefly before we jump into that, we did a raise of hands, but should we also say the names the people who raise their hands? So if folks who raise their hand,
Unknown Speaker 23:30
we're gonna embarrass you. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 23:33
Rob Lancefield, Douglas Hegley. Robbing my dad. Who's helped Katherine
Unknown Speaker 23:41
quickly. Map pop gay there in the back.
Unknown Speaker 23:46
Yeah. Is that everybody? Oh,
Unknown Speaker 23:52
and in the back, Nick. Connie said, leaning casually. That would be awesome. Oh, hey, thank you. And if anyone doesn't have a microphone, if you could repeat the question for the recording? For your practice spiritual practice lessons that fell out of the decisions you're making at some point, there are trade offs.
Unknown Speaker 24:33
Can you repeat that on the mic just for this? Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 24:37
Are there? Are there any functional practice groups or practice lenses that fell out or fell away during the course of discussion? Recognizing in full legitimacy that you're making trade offs? Right, there are hard decisions that I can argue with at length wide digital engagement online presence feel weird to me, but I accept that you've made a decision. That's right. And so I'm curious if like there are things that fall out and especially when I try to think of as only a technology lens be because I look at some of like, well, there's an operational side that I begin to wonder about. And I could see where I can pigeon horn that into a few of the other things. But I'm curious about some of those decisions and where you ended up and why.
Unknown Speaker 25:09
Yeah, I think I mean, actually, right next to you, Douglas might have something interesting to say about this. But I mean, I think, in fact, we actually ended up including more things than I had originally anticipated. I mean, my assumption was that this, the charter would not have anything useful to say about, say, hardcore it, you know, about your email server, you know, and and, well, what would that mean to look at that through a decolonization lens? You know, and that's my own, just sort of like, I can't see it?
Unknown Speaker 25:43
I mean, it's fair to say some of those things just don't have a clean match, right? I mean, you're right there. I'm almost certain that Microsoft documentation does not mention anything about decolonization when setting up a server. It's legitimately like, yeah, if somebody does have an accommodation for that, right, that the lack of something does not indicate a negative signal, right? It's just an acknowledge, correct, it doesn't do this. And it's okay, that it doesn't do this. Right.
Unknown Speaker 26:04
And I think where we see this being most helpful, the publication itself is, is being a framework for decision making. So not necessarily saying don't do this do this other thing as much as Yeah, like, you know, if you're evaluating between multiple options, and maybe one hits certain functionality goals, but fails on a number of these other lenses, you might say, whereas I think historically, in museums, I think we have a tendency, especially when evaluating software to over prioritize functionality and under prioritize, say, for instance, human centricity. I mean, our collections management systems are a reflection of that. So burn, but um, yeah, so I don't know if I'd say there's anything that fell out. I wonder if other participants straight on the mic, please.
Unknown Speaker 26:53
So yeah, my sense of it was not so much that things were carved out or allowed to drop out as things were getting folded together, subsumed into other categories, with the sense that it was important to keep the full palette of things that had surfaced somehow in play, but that they needed to be clumped in ways that ended up with a manageable list of clumps, for lack of a better word. One case in point could be something like collection systems, which started out floating at a somewhat higher level, it didn't make sense for it to remain there, as discussions progressed around that. So that got folded into business systems along with other other things. So I think there's, in this top level view, there are a lot of things that don't actually surface by name. But if one were to drill one level, lower to see the punch lists of things that live in each of those areas, it's pretty comprehensive.
Unknown Speaker 27:46
And what you're not seeing a lot of are the hundreds of post it notes that were written out that are part of the intersections. So a lot of these it was thinking through what makes sense as the axes versus what makes sense is the more detailed essays. So you know, getting down into the more specific topic areas or things we're writing on,
Unknown Speaker 28:09
you know, specifically poke holes. And I think the only one that kind of stands out for me is program development, right, is that if I think of using technology support programs that are being done, either in the organization or as an extension of the organization, I can see that maybe they begin to fall under some of those things about, you know, again, it's like, you make the argument for it. But that does feel like maybe there's a critical mass there and trying to support some of that stuff that that maybe doesn't quite feel like it's there to move. But
Unknown Speaker 28:33
yeah, I think that's an interesting one. And, Catherine, I don't know if you want to chime in, since we did sort of have a variation on this discussion before before the session. But I think where, you know, the decision that we did make there was thinking because program development did definitely come up. And it was it was an area that we frankly, had a difficult time addressing. And but I think we looked at it more in terms of Well, if we separate it out into sort of the production piece, and then the sort of output piece. You know, that's, you know, and as you say, like, that's sort of a structural decision that we made that made sense to us at the time and may warrant further further discussion. Catherine, if you want to say more on that.
Unknown Speaker 29:20
I don't know what I'm really adding. But I love to talk. So I'll just I think that we talked about the education piece, like for people that are working on digital education type of initiatives that that would be landing under content development. And that was a really long discussion, because it kind of felt like it was its own special thing. And it was kind of hard to have it be in there with everything else. But it did make sense at the end, I think, to just have less categories. And for me, I've kind of thought of it as like if you're an education person and you have like that crossover skill set of like you're an education person and you have some digital media skills. Those are digital content development skills, then you're kind of like in that functional practice group. And it can be so different in every museum. So it's really hard because it doesn't really reflect the org structure. And a lot of museums and these kind of roles are all over. But it's kind of like that person that has some tech skills and has an education background that can kind of translate the expert content knowledge into something that kids will understand or that the, you know, that kind of role. So that's sort of the way I was thinking about it.
Unknown Speaker 30:37
So I'm a consultant in the field. And so frameworks like this are really important for me to be able to talk to my clients when we're talking about to do just this try to to evaluate. So I've kind of been looking for something at least that can provide me with the structure that I'm looking for. And so I may have missed this, but this is just kind of like the tech side of things, right? Yes. Or, and that's one. So I guess my questions are around, is this just tech. And then, you know, some of the other ones that I've been looking at, did you guys look at these two, so the one the one on digital benchmark, or digital maturity, benchmarking by collections trust, and then the one that the Canada Council for the Arts has put together as part of their Digital Strategy Fund. And then for me, because digital is so cross cutting, I'm trying to figure out how it works and where it permeates into organizations. And I don't know, if you can, you can remove some of those other elements around people, especially organizational culture, and just being a digitally positive organization. And then those other sort of really specific elements around activities, and skills, and things like that. So I'm still trying to process all of this. But so those are bunch of questions. Did you look at those things? And how do you? How did you feel about removing those other aspects of organization and people from the Matrix?
Unknown Speaker 32:07
I mean, I can't. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a hard. I mean, that's in effect, the hardest question to answer with a project like this is sort of like, well, where are its edges? At what point does sort of museum technology practice stop, and whatever non technology museum practices begin? And, you know, so you can see like that, I mean, we made certain decisions here, and, and then there's some sort of subtle assumptions that are embedded in there, you know, that in effect, you know, we're able to sort of separate these things out more easily. If you think of digital in more of a sort of service model context, you know, where it's like, Curator requests this thing from a digital person and digital person does it, you know, and so that, that sort of there's, there's sort of an implicit assumption that at some point, even if it's the same person doing both of those jobs, that they sort of transition from being Yeah, he, you know, in. And so I think that's a complicated part of it there. But I also do, because we have some people that were involved with the digital maturity model, and then one by one project in the UK. And I think I hope I'm not sort of too broadly summarizing it. But I think, you know, when we, when Ross Perry and I have talked about our two projects in the past, like one of the ways that they diverge somewhat is that the maturity model is focused a little bit more on individuals at the institution are improving capability at the individual level. Whereas I think the focus of the charter is really more at the institutional level, saying, as an institution, these are things that you need to think about. Douglas had his
Unknown Speaker 33:53
think it's a yes, and in many ways, because I, when we were even in April, and I've continued to roll it over my head, like the the third and fourth dimensions have to do with capabilities, which maturity modeling, capability model, however you want to attack it, and fluency. So you know, if you try and what digital fluency, because one of the one of the issues with any of these kinds of matrices is you throw them at someone who doesn't know what the hell this stuff is. And it all just looks like impossibly expensive and impossibly complicated. What I think we're trying to do here is to simplify and build out a sort of current snapshot of where Practice and Technology come together in some effective way. Knowing full well that any organization that lacks digital fluency and isn't ready to adopt these kinds of technologies would still fail if they simply tried to install the software. And, you know, you have to put boundaries around something somewhere. And then finally, of course, the last piece and I think I'm sort of riffing off what you were saying. To me, a functional practice group is people. It's talent and we decided not to do that, because we were focused more on the tech and the technology. But I haven't seen any technology that that works without some people involved. So to me without thinking that a functional practice group is staff makes it hard to envision any of this being successful. Again, I understand we have to put some boundaries around things. And I'm not quite sure what those essays look like if staff becomes a functional practice group. That's an entirely different array of things. And now I have Jennifer fired up. Did you want to?
Unknown Speaker 35:34
Yeah, I think in general, when I looked at this matrix, I think even then I think about talent management, I think about how important talent management is, has to be viewed through a decolonization accessibility, inclusion, equity, and human Centricity lens. So I guess I just underscore I've always just thinking about the people when we were working on this charter, and I think, I think we can dimensionalize the charter with I think we need to dimensionalize it to include talent management, and professional development
Unknown Speaker 36:05
via the infamous Zed axis. Yes,
Unknown Speaker 36:07
there was an entire discussion there about a Zed access that was actually exactly this. And I just, I mean, I think that the the, the staff element is it's like implied in the practice groups, but is not explicitly called out. And I think it does have to do with like, at a certain point, we have to draw boundaries of some sort. But I think that, you know, it was a really robust conversation, then I think the fact that it's coming back up now, you know, point in that it's coming from a lot of different voices is that it points to, okay, we may not be able to, in this, actually tackle this, but that there needs to be in some part of the charter and acknowledgement of this thing that like, you need to deal with it like this will only work as well as how it intersects in your institution, with how you are structuring your staff, treating your staff, supporting your staff, like, this is not just I read this, and now we can do whatever, like you do actually need to remember that you it's people that are going to make this happen. So I I think it's good that this came to the dreaded Zed axis has returned.
Unknown Speaker 37:23
A small device that you're talking about, yeah, no. Sorry, to interject. But yeah, I think this might be where you're getting into that big institution, small institution thing. And the idea that it's implicit makes sense for those institutions, but probably not for the smaller ones. And so I think calling it out, is really important for them. So that they, it's clear, and they understand that that is an essential foundational element to do any of that.
Unknown Speaker 37:53
Sorry, divan has been waiting patiently for for a month.
Unknown Speaker 37:59
Yeah, just jump off of what people are saying I, I see this usefulness in the kind of Matrix style for the individuals who would be going through the process of actually doing it who know that the language of technology, right, like, Oh, I am, you know, I'm doing digital engagement. So I can like find my line on the axis and work with that. But from the institutional standpoint, looking at the, like, the the matrix as a whole, I could, I could definitely see people being like, this is just so much we can't, you know, do all of this. Is there a Is there, like an A to a B x, like, series of cells that you really want to focus on is like, what are more, you know, prioritize, yeah, like a way to read the matrix. If you're not, you know, in the matrix, if that makes.
Unknown Speaker 38:52
Maybe we should just leave it at that.
Unknown Speaker 38:56
Sort of off that sort of a side. Side thing of that is, it does write is also the valuable point that this isn't necessarily the resulting publication isn't necessarily something conceived of as having its only use case being somebody who tries to engage with the whole darn thing and wants to line everything on it up with fair institutional practice. People well might do that, and that would be cool. But there could also be great utility in it. Where there would be somebody who knows, let's say that they're about to do an RFP and consider possible paths for some particular kind of system or some particular kind of programming development. And that targeted kind of use of it as a resource to drill across one row. See how it hits these columns. Find that targeted number of cells that relate to the specific thing that's in play in that institution at that time. Almost more enough You know, look, look up the points that you connect to, at that moment. Use it as a resource that way I'm not engaged with the other 90% of it at that time. So yeah, and to some degree that that could dial down the dissuasive force of it seeming like so much all at once.
Unknown Speaker 40:18
Yeah, I think it's important to think like that this is a model and not a table of contents, you know, that the actual production of the resource itself, the model in this matrix may not be quite as sort of foregrounded as it is in our discussion right now. You know, and that it may be more like, Okay, here's resources related to collections management. And there's a narrative sequence to those, you know, making it easier to follow, you know, or social media best practices, and there's a narrative sequence there. And so, in a way, the model is there to ensure that we're being as sort of comprehensive as possible, but not necessarily like that won't necessarily be the way that you navigate the the publication and the any sort of end game
Unknown Speaker 41:03
chat. I think the I think the matrix is great on a conversational level to within organizations, to be able to kind of discuss where we are, where we want to be that sort of thing. I'm really curious that whether, as part of your discussions, there was any mention of an organization, especially moving backwards on the matrix, and this is related to that staffing question, you might reach a certain level, lose a few people or a team and fall back to another level? Did that ever come up?
Unknown Speaker 41:44
Yeah, very, I would want to say that it did come up in terms of how we talked about transparency, organizational transparency, and documenting processes, as well as with regards to sustainability of systems and recognizing that in order to keep certain things Lean and Agile, we'll we would also have to ensure some things are sunsetted. So that did come up a bunch of follow up.
Unknown Speaker 42:17
I mean, I think the other thing, that it just like your question makes me just think about like one of the things that we just kept coming back to is that the idea for this is that it is helpful as a decision making tool. And that part of the decision making tool may be like, Oh, we've we've actually overstretched ourselves, because we are, in fact not doing these things. And maybe like that, it could help an organization to figure out that they might need to actually take a step back, to fall back strategically, because it may help to clarify, like, you, you're not actually doing all the things that you need to do for this area.
Unknown Speaker 43:03
Katie, and then we have two more.
Unknown Speaker 43:08
I'm just I'm thinking about this, and particularly the lenses which are, you know, values in another way of maybe stating it and that and thinking about how this exists within, like, where the boundaries are of this, this is embedded digital is permeates all practices of the museum, but it's sort of like embedded within a museum itself, that has its own values, which and a big part of what you're trying to do is push forward, like we as a field feel that these are the values that we should be, these are the lenses. And I guess this is sort of a question slash comment, just as you guys are thinking about rolling this out. And, you know, how is there a kind of plan to bring this forward, like into like, you know, AMD into like, two, because it's only going to work if the people, like people are only going to buy this as a way as a way to guide decision making, if they, if that's what they believe, should be the things that are on that part of the matrix. So just curious if you guys have thought about it's kind of longer term in terms of like socializing this, but
Unknown Speaker 44:21
no, in fact, actually, there was a project that was in play, which unfortunately, the funding fell through. So it didn't, didn't happen. But I still think there's viability in that model, where we were going to partner with the Texas Association of museums to basically sort of roadshow, the this with, you know, and focusing on certain areas of the state, you know, I mean, Texas being gigantic, but where a majority of the museums are very small museums, and and so you know, really like road testing a lot of the assumptions that we made here to see if, if, in fact, what we thought would be useful is actually useful to those who are who are probably most acutely in need of this kind of information. So while that didn't go ahead, I think that's a viable model. We are talking with a few other the regional museums associations about, you know, what it would look like to roll this out amongst smaller, especially smaller institutions. And so I think we will be doing that. Probably not in the near term, but in the hopefully not too near term.
Unknown Speaker 45:24
We had, so everyone's got a question, raise your hand. So let's go 1234. Is that everybody?
Unknown Speaker 45:33
Yeah, that'll take. So kind of revisiting the reading the matrix without being in the matrix? Was there any discussion around including digital strategy or digital project management either as a practice lens or functional practice group?
Unknown Speaker 45:58
That is a lattice? I don't, I would say did not come up as a lens. I was in the lens discussion group. So I can't I don't know. Don't worry, we're in the Douglas, you're also in the practice areas, right. I mean, I think I think the thing is that the windmills in my mind? Yeah. I mean, for the for the lenses, it that it feels more like it's a functional, it's about like, the work. So it didn't come up in lenses, because that's really more like, you know, it is more of a values sort of lens, you know what I mean? So I definitely didn't come up there. I suspect that it probably came up as maybe a subset of the work rather than as a standalone.
Unknown Speaker 46:44
Well, I, I guess I would just push back a little bit about digital strategy being not being part of a value, it may be the thought that it could be included in the practice lenses. When you think about why are we doing this in the first place? Why did this organization decide to go digital? Why is it deciding to expand? And those big picture questions that are sometimes it's really easy to get lost in the forest? And and we do kind of need that guiding structure of something of, you know, why are we doing all of this work in the first place? And what's our roadmap?
Unknown Speaker 47:23
Yeah, I mean, it's foundational, right? So I wonder if it's more part of the introduction, or all of it, right? Like, this is what you need to do first or something? Definitely, we need to talk about it, because it is important, and it is a gap. So I'm glad you brought it up, for sure.
Unknown Speaker 47:45
I have a very boring, practical question. Yeah. In the description, it mentioned near term roadmap. And also for a complicated project like this, I always, immediately start thinking, well, what's the production schedule? Because when you multiply these, they're nearly 50. intersections. So how far away somebody's better at math off the top of their head than I am. But I'm very curious what the production schedule is. And also related to your question, how you're prioritizing things, not that I want to debate it, but I imagine that's part of setting up a production schedule, like this batch is gonna go first. And then we're gonna go to this. And so when could we start seeing even drafts of things?
Unknown Speaker 48:33
So I'm actually going to ask if we can put a pin in that because the last thing that we wanted to talk about is related to that. So if we could do the other two questions, and then we'll come back. Is that okay? Okay. It's a lot. It's just a lot better. As I said it was 63. Further discussion, let's practice. And I'm sorry, no, it's over here, or here. And then the lessons
Unknown Speaker 49:09
are disappearing down the matrix. I'm Ross. I'm Ross Perry. Museum Studies, Lester. And thanks, Kevin, for shouting out one by one. So I'm the project lead on that. This, this isn't going to be a question, but it's just going to be a call for us to have a bigger conversation because I have in front of me, I can't share it with the room. But I'm happy to come up the front and allow you to see it. It's the digital charter that we have just written for the UK sector. So we're our Department of Digital Culture, Media and Sport. We've been part of the team that's written spent the last year trying to do this, but in the UK context, it was going to be published later this month, but we've had a general election called so we're not allowed to release anything from government policy until the new year. We just vary in 30 seconds. I would say the way we approached it was to separate Write out a charter. That was a very one side statement of principles for everyone, individuals and organizations. And I have to say no technology language in there, the language is around being ethical, purposeful, resilient, inclusive, really wonderful kind of vocabulary in there. Then we separated that out from the tool that you saw this morning from Tanya Nelson, which is the, what's gonna be called the Digital tracker, which is a digital maturity index tool, which actually is for institutions is a classic business maturity index tool that builds a heat map and shows you where digital is in your institution, or to be flexible, any size of organization can switch off bits, turn bits on, so that it works for all organizations. And then for the individuals, a platform called Pathways run by culture 24 is going to be just rammed full of the definitions, the case studies, the tools, the templates, the how to guides that will help that individual on the ground in their institution to to see through digital change. So we've separated it out that way, which works in a UK context in our particular context. And we would, we'd be so happy just to lay that all out and say this is this is where we got to unwind.
Unknown Speaker 51:13
Can you say the name of our project, again, just for the room. So
Unknown Speaker 51:15
the two big projects are one by one, that's the building digital, confident museums in the UK, that's the project that I lead. And you can find out more about that on Friday morning, where we'll be talking about that, but also talking about two by two, which is the collaborative project with the US that we want to run next year. So if you want to be part of that with us, please come on Friday morning. And then the bigger piece of work is the digital culture compass. And that's the piece that the culture ministry has commissioned, that we've that we've been part of as well. Great. Sorry, that was a little bit longer than
Unknown Speaker 51:47
a year, and then we gotta go, and then we get to get. So it's very short and related to the production schedule. So that's good. But I was just curious if you could talk a bit more about how you will recruit authors, or if it'll be one author per section, or a group,
Unknown Speaker 52:08
thank you very much, I'll pay the $20 for setting that up later.
Unknown Speaker 52:11
And then also just if it will be a if you're envisioning like a white paper type of product, or there'll be a platform where people can come in and revise things or like how the community is
Unknown Speaker 52:22
responsive, or call out to
Unknown Speaker 52:25
just quickly Yeah, the platform will be it'll be online, it'll be digital. So yeah, the process will be quite transparent and open and open to comments and suggestions. So yeah, it, we don't imagine it being a print publication, though, you know, someone could have an interest in funding that potentially and might want to do it. But I think given the complexity of this, it would be hard to know how to navigate that. So it will be an online platform.
Unknown Speaker 52:52
And so to circle back the the idea about the production schedule, and prioritizing. So part of that is going to be predicated on getting people involved in writing, which is, that was sort of the last thing and involved in other aspects of creating and producing this project. So one of the things that we did want to do here today was to sort of put out a call to anyone that is interested in being a part of the project, if you are looking at this matrix and saying like, this is an area that I know about that I want to write about, or that I have case studies or I have a bibliography or I am somebody who would love to kind of recruit others to write about this, we would love to connect with you please come up talk to us. We have you can we would love to get your name, your email contact information, we would love to expand the group to include lots of people across the sector to be able to contribute to this and really build this out. So I think part of it is right now we don't have a production schedule because we are recruiting additional participants to help create the content that is going to be the final website
Unknown Speaker 54:10
actually at time and needs to go so. Thank you everyone so much for being here and for asking such great questions. And we'll be hanging around if you'd like to talk to us a bit more about the project or volunteer ideally volunteer to help and do more. Thank you, everybody.