Video Encounters next Friday

Video conferencing is the technology of the now.

In 2010 the NSW Government began the rollout of interactive classroom technology, so that over 80% of public schools in NSW now have a ‘connected classroom’. These mini technology hubs, be they in the school library, resource room, hall or nominated classroom are equipped with interactive white board, video cameras, microphones and data projector. They give our NSW school kids access to a growing number of really cool education programs offered by arts, cultural and scientific institutions around the world.

The Video Encounters seminar, is a chance to see how this technology might work for your organisation―to ask questions and be involved in building quality learning experiences for our communities, no matter how remote and isolated.

The seminar will show you how video conferencing works―you’ll learn that by using a video link school and cultural organisations are ‘connected’ allowing real time interaction. 

To showcase the opportunities of this technology we've engaged the very best programs in Australia on the day. These programs are varied and innovative ―they provide an opportunity to meet, talk with and do stuff with an industry specialist. You can come face-to-face with curator, robot, marine biologist, astronaut or Hyde Park Barracks convict.

We’re not just talking about watching ―we’re talking about participating in activities. 

So come along to the workshop and learn about how this technology might be utilised by your organisation and how involvement in innovative technologies can diversify, expand and develop your existing audience.

To read more about an example of video conferencing check out this interview with Sian Morgan Hall at Sydney Living Museums.

Video Encounters is at the Museum of Sydney next Friday 10 May.

To register for Video Encounters go to the M&G NSW website.

Good news from Cardwell

The devastation of Cyclone Yasi. Image courtesy of Cardwell and District Historical Society.

Cardwell and District Historical Society rebuilt. Image courtesy of Cardwell and District Historical Society.

For some of us, remembering Cyclone Yasi requires trawling our memory for images of the devastation of communities torn apart and washed away. In our fast paced world bad news stories are supplanted by another daily as we swing from latest update to latest update.

But for those whose lives were torn apart and washed away, the word Yasi remains part of their everyday world. Which is why the news that the Cardwell and District Historical Society has reopened their doors is worth celebrating.

It reminds us of the importance of preserving our history locally; of the sense of empowerment we gain from recording our own experiences and interpreting the things that affect us and change our lives. It allows us to choose our own memories and describe our communities by our own stories and the identities we forge from them.

So let’s celebrate with Cardwell and if you are up north, stop by the Cardwell Historical Society because it’s there you will find the spirit of the people affected by Yasi.

For further information about disaster preparedness visit these previous M&G NSW blog posts:

Preparing for Disasters   
Disaster response- introducing Q-Dis

Carole Best

Read more about the rebuilding of the Museum here.

Introducing Oliver Frankel

At a recent meeting the Museums & Galleries NSW Board elected Oliver Frankel as our new Chair.

Oliver was first appointed to the board in October 2011. He has held senior executive roles in corporate finance and management in a number of industries, and also spent over fifteen years practicing law at leading law firms in Australia, the UK and the US, including as a Partner of the London based Linklaters, one of the largest and best known law firms in Europe. He is currently General Manager (Property) of NRMA Motoring & Services, the iconic NSW based roadside service mutual which also has interests in hotels, holiday parks, car rental, travel and publishing.

Oliver has a passion for the internet and technology generally, and the value they can add to the work of M&G NSW in supporting web based program delivery and advocacy state-wide. He is well connected within the public and private sectors and is keen to develop opportunities for M&G to broaden its revenue base, enabling us to further strengthen activities and programs undertaken by museums, galleries and Aboriginal keeping places throughout NSW.

We're building a website: Wireframes and Use Cases

Like every profession in the world, website development is filled with insider words, acronyms and abbreviations (for example, UX is short for User Experience). My education into the world of website buzz words was like anyone learning a second language. First of all I was bewildered, then I tentatively picked it up and used it very, very hesitantly ("is that what you mean by UX? Is that thing I'm pointing at right now an example of UX?"), then I grew confident with select words and phrases ("the home page will aggregate content", "the responsive design will showcase the aggregated content on tablets"). I never even used the word "aggregate" before March last year and now my life is one big aggregation.

I've basically spent the last year and a half nodding sagely in meetings while people say words I don't understand and then rushing to Wikipedia to find out what I've just agreed to (I'm kidding- sort of). 

Sometimes Wikipedia didn't help. Here's a description of the web application framework Django that the Interaction Consortium are using to build our website:

"The core Django MVC framework consists of an object-relational mapper which mediates between data models (defined as Python classes) and a relational database ("Model"); a system for processing requests with a web templating system ("View") and a regular-expression-based URL dispatcher ("Controller")."

Sure.

Us and them

A massive gulf exists between my humble grasp of words and terms like "responsive design", "information architecture", "UX", "content management system", "agile development" and the world of actual programming, building and engineering. And it begs the questions: How do we find a shared language for developers to discover accurate insight into client needs? How do developers convert these needs into a meaningful system of functional explanations and granular steps necessary for engineering?

There are three very important solutions to this question. First, choose a development team that doesn't consist of egotistical geeks who play the jargon game to bewilder you into submission (M&G has been very, very fortunate in choosing a smart friendly team with Pure and Applied, Toben and the Interaction Consortium). 

The other two solutions are wireframes and use cases. These valuable development tools have helped us discover exactly what we want in collaboration with the website team. 

Crossing the gulf 

Wireframes represent the interface without getting swamped in design detail. This sketch concisely articulates the user experience in a visual language shared by designers, engineers and lay people. But because wireframes are simple and don't get bogged down in design detail their focus is function, and the process is discussion and intensive reiteration. 

Early wireframes sketch - early-December 2012.

Finding our way

As you can see above, we were still juggling with our original conception of the website. The directory of places and associated events leads the content on the homepage. The carousel features individual places and underneath are buttons that take us to museums, galleries and Aboriginal cultural centres. There is generic content in What's On and News (Video, Event, Touring Exhibitions) but there's no commitment to a style of content production, no definitive approach to the homepage. We're missing that X factor that makes the website stand out.

The X factor

Final wireframe for the M&G NSW homepage.

You don't need to know anything about the magical wizardry that goes into website development to immediately see the difference between this version of the public home page and the one above. When users come to our front door they are greeted by a selection of stories (interviews, onsite travelogues about regions, exhibitions, festivals, opinion pieces and videos highlighting programs). The content is thematic and formatted (Ask a Curator, Off the Beaten Track, Hidden Treasures), invites users to visit individual museums or galleries or highlights the connections between organisations. Simply put, the front door is like a "magazine" rather than a directory.

But the genius of the above sketch is the right hand column: despite all the exciting content this ubiquitous feature provides users with a consistent doorway to your places, trails and events across NSW. If the user doesn't want the stories on the page they still have direct access to the hard data. 

Why wireframes work

These very visual tools allowed everyone to collaborate and agree on functions intuitively rather than abstractly. It gave everyone a real sense of what the website would be like and provided the necessary detailed script for designers and developers to work off.

What happened next?

Pure and Applied finished the wireframes in January and Interaction Consortium converted them into Use Cases.

What exactly are use cases?

"In software and systems engineering, a use case is a list of steps, typically defining interactions between a role (known in UML as an "actor") and a system, to achieve a goal. The actor can be a human or an external system."

Thank you Wikipedia. 

In early February, Alastair Weakly and Simon Johnson from the Interaction Consortium laid out all the use cases on our meeting table. It wasn't long before we ran out of table:

Alastair Weakly, IC and Katie Duncan, M&G lay out the use cases.

The use cases close up.

A couple of use cases:

"As a sector editor I have an easy way of picking opening hours times."

"As a user I can see a list of the organisations mentioned in an article at the bottom of the article (created manually not automatic)."

We can break down these sentences into their "Actor" who is defined by their user status to our website. So a "sector editor" is the person chosen by an organisation to upload content onto our website, a "user" is anyone visiting the website. The rest of each sentence describes an action related to a goal. 

The list of use cases need to be comprehensive and exhaustive to define the scope and goals of the project in minute detail. M&G and the developers prioritised some use cases over others (though most were regarded as must-haves) and with a clear list of functions the engineers had what they needed to start building the beast.

But enough about the research part of the process. Next week we'll look at the sexy stuff: the design of the website. 

Opportunity Knocks - International Fellowship presentations

On 26 February M&G NSW hosted a special presentation of the 2012 Fellowship & Mentorship recipients.

In 2012, eight people from museums and galleries across NSW participated in two-week professional development placements with cultural organisations relevant to their field of work.

Each speaker talked about the benefits of undertaking a mentorship or fellowship and how they plan to implement the things that they have learned into their own work practices.

Are you interested in a mentorship, fellowship or professional placement?

DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART FELLOWSHIP
BRETT ADLINGTON, DIRECTOR, LISMORE REGIONAL GALLERY

Brett undertook a fellowship at the Dallas Museum of Art’s Centre for Creative Connections. Meeting with key people in the Museum and other institutions across the Dallas-Fort Worth area provided Brett with countless ways to re-invigorate his own gallery spaces, programming and approach to designing a participatory space. 

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF SINGAPORE FELLOWSHIP
CARMEL AIELLO, MUSEUM COORDINATOR & EDUCATION OFFICER, FAIRFIELD CITY MUSEUM & GALLERY

During Carmel’s 2012 fellowship at the National Museum of Singapore (NMS), she explored the ways in which NMS present their nation’s heritage, migrant settlement and multiculturalism. From her experience in Singapore Carmel will trial new exhibition and education projects at Fairfield City Museum and Gallery. 

This is an Arts NSW devolved funding program 

administered by Museums & Galleries NSW on 

behalf of the NSW Government.

Just say no!

Participants of the workshop. Photography by Tamara Lavrencic.
Image courtesy of Alan McRae.

On 15 March, M&G NSW hosted a workshop, Introduction to Collections Management, at the Orange Regional Gallery, with the generous support of the Sustainable Collections Project. This is the fifth of six workshops funded through a Community Heritage Grant from the National Library of Australia. 

The presenter was Margot Jolly, a Museum Consultant with years of experience working with museums large and small, in a broad cross-section of museum practice. Margot’s experience as a Museum Advisor working with community museums around Bland, Orange and Cabonne Local Government Areas, makes her very approachable and the workshop participants responded with enthusiasm, contributing their own anecdotes and experiences.

Of most interest was the session, Just Say No, where participants focused on refusing a donation and explaining why the object is not being accepted into a collection. It's never easy dealing with the disappointment from someone who has treasured an object and is looking for a safe home for it.

The following organisations were well represented: Carcoar Hospital Museum, Bloomfield Hospital Collection, Millthorpe Museum, Blayney Family History Group, Molong Museum, Orange City Library, Orange & District Historical Society, Canowindra & District Historical Society, and Bathurst District Historical Society.

The success of the workshop is expressed in the following email received a few days later:

“I just wanted to let you know how much I really enjoyed this workshop. Margot is a terrific presenter and she really made a lot of things much clearer...It's great to hear someone who knows what sort of things we have to deal with, and the sorts of problems we have to solve. We really appreciate all that M&G NSW does for small museums, and particularly all the help and assistance we get from you and the others personally.”

- Tamara Lavrencic, Museum Programs and Collections Manager, Museums & Galleries NSW  

Welcome to the Eora Journey – the Peoples Journey

On Saturday 23rd March, I attended a community celebration to launch the City of Sydney’s Eora Journey – the Peoples Journey, a major cultural project celebrating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture and heritage in the City of Sydney. Its programs include the creation of seven public art projects, a proposed knowledge and cultural centre, a major annual event/festival and an economic development plan.

Lord Mayor, Clover Moore unveiled Welcome to Redfern (pictured) a street art project by local Aboriginal youth artists Nahdia Noter, Tyrrelle McGrath, Trae Campbell, Ji Duncan-Weatherby, Brandon Phillips, Issac Phillips, Josh Addo and Josh Nolan who worked with Kamilaroi/ Gamilaraay/ Gummaroi artist Reko Rennie. She also launched an associated work, Mana-ngurang, the Elders Lounge Mural – described as a powerful new artwork for the Redfern Community Centre by Gadigal Artist and Elder, Charles (Chicka) Madden, in collaboration with Nicole Monks and architect Dirk Anderson from Urban Future Organisation.

To quote Hetti Perkins, curatorial advisor for the Eora Journey project, ‘The Eora Journey public artworks build on the original idea of a walking trail, including site-specific installations, monuments and temporary projects throughout the local government area. The works will stimulate an emotional and evocative connection in the viewer to the sites. They will provide Sydney residents and visitors with a history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and our enduring connections to the land and the harbour. And they will place this experience within an international context’.

When you are next in the area be sure to visit the Redfern Terrace Street Art Project on Caroline Street. It sits at the heart of a neighbourhood known for its Aboriginal history, strong activism, community life and cultural expression.

- Michael Rolfe, CEO, Museums & Galleries NSW

Clues and insight into accessing funding

Samantha Friend from Bathurst District Historical Society attended our Access to Funding seminar in Wagga Wagga in March. She kindly agreed to contribute her experiences of the day to our blog, including the clues of the day!

"I was lucky enough to attend a very good seminar put on by M&GNSW in Wagga Wagga, NSW on 21 March 2013. I am from a small, volunteer run museum in Bathurst, NSW and we, like most volunteer organizations, run on the smell of a dollar note, so ANY information at all about what’s out there in terms of funding is an absolute bonus for us. 

The presenters were all very good and full of useful information, tips and tricks, and hints on how to write an application – “Read the guidelines”, “Use plain English” and “Don’t be afraid to ask” seemed to be the clues of the day! But each presenter had plenty to say on the serious nuts and bolts side of funding applications too. I think the most important thing I found was while it is paramount to get the application right and some of them are complex, you are not doing it alone – there is plenty of consultation and time to get it right. And that there is a decent amount of funding out there; you just have to know where to look. Rachel Vincent from the Museum of The Riverina in Wagga Wagga gave a great presentation on other funding opportunities – it’s amazing who’s out there prepared to fund Museums and Collections!

My Society is small and a bit disorganized, and I am new to the industry, but everyone at these events always makes me feel very welcome, is very good about answering my stupid questions, and is interested in who and what we are. It’s also great to meet others in the Museum game, and to catch up with those you know, and there is always fantastic food! Last week’s was really good – specially loved the pies!"- Samantha Friend, Bathurst District Historical Society

Access to Funding is supported by the NSW Government through Arts NSW and is administered by Museums & Galleries NSW in partnership with the Museum of the Riverina.