N.B.  My notes from the Digital Transformations event, they might not make too much sense; I’ve padded bits out here and there. It might be worth looking at the tweets from the day which are in a handy document here.

Jim Richardson discussed the main themes which came out of the MuseumNext conference proposals.

Audience expectations are changing and museums just weren’t keeping up. That’s why Jim  kicked off @MuseumNext.

Jim discussed a visit to Seven Stories  in Newcastle. Which has a brilliant Gruffalo exhibition on, but you weren’t allowed to take photos.  Why?

Jim also discussed social media to empower your audience to advocate on your venues behalf.

• The museum of the future is….open.
• The museum of the future is…co produced
• The museum of the future is… Personalised
• The museum of the future is… Beyond the venue
• The museum of the future is… Measured.

I agree with all of those statements bar the measured.  Is the museum of the future measured? is it? I don’t really agree. The website is. But it’s only numbers. I know metrics are important. But really what do they tell us about the visitor experience?  (I don’t like numbers but my point still stands).

What put me on edge after Jim’s presentation was one of the questions from the floor about Crowd-sourcing.  There seemed to be a belief that crowd sourcing is actually uncomfortable in current society and even exploitative.  Katie Smith has already blogged about this here

This is what I meant about having some interesting discussions.  Normally when I attend Digital events, it’s like the speakers are already preaching to the converted.  It wasn’t the case here.  There were a range of views.  It was interesting to hear how perceptions of crowd sourcing could be so extreme. Which made for some interesting discussions in the breakout sessions, particularly when discussing the nature of audience and participation.  Lots of discussions about whether audience is a useful term, as well as ‘authority’ ‘critical thinking’ and ‘expert’ and where should they all be situated in the creative industries.