TCC 2011 conference - morning session: Social media goes mobile – new media, old messages

My quick notes from morning session. I tended to tweet later on!

Nancy Proctor, Smithsonian

• We’re in the midst of a mobile bubble – most apps don’t generate revenue, not much ROI. Quotes the Great app bubble
• Costs of mobile – developing the platform, onsite infrastructure, project management/staff time, content development, marketing + maintenance (new content, new platforms)
• How to achieve a better ROI?? Think outside the audio tour box, from headphones to microphones From we do talking to we help you do the talking” (Chris Anderson, Wired) “from interpretation to conversation” (Max Anderson)
• The multiplatform museum – exists far beyond physical walls. Museum is a distributed network.
• The people’s institution idea is not new, Smithsonian doing from the day it opened, we still have volunteers (also post on crowdsourcing since 1847)
• Use mobile to recruit the worlds to increase and diffuse knowledge, enlist collaborators globally to undertake the work
• Chris Anderson webcast: The best curators won’t be working for you. Create a Wikipedia of the physical world
• How do we turn apps into a true conversation and collaboration – how do we manage that internally?
• Mobile metrics: accessibility, quality, relevance, accountability, sustainability
• Are we using mobile as truly radical social media to connect people not just re-tweets?

Seb Chan, Powerhouse Museum

• Max Anderson – most of our resource is taken up in caring for collection
• Exhibitions offer experience of objects, web gives access to data cloud –museums are storytellers
• Mobile pushes us to think about museums as more than physical experience to offering a hybrid cross-platform experience
• We will be offering new services new customers and new users
• Transform the customer’s notion of what a museum is and what a museum does – more than just exhibition halls
• Museum visitor journey – pre is www; during is gallery handheld, post in mobile world, must build in re-visitation
• 5.67% of PHM Sydney traffic is on mobile device
• Mobile is all about context
• Problems are encouraging take-up and appropriate content production
• Great opps for mobile but need organisational change in structures and ways we think about what we’re offering visitors