 Thank you everybody. My name is Chad Weiner and this is an opinionated love letter to museums Museums museums. I adore you, but we need to talk about your assumptions. I walk your hallowed halls and thrall I've searched your sites touched your screens. You stole my heart, but we need to talk gentle muse Eum Sometimes you assume nobody even cares about your collections you dally with fleeting exhibitions your curators While their time with someone else's Monet or tut It's your collection that sets you apart You keep what we would run back to save in the fire or flood or war Tell the stories that help us make personal connections to the collection Sweet museum don't assume this you try so hard to please films dining concerts Insisting everyone comes to you partner with your friends go to their place once in a while What we need most from you is a great museum museum mausoleum. It's just morbid wordplay It's true though. You write tombstones for your collection. May they rest in storage You once kept mention in curate kept every mention in curatorial files not so much now what with internet and the emails But what if your collections are alive like never before in a digital space? Let's follow the trails of museum objects like fireflies dancing through a digital meadow And let's record their movement as part of their ongoing story But you're too busy for flights of fancy first the website than the online collection social media all on top of a busy calendar Of course, you're too busy first stop doing something old then try something new Museums you're terrified of copyright. He who shall not be named Copyright, and I'm talking about Voldemort here copyright Vaga ARS fear uncertainty doubt Museums don't even talk about it amongst themselves. How much did we pay to put the Picasso on the rack card? How much did you if copyright is Voldemort then fair use is your patronus your shield? Summon it often wear your educational mission proudly What if museums had a platform to share what they paid in rights fees and when they evoked invoked their patronus fair use? Museums why oh why does collections management software cast such a spell? How long will we wrestle data out of closed proprietary systems? It's not black magic It's a relational database But it may require an exorcism Museum technologists are under the spell to we assume registrars would never change How about an open system of the web on the web made for sharing and let's add value to the collection data? computer vision color palette face recognition analytics all in reach for the smallest institutions museums you kill me Collection software isn't the only sacred cow Every department has its own software system and most of them don't talk Conway's loss is that organizational silos get baked into Software design What if we pull a reverse Conway and affect organizational change through software? Use a generic mission as a guide connect people to collections on the left people on the right collections In the middle, that's where we post an archive all the ways the museum makes connections Software structured for museum missions. It makes sense. You need to sell tickets, but you're missing an opportunity Social is immediate and ephemeral, but its real value is long-term relationship connecting with the collection For-profit marketers recognize that social is no good at selling to them It's about content marketing businesses are hiring teams of writers editors and experts in order to create content that generates good Will museums have those teams already? Museums I still love you, but you are so sick of me by now go ahead stick me in a separate digital department in the basement Soon you'll need digital throughout though most staff already work with a computer, you know doing computer-y things They need better tools and processes Yes, digital isn't a fad. You can't wait it out. Hoping things will go back to normal I'd only quibble with the timing digital is the now Even if there is no technology in your galleries your audience has changed. They are digital So what can a technologist do about museums? I need to give a shout-out to Brett Victor who wrote an essay along these lines about global warming Technologists want to change the world for the better And I think they can do that by helping museums Together we should provide a resource that answers these questions What are open problems in the field not just solutions problems who's working on which projects? What are the friend fringe ideas? These are the fringe ideas. Let's share Let's share in progress project information to jumpstart innovation and get more people involved. Let's get to work Thank you