Here’s another recently completed WordPress site; http://www.estuary.org.nz
The Avon-Heathcote Estuary Ihutai Trust is a non-profit organisation formed by the general public and supported by Christchurch City Council and Environment Canterbury.
Testimonial
Jason Koning was contracted in 2010 to design a user-friendly website for the Trust, both for the end user and for the person maintaining and updating the site. He has done this successfully using a WordPress framework that is easy to understand and looks tidy and fresh.
This is the first in a serious of posts on my favourite presentations from Webstock 2010.
Fostering personal connection to a place
Thursday, 18th February 2010
Shelley is the Chief of Technology at the Brooklyn Museum where she works to further the Museum’s community-oriented mission through projects including free public wireless access, podcasts, cell phone audio tours, projects for mobile devices and putting the Brooklyn Museum collection online. She is the initiator and current administrator of the Museum’s web initiatives on MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Twitter.
Shelley’s presentation was passionate, enthusiastic and inspirational – without doubt one of my top three of the entire conference.
Embracing social networking tools and techniques as a core component of your online strategy
The core message (for me at least) of Shelley’s presentation centred around how they improved upon the patrons experience at the museum using freely and commonly used social media technologies – that patrons were already familiar with.
The museum has a unique demographic, it is the youngest and most diverse out of all the museums in the U.S. However, they have fostered this by opening up – encouraging photography within the museum and amongst the artworks, encouraging video footage to be filmed within the museum. Automatically eliciting feedback from patrons and projecting that externally – creating an open and active online community, building interest, brand awareness and increasing patronage.
People entering museums are generally looking to access, understand and draw context from it. The Brooklyn Museum has achieved this by encouraging blogging and social media interaction.
With regards to Twitter, the Brooklyn Museum’s goal was to build context and community through it’s use of Twitter. They achieved this by connecting people, by being transparent, being honest and by posting interesting content. As an example they tweeted when they sent four mummies to a local hospital for CT scans recently – as a result, people felt like they were being included, or let in on a secret.
They encouraged patrons to become a central part of the art works and the broader museum community, by integrating them into exhibitions. They created a YouTube channel and allowed visitors to interact with the exhibitions, automatically filming, uploading and then eliciting their responses.
The museum even went so far as sending out staff with GPS enabled devices (iPhone’s etc) to talk about the places they frequent at lunchtime and other breaks. They then aggregated this geo-located data on Foursquare, and brought that back to the museum website, building a deep, rich information source extending beyond that of the art gallery itself. They even allowed patrons to gain a Foursquare badge by just visiting the museum.
Crowd-sourcing as a form of community involvement
They created meta data around art works by encouraging their community to create tags. Over time they then build up a rich record of selected works with much more context for visitors – as it was created by them. Gallery visitors using the Museum’s iPhone app can feed data back into the museum building an even deeper context around those artworks.
In closing
Working the social media landscape takes time, and it needs authority. It’s not an intern role, it needs management buy-in and a whole lot of time and attention, with the associated commitment to have the patience to wait for the return on investment.
Trust the user – listen to the conversation and act on it: i.e. take on board that expertise is now distributed and that user communities have long term value. Even better, use the community – let it take the responsibility to find and locate your next step.
Brooklyn Museum is not about using social media as just another marketing and visitor experience tool-set. Rather, Brooklyn Museum itself is now a social network – that is its job – to be a centre for the community to have a conversation.
In my experience I would suggest that the idea of hiring a freelancer for your next project is not given much thought, if any at all. After all, you want the experience, and quality that only an established company can provide, right?
Wrong! Well, in the most part.
I’m sure you’re looking for all these qualities and more, but the idea that only a company can provide them is a large misconception. Freelancers often provide above and beyond the traditional business model, because they don’t have the limitations that most companies are bound by.
You should hire a freelancer for your next project, and I’ll explain why.
