It’s the Experience Stupid

A couple of readers replied last week with some great questions in response to my post on the graying of the web. These could be summarized as follows: if it isn’t innovation or new media that makes a good museum website, what is it? I tried to reply to this question with the examples I used in my followed-up. But, to no avail. I will spell it out…

Museum websites succeed when they offer visitors an online experience that marries the wonder of museum visitation (engaging the objects) with the opportunity for further exploration and surprising insights. Successful websites are those that create a space for experience that is not feasible in a physical museum environment.

In other words, it is the experience created that defines the success of Museum websites, not the technologies embedded or leveraged therein.

This might seem antithetical to my usual rants on Web 2.0, innovation, API’s and open access in the context of museum and cultural institutions. However, this is not the case. Web 2.0 is innovative not because its new fangled technologies, but rather because it has fundamentally shifted the paradigm of the web from eyeballs to hands. Web 2.0 and its extensions (Mash-ups, API’s, social production, tagging) have traded passive site visitorship and information broadcasting for tools that enable content creation, sharing and manipulation. This is the core innovation and it is rooted in the site visitor's experience.

Ironically, it is the experience that Museums tend to gloss over when they are wrestling with their websites. With the hype over technologies, the essential lesson is missed along with institutional mission. For example, while people certainly enjoy having access to Podcasts and tours in MP3 format, the technology itself is value-neutral. It is not the MP3 format itself that is driving people to download. The true power of the technology is in its redefining of where and how visitors interact and experience a Museum’s work.

A great analysis of the power of experience can be found in Max Lenderman’s Experiencing the Message. The author discusses the emergence of experiential marketing and what it offers brand managers in terms of both greater control and return for their efforts. And though Lenderman is primarily focused on the corporate retail and tourism sectors of the economy, the lessons are valuable for the cultural sector as well. “…reaching them might not be enough. They need to be inspired by the brand, product or service… An experiential approach – one that emphasizes a personal or sensory interaction - is proving to be the best way to reach the elusive influentials and connecors…” And while there is a real bias away from technologically-based approaches to experience in this work, his point on creating experience and not passive receptivity is important and points to the other essential benefit of experience-rich websites; the marketing and revenue return.

When experiential programming is embraced, there is a breakdown of the traditional silos of marketing/fundraising versus education/curatorial. Engaging and experience-driven websites create opportunities for loyalty, buzz and revenue where none previously existed.

The inclusion goSmithsonian on my current list of favorite Museum websites underscores this point. While it offers some surprising technologies – it is also extremely rooted in experience of the visitor. The ability to build your own itinerary (and subsequently share it with others) is a great utilization of technology to allow users to interact, build and share the experience of the Smithsonian. Its personally created and socially distributed structure reflects the web 2.0 paradigm completely. This platform, in turn, enables scheduling, reservation and other services essential to cultural tourism. (Now if only similar services like this would be developed for collections and exhibitions)

Another example, I really enjoy the public television station Channel Thirteen’s inclusion of their director’s blog on their homepage, weekly newletter and fundraising emails. One could validly ask how this is experiential. The point here is that the blog underscores the overall mission of the organization while complimenting other outreach that this institution performs - it does this by highlighting the activity, conversation and dialogue with the director.

The connective tissue here is the experience. Cultural institutions that are successful online are not just broadcasting their schedules or exhibitions to the web. These institutions are creating online spaces for exploration, conservation, sharing and connection that are rooted first in a user-centric understanding of mission.

Aging Museum Websites

This week, I ran across an article (login required) by Andrew Marton in the Dallas Star-Telegram and winced. In the piece, Mr. Marton writes "a more robust online presence is an attempt to entice a potentially huge number of younger patrons." This perspective is more than a little simplistic in its understanding of the demographics of web users and websites.

Taking a step back, the polarity presented here between grey-heads and cyber-babies is just blatantly false. According to comScore, Internet usage increased by over 24 percent last year. Of particular note here is the list of fastest growing properties for web user over 55. This list of sites includes MySpace, Wikipedia, Washington Mututal and Craigslist. A rhetorical question: what then is the older audience doing online? Well, the same thing as younger audiences. They are finding ways to communicate, research, educate, transact and connect themselves through the online channel.

Though the reality is interesting, it is the misconception of whom the web serves that is essential to understand and dicuss. From my own experience, it is exactly this mode of thinking that drives many Museums to keep websites and online services on the back burner in terms of priorities and strategic thinking – especially when it comes to discussions of funding projects and returns on investment.

The results are easy to see - most museums that I have reviewed are recycling the basic HTML containers they have used for the last five years. This is a pity because, as the comScore survey makes clear, audiences are maturing, growing and moving on. While museum-goers often cherish a more traditional experience of Museums and exhibitions, website visitors do not cling to a similar sensibility. As technology raises the bar of possibility on the web, Internet users raise the bar of expectation.

No Director would permit an exhibition hall to inspire a ho-hum reaction, yet this is frequently the net impact of museum websites.

This is an incredible resource to let go to seed. For perspective, according to the annual report of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, their website enjoyed almost 20 million visitors in the 2006 fiscal year. That is almost five times as many "visitors" than the actual Museum hosted. It is impossible to imagine that all 20 million of these visitors are “younger patrons”. Clearly, how that Museum represents itself on the web impacts a substantial portion of its in-person visitorship across demographic segments.

Lesson: We (technology practitioners and managers) need to be very careful of how we frame discussions on website technologies and whom they serve.

MoMA and the Importance of Echo Chambers

Less than one week into it, there have already been many words written about the MoMA compensation scandal. I think the weeks to come will see an ever growing and widening scope of discussion and facts from Strom's initial revelations.

Before the next round of spin and fallout related to Glen Lowry's compensation hits the news, I thought this lulled moment might be a good opportunity to present some of the best blogs related to the scandal. In the weeks to come, it will be interesting to see to what extent user-generated sources serve to extend this debate.

In the political world, the resilience and echo chamber of blogs have been able to wreck havoc on otherwise robust political personalities and careers. We saw this throughout the 2006 election cycle between John Kerry's comments, macaca politics and Conrad Burn's perspectives on race. What made those controversies powerful was a combination of factors: the volume of political blog watchers, the media's attention to these grassroots sources and the sheer intensity of the campaign. Does the museum world have that kind of intensity? Do that many people care about the future and integrity of an American institution with enough force to override the wax and wane of the news cycle?

Time will tell. I am sure you will find that the following blogs will have plenty more words to spill before it is all done.

Blogs

• Modern Art Notes - Tyler Green puts the current compensation issue in the greater context of MoMA's other recent lapses. He also puts forth quite a few suggestions to finding resolution.
  
• Artful Manager - In an ironic (purposeful?) twist, the day after the MoMA story broke, Andrew Taylor put forth this great post on IRS guidelines for maintaining tax exemption. I hope that the museum can avoid that ordeal, but once the regulatory and oversight wheels start rolling, it is difficult to say what it will take to stop them.
  
• Looking Around - Richard Lacayo writes a follow-up piece in the Time Blog covering much of the same ground as the original article. The notable addition his writing makes is the potential conflict of interest this would create between the director and trustees. Given some of the nasty criticism MoMA has received regarding its exhibition planning, MoMA's institutional government and decision-making seem entirely relevant.
  
• CultureGrrl - Lee Rosenbaum authors a revealing post providing additional details going back to 1995 relating to Lowry's pay package. Some of the more revealing details here include NY State auditors' complicity in this affair. She also makes clear that Sen. Charles Grassley might have been the initial impetus for this controversy and is committed to finding the truth in this matter. Given government's power to subpoena, this could be a very bad for the Museum.
  
• Bloggy - On a lighter note, there was a great post submitted on the site bloggy. A fine piece of satire, web or otherwise.
  
• New York Intelligencer - One final post, this time from New York magazine's blog. Basically just another repetition of previously disclosed facts. One thing it reminded me of though... the $20 admission fee. I have a feeling this is going to get worse before it gets better, not just for MoMA, but for the entire cultural sector.
  

Party like it's 1999...

I wonder to what extent ePhilanthropy companies (Convio and Kintera) have yet to understand people's actual interests and natural interactions on the web. It seems like most of the community-building models are trying to standardize a very limited and specific model of how constituents approach cultural institutions and the Internet as a whole (circa 1999). LinkedIn, like alot of next-generation web services (like MySpace, Friendster, Del.icio.us, Flickr) are finding new ways to systematize and frame user contact points with institutions. We all should take a page from their playbooks and actually think outside the box.

Outside the box; this is more than just partnering with these services. Though groups like MOCA in Los Angeles are leveraging MySpace for technology infrastructure and PR and they are missing this company's real impact; its innovation. MySpace executed a totally unfounded vision for how people could use the Internet. I have harped on innovation before, but this is the realm of opportunity for cultural institutions, using their mission as discreet advantage in developing web services and contact points to engage constituents. Beyond an ePhilanthropy paradigm (which has resulted in a formulaic, one size fits all, approach to online community and fundraising), it is time for organizations to get in on the game and create an innovation paradigm.

To begin, understand why people come to you and what makes you special in their eyes. This is a "good to great" epiphany. Then, go for it - develop requirements that baloon into a system of strategies and practices and technologies; a top down approach. Don't start the other way around.

On Innovation (II)

Beyond Competition and Dependency

I received some great feedback to my last post: the imaged letter to the CEO of a corporation serving the nonprofit world. In this installment, I want to expand on that conversation and use that feedback as a counterpoint to expound and refine some further possibilities.

One great piece of criticism I received on the initial letter was that innovation should be coming from nonprofit support organizations, the open source community and even organizations themselves. I certainly agree. Ideally, these sources would power innovation. Practically, though there are a number of reasons innovation does not circulate freely within the nonprofit sector. Mostly, the dispersion of innovation across the nonprofit sector is hampered by two forces, competition and vendor dependency.

On competition; organizations need to programmatically define advantage and uniqueness in their fields. Therefore, a cultural organization with a distinct content delivery mechanism, a humanitarian aid group with unparalleled impact reporting and stewardship mechanisms, a university with distinct alumni relations and community technology, these are competitive advantages to raise more money, serve more people, attract greater attention to a mission and an organization. In an online and offline world of finite constituent attention and fundraising dollars; there is a very real pressure to protect internally defined and developed best practices and solutions.

How would this competition be overcome? There would have to be some group that was immune or beyond competition for fundraising dollars. This group would need to have substantial technology expertise, knowledge of nonprofit business practices of varying scales and would need to be large enough to support the differing programming needs of the breadth of third sector institutions nationwide.

The open source community fits this description on most counts. A group of innovators above organizational segmentation, the open source community (OSC) occupies an unique position and outlet for defining nonprofit best practices in both theory and practice. Indeed, open-source is a powerful tool for those technology shops with the expertise and resources to integrate disparate open source parts into their technical environments. But from my experience, the majority of nonprofits are not looking for the moving parts to build a technology engine, they are looking for a fully formed product - a panacea. As such, the vast majority of innovation and best practices at the enterprise level are being defined by the small handful of nonprofit enterprise vendors that were able to ride the venture capital wave and also survive the bubble collapse; those megaliths that steer nonprofits through the sheer weight of their market share and product offerings.

There are certainly some exceptions; take Koha, an open source integrated library system. It is really a fantastic project, one that I have followed for some time, but one that has difficulty keeping up with the innovations of its commercial counterparts - for example, in regards to the Z39.50 standard. There is just not enough of a committed and educated user community to sustain a level of parallel innovation. As library technology continues to advance , this gap will only widen between the innovation offered by Koha and those of its commercial counterparts. I explore this example, not to undermine this respected project, but to outline the very real challenges of open source innovation for small and medium-sized nonprofits.

This is why I start with the CEO; a top-down approach. This would fit the previously outlined requirements description as well, technical expertise, size, knowledge of nonprofit operations at a variety of levels. I believe the route that will ultimately create a mutually-supportive cycle of technology need, innovation and capacity building within the nonprofit sector is encouraging (even demanding) more forward-looking, transparent and open commercial products. To reward vendors when they are expansive in their vision of new technologies (and penalize them for the downward spiral of non-productive version and upgrade co-dependency) will benefit all and create a foundation for future growth. I am not advocating a new run-for-the-vendors ideology. I am speaking on behalf of a new idea of the relationship between vendor and customer. With the shifting of that paradigm, a greater wave will be possible; a wave that includes organizations, technology vendors and a growing community of open source practitioners, looking for new and engaging ways of extending, improving and connecting various technologies.

I can anticipate the questions: Is this new idea even possible? What would it entail?

Look around. There is already a shift in the relationship between open source and the corporate sector. It is apparent in Java's recent dabbling, IBM's reliance on Linux, even Microsoft's suggested opening of code. The behemoths of the corporate IT world are cracking the flood gates. Why? Not because they are adherents or believers of open source, but because it makes good business sense. As a further example of how this paradigm shift can play out, consider the Google API community. By publishing API's, creating windows into their inner-workings, extending the capabilities of its commercial products, a whole range of software and applications are available. This open-source model (driven by the corporation) is compatible both with the bottom-line as well as linkage with the community of users and practitioners. Now it is time for nonprofit technology corporations to follow. Where is our sector's Google?

Welcome!

This is the first of many installments of what I hope will become a staple of analysis on technology issues from a cultural sector perspective. It is my hope, that this blog will benefit a range of technology employees from entry-level to managers.

Some may ask why another perspective on technology is necessary in the already over saturated blogsphere. (And only in reference to Museums? What a tiny niche!) Futher, I can anticipate the protests that cultural technology's concerns are really no different than those in the business world. If there is a difference, it is just one of scale. I can understand how such perspective could arise, but I could not disagree more strongly. On a plethora of issues, from salaries to development resources, from professional growth opportunities to the relationship with the software market, Museum and cultural technology operates in a de facto different world than its counterparts in the corporate world. The discrepancy between these two worlds often leaves nonprofit technology professionals afloat on a sea of ideas, perspectives, products and advice that are never entirely applicable to their organizations.

It is my opinion that amongst all nonprofit technology professionals there are few reliable sources for technology news and analysis. Further, the level of professional discourse surrounding nonprofit technology management, ethics, horizons and impact is relatively low. This state is not reflective of the quality of workers in the nonprofit technology field, but rather parallels the lack of communication and analytic mediums. Without a platform for a more pervasive and professional dialogue of what delineation and meaning are derived from nonprofit technology as a profession (opposed to its current self-understanding as an extension/reduction of corporate and government technology), its management and execution will be continually under informed as to accountability, direction and opportunities.

As a counterpoint, consider the field of fundraising. Nonprofit fundraising, as a profession, has grown by leaps and bounds in the last three decades. The professionalization of fundraising has arisen in no small part because of the need of nonprofit organizations to identify a core skill and knowledge base when making hiring and promotion decisions. Throughout the 70's and 80's it became clear to nonprofit boards that the skills needed to successfully manage and operate a fundraising program differ significantly from those in related corporate and even nonprofit realms. Even those staff members within organizations with experience in nonprofit administration often did not have requisite knowledge and perspective to move into the fundraising world.

In the last decade, to help serve this need, professional trainining and accredidation programs, certificates, and now Master's Degrees are offered in support of the professional fundraiser. Parallel to these educational opportunities, a wealth of information resources have also arisen to identify industry trends, changes in fundraising cultures, as well as, outlets for self-analysis and critique. The Chronicle of Philanthropy has been published since 1997, both defining a community of fundraisers and simultaneously defining the terms of that community; its applications, issues and opportunities.

It is my hope that in some small way, this blog will help to extend and deepen the community and conversations of technology professionals in the cultural world.