» Rapid Development at a 162 Year Old Institution: What I Learned This Summer
08/05/10 07:00 from Smithsonian 2.0
OneWeek | OneTool Development Team Pod (Missing in the picture are Julie Meloni and Patrick Rashleigh), by Effie Kapsalis, 2010 I recently took a weeklong break to go to camp - developer camp. No mosquito bites or arts & crafts, but lots of late nights and good stories to tell. The camp was OneWeek | OneTool , “a unique summer institute, one that aims to teach participants how to build an open source digital tool for humanities..
» Smithsonian Commons Prototype
06/18/10 08:07 from Smithsonian 2.0
Image: screen grab from Smithsonian Commons Prototype Story 2: Visitor The Smithsonian Commons Prototype is now public. Check it out and help us move forward by leaving us a comment on this blog or with the simple vote and comment form . The Smithsonian Institution Strategic Plan (.pdf) describes four grand challenges: unlocking the mysteries of the universe understanding and sustainin..
» Smithsonian Web and New Media Strategy v 1.0
07/30/09 07:09 from Smithsonian 2.0
We've just posted Smithsonian Web and New Media Strategy, Version 1.0 . The strategy talks about an updated digital experience , a new learning model that helps people with their \"lifelong learning journeys,\" and the creation of a Smithsonian Commons —a new part of our digital presence dedicated to stimulating learning, creation, and innovation through open access to Smithsonian research, collections and communities. This strategy ..
» Evaluating Value
07/16/09 09:42 from Smithsonian 2.0
[Word Cloud of Survey Responses: \"How would you describe this game to friends or family members?\", http://www.wordle.net] We have been running a module version of the \" Ghosts of a Chance \" Alternate Reality Game since December 2008. More than 900 children, teens, and adults have played. They look like they are having a good time, they tell us they are, and we certainly have a good time running the program. However, the biggest..
» You & the Smithsonian\'s Web and New Media Strategy
06/17/09 15:17 from Smithsonian 2.0
This awesome call-to-action on YouTube was produced for us by npampalone and strangeredfilms , on their own initiative and their own dime, just because they thought it was a good idea. Humbling, that is. I submit that the Smithsonian's future greatness will be measured more by how we inspire our fans to go out and do creative things like this than by the things we choose to build ourselves inside the walls of the Institution. A rel..
» Brainstorming a Federal Alternate Reality Game
06/17/09 10:37 from Smithsonian 2.0
I’d like to invite Government Web practitioners (educators, marketers, and content developers, and leaders) to attend an informal workshop/brainstorming session to explore the idea of producing a Federal multi-agency Alternative Reality Game (ARG). The general idea of a multi-agency ARG would be to use game play as a way of engaging citizens in an exploration of democratic ideals. It would also be a way to discover new connections betw..
» Opposing viewpoints laid out at Smithsonian 2.0 Forum
04/21/09 16:50 from Smithsonian 2.0
Earlier this afternoon I attended the Smithsonian 2.0 Forum , a follow-up event to January's Smithsonian 2.0 Gathering . The Forum, webcast from the Smithsonian 2.0 website, presented three points of concern and opposing arguments for each point. The three points of contention: Access to Everything versus Controlled Content; Structure versus Freeedom; and Free Access versus Fee-based Access, where less contested than I ..
» Moving beyond us vs. them
03/26/09 13:01 from Smithsonian 2.0
Recently one of our curators at NMAH came to me to discuss the aftermath of the Smithsonian 2.0 conference. “You have an image problem,” he told me. According to him, the buzz among his colleagues is that the conference was mostly a dump on curatorial authority, despite my protestations to the contrary . Rethinking the role of credentialed expertise in a “crowdsourced” Web 2.0 world was certainly one of the subtexts of th..
» Gorilla Marketing
03/25/09 08:13 from Smithsonian 2.0
This video—a marketing piece for the Grapes with Apes event at the National Zoo (tickets still available!)—brought to mind some advice we got from the experts invited to the Smithsonian 2.0 event in January. They quipped that we could do more good distributing 100 video cameras to boots-on-the-ground staff than we could do with 100-times the money spent on consultants and systems. This is not to say that consultants and systems are uni..
» Courage to go Open Content
03/23/09 13:14 from Smithsonian 2.0
Two recent stories may help give the Smithsonian courage to pursue an open-content strategy. Item #1, MIT faculty votes for open publishing Last week, MIT\'s faculty voted unanimously to mandate open access distribution of their scholarly articles. Other universities have open access policies within individual departments (Harvard, Stanford, and Boston University), but this is institution-wide. Their Office of the Provost will have auth..