chris-alexander.com

Alright – if you haven’t already heard  – I recently ended my 9 1/2 year tenure at the San Jose Museum of Art as the Manager of Interactive Technology. It was a bittersweet event because at one point I felt that it was the greatest job I ever had. It was very fulfilling, creative, art related – it was perfect! I had struggled all my life trying to find a so-called “career” and felt that I had finally found it. Unfortunately, my hours were cut December of 2008 to half-time. This pretty much took the wind out of my sails. 20 hours a week was not enough to do the technology related projects that I wanted to do.

Over the course of the last year, however, a great opportunity presented itself which I couldn’t pass up. During this period of working part-time I started consulting for a mobile start-up called Toura that is changing the way museums create mobile tours (more info forthcoming). After 5 months of fulfilling and exciting work with Toura they offered me a full-time position as Program Director.  The company’s ideas and philosophies align very well with my thoughts on mobile technology and museums so it was a perfect fit.

Since my website is so centered on the work that I did at the San Jose Museum of Art I thought it would be nice to go through and sum up what I feel are some highlights of my time there.

Road Trip Heels Screenshot

First off, I’m extremely proud of winning two MUSE awards. One was for our Artist of the Week podcast that we did in 2006. We were so green at that point it came as a great surprise, but my colleague Lucy and I felt that we were producing a quality product and winning the award validated our efforts. The second MUSE Award, Gold in the category of PR/Development, came recently in 2009 for our Road Trip/Giant Artichoke video that we produced for the exhibition Road Trip at SJMA.  It was the most fun we had on a project. It was a big departure for us from the artist centric audio and video content we had been creating.  The narrative nature of the video required us to storyboard, film on location and really tighten up on our editing.  The results were very rewarding.

Over the years I’ve worked with a variety of mobile delivery methods for audio and video content. Cell phones, Video iPods in Notes-Only Mode, and lastly iPod Touch/iPhone.  The iPod Touch tour we launched in 2008 was one of the first of its kind. While I realized at the time it was an important accomplishment, I didn’t realize how many doors and exciting opportunities it would open.

In London for the Tate Conference

Because of the launch or this iPod Touch tour, in September of 2008 I found myself at the Tate Modern in London presenting about SJMA’s mobile experiences to an audience of international museums.  It was one of the most rewarding professional experiences I think that I have had to date.  At the conference I met and befriended the most incredible and creative group of people.  All have helped to shape my knowledge on the subject.

Finally, I think my videography and editing skills hit a high point on one of my last big project for SJMA. For our Ansel Adams exhibition we solicited the general public to submit Ansel Adams inspired photographs to a special Flickr group.  The images collected in that group were displayed in the Adams exhibition on an interactive kiosk.  The main vehicle for this exhibition was a video that I shot in Yosemite. Shot in black and white the video features footage of classic Adams imagery cut with footage of visitors taking photos.  At the end the question, “Are you the next great photographer?” is posed with instructions for submittal.  The video has a sombre feeling and to me is reminiscent of the black and white footage in Woody Allen’s Manhattan (wishful thinking maybe).

So now I enter the world of museum vendors. I have had nothing but a positive experience with Toura.  It’s rewarding and exciting working with multiple museums to help them get their message and content out to their visitors. Toura is about enabling museums so that they can efficiently create mobile tours in a cost effective way – something that is important these days.  While some vendors have a bad rap, there are some that are conscious of the financial burdens and internal struggles that museums face on a daily basis.  My part at Toura has been and will continue to be the voice of the museum.

Nancy Proctor at the Tate Conference

I owe a lot to Nancy Proctor, the Head of New Media Initiatives at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She can safely be labeled a guru of mobile museum tours because her knowledge of the subject matter is extensive. She has also been a great advocate for the work that I have been doing at the San Jose Museum of Art by inviting me to speak at conferences like the Tate Handheld Conference in September 2008.

Recently, I was honored to be involved with two side projects of Nancy’s.

Learning Times Handheld Conference

On June 3rd, 2009 I was part of an online conference through Learning Times (sponsored by the American Association of Museums) and organized by Nancy. The conference was focused on handheld tours and built on the collective knowledge of the previous Tate conference. For my part I was involved again with the getting it done section. My presentation titled, “The Little Engine That Could: Mobile Tours on a Shoestring Budget” was paired with that of Silvia Fillipini Fantoni from the British Museum which provided a good contrast of what goes into developing a large mobile tour versus a smaller scale one.

The outstanding list of presenters that day also included – Nancy Proctor herself, Koven Smith from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Titus Bicknell from Experius/Gateway Auto Museum and Bruce Wyman from the Denver Museum of Art. Nancy and Koven’s part talked about the future of mobile and Titus and Bruce spoke about the rapid development of a mobile tour.

Here are the slides from my presentation:

This was my first online experience and I have to admit I had some concerns going in, but overall I thought that it was very effective. The one bit of strangeness that was prevalent, and expressed by Bruce during his presentation, was that you are speaking into the phone with no gauge on how people are reacting on the other end. A large part of speaking at a conference is gauging the expression on peoples faces as you are talking and making adjustments as necessary to make it more entertaining or more informational. There is obviously no way to do this via an online conference.

My part of the conference is available in it’s entirety and you are more than welcome to listen to all the other sections of too.

Museum Mobile

The other side project that I was a part of is on her wiki called Museum Mobile where she features regular podcasts around the subject of mobile tours. She had asked me at the 2009 Museums and the Web conference if I would like to be interviewed and I was quick to say yes.

For the interview, which also took place in June, she paired me for a discussion with Ted Forbes from the Dallas Museum of Art who has recently been developing a tour for his museum. In the podcast Nancy asks us a variety of questions about the development of our tours, web app vs. SDK, implementation in the galleries and a host of other juicy tidbits. The conversation was over an hour long and very enjoyable.

You can listen to it on Museum Mobile – Chris & Ted’s Excellent iPod Tours or listen to it here.

Road Trip Heels Screenshot

It’s very exciting to announce that the video we created for our Road Trip Exhibition won the Gold award in the category of Public Relations and Development at this years MUSE awards. The MUSE awards are given out by the Media and Technology committee, part of the American Association of Museums, for excellence in the area of museums and technology. The jury that voted in our category, led by Dana Allen-Greil, Project Manager for New Media, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, said this about our video:

This quirky video was produced in-house by San Jose Museum of Art staff armed with only a sense of humor, a video camera, and some crazy Japanese high-heels. The short clip depicts a journey to the fabulous Giant Artichoke restaurant, where a postcard is purchased and sent to the museum for inclusion in the “Road Trip” exhibition. Viewers are then prompted to send their own iconic, unusual, and hilarious postcards to supplement the museum’s “Road Trip” exhibition.” The judges were impressed with the innovative, low-cost, and appropriate use of technology to reach a large audience and engage people with the exhibition beyond the walls of the museum. Both the idea and the execution are fun, creative, and playful and show that the museum is both scrappy and savvy about engaging with visitors and successfully integrating experiences between online and offline presences.

When we created the video we knew that we were making something that was fun and special. It was definitely a new direction for us and it felt good to be pushed and challenged by our Director of Marketing.

As with most projects this was not a solo effort. I want to thank my partner in crime at SJMA Lucy Larson, Manager of Interpretation, for being a great and fun person to work with and an outstanding springboard for ideas (we can volley ideas back and forth with great ease). Additional thanks go out to Nicole Mcbeth, Director of Marketing, for her advice and up front criticisms which helped to fine tune the video in the editing process and also to Kristen Evangelista, Associate Curator, for creating an inspiring exhibition to work from.

Also, I want to thank AAM’s Media and Technology Committee and the jury that selected our piece.  It’s great to be recognized for our efforts and to be in the company of so many great organizations!

SJMA Wins Gold @ MUSE Awards from Chris Alexander on Vimeo.

Every once in a while a great idea comes out of merging unique items – peanut butter and jelly, chocolate and peanut butter, salt water and taffy all come to mind. I recently had a revelation when I crossed Nina Simon’s and Koven Smith’s write ups about institutions using Twitter with a few sites I recently came across.

A few weeks ago I found myself on a site called F*** You 2008. The site aggregates Twitter messages with the term “f***you2008” by searching for the phrase in recent tweets using what appears to be some fancy Ruby scripting. For the most part these messages include expressive comments about money lost, jobs lost, or any other unfortunate event associated with 2008. While I don’t totally agree with the language used on the site, though it is pretty funny, I was intrigued by how it was able to display comments directed at a specific subject.

Another site I came across recently almost does the same thing! www.dearie6.com asks it’s visitors to follow on Twitter the user profile of DearIE6. Once you are following that profile you can send direct messages to it which in turn will be displayed on the site www.dearie6.com. This site is a place where people can comment on their frustrations with the bug-ridden V.6 Internet Explorer browser.

I came across both sites after I had read the recent Twitter related posts on the Museum 2.0 blog and at www.kovenjsmith.com. Both articles address the institutional voice and how it should be leveraged in an online social space such as Twitter. Nina talks about creating a unique experience in your institution around Twitter by posting funny things overheard, behind the scenes info, or interesting facts about the building. This got me thinking…

Since I have a budget of nill-to-none at the museum I’m always trying to think of ways to use the internet to benefit our programs and collection at a low price point. I’ve recently been thinking about ways of commenting on works of art in the permanent collection and how this could be achieved in an engaging and interactive way.

Enter F***you2008 and DearIE6.

Hung Liu - Chinese Profile (Collection of SJMA)

Let’s say that I wanted to have a page devoted to Hung Liu’s Chinese Profile in our permanent collection. The museum would sign up for a Twitter account with the username @ChineseProfile or @SJMA_ChineseProfile. Visitors, both onsite and online, could then send comments or thoughts via the direct message feature on Twitter which would show up on the @ChineseProfile user page. This would have to happen after the visitor signed up for the service and then started to follow @ChineseProfile. A museum could create a Twitter page specific to an artwork in the collection where people could actively engage with others around the artwork. The work could even engage them back through a curator, registrar, preparator, or all three!

Example Wireframe

I like the idea of taking things a step further by utilizing the APIs or widgets offered by many of these web services to bring the experience to our your own website as well. You could create a page on your institutions site and pull the dialogue to it through some scripting with the Twitter APIs. Additionally on the page you could have a large image of the work, maybe a Wikipedia entry describing the work, etc. To illustrate, I have drawn up a wireframe example which you can view in-full by clicking on the thumbnail.

Obviously one of the biggest challenges with utilizing Twitter is the generational gap and trying to gain the art perspective of the older technology-challenged museum visitor. While they might have heard about Twitter by watching CNN or reading about it in this thing called a newspaper, they might never have signed up for any services on the Internet. Then to try and explain the concept of an “@” message sounds even more difficult.

I’m not sure if this is a truly unique idea. Are any museums doing it or something similar? I’d really like to know. I share this information with the larger museum community with the hopes that someone might attempt it and report back. Unfortunately, in my new limited capacity (half-time due to budget issues) I don’t think I will have the opportunity to attempt it! Let me/us know if it works out!

You can follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/cmalexander

Yep - That's me!

In April 2008, at Museums and the Web in Montreal, I was fortunate enough to be involved in the preliminary planning for a conference at the Tate Modern. The focus of the conference was on handheld tours and came to be called Audiotours to iPhones. Jane Burton, Creative Director for Tate Media, searched me out in Montreal to see what the San Jose Museum of Art was doing with the iPod Touch. Thankfully she was impressed and invited me to attend a luncheon centered on the planning of the conference to be held in London. At lunch I found myself in unbelievable company with museums like the Smithsonian, New York MoMA, and Tate. Yes – me in the company of these prestigious museums!

Flash forward to July, I had almost given up on the conference because it was to be in September. That was only 3 months away, but lo and behold an email came from Jane asking me if I was still interested. Uh…yeah!? I was asked to be one of 8 keynote speakers because of our recent forays into handheld tours at the San Jose Museum of Art, particularly the iPod Touch/iPhone.

After attending I can say that it was definitely the best conference that I have been to. This is due in large part to the intense focus on the subject matter. Most conferences offer a wide variety of topics where you can pick and choose, but not this one. It explored many aspects surrounding handheld tours from simple basics to what the future may hold.

The conference was preceded by a full month of active involvement on a Wiki created especially for the event. Invited contributors were asked to provide information and insights relevant to the conference and four predetermined topic points: Handheld Basics, Choosing a Platform, Getting it Done, and Advanced Handhelds. Anyone who is interested can view the Wiki at http://tatehandheldconference.pbwiki.com/. If you wish to contribute you can request access through the Wiki administrator.

Conference Day 1

The conference was a two day event held on September 4 and 5, 2008. The first day was by invitation only, where I joined 30 people selected from museums around the world. The focus of discussion was on the four topics from the Wiki. The new information gathered during each discussion was added to the Wiki and was synthesized into four mind maps. A mind map is a diagram used to represent ideas linked to a central key word or theme.

Conference Day 2

The second day was a public symposium attended by 200 people. Each mind map topic from the day prior became a session of one and a half hours with two keynote speakers presenting their own experiences related to their topic. As one of the selected keynote speakers, I co-presented along with Célia Meunier from the Louvre during the “Getting it Done” session. Presenting on SJMA’s in-house content creation and delivery via iPod Touch offered a unique contrast to the Louvre who works closely with Antenna Audio producing large quantities of audio and video content. Following our two presentations, there was a round of questions and answers which provided rich followup discussions about the work at the SJMA and the Louvre. Many of the keynote presentations from day 2 are available via embedded SlideShare players on the Wiki.

I have to say, one of the most pleasurable parts of the conference were the people involved. The mind-power that was there was truly impressive and to be a part of it was an honor I will not soon forget. I must concur with my new friend Daniel Incandela from the Indianapolis Museum of Art where he wrote on their blog, “The conference represented some of the most innovative and brightest minds working in museums today.” I made so many new friends and connections; I cannot wait to talk with them again in person. Everybody made me feel so comfortable with their warmth and kindness.

I want to thank Jane Burton from the Tate and Nancy Proctor from the Smithsonian for inviting me to attend. It was a privilege to learn from the many brilliant people who attended and, in turn, share the accomplishments of the San Jose Museum of Art with the iPod Touch tour.

One of the Mind Maps created

There are other mentions of the conference on the Musematic blog by Nik Honeysett; the IMA blog by Daniel Incandela; Buzzeum by Diane Drubay (in French, but page has a translator); and Nina Simon makes a mention of the Wiki usage on her Museum 2.0 blog.

Dave Patten of the Science Museum in London started a Flickr Group with images of the event if you are interested.

San Jose Museum of Art’s iPod Touch/iPhone tour: http://www.sjma.mobi (best viewed on one of the devices)