chris-alexander.com » presentation

Two Recent Recordings

Chris — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 07:19:16 +0000

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.

Presentation: SFSU and SCU

Chris — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 15:12:31 +0000

I recently had the pleasure of addressing two groups of students at two different universities. One, at San Francisco State University, was a class was being taught by my friend Karen Kienzle who recently became the director at the Palo Alto Art Center. The other was a class being taught by artist Kathy Aoki at Santa Clara University. The presentation (below) focused of a broad overview of technology in museums cover aspects of in-house content creation, mobile tours, and social media. There was an additional focus on the cell phone tour company Guide by Cell because both will be using the service for exhibitions later this spring. Both classes were engaged and had some good questions afterwards.

Presentation: CAM

Chris — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 07:13:52 +0000

On February 27, 2009, I had the distinct honor of presenting with Dave Ashiem from Guide by Cell and Suzanne Isken from MoCA at the California Association of Museums. The title of our session was Reach Out and Touch Your Visitors…with Technology! It was a great crowd with a lot of great questions!

Normally I talk about actual things that I’ve produced, but here I talked more from a hypothetical approach and in the process tried to be a little more philosophical and sociological. A lot of the ideas of this presentation came from a book that I’ve been reading called Grown Up Digital by Don Tapscott combined with discussions happening in blogs, on twitter and via email amongst museum people. In his book Don Tapscott discusses the large shift currently taking place between older baby boomers and the younger “Net Generation”. This younger generation has not known a world without computers and technology. These Net Geners are also going to be museum visitors and hopefully new donors. What are they expecting and what should you be offering them?

Today, technology is pushing us at a rapid pace. The new quickly replaces the “old” in an online world. A younger generation is entering the workforce and has very different ways of thinking and communicating – much different than their elders. They are making advancements to the internet that are slowly bringing an end to many of the things that are comfortable to older generations – museums included! In the past, visitors would passively view artwork and occasional take a docent led tour or an audio tour with an awkwardly designed device. Today , young adults demand more interaction and engagement. They are doing these activities both with their mobile device and through online social media tools.

Is your museum prepared?

Presentation: MCN-Cal SIG 2008

Chris — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 21:10:30 +0000

The San Jose Museum of Art hosted the Annual meeting of the Museum Computer Network’s California Special Interest Group (say that fast five times) in August of 2008. The day long meeting had several presentations from local museums including History|San Jose, the Magnus, the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco and our museum. For the meeting I spoke about our iPod Touch tour and then invited the 20 participants to check it out for themselves in the gallery. The day was a success and it was great to meet so many new people and learn about their organizations.

Presentation: AAM 2008

Chris — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 20:29:40 +0000

For the American Association of Museums Conference in Denver, I was invited to speak about how our museum over the years has gathered visitor comments electronically. I gave a historical perspective and talked about analogue methods using paper and worked up to utilizing “web 2.0″ technologies. The panel consisted of myself, Dave Ashiem from Guide by Cell, Peter Samis from SFMoMA, and Marla Shoemaker from the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the session was called Using Technology to Elicit Visitor Feedback. I was sick at the time of the presentation and was not at the top of my game. Ironically, while I was researching some facts about this post, I came across the audio from the conference available for purchase from the AAM website.

Presentation: YouTube – MW2008

Chris — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 05:07:29 +0000

I was flattered to be asked, through our YouTube Channel, by David Hart at New York MoMA if I would be interested in presenting at Museums and the Web 2008 about how we utilize YouTube at the San Jose Museum of Art. I was quick to accept because this would be my first conference speaking engagement. Also on the panel were Allegra Burnette, The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Daniel Dark, The Indianapolis Museum of Art; Jennifer Rossi, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; and Nicole Minor, The Exploratorium, USA. The idea for our panel presentation and discussion built on a presentation at Museums and the Web 2007 put on by the Indianapolis Museum of Art about posting videos to YouTube. Our idea was – so now you have a video on YouTube now what? My section dealt on how to make your video viral in a marketing campaign. The session was very well attended with attendees spill into the aisles and standing out in the hallway and lined up against the back wall.

The paper that we collaborated on Beyond Launch: Museum Videos on YouTube is available on the Museums and the Web 2008 website. Thanks to David and Allegra for putting it all together!

Here is the presentation that I gave:

The San Jose Museum of Art’s YouTube Channel can be found at http://www.youtube.com/sanjosemuseumofart

Presentation: Santa Clara University

Chris — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 04:49:13 +0000

Presentation to a group of Museum Studies students at Santa Clara University. Talked about current SJMA practices for creating and delivering audio and video interpretation with a strong emphasis on cell phones and Guide by Cell. Students are working on interpretive materials for an upcoming Anderson Art Collection exhibition. Interpretation includes writing labels, writing bios and creating cell phone tour.

Links from the presentation:

Presentation: SJMA Board Retreat

Chris — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 04:22:55 +0000

On October 29, 2007 I was pleased to be asked by the museum to present to our Board of Directors about our technology programs and what possibilities existed in the future. The presentation was very well received and seemed to open a lot of eyes towards the potential uses of technology in the museum setting. One of the highlights of the talk was the a diagram that I showed about how the museum could have a central database for artwork which would be fed by everyone from the museum registrar, to curators, to outside art enthusiasts.

Presentation: John F. Kennedy University

Chris — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:24:21 +0000

Presented to a group of students studying technology in museums, this talk focused on “Web 2.0″, technologies behind it, how it came about and included some example websites. In addition, I addressed how SJMA has been incorporating some of these technologies and looking at them in terms of an interactive permanent collection online. Finally, I ended talking about the process that goes into making one of our podcast series, “Artist of the Week”. The group was bright and very tech savy which made for great Q and A throughout the entire talk.

Links from the presentation:

Presentation: MUSE Award

Chris — Mon, 14 May 2007 04:53:10 +0000

In conjunction with the MUSE Award that we won for our 2006 podcast series “Artist of the Week” we were asked to demonstrate our winning “product” at the AAM Marketplace. After visiting it the day before I realized that I was unprepared as far as signage and overall look and feel for my designated table. The morning of my demonstration I whipped out this little presentation about how we created the award winning series entirely in-house. I has my laptop set up to loop the presentation while I demonstrated the podcast on the Video iPods that we checked out at the time.