chris-alexander.com » technology

Digital Technologies and the Museum Experience: Handheld Guides and Other Media

Chris — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 05:27:28 +0000

I recently started reading a book that was edited by handheld guide expert Loïc Tallon and fellow Londoner Kevin Walker. The book is a collection of essays by prominent technologists in the museum space writing about mobile guides in museums. The range of information is extensive ranging from best practices to research in the field. The book is highly recommended to those with an interest in this area of digital museum interpretation.

Purchase the book here: Digital Technologies and the Museum Experience: Handheld Guides and Other Media

On pilot projects and other things that don’t work

Chris — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 03:48:21 +0000

My good friend Koven wrote up this article about pilot projects within museums and how they mostly relate to technology. I’ve been privileged in the past at the San Jose Museum of Art because we’ve had a lot of freedom with technology and exploring ways of using it for interpretation. I can relate to his article though because of others I’ve come in contact with that share their stories. Worth the read for anyone that implements them or struggles with them.

On pilot projects and other things that don’t work

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: 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.

Presentation: Museums and the Web 2007

Chris — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 04:43:30 +0000

The San Jose Museum of Art was fortunate enough to host a group of 25 Museum and the Web attendees, from all over the world, on their field trip down from SF to three South Bay museums. I addressed several key tech initiatives that the museum has been pursuing and at the end my department fielded questions from the group. Unfortunately I did not make an audio recording of the presentation. Lots of great and interesting people attended! Thanks to everyone!

Links from the presentation:

Presentation: SJMA Docents

Chris — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 03:11:23 +0000

This is a presentation that I made at the San Jose Museum of Art that discusses all the technology currently in use at the museum with a few future possibilities thrown in for good measure. It was an enjoyable presentation with a lot of great questions. If you download the audio (see below) some of the questions from the audience are a little difficult to hear.

You can download the audio for this presentation in iTunes. Open iTunes and select “Subscribe to Podcast…” from the “Advanced” menu and paste:

http://www.chris-alexander.com/presentation/podcast.xml

into the box. Press OK and the podcast should start downloading.

Links from the presentation: