Digital and cultural organisations: Where are we now?

John Stack, Digital Director, Science Museum Group3 July 2015

Digital is …

Digital is …hard to define

• Technology

• Content

• Design

• Data

• Social media

• Copyright

• User generated content

Digital is …part of everything

• Programme

• Marketing

• Research

• Collection access

• Commerce

• Education

• Visitor experience

• Brand

Digital is … helping us

• Reach

• Niche

• Live

• Commerce

• Community

• Multimedia

• Interactivity

Digital is … challenging us

• Too expensive and risky

• Too cheap and easy

• Doesn’t have a “right” place in the organisation

• Doesn't respect departmental boundaries

• Is changing quickly

• Is hard to measure

• Requires new skills

• Requires us to work differently

Audiences …

Audiences …

• Expect a high-quality, seamless digital experience

• Have limitless access to information

• Need help understanding this information

• Are digital creators too and need resources to use

• Have knowledge about the collections that we don’t

We’re thinking about …

We’re thinking about… experiences

• Online

• On gallery

• Holistically

We’re thinking about… collections

• Digitisation

• Creative Commons

• Crowdsourcing

We’re thinking about… narratives

• Telling stories through the collections

• Engaging audiences with contemporary science

We’re thinking about… technology

• Solid foundations

• Sustainable

• Scalable

We’re thinking about… organisational culture

• Audience data

• Skills

• Processes

• Innovation lab

Thank you