What was said at Museums and Web 2.0 session in Madrid

The last session of the conference on ‘Communicating the Museum’, that took place in Madrid on Friday 29 May 09, was devoted to new media and Web 2.0. With the participation of some 150 communication professionals from museums and cultural centres from all over Spain, the morning was made up of presentations by three speakers followed by discussion.  

The first input was from Javier Celaya, an expert in Communication 2.0 and the author of (among other things) a 2006 study of museums and Web 2.0 entitled The new Web 2.0 technologies in the promotion of museums and art centres and most recently The company in the Web 2.0. After an overview of the major social networks—Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, etc—he talked about the explosion of profiles of cultural centres now appearing on these networks. He emphasized a point that, in my view, was the essence of his message: a lot of people are doing the same thing they do on their websites or on e-news, with the result that the user receives the same communication via different channels. On the social networks we should be speaking a different language and doing different things. What we say there should be more conversational in tone, building up network of relationships, listening. And what we do there should attract and build friendships; for example, we can offer things to our Facebook friends before they are available to the public, such as a preview visit, a publication… there are a thousand possibilities that each museum must learn to imagine and experience. Javier put it very explicitly: ‘If you tell me on Twitter that you’re having an exhibition opening, I’m not interested’. Of course, this information is already coming through other channels, and it may well be far more effective to tweet something across live at the opening, or at some stage in the setting-up of the show: details that really bring the museum closer to the public. 

The next presentation was Krea, a project from Vitoria, by Oliana Blanco, the head of communication of this multidisciplinary centre for contemporary culture with a focus on young creative talents. Though still waiting for the conversion of its physical premises (an old cloistered convent!) to be completed, Krea has already an active presence on the Internet. Oliana said that she sees 2.0 as more a philosophy than a set of tools: the same philosophy of participation, debate and dialogue that is the inspiration behind Krea.

The last presentation was by Gail Durbin, head of Victoria & Albert Online, a well known speaker at MW conferences (see for exemple Just Do it, at mw08). An excellent communicator, she had the audience spellbound with her description of the V&A’s Web 2.0 experiences, primarily on Flickr. Of the many interesting things that Gail shared with the audience, I shall comment on two: a concept and Flickr initiatives.  She began by introducing a very useful division of social networks into those she called ‘Me’ sites—Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc, where people talk about ‘my’ life, ‘my’ friends…—and ‘Us’ sites such as Flickr, YouTube and Delicious, which are essentially sharing sites. While the former are run by the Marketing department, the latter are run by the Web team or the Education and Conservation departments. She pointed out that Twitter is probably now about halfway between the individual and the collective.

Secondly, she stressed the importance in the 2.0 environment of focusing on tasks where the visitors—the users—can be experts, can provide new content and knowledge (‘the museums,’ she said, ‘are not the only ones with expertise.’). In the case of the V&A, it would be absurd to ask for lay opinions about 16th-century fabrics, for example, when the museum has one of the foremost specialists in the field; but there are other areas where the users can make relevant and significant contributions, such as artistic photography (of shadows, of tattoo/body art) or documentary materials (putting together a collection of period wedding photographs: people mailing in pictures were also asked to supply the couple’s names and the date and place of the wedding). The V&A has already received more than 360 photographs, which will be studied by the museum’s genealogical research team: at the same time the V&A has been provided by the users themselves with digitized materials that would otherwise have unobtainable.

The ensuing discussion clearly revealed the very keen interest with which museums and cultural centres in Spain are looking at social networks, and also the extent of some ignorance: Spain is still pretty ‘green’ in comparison with some other countries. The delicate question of copyright also came up, as did the fear of losing control over content (a point Javier Celaya made: there has to be a conceptual evolution from the control of information to the management of information). There was also concern about the lack of trained staff to manage these resources and a legitimate concern that the necessary dedication would place excessive pressure on what tend to be small departments, be it the Internet team—where there is one—or the communications staff in general. The unanimous recommendation from the speakers: start small and start right now.

From my museum, we announced the newly inaugurated presence of the Museu Picasso on the social networks—on Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Delicious, Slidesahre—and the blog, which was preceded by a survey of what museums around the world are doing on the social networks. As yet there is not much real Web 2.0 action among museums in our country, though we are beginning to see some initiatives, particularly on Facebook (Prado, Reina, Fundació Miró) and YouTube (MNACTEC_Museu Ciència i Tècnica de Catalunya) and wikis (WikiDocentes del Guggenheim de Bilbao).