Congratulations to the MW2010 Best of the Web Winners!

Education

Museum of Modern Art
Meet Me | The MoMA Alzheimer's Project: Making Art Accessible to People with Dementia
http://www.moma.org/meetme

Panel comments:

• [they] deliver what they set out to do
• an example of how to design a clear, usable and inspirational site
• teaches and inspires
• provides a wide variety of resources for those who serve this under-represented demographic
• an excellent model for presenting other pedagogical tools
• clear videos and audio
• beautifully edited
• really professional touch on every page
• offers downloadable resources, guides for how to set up a similar program in your institution, even a filtered calendar of events, all from one site
  
  
• My one quibble with the site is the name: 'MeetMe' does not really indicate what the site is about 

Exhibition (Honourable Mention)

The Historical Society of Pennsylvania
PhilaPlace
http://www.philaplace.org/

Panel comments:

• full of engaging content
• users contribute their own content ... the very nature of the site is to invite, allow, even depend on community input
• ambitious collaborative project
• succeeded in drawing different parts of Philadelphia together online
• embraces multiple ethnic groups and neighborhoods
• good content in educators section
• uses technology to support the experience, rather than dominate it
• I hope we see more like it
  
  
• performance .. the related content (tour, related media, related topics) took a very long time to load and sometimes didn't load at all 

Exhibition

Museum of Modern Art
Bauhaus: Workshops for Modernity 1919-1933
http://www.moma.org/bauhaus

Panel comments:

• I learned a lot about the Bauhaus from this website
• comprehensive
• works beautifully
• aesthetic that perfectly fits its subject matter
• slick, slick, slick!
• the addition of behind the scenes video was also an interesting view on the whole exhibition process
• I love the way the timeline works – the way it expands never results in getting lost or losing content
  
  
• would benefit from allowing users to print pages or images, and browse using more accessible standards (not Flash) 

Innovative

Royal Observatory, Greenwich
Solar Stormwatch
http://solarstormwatch.com/

Panel comments:

• excellent use of crowd sourcing to advance scientific discovery
• not just connect users, but to actually DO something
• engaging videos
• draws you in, step-by-step
• makes excellent use of existing resources, such as Flickr, and the 'astrotagging' concept from last year
• what could be more deserving than a site that actually makes a meaningful difference
  
  
• doesn't hold up very well against accessibility testing, the execution there could be improved 

Long-lived

Culture24
Culture24
http://www.culture24.org.uk/

Panel comments:

• a veritable portal to cultural heritage in the UK
• the museum of, really, everything
• nice online place to wander and seek surprises
• has brown impressively since its launch in 1999
• its work collating information and sharing data is amazing
• has definitely stood the test of time
   
• There is a kind of problem if you want to find some exact information – from a huge collection of museum sites and information, themes, objects and media — it's simply impossible to know beforehand what to seek

Museum Professional

Museum Marketing
http://museummarketing.org/

Panel comments:

• clear an direct target audience
• integrated site, with podcasts, video and myriad of other web-based resources
• I enjoyed it so much that i joined and bookmarked the site for future use
• really useful content
• The Carnegie Mellon lectures are a fantastic resource
• a good community site
• they've added a toolbar which makes very clear the different site offerings and functionality
• provides helpful aggregations of apps and other tools for social media marketing planning
• it really could apply to anyone working in small business or nonprofit marketing
  
  
• seems to have some useful information regarding museum marketing, but it could be more advanced and up-to-date 

Podcast

National Museum of Australia
National Museum of Australia's Audio on demand program
http://www.nma.gov.au/audio/

Panel comments:

• a simple but content rich way to engage the audiences
• I just love being able to sit on the subway, on my way to work, listening to interesting topics from seminars I would never be able to attend
• the interface is easy. I love being able to navigate through word clouds
• adding transcripts is a very nice touch
• quick navigation to the Audio on Demand content is available across the site
  
  
• How do I know up-front if this content will ultimately be interesting? It could benefit from a bit more  synopsis, an outline of highlights, or more visuals 

Research

Victoria & Albert Museum
V&A Search the Collections
http://collections.vam.ac.uk/

Panel comments:

• V&A did a great job, presenting the complete collection, open API, and image ordering in a visual, attractive way
• It's very impressive that in the sort time that it has been live, they have enabled a mobile site, and also added a crowd-sourcing app for image cropping
• love all of the metadata!
• love the recommendations from an object record
• has raised the bar
• Three cheers for the API!
   
• I have only minor quibbles about the design, which i feel could be a bit bolder to make it more clear what was clickable.

Small

Dulwich OnView
Dulwich Picture Gallery
http://www.dulwichonview.org.uk/

Panel comments:

• This is an impressive effort, with rich and engaging content. It succeeds in reflecting the vibrant community that the museum is part of
• there is a powerful model in here that could be widely applicable to other communities – on little to no budget
• broad and rich content, all community-based and much of it community-contributed
• a long list of contributors appears in the Who We Are section
• it is impressive that so much of this great content is primarily volunteer-driven, and updated regularly (seems like daily!)
• the big win with this strategy is that this is a 'fan' site that was not set up by the institution – it's the organic outgrowth of passion for the DPG.  
• pulling a museum at the heart of a community is an interesting future model, especially small communities for whom a museum might serve as a singular point of distinction
  
  
• on the downside the content does go in all sorts of directions. I can see why they're having to re-think the information architecture 

Social Media

Picasso Museum
Museu  Picasso Online Community
http://www.bcn.cat/museupicasso/en/get-involved/online-community.html

Panel comments:

• the interface is clean and easy to use with good visual hierarchy and information visualization
• an impressive prototype of cross-institutional social media development
• clearly profiles and unites all the different social network channels for the museum
• initially I was concerned that the comprehensive nature (facebook, flickr, twitter, youtube, blog, etc.) would leave the whole effort diluted. But each category had highly engaging, and (were applicable) visually interesting content
• genuine invitation is given for people to participate
• well thought out social media strategy, using a wide array of existing tools effectively
  
  
• it could strive to be more than just an index of external links; it could work to integrate the social media content inline 

People's Choice

National 911 Memorial and Museum
Make History
http://911history.org/

Panel comments:

• pros : user-generated content, lots of images and video, deep personal meaning
• connects the past with the present, by overlaying images from 9/11 onto current street views
• in some cases, user-contributed content helps families of those who died

Best Overall

Indianapolis Museum of Art
ArtBabble
http://www.artbabble.org

Panel comments:

• ArtBabble is terrific. It provides an engaging, easy-to-use, and extendable platform from which art museums can launch video content, and integrate it with so much more.
• it truly connects people with art and artists in new and exciting ways, harnessing the power of the Web
• This site is quite simply utterly brilliant
• the quality of videos that I viewed was exceptional – thoughtful, visually fluid
• The commenting and the reference feature on the playback bar took me a while to figure out, but I came to appreciate it once I understood it. A remarkable site.
• I have to admit, I've loved ArtBabble since it came out. I shared it with all my art friends
• it brings together many institutions to delivery content about art, not just about the museums themselves
• build on Amazon Web Services, which means that it will be able to grow to include almost any kind of functionality this coalition wants to deliver – as opposed to creating a You Tube channel, which would be very limited in its functionality
• the Indianapolis Museum of Art has stuck its collective chin forward and said it will lead in the issue of transparency ... bravo!
• ArtBabble gives a community of peers a place to store, share, and augment content
  
  
• I would like to see ArtBabble better encourage transcription (for those with vision impairments) and closed captioning (for those with auditory impairments)