The MCN program this year includes a number of opportunities for less structured learning, and conversation.

IMLS Project Demonstrations on Wednesday introduced projects funded by US Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) National Leadership Grants. during a coffee break, delegates could wander through the demonstrations, see the projects that were funded, and identify people to talk to later about how to make their next grant application work.

This morning, a new format of "Case Studies" introduced a series of projects in brief (5 minute) introductions that were followed by break-out discussions. it looks like this format might work, but the spaces provided for the breakouts [single tables per topic at the back of the room], and the lack of coffee [at least for me], might have limited the discussions.

However, they were good conversations, and this is a format that should be pursued.

Sheila Carey chairs a session on evauation in web spaces.

Beth Kanter {see http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/] on evaluating social media talks about moving beyond measuring static use of web sites to get at ways of appreciating the impact of social media.She cites Scoble: audience, engagement, loyalty, influence, and action for some principles that help understand the impact of a site in a social media context. Overally, she notes that trends are more important than actual numbers, as many of these measures (such as ) are hard to quantify. See socialmediametrics.wikispaces.com for a link to her slides.

Tim Hart introduces analytics as used at the Getty Trust, and the challenges of adapting measures that are e-commerce focused to mission-driven organizations. As an example, he looks at a page from the Getty Museum Site. The click map shows that people are going to the things that the page highlight; netgenesis stats show more detail, that lets you compare clicks to actual usage?. it makes it clear that many people link deep into the site, and that section pages aren't necessarily seen. but bot and spider traffic are a significant number of page views and need to be removed (javascript based tools can help filter those out). trends are more important than actual numbers. Metrics need to be compared to other measures, including interviews, visits ...