Today I participated in a Future Directions Forum at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum, which after 20 years in its current location is looking to the future.
To provide some context, the Powerhouse is specifically branded as a science and design museum, implicitly being about technology and it’s impact on people’s lives. It’s worth looking at the excellent online resources section of the Powerhouse Museum website, which provides value to many people who never visit the museum. I’ve previously written abouut the very interesting Web 2.0-style initiatives of the Museum (and listed them in the Top Australian Web 2.0 applications), which among other features enables user tagging of the museum’s collection. In a number of cases visitors to the website have corrected or provided more detailed information on the museum’s collection, exemplifying how to tap collective wisdom.
The session raised many interesting questions and thoughts for me. I haven’t been significantly involved with museums in the past, and was struck by many of the issues raised. The points below represent my perspectives as well as reflections on issues raised by people at forum. While the issues below were raised in the context of museums in areas like science, technology, and design, I think they apply across most kinds of museum.
Below are fourteen key issues in the future of museums.
What is a museum?
On the face of it, a museum records and makes accessible artefacts the past that have cultural value. The curatorial process is one of showing people things that enrich them. Museums need to have a clear idea of why they exist. In most cases (in addition to any financial imperatives) the objective is to benefit society, by educating and creating culturally richer and more well-rounded members of society.
Entertainment vs. education and onto experience.
Entertainment and education are quite different intents, but they can be integrated to achieve both aims. Certainly the demand from younger people has shifted strongly to only paying attention if content is truly entertaining. Beyond that, museums are fundamentally about providing experiences. People will seek engaging and powerful experiences, and if museums can provide them, their can fulfil their roles.
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Thomas Stewart leaves Harvard Business Review
By Ross DawsonI just got an email from Tom Stewart saying he is leaving Harvard Business Review – this was announced today with the press release below. He has been editor-in-chief for six years, during which time he maintained a strong consistency in HBR’s established editorial approach, but also injected his own highly innovative perspectives. I find HBR an essential read, not least through the pronounced focus on forward-thinking perspectives. I sincerely hope HBR doesn’t move away from this style with Tom’s departure.
I first met Tom in 1998, when I was organizing an Intellectual Capital seminar in Sydney, primarily intended for the funds management community. Tom had published his landmark book Intellectual Capital in 1997, after writing cover stories for Fortune magazine, where he was a writer for many years, on Brain Power in 1991 and on Intellectual Capital in 1994. At the time, drawing on my background in capital markets, I saw an immense opportunity in applying the nascent ideas of intellectual capital to financial markets and investor relations. (Some of these ideas are described in a 2002 speech I gave at KMWorld titled “A Financial Markets Perspective on Intellectual Capital”). I took Tom to visit many of the top fund management teams in Australia. At the time it was great to see the very positive reaction to his ideas, but the reality is fund managers globally have been rather slow to take up the ideas. The response from the broader investment community is improving, but it’s slow going.
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Trends in the Living Networks ranked #27 business blog in the world by Wikio
By Ross DawsonTwo months ago Wikio launched a ranking mechanism for the top blogs in the world, appearing to use a more sophisticated algorithm than the incumbent leading blog search engine Technorati. In the latest monthly reclassification by Wikio, Trends in the Living Networks has been ranked #27 of all business blogs. In part the high ranking is due to the fact that there are relatively few blogs about business, with technology and politics the dominant subjects. In fact the blog is ranked #761 out of all blogs for this month, still not bad considering I don’t get to post on here nearly as much as I’d like – a few posts weekly recently. However I intend to start posting quite a lot more as our research for this year’s Future of Media Summit gets under way. Thanks for being a reader!
Registrations now open for Top 100 Australian Web 2.0 Applications Launch Event
By Ross Dawson[UPDATE:] The complete Top 100 list is now up.
The Top 100 Australian Web 2.0 Applications list I wrote about earlier is being readied, and the launch event on 19 June is now open for registrations.
A few exciting developments:
* A great cast of panellists to uncover the state of online innnovation in Australia, including John Butterworth, Duncan Riley, Foad Fadaghi, and Malcolm Thornton
* Showcases of five leading Australian Web 2.0 applications
* The Web 2.0 list will be featured on the cover of BRW magazine that morning
* Sponsors including KPMG, Adobe and Starfish Ventures – a Gold sponsor will be announced shortly
* 10% of ticket proceeds to be donated to the Layne Beachley Aim for the Stars Foundation
Click here for full details on Top 100 Australian Web 2.0 Applications – Launch Event.
Note that every event run by Future Exploration Network has been sold out (last year’s Web 2.0 in Australia was fully booked two weeks before the event), so register soon if you’d like to attend!
More details on the event, including the showcased companies, coming soon.
There is still an opportunity for applications to be considered for the list – please get in touch in comments or by email to submit if you think we might not be aware of you.
The rise of professional-quality user generated media
By Ross DawsonThe launch of Blogger in August 1999 opened the door to anyone and everyone creating media. Since then platforms to share writing, photos, video and more have enabled an extraordinary volume of content to be made available to the world. The media world has at least doubled in size this decade, adding many new content formats to the existing professionally produced media on channels such as TV, radio, magazines, and newspapers.
Despite cries from many that all user generated content is crap, that’s not true. It’s just that most user generated content is crap, and a small proportion is outstanding. Anyone who has browsed through the best photos on Flickr, for example, will see some extraordinary images they never would have seen otherwise. The best industry blogs are certainly considered on a par with mainstream reporting and analysis.
There are now some compelling examples of businesses that are based on professional-quality submissions from their users. A great article in today’s San Francisco Chronicle titled Everywhere, JPG – magazines for the future describes how these glossy magazines are compiled from people submitting their travel stories and photos, with the promise of being paid $100 and a year’s subscription to the magazine if their contributions are published. The selections are in fact made by the readers by voting on the site.
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Enterprise 2.0 in Financial Services: upcoming keynote
By Ross DawsonI have long been interested in how collaboration technologies are applied in financial services, having come from a career largely at Merrill Lynch and Thomson Financial, and spent much time consulting to the instittutional financial services sector.
A few years ago now I ran the Collaboration in Financial Services conferences in New York and London, and wrote a white paper on How Collaborative Technologies are Transforming Financial Services. Since then I’ve been heavily involved in the Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 spaces, and I’m finding that these are extremely relevant to the financial services sector.
I will be doing the opening keynote at this year’s annual Financial Services Technology forum on Enterprise & Web 2.0 for Financial Services in Sydney on 29 May. In my presentation I will look at the big picture of the history and relevance of these technologies in the sector, and drawing on my recent work helping organizations with the governance issues of Enterprise 2.0.
Financial services are certainly very diverse, however many of the sectors within it handily illustrate the themes I have been discussing for some time: there is a deep layer of highly process-driven work, supplemented by a layer of connecting expertise to make highly time-sensitive decisions. Enterprise 2.0 technologies and approaches are outstanding in supporting the latter, which is where there is the most potential for competitive differentiation – which can be very fleeting in the world of money.
I’ll provide more details later on what I cover in my keynote.
Thinking about the future of museums: fourteen key issues
By Ross DawsonToday I participated in a Future Directions Forum at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum, which after 20 years in its current location is looking to the future.
To provide some context, the Powerhouse is specifically branded as a science and design museum, implicitly being about technology and it’s impact on people’s lives. It’s worth looking at the excellent online resources section of the Powerhouse Museum website, which provides value to many people who never visit the museum. I’ve previously written abouut the very interesting Web 2.0-style initiatives of the Museum (and listed them in the Top Australian Web 2.0 applications), which among other features enables user tagging of the museum’s collection. In a number of cases visitors to the website have corrected or provided more detailed information on the museum’s collection, exemplifying how to tap collective wisdom.
The session raised many interesting questions and thoughts for me. I haven’t been significantly involved with museums in the past, and was struck by many of the issues raised. The points below represent my perspectives as well as reflections on issues raised by people at forum. While the issues below were raised in the context of museums in areas like science, technology, and design, I think they apply across most kinds of museum.
Below are fourteen key issues in the future of museums.
What is a museum?
On the face of it, a museum records and makes accessible artefacts the past that have cultural value. The curatorial process is one of showing people things that enrich them. Museums need to have a clear idea of why they exist. In most cases (in addition to any financial imperatives) the objective is to benefit society, by educating and creating culturally richer and more well-rounded members of society.
Entertainment vs. education and onto experience.
Entertainment and education are quite different intents, but they can be integrated to achieve both aims. Certainly the demand from younger people has shifted strongly to only paying attention if content is truly entertaining. Beyond that, museums are fundamentally about providing experiences. People will seek engaging and powerful experiences, and if museums can provide them, their can fulfil their roles.
Read more →
Picking the future of Microsoft
By Ross DawsonMicrosoft’s withdrawal from its bid for Yahoo! has hardly clarified the the tech landscape. In fact it has made the shape of the industry far more uncertain, as Microsoft mulls moves to shore up its future.
Microsoft is one of the most financially successful companies on the planet. It anticipates operating income this year of over $26 billion, maintaining strong growth from the last few years (just $9 billion in 2004), making it arguably stronger than other highly profitable companies in financial services and oil, which have more inconsistent incomes. However their success is founded on operating systems and client-installed office productivity software. Online services account for around 5% of their revenues, and entertainment 12%. There is no question that their core revenue is under attack. The summary of the challenge is “lower cost alternatives”, including online software and services, and open source.
So what will Microsoft do? The latest rumor is that Microsoft intends to buy Yahoo!’s search business, then buy Facebook for $15 to $20 billion. This is highly credible, though gossip is rife. Unquestionably this would give Microsoft a very strong position, both in the online advertising business, and also in leveraging what is now the dominant social network platform. In addition, the total price would be less than what Microsoft was prepared to pay for Yahoo! as a whole, keeping some of its financial powder dry.
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Search engines and journalism: Seven key issues as news goes online
By Ross DawsonRecently the Future of Journalism conference was held in Sydney, run by the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, the body that represents workers in media and entertainment, including journalists. One of the broadcast media channels which covered the event called me last week to get some ideas for their interviews with the keynote speakers at the conference.
Their first question to me was about the impact of search engines on journalism. While our conversation went off in quite different directions regarding the future of journalism, I think it’s a very interesting issue to address. There are seven important issues for how search engines impact journalism:
Traffic from search engines provides a significant proportion of online media income. In some cases up to one third of traffic to online news sites comes from search engines. With the primary revenue from most online news coming from advertising, search engine optimization is not an optional activity for news sites and editors.
Headline writing is becoming a completely new art (and now science). As many have written on headline writing for search engines before, including the New York Times and an article I wrote on newspapers, search optimization, and old-school editors, publishing online requires a very different approach to headlines. The cute wordplays that have characterized newspaper headlines through the last century (Headless Body In Topless Bar; Ice Cream Man Has Assets Frozen; Two Convicts Evade Noose, Jury Hung etc. etc.) don’t tend to bring search traffic. Morever, visitors will usually find the content was not what they were looking for, and will leave in seconds.
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Interview on SkyBusiness: Facebook And Other Social Networking Sites Can Be Beneficial For Corporations
By Ross DawsonHere is an old (November 2, 2007) interview I did on SkyBusiness about social networks, examining both the industry landscape and how social networks can be valuable inside organizations. What I like best about this is that for much of the interview they had up a banner reading “Facebook And Other Social Networking Sites Can Be Beneficial For Corporations”, a message that business audiences, especially at the time, hadn’t heard much before.
Some of the things I discuss in the interview:
* The role of advertising networks in social networks
* The upcoming launch of Google’s Open Social and what it means for the sector
* The value to organizations of encouraging strong social networks
* Examples of companies using Facebook and other social networks internally
* How Enterprise 2.0 takes social media tools to apply to organizational productivity
Participate in creating the list of top Australian web apps
By Ross Dawson[UPDATE:] The final Top 100 list is now up.
In researching the Top 100 Australian Web 2.0 Applications list, I created a draft list on Google Docs of 125-odd applications I was aware of, and invited a dozen of the most connected and influential people in the space as collaborators, to add any applications I wasn’t aware of and provide updates on any apps in the list.
Phil Morle of Pollenizer told me the Australian Twitter community has been asking for the spreadsheet to be opened up. Click here to view the early draft list of Australian Web 2.0 applications. Note this is absolutely a draft, does not necessarily cover all the applications we’re looking at, may have incorrect information, and comments are unmoderated.
If you want to add to the list and are not currently invited into this list, either email me or comment on this blog, or ask me or your favorite leading Australian Web 2.0 entrepreneur for an invite to collaborate on the document.