Sharing is daring

Openness as a Business Strategy

Merete SanderhoffProject researcher

merete.sanderhoff@smk.dk@MSanderhoff

What does an Art Historian

have to say about Business Strategy?

The Rijksmuseum’s generosity earned them

a new ambassador

From Gods of knowledgetoServants of knowledge

Ambrogio Lorenzetti, St. John the Baptist, 1337-42, SMK

Meet Mai Misfeldt

• Art critic at Danish national newpaper

• Educator

Lucas Cranach the Elder (c. 1472-1553), Melancholy, 1532 , Statens Museum for Kunst

http://www.kdcs.kcl.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/USMuseum_SimonTanner.pdf

"Everyone interviewed wants to recoup costs but almost none claimed to actually achieve or expected to achieve this… Even those services that claimed to recoup full costs generally did not account fully for salary costs or overhead expenses."Simon Tanner, Reproduction charging models & rights policy for digital images in American art museums, 2004

A study

A case

"Since 2006 the commercial market for [images] has undergone a revolution, with consumers now expecting images free of charge, free of usage restrictions, and instantly available for use… …more people want more content, from more complex sources and at more speed, but are less prepared to pay for it.“

Jo Prosser, Managing Director, Victoria and Albert Enterprises

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/kit-eaton/technomix/monty-python-youtube-move-boosts-dvd-sales-23000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain

Public Domain benefits• Building blocks for the creation of new knowledge

• Access to cultural heritage through information resources

• Promoting education through the spread of information, ideas, and scientific principles

• Enabling follow-on innovation

• Enabling low cost access to information w/o the need to locate owner

• Promoting the democratic process and values

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain

http://pro.europeana.eu/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=b80cebc9-34ed-475b-b531-1d3c98e724a2&groupId=10602

“Commons are usually created when a poperty owner determines that a given set of resources – grass for grazing sheep, forest for parkland, software code, or intellectual property – will create more value if freely shared.”

Smithsonian Web and New Media Strategy, 2009, p. 19http://smithsonian-webstrategy.wikispaces.com/file/view/20090729_Smithsonian-Web-New-Media-Strategy_v1.0.pdf

Smithsonian Instituion

“…as the legal designation “public domain” is supported by the rationale that eventually all creators and/or owners of content must relinquish their monopolies over such content making such content available for unmitigated access and use, attempts to restrict access through licensing provisions may be neither legally enforceable nor ethically prudent.”Memo on open access to digital representations of works in the public domain from museum, library, and archive collections at Yale University (5 May 2011)

Yale University

http://collections.britishart.yale.edu/vufind/Record/1668455

http://collections.britishart.yale.edu/vufind/Record/1668455

https://images.nga.gov/en/page/show_home_page.html

https://images.nga.gov/en/set/show_content_page.html?category=16&set=11

Why are museums giving their assets away

for free?

Better for business

“It is likely that the Smithsonian will make more money by promoting “free” resources to a large audience than it can make charging small amounts for small transactions to a small audience, and it is a much better fit with the mission.”

Smithsonian Web and New Media Strategy, 2009, p. 21http://smithsonian-webstrategy.wikispaces.com/file/view/20090729_Smithsonian-Web-New-Media-Strategy_v1.0.pdf

http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/collectie/SK-A-2344/het-melkmeisje

Better for the users

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Johannes_Vermeer_-_De_melkmeid.jpg

Pushing out bad copies

Enriching public knowledge

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Milkmaid_(Vermeer)

What has helped SMK get things done?

Collaboration

Benchmarking

Networks

Alliances

Patience

http://www.dkmuseer.dk/tidligerearrangementer/1186.html

Setting the agenda

What are we sharing?

http://www.brandwatch.com/2012/01/product-update-dashboard-sharing/

http://www.googleartproject.com/collection/statens-museum-for-kunst/

SMK is a part of the Google Art Project

Access is not =

to sharing

http://www.smk.dk/en/explore-the-art/the-royal-collections/free-download-of-art-works/

http://www.youtube.com/user/NationalGalleryDK?ob=0&feature=results_main

http://www.flickr.com/photos/51443772@N06/sets/72157629482773770/

http://pinterest.com/statensmuseum/pins/

How is it daring?

www.digitalfreak.net

Loss of control?

P. S. Krøyer, Hip Hip Hurra, 1888, Skagens Museum

Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind, Hip Hip Today, 2007

"The fear that somehow everyone will expect us to control everything with our name on it - - not only is this not a reasonable fear based on the way the technology works, but society has internalized the idea that the re-purposing is not the same as the purpose. And to be a platform and to be a convener means opening up to kinds of uses you don't expect, and also kinds of uses you don't have to feel responsible for."

Clay Shirky, keynote speaker at the Smithsonian 2.0 conference, 2009 http://smithsonian20.si.edu/schedule_webcast4.html (quote begins at 25:30)

Is this man dangerous?

http://www.waynewbishop.com/about-me/

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/community/blogosphere/2011/05/05/brooklyn-museum-api-collections-ipad-app/

Loss of revenue?

”…potential for a new revenue model based on users and content. Amazon’s success is linked to the way it harnesses the collective intelligence of its huge base of users through recommendations and rankings. Google develops powerful information-access tools, then gives them to its users – for free – and makes billions by selling ads. In these models, the revenue-generating potential of a Web site is exponentially amplified by the size and activities of its audience.”

Smithsonian Web and New Media Strategy, 2009, p. 16 http://smithsonian webstrategy.wikispaces.com/file/view/20090729_Smithsonian-Web-New-Media-Strategy_v1.0.pdf

Outcome of free download?

• Increased usage (blogs, Wikipedia, education, publications, TV productions, print products, creative projects, hackathons etc.)

• Increased traffic to smk.dk (CC BY asks the users to credit the source)

• More visitors to SMK

• In short = more users and usage

"When SMK releases images of 159 artworks under CC BY, it means that we in Wikipedia are able to write better articles about both the artists, the artworks, and the motifs.”

Ole Palnatoke Andersen, Wikipedia Denmarkhttp://wiki.creativecommons.org/Case_Studies/Highlights_from_SMK,_The_National_Gallery_of_Denmark

Jan van Goyen, View of the City of Arnhem, 1646

”One example: In 1646, Jan van Goyen painted a prospect of the city of Arnhem. This image is not only fit to illustrate the article about van Goyen, but also the one about Arnhem, 1646, tonal landscape painting, and tulipomania - not just in Danish, but in all the languages that Wikipedia is available in.”

Why daring pays off

• Running government smarter– Public Domain content should be free

• Running business smarter– Building a loyal & supportive community

of users

And, most importantly…• Supporting a culture of sharing

– An environment where innovation and creativity thrives

Povertà vien dal timor!

Oralto’s aria ”Chi dal cielo”Antonio Vivaldi, La Fida Ninfa, 1731

(a work in the Public Domain)

Merete SanderhoffProject researcher

merete.sanderhoff@smk.dk@MSanderhoff