Super-SuccessfulGLAMs

Opening remarks for

The Commons and Digital Humanities in Museums

Sponsored by the City University of New York Digital Humanities Initiative

November 28, 2012

http://cunydhi.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2012/11/07/wednesday-november-28-the-commons-and-digital-humanities-in-museums/

Michael EdsonDirector, Web and New Media Strategy

Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.@mpedson

Slideshare.net/edsonm

[Annotated/expanded text.][Note: big font size for better reading on Slideshare.][Note: I’m not an official spokesperson for the Smithsonian Institution. These views are my own.]

They have some of the most important missions in society,

The increase and diffusion of knowledge

Smithsonian Institution, USA 1

A center for learning, tolerance, dialogue and understanding

Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt 2

...[To support] citizens in the defense of their rights and

encourage the production of scientific and cultural knowledge

Arquivo Nacional, Brasil 3

They are GLAMs: galleries, libraries, archives, and museums—

sometimes called memory institutions—and I have yet to visit a healthy

community without one or meet an individual who has not had their life

changed by one in some way.

But this talk is about turning that bet on its head and asking: Can you,

with your heads and hands and hearts, change GLAMs?

Can everyone, working together in new ways, amplify and supersize the

impact that GLAMs have in society?

1

● Can we put the tools of knowledge creation—of all kinds of

creation— into more hands to catalyze research and

discovery?

● Can we share the joy and meaning of artistic and cultural

exploration with more citizens?

● Can we deepen engagement with the challenges that face our

species, and in doing so, can we nurture the habits of a civil

and sustainable society?

● And ultimately, can we make these changes quickly enough,

and at big enough scale, to make a substantial difference in the

lives of individuals and the fate of our species?

I hope that tonight, Will Noel, Christina DePaolo, and Neal Stimler and I

will outline, in one interrupted chain of thought, the ideas that connect

successful - - supersuccessful - - galleries, libraries, archives, and

museums, with the essential capabilities of the World Wide Web so that

we can get better outcomes, for society - - for all of us.

I have no doubt that we are capable of changing GLAMs—they are,

after all, just human institutions: made by us, for us. The first question

then - - the first link - - is not whether change is strategically possible or

tactically achievable, it is whether we care enough about the institutions

and the outcomes to make change happen in the first place.

The success of GLAMs is a matter of urgency

So let me begin by asserting that the work of GLAMs matters, now.

GLAMs are easy to dismiss as tourist attractions, warehouses, book

depots, or the trophies of rich industrialists.

But look at GLAM mission statements - - look at what they say they do,

and sometimes actually do, and then look at the problems we face on

earth today.

We, as a species, are faced with unprecedented environmental, social,

and geopolitical stresses 4,

● atmospheric carbon has reached 391.03 parts-per-million

● 16,928 species are currently threatened with extinction, including

21% of all mammals

● there are 63 active armed conflicts worldwide

● and 1.4 billion people—more than the populations of the USA,

Canada, and the European Union nations combined—live on the

equivalent of less than $1.25 a day.

And these are just some of the challenges of the present moment: the

future is even more uncertain, and it is likely that we will live the rest of

our lives in an epoch of dramatic and accelerating change - - even

without taking into account what will surely come crashing down on us,

as a species: the specter of DIY-Biology and advanced biotechnology,

nanotechnology, and artificially extended human life just to name a

few.5

As Sir Ken Robinson said at the closing talk of the 2006 TED

conference,

“If you think of it, children starting school this year will be retiring

in 2065. Nobody has a clue, despite all the expertise that's been on

parade over the last 4 days, what the world will look like in 5 years

time, and yet we're meant to be educating them for it. So the

unpredictability, I think, is extraordinary." 6

Given the missions of GLAMs and the resources and attention they

consume, an objective observer would reasonably conclude that we, in

our societies, believe they represent a potent tool for addressing big

challenges.7 GLAMS are supposed to nurture creativity and knowledge

creation; learning and independent thinking; civic engagement and

dialogue around ideas that matter.

There are approximately 18,000 museums in the USA alone, and

together they spend more than $20.7 billion annually to achieve their

goals: this is more than the gross domestic product of almost half the

nations on earth.8

Society has wagered, by creating and supporting memory institutions,

continuously and at great expense for thousands of years,9 that they are

good for civilization. That if we take them away or weaken their

effectiveness we get less learning, less enlightenment, less knowledge

and wisdom, and less shared experience and dialogue in our

communities—and that we will be impoverished by this absence.

Conversely, we wager that if GLAMs succeed—have more impact,

touch more people more deeply in more ways—our communities will be

nourished.

But the primary model we have used to convert our investments in

GLAMs into civic value is an old one, based on tools and methods that

enclose resources, exclude participants, and ultimately diminish

outcomes.

The impact of GLAMs is inhibited by the broadcast model

We formed our collective expectations for the performance of memory

institutions—how they do their work and the scale of impact they could

achieve—back in the 20th century, in the age of enduring wisdom,

before the World Wide Web.10 This was the broadcast era, and it

worked the same in GLAMs as it did in government, business, and

nonprofits. To create outcomes in the world using broadcast era tools,

leaders needed to,

hire experts and put them in a organization, with offices,

cubicles, an administrative staff, lawyers, a human resources

department...

put resources into the organization: money, trust, mindshare,

reputation, real estate, physical and intellectual property

try to get something valuable to come out of the other end

In this model, the people inside the organization—the experts—defined

the problems, engineered the solutions, and delivered them as final

products down a one-way pipe to mostly passive recipients—consumers

—on the other end. This was a reasonable way to work given what was

possible with the mass media platforms that were available: We didn’t

know we could enlist the participation of millions of individuals in any

way because we couldn’t harness, or even find those participants

through television, radio, and print publishing platforms.11 We did know

that we could count the number of visitors through our doors, the

number of items accessioned into collections, and the number of

scholarly publications we published. And it was good.

My sense is that most GLAMs were founded, staffed, and organized

before the World Wide Web.12 Most GLAMs still utilize the broadcast

model almost exclusively, and it can do a lot of good.13 The broadcast

model gives us stately library buildings filled with patrons borrowing

books, glorious museum exhibitions, research publications, and priceless

collections of scientific and cultural artifacts. The broadcast model will

continue to be important for scholarship, learning, and culture in the

future, but given what we now know about the physics of the web - -

what it allows us to do that we have never been able to do before - - the

broadcast model seems like an incomplete model for accomplishing

important things in society.

But three ideas, central to the work of Will, Christina, Neal - - and also

everyone at the CUNY Digital Humanities Initiative, define a new way

forward.

Joy’s Law, Cognitive Surplus, and Kathy Sierra’s “Every user a hero...”

- - they illuminate the path forward. They fire a lethal silver bullet

through the werewolf heart of 20th century broadcast model value

creation.

Joy’s law

Bill Joy was the co-founder of Sun Microsystems in the U.S., and he

famously said "no matter what business you're in, most of the smartest

people work for someone else."14

That’s not an easy thing to say at a staff meeting, but think about it.

For example, the Smithsonian Institution’s mission is “The increase and

diffusion of knowledge”, and of their core objectives is to create

breakthroughs in biodiversity and climate change research.15 But there

are 6,000 Smithsonian employees, only a small fraction of whom work

directly on climate change or biodiversity issues and there are 7 billion

people on earth? Where is most of the innovation, and the drive, and the

knowledge, and the discovery going to happen---where is most of that

work going to happen? Inside the walls of a single institution? Or

everywhere else on the planet? That's what Joy's Law is all about. Joy's

Law stands the broadcast model on its head.

Cognitive Surplus

The second idea is Cognitive Surplus. Cognitive Surplus is the title of a

recent book by Clay Shirky, and in it Clay figures out that among the

Internet connected, educated population of planet earth there are a

trillion hours of free time every year that can be used to achieve some

greater good.

A trillion hours.

Clay notes that in the United States over 200 billion of those hours are

spent watching television.

There's a lot of time there that can be used, with a new way of

organizing, to accomplish something.

Every user a hero…

The third law of physics I want to talk about is by Kathy Sierra, who is a

thought leader in social media and new media. Kathy has observed that

in the old days of the 20th century, an institution, a brand, a government

would say "Trust me, trust us, because we are great." And she observes

that now the formula is "Trust us, buy our product, follow us, because

we help make you great."

That’s a very different way of running an organization, or approaching

creating value in society: rather than being great - - succeeding by

manufacturing greatness within the organizational walls - - greatness is

achieved indirectly, by helping individuals to be successful outside

organizational walls.

Kathy Tweeted in 2009,

"I am your user. I am supposed to be the protagonist. I am on a

hero's journey. Your company should be a mentor or a helpful

sidekick. Not an orc." 16

What you should do

So, let’s say you believe that these things are true - - that transition

between broadcast models and other models really happening and you

want to make it happen, as a citizen, a policy maker, or an employee of a

gallery, library, archive, or museum. What do you do? If you looked at

the actions of an individual or organization, how could you tell the ones

who believe this has happened from those that do not?

Over the years I’ve written about the design patterns of how

organizations make these thing happen - - ingredients that, together and

in different combinations, seem to feed the kinds of scale and

interactions we are seeking - - we so desperately need in society. And

you can look these up and read them and make use of them.17 And Will

and Matt and Neal and Christina will talk about some of the practical

and useful applications of these commons design patterns: I have learned

these patterns from watching their - - and your - - actions.

But I want to mention five things that can be done, practically, by almost

anyone who has an interest in advancing the goals of society through the

work of galleries, libraries, archives, and museums.

[Note to readers: More work needed here - - I’ll update this

document as I introduce new/better examples. Thanks!!]

1. Look outside your organization

The first is to think, not “what can I do inside my organization, to

advance my goals” but to look for people and groups - - outside your

organization. Find those people, and ask them, with all humility, how

you can help them. Rather than try to manufacture all the outcomes you

want from within your organizational walls, ask people already active

doing the kinds of things you want to see more of in the world how you

can contribute to their success.

[Examples of things institutions can do (Tracking down examples

of):

Stockholm’s Tekniska Museet (Technical Museum) hosts

regular Nerd Cafés for science and technology enthusiasts

genealogy resources at National Archives of Denmark, and

crowdsourced content

OBA library in Amsterdam gives free office space to

entrepreneurs and startups

US National Archives’ Citizen Archivist Dashboard

The Arctic Studies Center at the Anchorage Museum

gives… ]

2. Find a piece of information you can liberate

Will Noel and Christina DePaolo [presenting next], as individuals within

their organizations, are methodically working to ensure that high quality

resources are more findable, more accessible - - and, by removing

unnecessary intellectual property restrictions - - more reusable by people

who are advancing the goals of their institutions.

Christina’s project, the Balboa Park Commons, is focused on

releasing huge quantities of resources for educators. 18

In May, 2012 the Walters Museum uploaded 19,000 images from

their collections into the Wikimedia Commons, so that those

resources and their metadata can be freely incorporated into

Wikipedia articles, and also - - because they released most of the

images and metadata into the public domain - - re-used by anyone

for any purpose.19

[Anyone can contribute re-usable photographs and text to the

Wiki Loves Monuments project. In 2012 “More than 350,000

images have been submitted by over 15,000 people for the 2012

competition in countries all over the world.”

(http://www.wikilovesmonuments.org/ )]

3. Generate effort

In my own digital projects, I’m focusing less and less on counting hits,

image views, and the length of visitor sessions, and more on generating

effort and action - - human hours invested towards outcomes I care

about. In one project I’ve included a goal of generating a million hours a

year of effort from users.

[Examples: Trove (Australian national library), OpenStreetMaps,

Zooniverse, Cam Clicker, Open Ideo…]

4. Where do you want to be in 1 year?

If we gather here again a year ago from today, what one or two things to

we need to have accomplished...Or we should hang our heads in shame.

Often when I put that challenge to an organization or work group, the

goals they set are accomplished in weeks and months. Relentless focus

on goals is required to make progress in any context.

[Example: Statens Museum for Kunst (National Gallery of

Denmark) open access initiatives/CC-BY pilot project]

5. Think big, start small, move fast

Finally, this is something I picked up from the social entrepreneurship

movement, and I repeat it in almost every talk I give: Think big, start

small, move fast - - but move. Get it done.

* * *

So, looking at these examples and thinking about the talks you’re about

to hear, I’m confident we can move from exclusive, broadcast methods

of value creation to inclusive, saleable, powerful models.

WE can put the tools of knowledge creation into more hands to catalyze

research and discovery

We can share the joy and meaning of artistic and cultural exploration

with more citizens

We can deepen engagement with the challenges that face our species,

and in doing so, can we nurture the habits of a civil and sustainable

society

And we can we make these changes quickly enough, and at big enough

scale, to make a substantial difference in the lives of individuals and the

fate of our species

This story matters now because the stakes, now, are ridiculously high.

Our fulfillment as individuals, the deep rewards of our family and

community life, the future of our species, and the plight of every other

living thing on earth might quite literally depend on the next few

decisions we make about how our civic institutions work and what kinds

of interactions and outcomes they celebrate.

Thank you.

1 See http://www.si.edu/about2 See http://www.bibalex.org/aboutus/mission_en.aspx 3 See http://www.arquivonacional.gov.br/cgi/cgilua.exe/sys/start.htm?sid=14 Sources for these facts are carbon: http://co2now.org/; extinctions: Facing the Future

http://www.facingthefuture.org/GlobalIssuesResources/GlobalIssuesTours/Biodiversity/tabid/506/Default.aspx?gclid=CIGFoO6-t7ICFcaiPAodLjIAaA ; armed conflicts: http://conflictmap.org ; poverty: Office of the UN Commissioner for Refugees, http://www.unhcr.org/4a2fd52412d.html

5 John Kotter establishes the basic premise that we live in a time of accelerating change in his book A Sense of

Urgency. (Harvard Business Press, 2008). The “DIY” in DIY Biology is an acronym for “Do It Yourself” - - see Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIY_biology) and Biopunk: DIY Scientists Hack the Software of Life, http://marcuswohlsen.com/book/

6 "Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity"

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html, filmed February 2006

7 There are a lot of ways to assess the success, and failure, of individual institutions and GLAMs as a whole. For the

purpose of this short chapter I’m asking the readers to perform a kind of logical shortcut and just consider what GLAMs say they do, as expressed in their mission statements, and the resources and privilege we confer to them.

8 “Museum Financial Information, 2009”, AAM Press, 2009. AAM notes that the number of museums is extrapolated

from other data and is not an exact count. The $20.7 billion figure is cited on p. 49.

Regarding the GDP information, see International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook Database, October 2010: Nominal GDP list of countries, data for the year 2009, http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2010/02/weodata/index.aspx. Of the 181 countries whose GDP's are listed by this report, 86 have GDP's under $20.7 billion. Getting the data from this resource directly is a little complex but the Wikipedia has a useful summary at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal).

9 I haven’t found a solid reference for the appearance of the first library, museum, or archive in human civilization, but

the Library of Alexandria was built in the 3rd century B.C. (Wikipedia cites the Letter of Aristeas as the source for this, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria

10 See Tim O’Reilly’s seminal essay from 2005, “What is Web 2.0”, http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-

20.html

11 Clay Shirky and Chris Anderson (of Wired magazine) have done an extraordinary job of articulating this point over

the years.

12 To-do: facts to back this up.

13 Though there are innovative, non-broadcast activities in many GLAMs, they tend to be small scale and low risk

projects when compared with overall institutional budgets and staff hour commitments. As a general indication of this, the American Association of Museum’s “Museum Financial Information, 2009” report, cited above, states that the median annual Internet and website investment in American museums is $5,113, just 0.4 percent of total operating expenses, though they note that further research is needed to understand if the number reported is truly representative of all expenses (p. 106). Clearly, American museums, as a whole, are not investing much money in new digital publishing and audience engagement paradigms, or technology projects of any kind.

14 Joy's Law is frequently referenced in business and strategy contexts without academic source attribution. A suitable primary reference seems to be Lakhani KR, Panetta JA, "The Principles of Distributed Innovation," 2007, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1021034

15 See http://www.si.edu/about 16 From Twitter user KathySierra, November 5, 200917 I’m thinking specifically of

“Making and the Commons” http://www.slideshare.net/edsonm/makers-and-the-commons

“Museums and the Commons: Helping Makers Get Stuff Done” http://www.slideshare.net/edsonm/museums-and-the-commons-helping-makers-get-stuff-done-6779050

“Imagining the Smithsonian Commons”http://www.slideshare.net/edsonm/cil-2009-michael-edson-text-version

18 See http://www.balboapark.org/bpoc/work/commons 19 See https://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/05/08/walters-museum-uploads-19000-photos-to-wikimedia-commons/ . Note that there seems to be some uncertainty about the intellectual property status of some of the works and texts - - see the comments at the end of the above-referenced blog post. I’m not sure what to think at this point: more research needed.