For some insight, we look at a crowdsourced history site: Historypin is an appealing database of historical photos, with dates, locations, captions, and other metadata. It’s called History “pin” because the photos are pinned on a map. (See recent article about Changes over time, in photos and maps.) Some locations have photos from multiple dates, showing how a place has changed over time, or cross-referenced with Google Maps StreetView. Currently, Historypin has 308k items, from 51k users, and 1.4k institutions. This is a graph of pins over the last three years:

Aside from a change in their growth rate in early 2012, growth is linear. Since new users are always being added, the linear rate of content growth means users are losing interest. The following are activity rates:

These graphs show some trends:

• New users: In early 2013, Historypin was pulling in around 23 new users a day, and that rate nearly doubled by late summer. But there was a precipitous fall in July 2013, and Historypin currently averages 17 new users per day.
• New institutions: This rate is more consistent, hovering around two new institutions per day. This rate will eventually limit as they saturate the market.
• Daily pins: Between personal and institutional users, and ignoring a one-time spike in May 2013, the rate of new contributions hovers around 200-300 items per day.

How much do users participate? Users can join for many reasons; e.g., to contribute, to be able to make favorites (bookmarks), of curiosity, or because they are spammers. As with many sites, most users are dormant, with just a few users doing most of the activity. The following are the number of pins posted per user:

Four out of five users never post a photo, and 9% only upload one image. The remaining 12% are enumerated in the above-right graph (starting at the top clockwise).

Not another drop in the bucket

It can be thankless to contribute to a crowdsourcing site, so successful projects provide a broader context and community. Historypin illustrates some good practices.

One strategy is to have themes. Rather than generic task (“do stuff”), a theme narrows the scope (“do stuff about the San Francisco Bay”). For example, here are three current Historypin themes:

Themes are also used by the DIY History site from University of Iowa Libraries, where volunteers have been recruited to transcribe 37,507 handwritten pages of stories of Civil War soldiers and their families, of Iowa women making lives for themselves and their communities, and other themes like cookbooks, women’s lives, and the machinations of railroad barons. In DIY history, they have a large archive collection, organized into these themes.

Here’s one of their letters, which needs transcription:

Narrow themes create a manageable and achievable workload, offsetting the drudgery of transcription, and providing satisfaction to volunteers.

Other good features

Projects must have robust, easy to use technology so that volunteers can easily get started and participate.

Also, draw on gamefication principles: Keep it fun and satisfying, include some challenge and sense of accomplishments. Old Weather has a clear process. It’s clear how to get involved, and easy to follow individual and project progress.

Another motivator for contributors is to have tangible outcomes or context. For example, Old Weather has tangible outcomes, providing Arctic and worldwide weather observations which are fed into climate models of past environmental conditions; and tracking past ship movements so historians can tell the stories of the people on board.

Appeal and ease of use matters. A similar idea, “Papers of the War Department” from the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University is progressing much slower, with 1.6k registered users (since June 2010), and approximately 200 people volunteering on the site per three month period. Volunteers have transcribed approx 4 thousand (out of 43k total) documents. At this rate, the Mason project will be done in 30 years. Check out their site, and you’ll see how it falls flat.

So what’s happening with Historypin?

Historypin is not growing exponentially. It’s not viral. Rather, Historypin’s rates of new users, new content, and new content per user have been falling in 2013. Here are a few theories:

• Failure to tap a nerve – Not many people care to help stick photo pins on a map, despite their themed projects. Some ideas don’t stick.
• Hasn’t reached a critical density – The earth has 149 million square kilometers of land. London is 1.5k square kilometers. A density of 1 photo per square kilometer would be require ~500x more pins.
• Monolingual – Historypin wants to have a global community, but the site is exclusively English. It’s not hard to translate a user interface. (See our 2012 article about outsourcing translations.)
• Closed system – There’s no way to export your content, link it to another system, nor is there an API. Similarly, they did not pursue a way for institutions to use their site on the backend, e.g., for a historical society in a small town to create a local site on their platform.
• Questionable owner & future – The absence of clear funding sources undermines confidence in the long term prospects. Historypin was created by We Are What We Do, a “not-for-profit behaviour change company.” Their other projects range from branding a series of plastic shopping bags for a British retailer, to embroidered napkins with Tweets. The sole mention of a funding source for Historypin is a vague comment about support from Google.
• Bugs – Most of the technology on the Historypin site is slick and polished, but the core action of browsing photos on a map is buggy and awkward unless you zoom in close. Their mobile app is criticized by many users for being buggy and inadequate.

It’s a shame, because they are doing lots of things right, with a visually appealing site, an active and authentic blog, smooth technology, a mobile app, and some social media (Twitter, Facebook) to give contributors a sense of what’s new. In August 2013, Historypin acquired a smaller, similar project, LookBackMaps, but that has not boosted activity.

Invaluable labor

These considerations are important because crowdsourcing with volunteers has strong potential to deliver two kinds of content:

(a) Content which requires human judgement. For example, transcription projects focus on documents which are impossible to digitize automatically with OCR, but cost prohibitive to be transcribed by paid staff. Volunteers to the rescue! Once digitized, the documents become more vital, searchable in full text, read online, cross-referenced and mined by researchers. Fascinating insights can be extracted from large amounts of historical text.

(b) Content in which volunteers have unique knowledge. For example, the beauty of Historypin is that so much of the world’s photographic history is owned by individuals. When people share these old photos, scanning their family albums and the like, many other, interesting questions can be asked and explored.

What do you think?

What other crowdsourced projects in science and culture should folks know about? And what do you think are key ingredients for success?

Data source: Statistics from the home page and site of HistoryPin and other projects, over time.

Here’s an overview of several facets of crowdsourcing.

Motivations

Competition vs. collaboration are two common frameworks for projects. A competition can draw dozens or or thousands of participants who seek a prize. Unlike grant solicitations, these competitions are based on objective results, not on resumes, prior work or personal history. A collaboration typically involves a participant working on a small piece of a larger project.  

The Walker Art Center ran a crowdsourced video festival & awards competition (First International Cat Video Festival) attracting 10,000 entries and over 10,000 attendees.

Fundraising

Crowd funding is when educational projects are funded by individual, online contributors or investors.  Most crowdfunding is done via web sites which list projects, and provide a means for donors to commit. Typically, project funding is all-or-nothing.

One of the leading sites is Kickstarter, which since their launch in spring 2009, has funded over $417 million, funding over 36,000 creative projects. The “Let’s Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum” crowdfunding campaign on IndieGogo, another major crowdfunding site, enable a nonprofit group to buy Tesla’s old lab, which was threatened with development. The group raised over $1,370,511, reaching their original $800k goal in under a week.

Crowd funding tends to work best for a hip projects, on average, a third of projects are funded.

Crowdfunding is distinct from traditional, online fundraising, in that it is focused on projects, not general operations. In the traditional realm, in Q2 2012, charities reported $204-million in total online gifts (10.9% growth over Q2 2011) and $180.9-million for Q3 2012 (8.9% over Q3 2011), with an average gift of $77, according to data provided to The Chronicle of Philanthropy. More people are giving online, albeit in smaller amounts, than in past years.

See a prior blog post on crowdfunding virtual exhibits.

Workers

Cloud Labor is hiring a distributed virtual labor pool, available on-demand, to fulfull a range of tasks from simple to complex. With enticing projects, this can mean a ton of volunteers …

• The New York Public Library is developing a citizen cartography tool that lets the public take information archived on digitized historical maps and use the data to tag a searchable interface built with Open Street Map. The goal: a larger, more detailed database that will help future researchers.
• The National Library of Finland created the digitalkoot project to help digitize millions of pages of archival material. Visitors to the site transcribe old books one word at a time while playing a video game. Think CAPTCHA meets Angry Birds.
• The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (in partnership with the private company Ancestry.com) has recruited “citizen historians” to research historical documents from WWII. The Children of the Lodz Ghetto project is designed to teach historical skills while “restor[ing] names and stories to those whose identities were nearly silenced by a force that nearly succeeded in making them disappear completely from history.”
• Many natural history museums coordinate “citizen science” projects that enlist public help to tackle large research challenges, like collecting and identifying ants, transcribing data from the labels on century-old cicadas or spotting celestial phenomena.
• Many other citizen science projects have elements of crowdsourcing. See SciStarter for more citizen science projects.

In addition, administrative work can sometimes be done. Fansourcing involves recruiting fans to do administrative tasks which are more interesting to enthusiastic fans (brand advocates) than low-level staff. It can connect volunteer fans with potential visitors via live chat, or moderating online discussions and answering customer service questions. The volunteers offer their genuine enthusiasm, not necessarily a deep professional expertise.

Aside from volunteer engagement, the majority of cloud labor is paid. Simple tasks are often paid at hourly rates below $5/hour. See a prior blog post on outsourcing some outreach tasks to freelancers. It tends to drive towards the lowest common denominator, so it’s best for tasks that are suitable for non-professionals. Quality control is often maintained by double and triple-checking work through redundancy. For example, if the task was to write tags describing a painting, the same painting could be tagged by 5 workers, with software to detect spammy responses, and look for tags common to multiple workers.

Politics

Civic Engagement is collective actions that address issues of public concern. This works on both local and national levels. The White House could collect ideas on how to change the manufacturing industry from those who work in it. It asks people which technologies they think are the most important to the industry, as well as what sort of future regulation they believe would be beneficial. Soliciting responses via the internet, in public, eliminates barriers to participation.

Knowledge of the crowd

Collective Knowledge  is development of knowledge assets or information resources from a distributed pool of contributors. This type of mass collaboration is best showcased by the Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. Here are some smaller projects which collected votes from their community:

• The Smithsonian American Art Museum invited the public to vote via the Web on which examples of video games to include in its “Art of Video Games” exhibit.
• In 2010, the Walker had 50/50: Audience and Experts Curate the Paper Collection, in which visitors cast over a quarter million votes about which of 183 paper artworks should go into an upcoming exhibition.
• In 2008, the Brooklyn Museum invited visitors to help choose the best photos for an exhibition.

Talent of the crowd

Collective Creativity  taps into creative talent pools to design and develop original art, media or content. This can mean new creative works by professionals, or non-professionals.

• Several museums, including the Smithsonian, The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis and the British Museum, have established positions for “Wikipedians in Residence.” The Wikipedians push museum data and images into the Wikipedia universe, as well as soliciting and managing content from the wiki-editing crowd. (See my blog post on reaching the public using Wikipedia.)
• RunCoCo is advice on how to run a community collection online (see PDF).
• New Zealand was looking to revitalize their tourism campaign, and hosted a contest for young filmmakers. Their reward was the opportunity to screen their work in front of famous filmmaker Peter Jackson, plus a trip to New Zealand to shoot and produce a 3-minute film.
• In 2007, World Without Oil, was a crowdsourced public media narrative which invited players to participate in a collaborative simulation of a global oil shortage by playing an online mystery game, and later generating their own stories about the crisis and strategizing ways to manage it.

Open Sourcing is a philosophy and approach that promotes free redistribution and access to an end product’s design and implementation details. It’s the opposite of keeping secrets or paid licensing. Key benefits are broader use and publicity. Some popular projects are also able to foster a community where people outside the organization also contribute. Typically, revenue comes from selling related services, or grants. For example, Omeka is a web-publishing platform for library, museum, archives, and scholarly collections and exhibitions.

Communities

Community Building  is developing communities through active engagement of individuals who share common passions, beliefs or interests.

Preserapedia is an open encyclopedia for heritage conservation with over 1 thousand articles.

In business

The term was popularized by journalist Jeff Howe in a 2006 Wired article “The Rise of Crowdsourcing,” about outsourcing labor to the “crowd,” but the concept rapidly broadened beyond labor. In business, crowdsourcing now means obtaining services, ideas, content, or money from a large group of people. “Crowdsourcing has become a very successful business model for many startups such as YouTube, Wikipedia, Reddit, Threadless and Kickstarter – to name only a few. But so far, its usage by big companies has been sporadic and experimental,” notes François Pétavy, CEO of eYeka, a crowdsourcing platform. Pétavye says that use in the business world is growing, and that crowdsourcing now solves a variety of real world problems, have a demonstrable return on investment.

It is related to other evolving concepts. For example, Open Innovation is using of sources outside of the entity of group to generate, develop and implement ideas.

Tools are applications and platforms that support collaboration, communication, and sharing among distributed groups of people.

Source: The categories above, and the lede illustration, are adapted from Crowdsourcing.org. Several projects from AAM TrendsWatch 2012 (PDF).

Located east of Detroit, on the shore of Lake St. Clair, near the Milk River (photo below), the Ford house is involved with water quality monitoring as part of the worldwide GLOBE hands-on, school-based science and education program. The science part of the picture involves having students input water quality results into a global database. Shires notes, “Many groups who are engaged in ongoing testing come back for history tours of the house.”  Student visitors also learn about history of the family, including their love and respect for the water.

The Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens in Akron, Ohio has a successful program for 9th grade students from the local ‘Science’ High School. The students do two days of experiential learning activities on the 70 acre estate during a summer program before starting school. During the tours, the students learn about architecture, landscape design and technology, and they also assess primary source materials including archival blueprints, letters and historic photos. One of the science teachers remarked, “To be in their community and creating something that someone could really use–that is the motivation.”

Read more about both programs in Shires’ blog post at AASLH, “Bringing in Other Disciplines to Your Historic Site.”

Another cool example of multidisciplinary outreach school programs is at the Roberson Museum and Science Center (Binghamton, NY):

• Hands-on science, history and art. Students discover animal adaptations by studying taxidermy specimens, participate in magical science experiences, build steampunk scultptures, or explore antique objects and create a new use for them;
• School receives a mysterious artifact once a month (September-May) for your classroom. Artifacts range from tools to toys and relate to American History;
• Discover the Iroquois, their culture, their relationship with the land and how European culture has impacted native peoples. Students create pinch pots and learn Native American constellation legends in the Planetarium.

List of the best hashtags for education and outreach…

• #edtech: Using technology in education, both theory and practice
• #elearning: Computer-based learning and remote study. Can include computers, kiosks, mobile devices
• #OER: Open educational resources for reuse and repurposing, e.g., textbooks in the Creative Commons license
• #crowdsource: Delegating small tasks to a large group. Both business and outreach uses
• #STEM: Promoting knowledge of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. See also #scied.
• #OpenAccess & #OA: Projects that deliver free, immediate, open access to research online (Nice intro video)
• #mlearning: Learning mobile apps and devices. Contrasts with “elearning” above
• #edreform,  #edpolitics, & #edpolicy: Discussions of educational reform, policy and politics
• #ece: Promoting and discussing early childhood education, see also #earlyed
• #mtogo: Museums exploring the use of mobile, both in and out of their museum
• #dataviz: Data visualization, charts and graphs, information design
• #gbl: Game based learning. See also #gamification for broader uses in learning and commerce
• #commoncore & #ccss: Common Core State Standards (CCSS)
• #speced: Special education discussion and advocacy, see also #sped
• #museumed: Museum-based education, see also the lower traffic #mtogo for mobile-focused outreach
• #YouthSkillsWork: Youth and skills, often focused on developing countries
• #iPadEd & #iosedapp: Teachers and developers working with Apple iOS apps and eBooks
• #edcamp: Local, professional development conferences for K-12 educators, participant-driven (See Edcamp Foundation)
• #playoutdoors: Encouraging people to get outside. (Read about nature-rich society)
• #BlendedLearning: Course structures that blend of face-to-face and online learning environments
• #afterschoolworks: Promoting various types of after school programs for youth
• #museweb: Museums using the web in various ways
• #MOOCs: Massive open online courses, often free and not-for-credit, for thousands of students
• #HigherEd: Issues in higher education
• #edleadership & #edadmin: Views on leadership/administration in education
• #PBL: Project-based learning and tools
• #flipclass: In flipped classrooms, students learn lessons at home (often watching videos), and do assignments in class.

If hashtags are new to you, read this short orientation from Twitter about hashtags or read a short history.

There are many ways to use these hashtags. For example, if you are an app developer and have created a new educational app, you can use these hashtags to lurk in on discussions among your target audience, and include the hashtag in your tweets to increase the chance that influential educators find out about your project. Or if you’ve made a new video, try promoting it with #flipclass.

Direct to your audience

Aside from museums, most outreach organizations do not directly reach their audience via Twitter. In particular, if you create resources for students, you are likely to ultimately reach those students via their educators. Twitter is a convenient place to find out what those educators are talking about, try to get your project picked up by some influential Tweeters, or get some feedback.

Moreover, there is a vibrant, unorganized community of adult learners, self motivated to pursue new knowledge. Twitter is a useful watering hole for them as well, particularly if you use subject-oriented hashtags, such as: anthropology, Archaeology, art, ArtHistory, astronomy, autism, bilingual, BlackHistoryMonth, books, Brain, Breastfeeding, cern, climate, climatechange, Creativity, Culture, dinos, Dinosaurs, diy, dyslexia, earth, engagement, environment, Fossils, health, history, homeschooling, Imagination, journalism, kids, literature, microbiology, NASASocial, neuroscience, painting, Paleontology, photography, physics, Picasso, poetry, Psychology, read, reading, Refuge, religion, research, science, scientists, sculpture, Sociology, space, specialneeds, telescope, toxicology, and Writing.

Source: We compiled a list of over one thousand hashtags which appear among popular education, outreach, literacy, museum, and e-learning Twitter feeds, plus the accounts which @IDEA_org follows, and this list in a live Google Doc  from Chiew Pang (@aClilToClimb). We ranked the hashtags based on the multiple scoring factors, including signal-to-noise, relevance to education and outreach, the number of times the hashtag was Tweeted on Friday, 26-October (volume), the total number of times the hashtag was delivered to Twitter timelines (exposure), and the number of  people using the hashtag. 

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA3H1rqiJpk

Palmer sharing comments after a presentation at AAAS last night about wildlife filmmaking.

Palmer works to promote better portrayal of wildlife in film, both in terms of imbuing films with a conservation message, and also by maintaing an authenticity to filming wild animals. He emphasizes that scientists and filmmakers need each other. The filmmaker gains scientific insights and can anchor story arcs around scientific inquiry; and the scientist gets the word out about their work and the broader issues they study.

There are many great examples of science public outreach on video, but there should be much more. And not only in photogenic fields of wildlife biology and astronomy. But when working with video, all scientists will struggle with the conflict Palmer desribes on some level, as they seek to be brief, and express scientific concepts with relatable metaphors.

Translations

In our global world, there’s no excuse for staying limited to English speakers, especially when there’s greater need for education in non-English places. Even if you have multilingual staff, most translations will be better and more cost effective if you outsource. Professional translators are efficient, and skilled at adapting idioms and phrases. They tend to be detail-oriented, soft spoken individuals.

ProZ – Text translations of any size, e.g., articles, reports, books. ProZ also has interpreters. Quality translation into a Western language costs $0.07-$0.15 per word, languages from developing economies cost a bit less. Target the upper range, e.g., €0.10 EUR per word if you were going to French. If you know a native speaker, have them review a few of the most promising applicants’ samples. The workflow is that you send the translator your text, and they email you back the translation. If you have large volumes, a translator can translate 30k words a month, going up to 50k if you have bursts of work. Over 300 thousand translators represented.

ICanLocalize – Software translations, such as the short text labels which are part of any web site or app. Little texts like “Back,” “Next,” “Go to article.” We recently used them to translate our WikiNodes app into 18 languages. The cost is $0.10-0.15 per word, including their 20% commission and a 50% fee for peer review. Your programmers first consolidate all the text blurbs from your app into single files (“localization”). Conveniently, you can upload many common formats to their site, and then download them back to put in your app a few days later. Their translators are savvy to the nuances of software localization, and will know that “back” is navigation, not the region between your neck and your buttocks.

Voiceovers

Voice123 – If you are creating a radio advertisement, podcast, game, or need narration for a video, and you want a specific kind of professional voice, there’s an infinite world of voiceover artists. Voice actors have a range of styles, from youthful to movie trailer. Voice123 has had 220 thousand voice talents sign up, giving 3.1 million audition samples, since being founded in 2003. There are a few voiceover marketplaces, Voices.com is another option. With both sites, voice actors — with a diverse range of prices and skills — will give you short samples to listen to. These professionals have studios (microphones and audio software) in their office, and can often send back short recordings within a matter of hours. A ~1 minute recording (e.g., voice track for a video) could cost $50-100. But the price is not linear, so 2 minutes is not 2x the cost of 1 minute.

Simple, repetitive tasks

Some tasks need a person to be involved (i.e., can’t be done by a computer), but don’t need a highly skilled professional. For example, reviewing thousands of blog posts or comments for spam or abuse, categorizing posts or photos, retyping entries from print or PDF into a spreadsheet, or looking up thousands of web sites or Twitter handles for your members. Workers can be paid around $3-10/hour, typically paid 5-10 cents per task. You never know who the workers are, it could a a retiree in Montana, or a 19 -year-old in Delhi.

CrowdFlower makes these tasks easy to manage. They deal with the details of hiring remote workers, and charge a commission for serving as an intermediary.

If you want to go straight to the source, check out Amazon Mechanical Turk (which CrowdFlower and others use as their backend). With Mechanical Turk, you define small tasks, called a “HIT,” (e.g., looking at a photo from your site, and assigning a category), upload the task as a spreadsheet file (each spreadsheet row is a different photo URL). Depending on the price you set, you may have none, or dozens of workers working on different rows from your spreadsheet at once.

Transcription

Converting audio to written text is tedious. Several services will manage the details of finding transcriptionists, and managing them. (Behind the scenes, these services often use Amazon Mechanical Turk).

CastingWords is one of many transcription services. You email audio or provide URLs, and 1-10 days later, you receive a text file. Price depends on speed. $2.50/minute for 1 day turn around, $1/minute for slow turnaround.

Programming

There are two main sites for hiring web programmers for defined tasks like creating web sites, writing simple blog posts or making web graphics. These can also be a good way to find an ongoing part time web master, if you first hire then for a small, defined task.

ScriptLance is the best site for freelance programmers, and has good management features. No need to pay extra for a ‘featured’ project.

vWorker  is a bit more cumbersome, has fewer users, but tends to have slightly more technical workers. There’s no harm in posting jobs to both sites. (Previously called “RentACoder”)

Local help

If you need local help, or need to work in person with the worker — take a look at your local Craigslist and Idealist.

Everything else

From accounting to data entry, writing to design, transcription to programming, the Coke and Pepsi of outsourcing are eLance and Guru. We tend to have a slight preference for eLance, but they are similar. Both sites are focused on web sites, ecommerce, programming and databases, but also include creative tasks, administrative support, and accounting and legal (e.g., drafting a terms of use for your web site).

Below, this map from eLance shows where their talent is based. Darker blue is more common:

eLance – Claims over 68 thousand jobs posted in the last month, over 1.4 million registered contractors, and nearly $550 million in projects to date, with $43 million in 2011.

Guru –  Guru touts that over 1 million users have completed over 3 million tasks, working on over 150 million dollars in projects (average of $50 per project, though project budgets can often go into the $thousands). Today they have 4716 open jobs.

Freelancer.com – A slightly smaller community, but could be worth posting here also. Over 3.5 million freelancers registered.

Specific skills

oDesk – Specializes in buying time from workers on an hourly basis. Their workers tend to be more highly skilled, so expect higher hourly rates — in the $20-100/hr range. But if you have a specific technical task, this can be a place to fine workers who are not on the other sites. Some other sites (e.g., Freelancer) are expanding into hourly work also.

Design

Designers and other creatives can be challenging to track down because the best designers tend not to use the above sites. Here are some options:

Sortfolio – Created by 37Signals (who created BaseCamp project management software), provides a convenient way to browse portfolios and filter by budget ranges and location. Has a lot of good designers on board.

Coroflot and Behance – Browse portfolios for various kinds of creative work, and then write personalized emails to a few designers praising their work and inviting them to work on your project. Both sites also have full time job boards. Coroflot has 1.4 million images of creative work, from the portfolios of over 150,000 creative professionals and students. Behance has 10.6 million images, 1.6 million projects, and recently raised $6.5 million in funding from investors including Jeff Bezos.

Other marketplaces?

Do you have experience with other marketplaces? Share them in the comments…

See the site: Google Art Project

Google’s project also includes their “street view” to provide walkthroughs of 46 museums, with more on the way. Google’s team took 360 degree images of the interior of selected galleries which were then stitched together, enabling smooth navigation of over hundreds of rooms within the museums. The gallery interiors can also be explored directly from within Street View in Google Maps. Here’s walking around the Acropolis Museum:

Young Knight in a Landscape

Zoom. Zoom. 

All the images can be zoomed, some to a stunning degree. For 46 objects, visitors can see extraordinary detail using super high resolution or ‘gigapixel’ photo capturing technology, enabling the viewer to study details of the brushwork and patina beyond that possible with the naked eye.

At right is ‘Young Knight in a Landscape‘, (1510) by Vittore Carpaccio from the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid. This is what you can see on the museum’s current web site:

But check out the level of detail which the museum gives you via Google’s Art Project:

More range. More access. 

Amit Sood leads Google's effort to bring the world's greatest museums online. This started as his "20%" project.

Their online collection spans a wide range of institutions, large and small, traditional art museums as well as less traditional settings for great art. “The Art Project is going global, thanks to our new partners from around the entire world. It’s no longer just about the Indian student wanting to visit Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It is now also about the American student wanting to visit the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi,” said Amit Sood, Head of Art Project, Google.

Google suggests you check out the White House in Washington D.C., the collection of the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar, or the Santiniketan Triptych in the halls of the National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi.

Videos, hangouts, online learning.

The expanded site has more powerful browsing (e.g., by period, artist or type of artwork), and integrates Google’s “hangouts.” Their videos (e.g., stories from curators) are collected in a central ‘Art Project’ YouTube channel.

In a smart move, Google also worked with Khan Academy’s smARThistory, who made 90 Khan Academy videos expressly for Google Art Project version 2. See them here.

Other uses of the technology

Google is using the same technology to host content on a few other institutions’ sites. Under the auspices of the Cultural Institute, Google is producing high resolution images of the Dead Sea Scrolls, digitizing the archives of famous figures such as Nelson Mandela, and creating 3D models of 18th century French cities.

What does this mean?

Access is growing. Museums are rethinking control vs. outreach. Is it better to limit access to real-life visitors who buy tickets and shop the museum store, or make culture freely available? It is better to lock down access to promote image licensing as a revenue stream, or release publicly hoping that free access will open doors for newer business models?

“Usability testing differs from focus groups in that it involves the observation of participants as they actually use the product,” said Ian David Moss, a development consultant who works in the Arts. “They key feature of usability testing that makes it different from most other kinds of feedback-gathering methods is that it is based on direct observation rather than self-reporting….So, rather than have people sit around a room and talk about (for example) how they might react to a new feature or what challenges they face in their daily work, you have people sitting in front of a computer and trying to navigate a website’s capabilities while staff members look over their shoulders and take notes.”

To do testing… see my recent post about usability testing vendors and systems.

In addition to collecting user feedback with testing, there are other approaches to good usability:

• Intuition (instinct) – Idiosyncrasy is valuable. Create a site or app that you really like, while also trying to think about how outsiders and users will perceive it. Try to clear your mind (for a fresh look) and ask yourself how you would want it to work. Many of the biggest ideas, e.g., Facebook, and many products from Apple started this way.
• Casual testing – You can catch the majority of usability problems by testing with just a few people. Use your friends, family and colleagues as Guinea pigs — and ask them for quick 5- minute feedbacks.
• Heuristics (abstract theories) – Follow a series of rules and best practice guidelines. Jakob Nielsen’s list of ten heuristics are a famous starting point, but there are many variations. Apple also has a classic list of human interface guidelines for engineers. Heuristics are useful framework and checklist, but merely following heuristics misses the forest for the trees.
• Tracking – Review statistics of what they click and tap. Services like Google Analytics show the most popular pages, and the sequence users take. Review this to make sure that important screens are reached, and that there are not deadens. Eye tracking and heat maps are also useful to make sure that important parts of your design are not totally ignored.
• Accessibility – Make sure people with different abilities (e.g., blind, or with cataracts) can user your resource. Often this means adjustable font sizes, or including audio versions.
• Internationalization – Adding translations/localizations for users to who don’t read English. Mandarin Chinese is the most widely spoken native language, followed by Spanish, English, Hindi-Urdu, and Arabic. See a list of languages by number of native speakers at Wikipedia for a reality-check about how many non-English speakers there are on earth.

These concepts apply to programs (e.g., real-life outreach projects) as well as web sites and apps. Arts management consultant David Dombrosky said, “I love the idea of re-contextualizing “usability testing” as a feedback mechanism for arts audiences. As with online usability testing, the devil will be in the design, but the concept is well worth pursuing.”

Gameplay has a lot to teach us about motivating participation through joy. ‘Gamification’ is a new term, coined in 2008, for adapting game mechanics into non-game setting — such as building online communities, education and outreach, marketing, or building educational apps. Here are some ideas for how to do it.

Achievements

Badges, trophies and points represent having accomplished something. Since antiquity, people have been honored with medals, crowns and other decorations. Wreaths made of bay laurel were awarded to Greek athletes, and worn by Roman poets (e.g., Ovid, at left).

Judd Antin, at Yahoo! Research, in a talk this summer noted, “Closer to home, the Boy Scouts of America’s iconic merit badges promote the acquisition of specific skill-sets as diverse as nuclear science and basketry. One of the first large-scale implementations of badges in online games began in 2002 with Microsoft’s Xbox Live service. Since that time, badges have become a fixture in many games.”

Achievements can be easy, difficult, surprising, funny, accomplished alone or as a group. FourSquare uses badges to promote location-sharing via “check-ins,” StackOverflow and Quora use rating systems to encourage members to write quality answers to posted questions, KhanAcademy uses cute meteorite badges to reward correct answers (see KhanAcademy “Going Transonic” badge above left), and Wikipedia encourages hardcore contributors to post barnstars and WikiLove to other member’s profiles. Many shopping and social media sites have some form of member ranking.

“This has already occurred in education for a long time with things such as merit certificates and awards,” says Australian science teacher Alice Leung, but “gamification is more than that “because the game guides learners towards those goals, and gives constant feedback.”

It’s not about winners and losers, says Leung. Gamification leads to fewer “losers” because the education is personalized for each learner, and “students feel safe to take risks in their learning.” Rather than most students having to work at the same pace, with gamification, “students work at their own pace to gain achievements.”

Judd and his colleague Elizabeth Churchill outline five key psychological functions of badges:

• Setting goals: Badges challenge participants to reach a higher mark, and are best when they are just outside of comfortable reach, and when participants can see their progress.
• Instruction: Badges embody the social norms of a system, exemplifying activities and interactions that are valued — i.e., what participants should do. — In a social setting, a party organizer could reward positive social behaviors by assigning roles to event attendees (e.g., matchmaker, deep talker, explorer) and awarding prizes for fulfilling their roles.
• Reputation: Badges encapsulate a participant’s interests, expertise and past interactions — providing an easy way to gauge the trustworthiness of other people, the reliability of content, and assess whether a participant is a casual or fanatical community member.
• Status & affirmation: Badges serve as a status symbol, advertising a participant’s achievements and accomplishments without explicit bragging. Some people are highly driven by status rewards (displayed in leaderboards, class rankings, etc.), but most people are more driven more when their work interacts with others’ and when their recognition creates enduring artefacts (e.g., school newsletters, posters, wikis, blogs, etc.).
• Group identification: Badges bind a group together around their shared experiences, lend a sense of solidarity, and promote collaboration.

A limitation of achievements is that they are external motivators, and only a subset of people really care about external recognition, so don’t rely on achievements alone to drive interest in your project.

In a classroom setting, Leung cautions, “If gamification is implemented in a superficial way (just points and badges), it is just a layer of extrinsic motivation, which may work well for younger students but not for older students…” it needs to include “strong narratives, goal-orientated lessons and personalized learning.”

Other game mechanics

Many other game dynamics can help engage your audience. Dynamics that draw on the human psyche, create feedback loops, or lead participants to accumulate skills or accomplishments. Here are some more:

• Appointments are specific times/places a participants must participate. (e.g., FourSquare and geocaching are based on physical places; Farmville requires players to return to harvest their crops after a specific amount of time has passed after planting; last summer, nine Smithsonian museums cooperated in a mobile game based on SCVNGR called goSmithsonian Trek, played on iPhones or Android phones.)
• Behavioral momentum is people’s tendency to keep doing what they have been doing.
• Blissful productivity is a sense of accomplishment, which might be missing elsewhere in someone’s life.
• Cascading Information Theory says information should be released in the minimum possible snippets, as not to overwhelm.
• Community collaboration rallies people to work together to solve a problem or a challenge. Learners are more motivated if their success at tasks is dependent on other group members, not just their own scores. Cooperative motivators should be stronger than competitive motivators. (e.g., DARPA balloon challenge.)
• Countdowns give participants a short amount of time to do something, and can spike participation. Arcade games often have a countdown. (e.g., Bejeweled Blitz gives players 30 seconds to get as many points as they can.)
• Discovery or Exploration delight participants with the surprise of something new, sparking their curiosity. The element of surprise can come from unraveling a complex subject, or challenging preconceived notions. A slick presentation will attract attention from its technical novelty, but thoughtful curiosity comes from sustained engagement that makes learners think, gain productivity, filter information, or create. Discovery works because it is mostly an internal driver, but some people can be encouraged by giving them a bonus for exploring, e.g., how many new pages they read each week.
• Epic meaning lends a sense of achieving something great, awe-inspiring, and bigger than oneself. Meaning can drive people to participate in citizen science, or other crowd sourcing projects like Zooninverse. Meaning also comes from creating an environment that does exist, such as inventing characters, locations, objects; and from applying a skill to that environment (e.g., simulation and roll employing games). Richer learning happens when learners connect new learning to prior knowledge through their narrative structure. (e.g., The online game, War of Warcraft’s ongoing story line motivates players to devote hours to the game, and also work outside the game, where volunteers have created a huge wiki to help them achieve their individual quests and collectively their epic meanings.) What’s challenging or an interesting fantasy will vary from person to person, and vary over the course of  a person’s learning life.
• Free lunch is when when participants feel they are getting something for free due to someone else having done work. (e.g., Groupon gives participants the sense of a great deal because other people have also signed up.)
• Infinite gameplay does do not have an explicit end. (e.g., Casual games like Farmville have a static, positive state.)
• Levels are a system, or “ramp,” by which participants are rewarded for accumulating points. Often features or abilities are unlocked as participants progress to higher levels. Leveling is one of the highest components of motivation for gamers. There are typically three types of leveling ramps: flat, exponential and wave function. — An example in an online community is giving frequent contributors special perks, like the capability to moderate, or the ability to unlock new content.
• Loss aversion is the drive to avoid punishment. (e.g., In Farmville, player receive alerts so they remember to log in and harvest their crops, other games have decays of points which require active participation to maintain.)
• Lottery determines winners based solely on chance. This can create a high level of anticipation, but can quickly alienate losers.
• Ownership gives participants a sense of control, and fosters loyalty. In the game world, participants’ decisions have consequences; winning isn’t dependent on completely random factors. Empowering learning environments depend on making learner’s choices tied to significant and meaningful outcomes. Learners must feel they are capable of succeeding. Conversely, too many choices can swamp and frustrate a learner.
• Points are a running numerical value given for any single action or combination of actions. They are a form of achievement, and can indicate a participant’s progression in completing itemized tasks. Points can be delivered as virtual currency. Here’s a video of adding points to a recycling bin — making it an arcade game — dramatically increasing recycling.

  //www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSiHjMU-MUo

• Quests & challenges – Challenges usually have a time limit or a competition, and Quests are a journey of obstacles which participants must overcome. — Learners prefer the right level of challenge, with clear goals and feedback on performance. Goals can be relevant for allowing a learner to do something new (functionally useful), feel emotional connection (fantasy relevance), or social relevance. Uncertainty also matters. If you know you will triumph, you stop caring. Uncertainty can be boosted by varying difficulty levels, hiding information, or otherwise randomizing.
• Reward schedules are a timeframe and delivery mechanisms through which rewards (points, prizes, level ups) are delivered. Three main parts exist in a reward schedule; contingency, response and reinforcer.
• Urgent optimism is extreme self motivation. A desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle combined with the belief that we have a reasonable hope of success.
• Virality is a game element that requires multiple people to play (or that can be played better with multiple people).

You can combine these mechanics. In the following 20 minute video from TED, Jane McGonigal talks about the lure of the ‘Epic win,’ and how gaming can make a better world:
[ted id=799 lang=eng]

Keep in mind, gamification does not necessarily mean playing games, though there is certainly a place for games in outreach & education. Gamification is not serious games, and it is not playful interactions (see chart at left). Though, there is continuum from games with a purpose to subtly incorporating some principles of gameplay into other projects.

Gamification “really has little to do with games or video games,” rather it is about giving people proper, faster feedback says Ryan Elkins, an entrepreneur who started gamification platform company IActionable. “It helps new people learn what is expected of them and that they are on the right track. It gives experienced people reasons to continue by quantifying their intrinsic motivation. It helps provide context to users so they can make better decisions. It helps individuals track personal growth and progress with measurable goals and a path to mastery.”

No size fits all. People might be driven by (a) a desire for achievement and the prestige of accomplishment; (b) the joy and delight of exploration, satisfying their curiosity; (c) a draw to socialize and connect with other people; or (d) a thirst for competition. — Your audience (e.g., students, the public or your community) will all have their own unique motivations for learning, participating in you projects, or using your resource. — And you don’t want to accidentally alienate some of your participants who don’t care about petty tokens, or make the game elements overwhelm the core job to be done.

Two examples 

A classroom example is from Leung, who created a unit called ‘The Great Science Race‘ with game mechanics like narrative, quests and achievement badges. See her post with positive data on student responses.

The LA Times ran a story last year: “Michael Pusateri is a 43-year-old senior vice president at the Disney-ABC Television Group, but he still doesn’t eat his vegetables. So in October he joined Health Month, an online game that allows him to compete against 16,000 other users in striving toward his goals — which include cycling 80 miles a week and going on a weekly date with his wife… When he made progress, he earned life points and raised his ranking. When he failed, he lost points but could ask other players to take pity and ‘heal’ him by giving him virtual ‘fruit.’ The game prepared him for his first triathlon. ‘My wife has been after me for years to eat more fruit and vegetables and bring my lunch to work, and it was, ‘Next week, I’ll do it next week,” says Pusateri, an avid video game player and father of two. ‘Just because it was on this dumb website I actually did it.'”

Gaining popularity

Gamification is gaining traction as a word. The term was first used in 2008, and became more popular in late 2010 (see Google Trends graph at right). In online marketing circles, gamification tends to focus on achievements because they can be readily added to web sites and apps. Vendors like Badgeville, Bunchball, Bigdoor Media, and GetGlue jumped to deliver a service layer of reward and reputation systems with points, badges, levels and leader boards.

But gamification is much more, and is a useful mental framework for planning how to incentivize your audience to be active and productive.

Leung says, “You don’t fail in games. If you don’t pass a stage, you reflect back on what you need to change and improve on and you play again. This is a vital element of gaming that will vastly change students’ academic achievements.”

Sources: The structure and much of this article comes from  a list at the gamification wiki. Some background from instructional designer and blogger Dianne Rees, who writes about education psychologist Jerome Bruner’s work on intrinsic motivation in 1966, and Malone and Lepper’s 1987 taxonomy of intrinsic motivation. See also papers from a 2011 CHI workshop (PDF). 

Update 20-Oct-2011: Added several quotes from Alice Leung.

LEGO models of every shape and size were spread on tables. The models were created by kids and geeky adults, on topics from fantasy, to trains, to animals, to space. Front and center, near the entrance, the NASA Aeronautics directorate set up a display with a large banner, some astronaut paraphernalia (e.g., gloves), and an assembly of LEGO models created by enthusiasts.

A steady stream of kids poured by the NASA booth. The LEGO event had 941 participants showing their models, and 16,500+ paying attendees.

Origins of the partnership

According to fair organizer Todd Webb, in 2009, NASA suggested some involvement in the show, but “NASA involvement was small and most wondered ‘what is that guy doing sitting there?'” Webb realized that to make it work, they had to kick it up a notch.

From NASA’s point of view, summer 2011 was good timing. The Space Shuttle Atlantis recently landed, and the Juno mission would launch during the LEGO event. NASA looks for opportunities to promote science, technology, engineering and mathematics. It’s a priority for both President Obama and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. According to Tony Springer, the head of communications and education for NASA’s Aeronautics directorate, it was also logistically easy: NASA Headquarters was a short drive away, so “it made sense for us to participate.” Springer’s department is interested in reaching both adult attendees, and youth.

Webb says, “I suggested NASA would make a cool ‘theme’ one year, then we’d have a special logo, t-shirts, a trophy, etc.” At the time, 2010’s theme was planned, so they agreed to do it in 2011. Webb has themes for the LEGO fair each year. Past themes have been “food and drink,” and “music.” He says, “Normally I wouldn’t be quick to accept a ‘corporate’ type of entity as our theme.  That’s not very fun.  But NASA isn’t too corporate.  And it’s generic enough — spacey — that we could encourage people to participate, build models for the theme.”

The NASA booth was much more professional looking in 2011, said Webb, and they had “even more cool stuff… and made a nice presentation.” NASA was responsible for their display, and brought their own table clothes, display cases, and props.

For Webb, the motivation was the “neato-factor,” and also providing appealing mood for his events. He said the NASA presence did not boost attendance. For LEGO enthusiasts, “LEGO is all the attraction needed, and is all we feed off of.”

Audiences & impact

According to Springer, NASA looks for events that are “STEM-appropriate.” Anything from an education convention to an air show. In general, it’s a nerdy crowd at a LEGO event. Springer says, “Many of those attending BrickFair events are already predisposed to STEM disciplines: “self-interested,” according to the term of art. We are trying to amplify that interest. Since they are so attentive to design and construction, devoted LEGO builders seem to have an innate STEM interest. We hope that one day they may make the decision to transition that personal fascination into a STEM-related career, which we think would be a very positive thing.”

Springer is looking for “quality and not necessarily quantity. That translates during a given event into solid interactions with attendees; substantive conversations with educators and students that we then follow up with actions like emails, phone calls, and further exchange of educational materials. Leveraging strong initial contact with subsequent, sustained relationships (online or in person) is how we define success.”

Implementation details

To make it work, NASA had to do some leg work and provide some swag. At LEGO events, the majority of participants are fiercely independent in their interests. Webb says annual theme tends to draw just a few builders. Adult LEGO fans “don’t like to be told what to build, and most just build what’s in their genes.  So I bribed them with big prizes (an autographed book donated by NASA and a large LEGO set).  The turnout of NASA MOCs was pretty good I think.”

In terms of promotion, there were a few ground rules. Administratively, NASA created a Space Act Agreement with the Festival. Due to NASA’s strict regulations on external use of its logo or those of any its research partners (e.g., Boeing), Webb’s event was required do something special for its NASA-themed Event Kit. While the kit itself could not include the NASA logo on its label, instructions or any photographs, Webb was able to include a special tile with the NASA logo and a plain white 2×2 LEGO tile as choices for “the very last piece to be assembled.” The instructions stated: “So now you have 2 tiles left.  We leave it to you to decide which to add to your model.”

Reaching other audiences? 

The LEGO event was a great fit, but can they push the envelope? Springer says NASA Aeronautics has no current plans for more daring events, like Comic-Con. That’s a shame, since there’s a huge overlap between science and science-fiction geeks (see post by  Whitney Clavin of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab  from the 2010 Comic-Con.)

Meanwhile, the folks at Goddard are exploring collaborations that cross over into the arts. NASA and Tor/Forge recently announced a new publishing collaboration to meld the sensibilities of strong science fiction with equally strong space science. It will team up Tor/Forge authors with scientists from the Goddard Space Flight Center. Tom Doherty, publisher of Tor Books, said in a statement, “When I was a boy, books by Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein and their colleagues excited me, inspiring a lifelong fascination with space and the science and technology that would get us there.”

Do it yourself

To do community outreach in the sciences or humanities, take a fresh look at local/regional events. Who can you partner with?

It’s not “merely a larger audience, but a different audience,” says Sara Snyder, webmaster for the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art, who has recently started to use Wikipedia more. She says, “Our main website is geared towards an academic-minded or university-level student, researcher, curator, or professional art historian. Yet we have information and collections that may inform or appeal to a broader set of folks, such as younger students and art enthusiasts.  Wikipedia is a platform for trying to start serving those researchers too, without overhauling the current way we do business or our existing website.”

Go where the people are

Search Google for “dinosaurs“, “Jupiter,” “Genome,” “WWII“, “Impressionism“, or “Monet,” and the first hit is usually not a museum, school, or commercial publisher. It is Wikipedia.  Wikipedia ranks high in search engines for most non-commercial queries.

Wikipedia currently has 3.7 million articles in English, and an additional 15.7 million articles in other languages. The popularity of Wikipedia articles is a long tail distribution. A few hot topics are viewed millions of times a day. For example, on 23 July 2011, when soul singer Amy Winehouse died, her Wikipedia page was viewed 8 million times. More typical, the top 100 articles (topics like Steve Jobs, United States, Harry Potter, Miley Cyrus are read around 25k times a day, with traffic depending on spikes in public interest from current events. The end of the long tail includes hundreds of thousands of esoterica which are read only a few times a year.

Content lives on

Articles in Wikipedia have a long shelf life, and most last indefinitely. Whereas content on your web site can die of obsolescence, be buried in the archives of a blog, or otherwise lost through staffing and technology changes; content added to Wikipedia sticks around for years, and will further improved and reused by scholars and amateurs.

Wikipedia articles evolve. The median Wikipedia article has 16 edits, and 30% of articles have fewer than 10 edits. Articles are occasionally subject to vandals, ignorant editors, or editors with an axe to grind. But vandalism is usually fixed quickly, and most scientific and cultural topics are monitored by well-meaning volunteers. You can use Wikipedia’s “watch list” tool to keep track of your articles and fix problems.

Your organization’s name is not closely affiliated with the article, and potential flaws introduced to an article in the future will not be blamed on you; they will be blamed on Wikipedia.

Contribution logistics

Wikipedia’s rules require that contributors be single individuals, so your organization’s outreach department can not have a shared account. Wikipedia has grass roots beginnings, and has a systemic bias against organizations, corporations, and public relations. The intention is to maintain a neutral, objective approach.

Giving to Wikipedia means giving to the public. Content in Wikipedia, by definition, loses copyright. Any content you contribute to Wikipedia needs to be new or be public domain. Wikipedia must scrupulously avoid copyright infringement, so many volunteers watch to prevent content from being copied from other sites. The result is that educational and outreach staff can not re-post your own institution’s existing content to Wikipedia verbatim unless you release the source content (and label it as such) under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike. Or you can follow steps to officially donate your own material.

You also need to disclose potential conflict of interest, but that’s easily manageable.

Keep with it

The process of contributing to Wikipedia is not user friendly, and there are a number of rude volunteers. These two problems have led to recent decline in the number of volunteers for the first time since Wikipedia launched in 2001. “A lot of it is convoluted,” said Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales at a conference last week, “A lot of editorial guidelines … are impenetrable to new users.”

The learning curve to do meaningful work with Wikipedia is steep but short. But the personality problems are pervasive. Wales says the typical profile of a contributor is “a 26-year-old geeky male,” not professional educators, scholars, writers nor outreach professionals. By the time you contribute a few dozen articles, you will encounter obstructionist personalities. Keep in mind that these antisocial people play an important part of the Wikipedia ecosystem because they remove the thousands of petty vandalisms which happen every day. You will have to ignore bad attitude of occasional bad apples, and not get discouraged.

Think like an encyclopedia

Wikipedia is built on secondary and tertiary sources. Virtually everything you say in an article has to be cited, and verifiable in some other source. You can cite books, news articles, journals and magazines, but Wikipedia discourages citing primary sources. This policy is intended to make sure that all statements have passed through some kind of institutional filter. But it doesn’t make much sense for culture and science, which often have peer-reviewed research, artwork, objects, or data. The guidelines say, “secondary or tertiary sources are needed to establish the topic’s notability and to avoid novel interpretations of primary sources, though primary sources are permitted if used carefully.” Ironically, peer review (e.g., a paper in Science magazine) does not count; but if your institution has a complex internal editorial review, your in-house publications might count as secondary sources.

Getting started

It’s easy to get started on a small scale. In minutes, you can make an account, and start contributing. If you want to make large contributions or add pages, look over some of the orientation guides. These guides vary in quality and are occasionally contradictory — but there are “no rules” and most good contributions, backed up with secondary sources, are welcomed.

The best starting point for cultural and scientific projects is the Wikipedia GLAM pages. (GLAM is an acronym for Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums. It also incorporates other institutions such as theatres, zoos, botanical gardens, public broadcasters, etc.) Those pages will point you toward relevant regulations, and give you tips on getting started. Many of the GLAM guidelines also apply to science and technology related outreach.

The challenge remains of finding staff time and resources. The key here is to draw in volunteers. The GLAM pages have several ideas about how to connect with existing “Wikipedians,” get your own volunteers involved in Wikipedia, make”content donations” so there are more raw materials available for volunteers to work with, or set up internships dedicated to Wikipedia.

Internships

If you set up an internship, recruit a Wikipedian, and give your intern the job title “Wikipedian-in-Residence.” Archives of American Art currently has a summer Wikipedian intern, Sarah Stierch.

The biggest advantage, says Sara Snyder, of a Wikipedian intern, is that it’s hard to learn the ins-and-outs of Wikipedia without bringing in an Wikipedia insider who has already learned the ropes. Snyder says, “I have lurked and done light editing on Wikipedia for years, but I never understood what it was really about, how it functioned, why things are the way they are, until I had some people who were able to speak to me face and face and start explaining and answering my questions. Having [our Wikipedian-in-Residence] Sarah here has made me a thousand times more confident/competent as an editor and advocate.” A secondary benefit is that the residency raises awareness of Wikipedia among institutional leadership.

Since summer 2010, there have been nine volunteer interns (e.g., a grad student) or staff given the job title “Wikipedian-in-Residence.” (Four are in the photo at right.) The title is useful for the intern or staff person because it defines their job, and helps them build collaborations with other Wikipedians.

Your intern can collaborate with your organization’s staff to improve articles, organize local events which help excite volunteers, organize challenges or competitions which motivate more volunteers, or serve as your bridge to teach in-house staff about Wikipedia practices and values. Snyder says she would love to have more Wikipedians intern at her institution in the next few years.

Local events

Events like meetups and/or edit-a-thons boost energy of volunteers and staff. Snyder co-organized an event with Stierch in late July. Snyder was inspired by the enthusiasm of the ten Wikipedians who attended, and impressed by the intelligent questions and engagement. The event also puts a human face on Wikipedia for the Archive’s staff. Events have trickle-down effects, from attendees, to their colleagues in cyberspace, ultimately increasing the volume of work done by volunteers.

Traffic boost

Working with Wikipedia also boosts inbound web traffic. Wikipedia has long been a top-5 referrer for the Archives of American Art web site, but since June 2011 when Sarah started working, Wikipedia has been the #1 inbound referrer.

Sources not noted above: Wikipedia stats from WikiRoll; April Wikipedia Report card; and I attended the Backstage Pass Tour of the Archives of American Art, on Friday, 29-July-2011, organized by Wikipedian-in-Residence Sarah Stierch, and webmaster Sara Snyder.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFTddFk6zb8

If you are at work, or don’t like the word “F##k,” try out this clean version. Here’s the story…

The 2-minute video was produced by professional entertainers, for the Australian TV show “Hungry Beast,” which blends current affairs and comedy. The show’s target audience is younger people, and digital, politics, and climate change are all regular themes in the show.

The idea: According to comedian Dan Ilic, who had the initial idea, wrote the lyrics, directed the shoot, and performed in the video, the genesis came from watching another show on the (Australian) ABC, “Q & A.” Mr. Ilic watched a panel show on climate change. However during the debate all of the presenters prefaced everything they said by saying, “I’m not a climate scientist but… the debate continued by people who were less than informed on the facts of climate change. It made me so angry that the most important issue of humanity was being reduced to hearsay and name calling.” It was 3 weeks from the start of the idea to airing the skit.

Planning: Mr. Ilic emailed a few climate groups in Australia 2 weeks before filming, and a few scientists were interested. Dr. Roger Jones (Victoria University) was the most senior scientist to get involved. Dr. Jones did student comedy in his younger days, and also wanted to support the video project by lending the credibility of a “professor.” He had some other senior colleagues would have also participated, but couldn’t make the video shoot. As Mr. Ilic wrote the first drafts of the lyric, he worked closely with Dr. Jones and Dr. Katrin Meissner (University of New South Wales) who fact checked the lyrics, and provided Mr. Ilic with material to mine for lyrics. A week before shooting, Mr. Ilic visited Dr. Meissner’s office to further fact check. She did not give input from an artistic point of view, which she says was “probably a good thing.” They also had a few chats/emails with other participants as they planned ideas for the song.

Production: The video was shot at a few locations. The main shot of the lab-coated scientists was filmed in the Sydney TV studio one morning. They shot other footage that week. Mr. Ilic was in Melbourne the week before to attend the Logies (Australia’s Emmys) and while there, he shot two scientists in Melbourne. Other shots were done by his production team, such as the cheerleaders (who received a modest donation), and bits like the burning globe or Mr. Ilic performing. The budget was modest. ABC is analogous to BBC, but the budgets are more like PBS. The only paid people were the production staff. Dr. Linda Beaumont (feedbacks) was shot in front of a green screen.

Post production: All post production was completed by Nick Mcdougall at the production company using Final Cut Pro. Duncan Elms did the After Effects and grading work. Mr. Ilic recorded the song which was produced outside of the company with Brendan Woithe from Colony No Fi. Mr. Woithe normally works in commercials and did this fun project for a very reduced fee to help out.

Distribution: The overall marketing plan was to broadcast it on (Australian) ABC, release it on YouTube the night of the show, and be cool enough that it would go viral. They have over 300k views of the video in the last 2 weeks.

Impact and next steps?

Does a rap song have any greater impact than volumes of data and evidence? Dr. Meissner says, she “personally believe that we have to keep talking (and if nobody listens, I am also happy to start screaming) about our results.” But she cautions that that there’s no formula for reaching deniers and doesn’t know whether rap songs or focusing on evidence is best for the people who are neutral about climate change.

According to Dr. Jason Evans, one of the scientists in the video, “The video isn’t really meant to convince anyone about climate change. It is a fun way to point out how silly it is that so much media time about climate change is given to people who don’t know climate science (and often admit it openly). I can’t think of another area of science where the opinions of people who know little about it seem to be given as much credence as the scientists who actually study the system in question.”

Mr. Ilic says, “I have been making this kind of content for along time for many progressive groups, and sometimes just because I get angry with the world I live in. I find that most of the time you’re preaching to the choir, but if you make it entertaining enough, even the atheists will sit up and take notice.”

Dr. Jones says he is “contemplating more guerrilla-type actions but not sure what works (a repeat wouldn’t).” But he also realizes that when dealing with humor, it’s best to rely on professionals. He says, “if left to us it would have been too nerdy and naff. There have been conversations between science and artists talking about getting together to communicate more broadly. I am attracted to both low and high art and think we could do a lot more. As Mike Hulme says, climate change is a lot bigger than just the science. It affects all of us, even via negativity.”

Yesterday, art critic Judith Dobrzynski wrote in her Real Clear Arts blog about how an upcoming nighttime event at the Hirshhorn is elitist, flaunted, and inexcusable. Dobrzynski says, “I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again, if museum officials don’t believe that art is enough, no one else will either.” What do you think?

The “After hours” event is $18, next Friday night (29-April) in the outdoor plaza of the Hirshhorn. Dobrzynski’s concern is that a VIP event may make the general public think the museum is elitist. Dobrzynski laments, “For years, museum officials have been droning on about the need to dispel the notion that art museums are elitist. To me, it’s more of a museum image problem than anything real: some people think that they have to dress up, have a college diploma, or have other so-called elite attributes to feel welcome. Mostly, that’s pure fantasy — or an excuse.”

New revenue models are sorely needed, and late evening events at an otherwise closed museum do not disrupt free daytime operations. Mark Durney, who maintains the blog Art Theft Central, noted that “institutions that put on risque after hours events did not make huge cuts or layoffs during the past 2-3 years.”

The Hirshhorn has a lot of great events, targeting a variety of audiences from teens to nightclubbers. See events. They are also creative about outreach methods, including using Facebook to target teens. See my article on Hirshhorn, “Promoting art events to teens directly from FB.”

Especially as the internet, social media, and mobile devices are dissolving the walls of the museum, critics like Dobrzynski (who has been editor of the Sunday “Money & Business” section and deputy business editor of The New York Times) would better support the institutions they love by supporting new revenue models and use of museums as events spaces, rather than mischaracterize a fun, late night Springtime party in the courtyard of an art museum as making the museum inaccessible.

Meanwhile, there are many interesting events going on in the UK now during Museums at Night 2011. See list at Culture 24.

The largest science outreach program telling the public about military-related science is a popular blog, Armed with Science, which features podcasts and short articles by scientists and other staff in various military departments. 

“The portrayal of science–its methods but also its practitioners and its impact on our lives–has often posed a challenge to communicators”, says Dr. John Ohab, the project lead for Armed with Science. “Similarly, the scientific community has struggled to find an effective conduit through which it can communicate its stories.” With Armed with Science‘s blog and podcast series, “we provide a mechanism for scientists and engineers at the Department of Defense (DOD) to communicate first-hand with the public.”

The idea of Armed with Science was conceived in 2008. Several U.S. Navy public affairs staff were thinking about new kinds of outreach using podcasts and social media, and Ohab was working in the department on a fellowship. The funding came from DOD’s public affairs department (the Defense Media Activity’s Emerging Media Directorate).

Ohab developed an online, weekly radio show which launched in January 2009. The show featured scientists, engineers, and other experts from DOD, other federal agencies, academia, and industry. It was broadcast live on BlogTalkRadio, taking questions via Twitter. There were 64 episodes, covering a wide range of sciences, and the podcast was downloaded nearly 200,000 times in 2009.

After Ohab’s fellowship ended, the Directorate hired him as a contractor via an existing contract with defense contractor OMNITEC Solutions. OMNITEC had prior experience with podcasts and social media, as well as ghostwriting and editing speeches and publications.

Inspired by the success of the podcast, in January 2010, additional staff were brought on, and the podcast evolved into a blog. In the blog, contributors to Armed with Science could share personal narratives, images, and videos. The Armed with Science team also posts headlines from their blog and related news to Facebook (2726 likes), and Twitter (8362 followers). In 2010, Armed with Science published 290 blog posts, 15 webcasts, and 45 YouTube videos. They had over 600k visitors and 250k YouTube views. The blog was the 4th most visited out of 80 Department of Defense blogs, a department that extensively uses social media (see list).

Sources of material

Ohab says that his three-person team tries to keep the content diverse, with “breaking news, human stories, research findings, generally ‘cool stuff,’ gadgets and gizmos, and topics related to the overall mission of DOD (e.g., warrior care)” as well as to keep the tone authentic. Most blog posts are written by scientists, engineers, and other experts. He says they “encourage contributors to write in the first person and share their personal experiences and motivations,” as opposed to tepid mission statements and repurposed releases. The team carries the authenticity over to microblogging, where Ohab says, “we also try to infuse our own personalities into Facebook posts and tweets.”

The blog receives submissions from staff at other DOD laboratories (e.g. Army Research Laboratory), funding agencies (e.g., Air Force Office of Scientific Research), industry collaborators (e.g., SENDS & The Science of Cyberspace), and DOD-funded academics (e.g., neuroscientist William Tyler at Arizona State). At times they also cross post articles from civilian federal agencies.

They also have several ongoing series centered on specific themes. These include: learning technology, modeling and simulations, gaming, contests, distinguished lectures, Operation Deep Freeze, and the current ‘IceBridge’ series.

What kind of impact?

Armed with Science has great potential to accomplish a broader goal of boosting scientific literacy and improving attitudes about science among members of the public who are interested in the military, but not in science. The open question is how much this broadens the audience:

As covered in our recent article about “Framing art and science in terms of national security,” military is a massive force in our country, with over 3.6M military personnel, 1.9M spouses & kids of active duty members, and over 22M veterans (plus their families).

Educators interested in improving science literacy among this large chunk of the US population and their supporters might keep in mind military themes when looking at possible hooks to capture their interest.

In their struggle to bring in visitors, U.S. science centers are increasingly turning to blockbuster exhibits (see ‘Traveling blockbuster exhibits, $2m a pop, draw a crowd‘) about sensationalized topics (see ‘Currently featured exhibitions at U.S. science centers‘) like plasticized dead people, monster sharks, King Tut and Star Wars. There’s virtually zero coverage by large civilian institutions of the hot science being done by the U.S. military.

According to Brown, the metrics for Armed with Science focus on raw traffic numbers, geographical distributions of visitors, and tracking the popularity of various topics. But they do not track users with cookies or IP numbers, and they do not currently survey visitors. Brown says that in his experience with military public affairs, it’s difficult to accurately measure impacts, and crafting content based on surveys and polling sniffs too much of propaganda. Moreover, on a practical level, Brown says a self-selection bias of respondents could skew results anyway. He says a survey of the impacts of cross-discipline (science + military) outreach on different types of audiences could most likely come from the academic community.

Take aways

1) Facilitating (rather than production) is a good investment for social media. Help others create content.

2) Military topics open up a wide possible audience for science outreach, and may be useful and appropriate for other kinds of educational outreach.

Update on 6-Apr-11: Clarified origins of project and role of OMNITEC; added Venn diagram.

Before the Internet, the gatekeepers of public information (journalists, editors and producers) considered the needs of audiences for you. These gatekeepers would filter a fire-hose of information in press releases and technical publications to deliver a digested slivers of information via television news, tv, print, and trade press. Other kinds of technical information was discussed at conferences, at meetings, in journals or in private. (See my post about “Fall of the gatekeepers“) 

Who’s your audience?

A target audience can be defined by specific occupations (as in the diagram below), or can be stratified by age, educational levels, demographics, interests, roles/relationships, etc. Many people fall into multiple audience categories. The craft of social media lies in selecting and creating content for your audience. (See our post about the value of curating information on Twitter)

If you have multiple audiences, consider making more than one blog, or Twitter/Facebook account. Different kinds of information, earmarked for different target audiences, should be sent via the right channel:

For an example of this in practice, see the National Science Foundation’s Twitter accounts. NSF has a number of Twitter accounts (see list). The main account “@NSF” (107k followers) is administered by Dr. Paul Filmer, who writes some of the posts and chooses RSS feeds to automatically include. Other posts are written by 5-10 public affairs staff. The @NSF feed has a diverse audience, including the general public, students, and professionals.

The specialized accounts, e.g., @NSF_BIO, focus on program announcements and meetings. The kind of stuff Filmer says, “nobody but an academic would really be interested in.”

Filmer uses a mixture of manually-created posts, and automated posts, which creates it’s own challenges. Today the @NSF feed included a Tweet about a cool robotic fish (of interest to kids, the public, and robot enthusiasts) as well as a highly specialized Tweet: “Event: MPS Advisory Committee Meeting (MPSAC): Apr 7 2011 8:30AM toApr 8 2011 2:00PMRoom 1235Advisory Com…” an event which will have a total attendance of 30-40 committee members and NSF staffers — less than 0.02% of @NSF’s followers.

That’s the kind of Tweet Filmer tries to avoid. The event tweet originated from an RSS feed of events, and the number of event-related tweets recently spiked, drowning out the main feed. Filmer says he’ll have to kill the events RSS posts to keep the main @NSF feed interesting to a broad audience.