Just a quick note to say we haven't abandoned this blog, but at the moment I've been concentrating on working out issues around schemas/formats, content, and functions for re-usable and interoperable cultural heritage data on a wiki.
There's a list of things you can do if you work in a museum or are a developer interested in using museum data - jump in!
Friday 24 April 2009
Thursday 9 April 2009
The Cosmos and Culture mashup competition
[I'll probably be making more frequent updates on my personal blog, Open Objects, until things really get going in about July. If things are a bit quiet here, you can poke me there, on the museum API wiki or on twitter @mia_out.]
I'm really putting this post here so I've got something to point to during any discussions at a conference (Museums and the Web) I'm at next week. It's not perfectly written, and it doesn't necessarily totally reflect current thinking - but I guess that's in the nature of the thing. Perhaps the document is in perpetual beta. So consider this a draft, and remember that it's a document written for internal consumption, repurposed in two minutes before I go back to debugging some code.
[Update: I've put the presentation I gave internally about this on Slideshare.]
Cosmos Mashup Competition
Objectives
How the competition works
We make raw data about C&C’s objects (name, date, caption text, people, locations, relevant celestial body, associated images etc etc) available.
Users come up with a mashup interface for this. This will integrate our object information with other freely available resources (examples could include Google Maps; sky mapping applications like Google Sky, Stellarium and Celestia; photo-sharing sites; Yahoo Pipe; IBM Many Eyes, astronomy news feeds … or something completely unexpected). The other resources will generally be a form of visualisation (maps, timelines, etc) or another data source.
The best mashup, as judged by a panel (made up of?) is awarded the prize fund. We will be judging in terms of creativity rather than purely technical accomplishment so if someone comes up with a great idea that they can’t quite execute, we can work this up to get it online.
[Working up the final project might take resources so we'd need to think about this - or we could pair them with another contestant.]
If feasible, we could run a ‘mashup speed dating’ ['hack matching'] event as part of the programme (between the data being released and the deadline for submission) – this would allow people to meet and share creative ideas, knowledge and skills. It would be easier to run this as part of Dana/Lates programme but we can look at different ways of doing it.
Audience
At the competition stage the field would be relatively small, as users will need some familiarity with mashups. Possible entrants could include design students, web designers, astronomers (many are very web literate) etc. Although a small field it enables us to target some sectors who might not normally be interested in a Science Museum web offer, and can be open to people around the world.
Once the finished web presence goes live it is open to all of our web audience.
Timescales
To avoid confusion with everything else going on at the Science Museum in 2009, we could open the competition in Autumn 2009 (there are various astronomy anniversaries we could tie into).
Period between the data release (or event) and the submission date should not be more than a month or it will lose momentum.
Possible benefits
We get users to develop a significant web presence for the exhibition – we don’t have time or budget to do this ourselves.
Fits aim of trying out new ways of interpreting objects.
We could get something really innovative.
The interface could have a life beyond the exhibition run and could be extended to the wider collection (or even to collaborations with other institutions if they are interested).
Shows we are serious about making the collection more accessible, and encouraging users to find their own stories about objects.
Makes use of raw information we are already generating for objects, so does not generate extra load on content team.
Feel free to comment! We're still working out the competition parameters, judging, etc.
If you've got data that might work well with our collections data, I'd love to hear from you.
If you're interested in the API side of things, you can join in on the museum API wiki.
I'm really putting this post here so I've got something to point to during any discussions at a conference (Museums and the Web) I'm at next week. It's not perfectly written, and it doesn't necessarily totally reflect current thinking - but I guess that's in the nature of the thing. Perhaps the document is in perpetual beta. So consider this a draft, and remember that it's a document written for internal consumption, repurposed in two minutes before I go back to debugging some code.
[Update: I've put the presentation I gave internally about this on Slideshare.]
Cosmos Mashup Competition
Objectives
- Make best use of the limited budget and staff time to get the highest impact web presence for Cosmos & Culture
- Experiment with new ways of making objects available via the web
- Experiment with new ways of attracting user-generated content
- Provide our audiences with new visualisations and interpretative contexts for objects
How the competition works
We make raw data about C&C’s objects (name, date, caption text, people, locations, relevant celestial body, associated images etc etc) available.
Users come up with a mashup interface for this. This will integrate our object information with other freely available resources (examples could include Google Maps; sky mapping applications like Google Sky, Stellarium and Celestia; photo-sharing sites; Yahoo Pipe; IBM Many Eyes, astronomy news feeds … or something completely unexpected). The other resources will generally be a form of visualisation (maps, timelines, etc) or another data source.
The best mashup, as judged by a panel (made up of?) is awarded the prize fund. We will be judging in terms of creativity rather than purely technical accomplishment so if someone comes up with a great idea that they can’t quite execute, we can work this up to get it online.
[Working up the final project might take resources so we'd need to think about this - or we could pair them with another contestant.]
If feasible, we could run a ‘mashup speed dating’ ['hack matching'] event as part of the programme (between the data being released and the deadline for submission) – this would allow people to meet and share creative ideas, knowledge and skills. It would be easier to run this as part of Dana/Lates programme but we can look at different ways of doing it.
Audience
At the competition stage the field would be relatively small, as users will need some familiarity with mashups. Possible entrants could include design students, web designers, astronomers (many are very web literate) etc. Although a small field it enables us to target some sectors who might not normally be interested in a Science Museum web offer, and can be open to people around the world.
Once the finished web presence goes live it is open to all of our web audience.
Timescales
To avoid confusion with everything else going on at the Science Museum in 2009, we could open the competition in Autumn 2009 (there are various astronomy anniversaries we could tie into).
Period between the data release (or event) and the submission date should not be more than a month or it will lose momentum.
Possible benefits
We get users to develop a significant web presence for the exhibition – we don’t have time or budget to do this ourselves.
Fits aim of trying out new ways of interpreting objects.
We could get something really innovative.
The interface could have a life beyond the exhibition run and could be extended to the wider collection (or even to collaborations with other institutions if they are interested).
Shows we are serious about making the collection more accessible, and encouraging users to find their own stories about objects.
Makes use of raw information we are already generating for objects, so does not generate extra load on content team.
Feel free to comment! We're still working out the competition parameters, judging, etc.
If you've got data that might work well with our collections data, I'd love to hear from you.
If you're interested in the API side of things, you can join in on the museum API wiki.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)