Project AMEP

[Lynda Kelly]

Today we begin an adventure. I'm taking on board Mal's idea of "touring the web", building on Nina's work about how much time does Web 2.0 take and my own reflections in my paper Museum 3.0, organisational change and informal learning by starting Project AMEP.

The Australian Museum Eureka Prizes (AMEP) are Australia's premier science awards. This year we are trialling taking AMEP to the web. This afternoon we will set up our Facebook fan page and Flickr channel and then start spreading the word. At the AMEP finalists announcement function on 24th July I will attempt to get vox pops and fotos which I will upload startight away to the Fan page/Flickr, and we can then use Facebook to start feeding stories in the lead up to the dinner and prize giving ceremony on 19 August.

At the same time I will be putting my money where my mouth is and seeing:
* how much time does Web 2.0 actually take compared with Nina's model
* how we can put in systems to move these projects to the mainstream and make them sustainable through training and commitment of the AMEP staff
* whether people do join up (which is one thing) but then do they actually interact with the site.


Keep you all posted.

[Lynda Kelly]

Twitter feed now live. This did add considerably to the timing as there were a few glitches. However, now it is there it really takes no time to maintain at all! We will be tweeting from the dinner so please follow our Twitter account or via the AMEP website. Have added some images below

[Lynda Kelly]

OK, an update. Kristen has joined the FB page as an admin. She told me that after realising she wasn't going to break or stuff anything up she got into doing some updates (time taken - 20 minutes).

I set up the eurekaprizes Twitter account this morning. Realising I had to delete my current account and stuffing about a bit managed to do it - time taken 30 minutes (inlcuding a brief chat with Russ yesterday). Will follow up the Twitter feed to the website today. I should confess that this will cost real $$s now (as opoosed to our time) but as is only $600 I think that's OK for now (I know in future we will be able to do it ourselves).

So how long to date?? Discounting Vanessa's work in finding a sound file app for Facebook my best estimate is 3 hours in set-up (incl adding apps) and 55 minutes maintenance/content update. Divide the latter by number of weeks, then 11 minutes/week - not bad!!

[Lynda Kelly]

Here's some other useful Twitter links (the one above is to one of those really great Common Craft videos):
* Twitter explained by Wikipedia
* Museum 2.0 What is Twitter really? And can it do anything for museums?
* Twitter website

I also re-read the Twitter section in Shelley's paper about the Brooklyn Museum and Web 2.0. Some useful lessons there:
* Sign-up process can be confusing (action - sort this early and do some test runs, have a dedicated Twitter person there on the nite??)
* Post interesting content (action - our content will be the actual winners, include prize name and name/s + plus food updates of course! The event is sold-out so those who can't make it want to engage with us somehow and gives us a good way to manage their disappointment by offering live updates)
* Post content relevant to visitors (action - see above, will be highly relevant to winners and their families/friends who can't be there on the nite)

Russ is also going to do a post about Twitter on his blog somewhere so I hope he posts the link when it's done (won't you Russ?!).

[Lynda Kelly]

Hi all, a quick update and an observation/ question. Fan page going well, staff maintenance time to date 5-10 minutes over last two weeks or so for Ruth who added some images and new information. Took me a little longer to cut and render the sound files and upload them (2 glasses of red wine to be exact). Luckily our intern, Vanessa, spent a little bit more time looking for sound file apps for Facebook - maybe I don't count that time??

33 fans to date, someone has uploaded Fan fotos and Roger's sister rang him to say how impressed she was to see him on Facebook!

So, our conundrum. We want to blog "live" from the awards dinner. Been chatting to Russ, our web guru here, and we're thinking of taking the Twitter route for the following reasons (his words):
1. Aim for "bang for your buck" - you want to do a little (simple twitter "tweet") and have it appear in a lot of places (website, facebook, twitter).
2. Avoid diluting audience - sending them away from your core site.
3. Multiple authors using simple system (twitter) via any device (website, mobile etc).

He has done a great image of how this could work (see below). Myself? I have tried Twitter but couldn't see the point of it until now, so looks like that's a goer. Will keep you posted...

[Lynda Kelly]

Ruth put a link to FB on the Eureka page (Roger asked her too after seeing the ad on Covent Garden's web page!) - be keen to see what this does, maybe that's why some people have joined up now??

[Lynda Kelly]

Content: 22 fans, now mostly seems to be viral (and not just mine and Ruth's friends!); 4 notes PS I note that Bryan Gaensler, a former Young Australian of the year and high science achiever is a fan, as is one of the finlaists for this year - that's exciting!
We have an event tonite which Vanessa and I are attempting to do something with so watch this space tomorrow to see how we went...
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[Lynda Kelly]

Thnx Nina. So far 13 Fans, mostly friends of friends + some people I emailed separately. Ruth will be sending out the e-newsletter soon with details of this group so we'll see what happens and how many people join up.

I plan to add a short note later this week (5 minutes max time i reckon for that as it is a cut and paste from another document). So far as you say, the set up took a bit of time but maintenance time is minimal.

[Nina Simon]

Lynda, this is so great! I can't wait to hear how it goes. My experience is that the startup time is much more than the maintenance time... good luck putting it all together!

[Lynda Kelly]

notes, and general information

[Lynda Kelly]

with events