Conference presentation 2009 at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Associations (Philadelphia) about several expedient ways to bring museum content online: exhibit space panoramas, online albums with extended captions, simple narrated sets of images for playback like a movie (with or without clips embedded).

1. Hokkaido University Museum – Sapporo, Japan
Making waves in the museum
galleries with multimedia work
Guven Witteveen
anthroview@gmail.com

2. Workshop – making multimedia (3 hours)

3. [panorama view] Final hall – the university history

4. Why expect multimedia from Univ. Museum
reasons FOR
reasons AGAINST
• novel & efficient
• enjoyable, effective
• peer uni. catch-up/lead
• institution resists change
• risk averse, unknowns
• no immediate reward

5. Do results merit this effort? CONSIDERATIONS
• Web 2.0 (user generated content)
• ever easier to make, increasingly expected
• Snowballing: play> work> serious play

6. Looking ahead three years
• more user generated content
• peer to peer "how to" help
• students produce MMD, profs follow

7. Goal: give direction and then to coach museum
curators to produce & distribute multimedia
Hurdles:
•
•
•
•
(English/Japanese) language flow
culture reference points or standards
motivation/precedent for added work
software ease of use

8. What the multimedia looks like: examples produced
panorama views = spaces of gallery
online albums = details and text
narrated slideshow = playback ease

9. Panoramas – displayed as online album [Picasa >Export as HTML]

10. Gallery details - online album [Picasa >Export as HTML]

11. Narrated slides & video clips for playback
[Windows MovieMaker]

12. How to make these - HARDWARE
desktop PC
digital still camera
(for video clips)

13. How to make these - SOFTWARE
• panorama = Autostitch.net
• album = Picasa3 (host picasaweb.google.com)
• movie = Windows Movie Maker, photostory3
see also www.papajohn.org for WMM & Ps3
cf. www.jingproject.com (screencast comment)
link: http://tinyurl.com/makemedia

14. [panorama] Download page – Autostitch.net

15. Making panorama from images that overlap

16. Recording boundaries for screencast (JING)

17. Selling the Project - timeline
simple version March 8 greet board
simple demo March 20 party
overview described April article blurb
promotion May/June one on one talking
coaching May/June 1 on 1, case by case
finished products June show to board
workshop June how-to practicing

18. Providing Support
guidance, reference (use Jing screencasts)
coaching one on one

19. Resulting Products (by Witteveen)
•
•
•
•
movies: museum, botanical space, photo
online albums: same subjects, different detail
panoramas: same subjects, different view
train: screencast demo of software, workshop
for wider campus community of producers

20. Resulting Products (museum staff)
researcher
curator
admin/outreach
students

21. Recommendations
• more play (personal uses)> work >serious play
• showcase products, tell "how to“
• conference clinic, coaching, mentor match

22. Questions we would like to answer
• Which product attracts most users? Why so?
• Which mode is most effective to change
knowledge, attitude, actions
• What feature/function is liked best? worst?
• Workflow streamlining: event> product >promo

23. More unanswered questions
a) longitudinal effects of multimedia stories
b) learning curve as producer: able to do more, conceive wider, foresee more (cf.
Megatrends pattern: play to work to serious play)
c) predisposing or shaping role of a particular recording device (digital vs optical
camera; pro vs. Point-and-Shoot; camcorder vs. film movie camera); of a particular
set of software tools that make certain functions easy to perform (or conversely
present obstacles to quickly and easily performing)
d) supposing you could have a dream device and software the streamlines your
desired workflow and end product: then what subjects would you more effectively
or at least more readily explore?
e) cost/benefit (or Return On Investment) reasoning: do the products merit the efforts
made?
f) looking at each form of multimedia produced, what are the strong/weak points of
each? per learner style? given the lifecycle (or food chain) for texts vs. images vs.
movies vs. audio (which are used over long years vs. tend to be time-sensitive)?
g) user feedback on each multimedia mode
h) observed user actions or applications of each sort of multimedia (repurposing?
citation? intertextual referencing? change in behavior or attitude?)

24. Hokkaido University Museum – Sapporo, Japan
Making waves in the museum
galleries with multimedia work
Guven Witteveen
anthroview@gmail.com