Presentation given at the MMA/AASLH 2016 unconference at The Henry Ford on 9/17/16, covering The Henry Ford's digital platform and digital content efforts.
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The Henry Ford's Digital Platform Development
1. The Henry Ford’s Digital Platform:
Developing a Digital Content Engine
Ellice Engdahl, Digital Collections & Content Manager
MMA/AASLH at The Henry Ford
September 17, 2016
2. Presentation Overview
• About The Henry Ford
• Our Digital Vision
• Foundational Pieces
• Starting Up: Staffing & Process
• The Content!
• Results, Lessons Learned, &
Ongoing Challenges
Printing Block, Public Address in a Town Square, 1860-1940 (66.143.780)
3. The Edison Institute, Founded 1929
Francis Jehl, Thomas Edison, President Herbert Hoover, and Henry Ford at Menlo Park Laboratory in Greenfield Village, 1929 (P.O.4556)
4. Five Venues
Henry Ford Museum
Greenfield Village
Benson Ford Research Center
Giant Screen Experience
Ford Rouge Factory Tour
Henry Ford Museum, 1953 (P.B.3002)
Old Car Festival, 1959 (2005.0.9.18)
5. • ~250,000 objects
• ~25 million archival
documents and photographs
• Historic audio and video
• 200+ objects on loan to
dozens of institutions
• ~21,700 artifacts on display
in Museum and Village (~5-
10% of non-archives
collection)
• More than 30 distinct
collections storage areas
totaling nearly 200,000 sq.
ft.
Eye Portrait, circa 1800 (61.151.40)
Our Collections:
“The Bottomless Pit of Wonderfulness”
6. Presentation Overview
• About The Henry Ford
• Our Digital Vision
• Foundational Pieces
• Starting Up: Staffing & Process
• The Content!
• Results, Lessons Learned, &
Ongoing Challenges
Printing Block, Public Address in a Town Square, 1860-1940 (66.143.780)
7. Digital Vision: 2020
• Embrace the Connected Consumer
– Deliver world class user experiences and
exclusive content to consumers on all screen
sizes and device types
• Drive Global Accessibility
– Curate digital-first content that effectively
blends with physical experience to drive
global access to America's most important
history collection
• Consumer Experience & Data Focused
– Cultivate a consumer experience focused and
data driven culture. Leverage data driven
insights to optimize a consumer experience
that effectively blends the physical and
digital worlds
• Monetization
– Leverage digital technology and distribution
models to optimize and create new and
innovative revenue streams
Advertising Photograph, Model with 1979 Ford Mustang interior Door and Seat (88.400.52)
9. Presentation Overview
• About The Henry Ford
• Our Digital Vision
• Foundational Pieces
• Starting Up: Staffing & Process
• The Content!
• Results, Lessons Learned, &
Ongoing Challenges
Printing Block, Public Address in a Town Square, 1860-1940 (66.143.780)
10. Oversight:
Digital &
Emerging Media
Department
• Established 2013
• Small (8 FTEs) but mighty
• Three arms:
– Digital Strategy &
Implementation
– Digitization & Digital
Content
– Digital Analytics &
Insights
• Works most closely with
Marketing and Historical
Resources Software for an Apple II GS Computer and Apple Imagewriter II, circa 1990 (2009.4.4)
11. Productionized Digital Collections
pre-2010: “Random Acts of
Digitization”
2010: THF announces intent to
digitize all collections holdings
2011: THF begins using EMu as
its collections management
system and repository of record
for digital collections
data/image metadata
2010-2016: Artifacts online grow
from 300 to 56,000+
2016: New Digital Collections &
backend infrastructure
Building Blocks, 1900-1910, Used by Edsel B. Ford (44.160.63)
15. Presentation Overview
• About The Henry Ford
• Our Digital Vision
• Foundational Pieces
• Starting Up: Staffing & Process
• The Content!
• Results, Lessons Learned, &
Ongoing Challenges
Printing Block, Public Address in a Town Square, 1860-1940 (66.143.780)
16. Skills
• Content strategy & program management
• Collections imaging (museum & archives)
• Web implementation
• Digital design
• Cataloging
• Collections management
• Content authoring & project management
• Conservation
• Video production
• Social media
Women Employees Receiving Approved Coverall Uniforms at
Willow Run Bomber Plant, 1942 (P.833.76946.F)
17. Process
• Idea generation
• Initial discussion
• SME follow-ups
• Idea finalization
• Content creation – by or
in collaboration with
SME(s)
• Content vetting – by or
in collaboration with
SME(s)
• Content publication
• Content distribution
1924 Ford Motor Company Institutional Message Advertising Campaign, "Organized Economies“ (64.167.19.601)
18. Presentation Overview
• About The Henry Ford
• Our Digital Vision
• Foundational Pieces
• Starting Up: Staffing & Process
• The Content!
• Results, Lessons Learned, &
Ongoing Challenges
Printing Block, Public Address in a Town Square, 1860-1940 (66.143.780)
19. Content Types/Destinations for
Storytelling
• NEW
– Connect3 videos
– What If stories
– Exhibit stories
– Curating/Preserving stories
– On-the-floor digital kiosks
• REVAMPED
– Expert Sets
– Popular Research Topics
• EXISTING
– Other videos
– Blog posts
– Online exhibits (Google Arts &
Culture)
– Social media posts
– TV show episode pages
– On-the-floor digital kiosks
• FOUNDATIONAL
– *Digitization (can include 360˚ views,
narratives, extended narratives,
specs, etc)
Grand Panorama of Cinderella, circa 1890 (59.48.2)
22. Presentation Overview
• About The Henry Ford
• Our Digital Vision
• Foundational Pieces
• Starting Up: Staffing & Process
• The Content!
• Results, Lessons Learned, &
Ongoing Challenges
Printing Block, Public Address in a Town Square, 1860-1940 (66.143.780)
23. Some Results So Far
• ~10% of our unique pageviews
March-August 2016 are for content
or Digital Collections pages
• 6% year over year growth in visits to
thf.org for July 2016
• 123% year over year growth in usage
of Digital Collections for July 2016
• Referrals from social and search
engines growing
• Rosa Parks What If is a top draw
• Low usage of Connect3s
24. Provide Visibility
• Content takes more time &
staff than anyone might
think
– Challenge: Track & explain
time
• Much of our collection is not
as well-understood as we’d
like
– Challenge: Reveal hidden
stories
• Collections content provides
opportunities
– Challenge: Understand
opportunity benefits & costs
• We’re more than our top 10
stories
– Challenge: Find ways to
popularize our less well-known
stories
Cutaway View of a General Motors EV1 Car, 1997-2002 (2002.76.2)
25. Prioritization Is Key
• Our collections really are the
“bottomless pit of
wonderfulness”
– Challenge: Pick topics wisely
• We have many institutional
messaging needs
– Challenge: Create content that
serves multiple purposes
• Demand outstrips supply
– Challenge: Not everyone will be
happy
Boys in Brooklyn Children's Museum, 1899-1915 (32.351.38)
26. No Fear
• Our collections are the root
of our institution
– Challenge: Derive message from
collections vs other way around
• Clear roles & responsibilities
are needed
– Challenge: Resolve lack of
clarity, even when this is
difficult
• “Fit & Finish” vs “Minimum
Viable Product”
– Challenge: Don’t let the perfect
be the enemy of the good
• Not everything will work as
expected
– Challenge: Treat failure as a
learning opportunity
Lillian Boyer Performing Stunts with an Airplane in Flight, circa 1922 (68.160.1.25)
Just a quick outline of what I’ll be covering today—will put this back up as we switch sections so you can stay oriented
Also note that all the images in my presentation are from our Digital Collections—it’s always nice to show them off—they always have some relationship to the text on the slide, so you can see if you can figure that out as we go
Currently known as The Henry Ford, but founded 1929 by Henry Ford as Edison Institute, on 50th anniversary of Thomas Edison’s invention of electric light
Henry interested in significant achievements of industrial history (like Edison’s) but also everyday life for Americans before changes from automobile and industrialization
Two large venues:
Henry Ford Museum
Museum = 600,000 sq. ft.
Greenfield Village, open-air historical village
Village (developed) = 81 acres
~80 historic structures
Also have
Benson Ford Research Center = portal to our collex, incl. reading room
Giant Screen Experience theater (45,000 sq. ft.)
Run Ford Rouge Plant factory tour for FMC
In addition have on campus Henry Ford Academy, a public charter high school with 485 students
Quote at top from Curator of Public Life Donna Braden– gets at both good & bad things about vast collection
About ¼ million objects--estimates vary depending on how you count, but that’s estimate for accreditation
Vast archives and lots of material in storage
Now vision for digital @ THF
Developed by Digital & Emerging Media Director (my boss) as an extension of 2020 institutional strategic plan goals
Four key points
Embrace Connected Consumer
Recognize that most people now have smartphones, tablets, etc, and that this has changed their expectations
Drive Global Accessibility
Become a digital content publisher & distributor ->really the point of the Digital Content Engine
Ties to strategic goal around collections access—recognizing that not everyone will ever visit, but web can increase our reach worldwide
Consumer Experience & Data Focused
Our goal not only to create great experiences, but use analytics & other data to determine where they aren’t working and improve based on data
Monetization
We only draw about 40% of our annual budget from revenue from our endowment—about 60% is earned through ticket sales, retail, events, etc. This is a big deal for us—we brag about it often—so finding new ways to maintain that ratio as the world changes around us is important.
Potential content licensing, branded content, plus revenue conversions through drawing people into our site
Key on this plan and the next slide: Note marketing-centric nature. DEM director has marketing background; though it springs from collections access, this was sold largely on its marketing potential.
“Content is king”—my boss’s slide
Slide that sold this plan to our board
Shows
Continuing to digitize and maintaining a digital collections database online
But expanding to use digital collections as atomic elements for storytelling
Then distributing those stories via numerous marketing channels
CONTENT MARKETING!
'You think you're in a museum, I think we're in a data vault' – Eric Schmidt, Exec Chairman of Alphabet, Google’s parent company -> museums have in quantity an asset everyone wants – interesting stories to tell
Both want to share collections and expand access but also tie this to the promise of expanded reach and revenue -> this is what got everyone excited about developing DCE – and willing to fund
Couldn’t have done this 5 years ago—will talk about what we had to have in place to tackle this effort
Provides ownership and oversight of THF’s digital activities
Three areas:
Digital Strategy & Implementation
manage our digital platforms as a whole, including web and mobile
Digitization & Digital Content
me!
Manage our cross-functional collections digitization efforts, and also the new DCE effort
Digital Analytics & Insights
Manages our analytics and business intelligence, including data-driven marketing campaigns
Work most closely with
Marketing
Web changes/enhancements and campaign requests
Historical Resources
our collections experts—curatorial, registrars, archives, library, collections management, and conservation
Who I work most closely with cross-functionally for both digitization and digital content
Digital collections = foundation of whole DCE idea
Collections digitization began in earnest at THF around 2010; before that digitization was not done consistently or methodically
Since then we’ve worked on smoothing workflows and handoffs; now have 56K+ artifacts online
Last bullet point is a key one, which leads to next slide
New institutional website launched February 2016
Whole site has great SEO/findability, is responsive (works on any size device)
Includes new digital collections interface
Robust – good indexing, advanced search, related objects, new multimedia types, high-res image ecommerce
New backend infrastructure
Automated daily harvests from our collections mgmt. system – no need for manual intervention
used to not harvest when DBA was not here, now the digitization team controls
Images pre-processed; pre-cropped for speed and best appearance
Another key feature of the new website to mention
Artifact cards – automatically created for every artifact in our Digital Collections
Compact, portable, sharable versions of our digital collections objects
Designed to be embeddable—in your blog, or in our website
Hope to draw in those who might not visit Digital Collections database; also hope to encourage social sharing of collections in a fun and interesting way
Play one minute video
Storytelling hub -- home for most DCE content
Designed to be browsable & suck you in
Explore section contains new types of content developed just for DCE plus repurposed existing content such as blog, video oral histories, etc—more on those soon
Talk briefly about staffing up and process
All the different skills we need to pull this off
Need someone to manage the priorities and process – me
Need resources that continue to work on digitization – conservation, registrars, archives, photography
Need folks to write and manage putting the content together
Need folks to design and implement content on the web (or other digital interface)
Need production staff to put videos together
Need social media & marketing resources to share the content
Across all those roles
added 6 new FTEs
seems like a lot but spread across all those needs doesn’t go as far as you’d think
increased 2 staff from PT to FT
Moved 4 staff from soft money to hard money; this wasn’t a net increase in bodies because all came with existing work but it at least means they are permanent
Reminder: Funding for all of this came via the promise that this effort can become self-sustaining from a revenue standpoint some day
Process for digital content development - work in progress but right now…
Ideas for possible digital content are submitted in theory by anyone but mostly from marketing, education, & historical resources
Discussed by stakeholders to assess potential strategic value (from interesting story through potential promotional tie-ins) – discussing the topics for discussion, not formats
Follow-up discussions with subject matter experts (usually the curators) to refine & determine format(s) for the topic
Content authored by DCE resources in collaboration with the SME – or by SME as time permits (DCE resources still often do project management/implementation/web requests) – always vetted by the SME at several steps in the process to ensure historical accuracy
Then published & shared – still working on refining these pieces as we do “the first one” of everything
The content! (fun part)
Wanted DCE to have a “wow” but also recognize even with added staff can’t do everything
At bottom—digitized collection records as the foundation
Next – repurpose (and/or continue to create) existing content where that makes sense
Types of content we already created or must maintain (like kiosks on the floor), plus partnerships like Google Arts & Culture
Rethink/revamp
Presenting existing content in different ways, covering more broadly, or including expanded functionality
Brand new
New type of video – will show you one in a bit
New type of narrative story based around a “what if” question – more later
Behind the scenes stories showcasing the way we care for artifacts, put exhibits together
So new we’ve just begun discussing – new ways to develop content for digital kiosk experiences on the floor
Example of a What If story on Bucky Fuller & the Dymaxion House behind me in Museum
Currently have 8 What If stories in production, one more on the Wright brothers nearing completion
Take a very narrow focus of a key moment around one or more artifacts and tell 800-1400 word story (5-7 minutes reading time)
Richly designed pages, lots of multimedia and in some cases interactive elements
Connect3 videos – other content type we’re proud of
Collections experts pick three artifacts that might not have a clear connection and elaborate on one
Play two-minute video
Our hope is that these are pretty quick, simple, templatized to put together, but we’re finding the more intriguing the idea, the more thinking they require. Still working on productionizing these and getting more than three online.
Initial results, lessons learned and ongoing challenges
Some early findings since the new site launched.
Chart shows content-based unique pageviews in relation to rest of site
Most visitors come to site for visit info, but 6% of pageviews for Explore and 5% for Collections & Research, which contains Digital Collections
Seeing more visits to our website in general and LOTS more to content pages
Increasing referrals from search and social channels as content is shared
Really great results from Rosa Parks What If
Very low views for Connect3s—want to figure out how to improve this (may improve as we create more)
Now, lessons learned and related ongoing challenges in several categories
Visibility
Making sure people understand how much time things take
researching, writing, project managing all take more time than you might assume
esp. for areas of our collection not under great intellectual control/well understood/well researched
But latter is key to true collections access – not just the stories we already tell all the time, but revealing our hidden gems
Opportunity cost
back to bottomless pit of wonderfulness
our problem has never been lack of opportunity to do cool things with our collection – these are virtually unlimited
instead need to analyze the potential cost and potential returns from each opportunity—may not always be obvious
More bottomless pit of wonderfulness – have much, much more material than we could ever adequately cover, so employ strategic thinking
Including institutional needs – where can we create content that serves multiple purposes
Institution will always want more than we can provide
Accept this, try to create content that does as many things as possible, and communicate clearly on priorities and their rationale
On related note… You can’t be afraid—or at least need to conquer fear
Remember why we’re doing this
Effort is rooted in our collections, and our collections are the reason we are here.
We have a strong brand identity, but make no mistake—our stories are our message
With new work / workflows comes potential lack of clarity on roles & responsibilities
Have to take on these difficult conversations
“Fit & Finish” is one of our five pillars, but it can get in the way with a start-up effort like this
“Minimum viable product” – concept from Agile where good enough is good enough
80-20 rule
But embrace potential collision of this mindset with “fit and finish”
live our innovation message
back to branding: we don’t have to say “innovation” if we are doing innovation
Last, things will fail
They will take too long, they will be a mess, they will be abandoned
THIS IS OK
Learn and move on
Again, live innovation mindset