Dreaming of AI: A Crash Landing into AI in Collections Management

A 1-hour webinar hosted by BPOC's Digital Operations and Collections Information Analyst, Alex Kron, and CEO, Nik Honeysett, with guest speaker Amy Adams, Collections Information & Access Manager at the National Museum of the Royal Navy. Amy shares her experiences with implementing artificial intelligence in collections management and discusses ongoing projects related to AI classification of cultural artifacts. She highlighted the potential and limitations of these technologies, emphasizing the need for customization, data validation, and improvement of data quality. The museum also plans to continue to collaborate with academic partners and suppliers to integrate AI into their systems for entity extraction and keyword extraction, while considering the challenges of compliance with data protection regulations.

Dreaming of DAM: Redesigning Newfields’ Online Collections

An hour-long webinar hosted and moderated by Alex Kron and Nik Honeysett from Balboa Park Online Collaborative. This webinar features Samantha Norling, Anne Young, and Daniel Keller from the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, who share their ongoing efforts to update their collections data and infrastructure. With a critical eye on their collection and archival portals, Samantha, Anne, and Daniel present an overview of their project's progress; grant funding, staffing, and resources that make the project possible; efforts toward Open Access; lessons learned; and diagrams depicting how their technical infrastructure and existing systems will be updated.

Dreaming of AI: Perspectives on AI Use in Cultural Heritage

A one-hour-long webinar facilitated by Alex Kron, Nik Honeysett, and Jack Ludden from Balboa Park Online Collaborative with Jeff Steward from Harvard Art Museums. Kicking off the discussion, Jeff, Jack, and Nik shared their experiences and thoughts on using AI in their work and responded to questions and thoughts from webinar participants during the open discussion. Several webinar participants contributed to the discussion on camera, in the Q&A section, and in the webinar chat.

Dreaming of DAM: Getty Art Collection Reboot

An hour-long webinar hosted by Alex Kron and Nik Honeysett from Balboa Park Online Collaborative features David Newbury, the Assistant Director of Software and UX from the Getty. David presents a thoughtful dive into how the Getty redesigned its online collections to improve functionality and accessibility with a more user-friendly search interface, linked data, IIIF-powered comparisons across their collection, APIs, audience identification, page designs for each of the Getty’s galleries, better exhibition templates, and highlighting connections between objects, people, exhibitions, bibliographies, galleries, blog posts, lesson plans, and more.

Oral History of Museum Computing: Nik Honeysett

This oral history of museum computing is provided by Nik Honeysett, and was recorded on the 5th of April, 2021, by Paul Marty and Kathy Jones. It is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC-BY), which allows for unrestricted reuse provided that appropriate credit is given to the original source.

Dreaming of a New Collections Management System: Episode 6

An almost hour-long webinar hosted and moderated by Alex Kron and co-hosted with Nik Honeysett. The webinar features Elysian McNiff Koglmeier, Head of Growth, from Artwork Archive who shares how you can leverage Artwork Archive to increase access to your museum by bringing exhibitions online, developing programming with interactive maps, and QR codes, virtual fundraising, and collaborating remotely.

MCN Strategy SIG - Nik Honeysett

Dreaming of a New Collections Management System: Episode 4 An hour and thirty-minute webinar, moderated by Alex Kron and co-hosted with Nik Honeysett. The webinar features three panelists who share their professional experiences with embedding DEAI initiatives into their organization's collections management policies and procedures and the limitations in existing collections management systems to meeting those initiatives.

The panelists include:

Mikka Gee Conway, Chief Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Officer and EEO Director The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

Nicole Allen White, Interim Deputy Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access and Director of Government and External Affairs Philadelphia Museum of Art

Kara Vetter, Director of Cultural Resources Museum of Us, San Diego, California

Dreaming of a New Collections Management System: Episode 1

During this hour and a half webinar, we cover many different challenges that cultural heritage professionals face on a regular basis with collections management systems. We discuss challenges around data standardization, the differences in metadata across Libraries, Archives, and Museums and the need to create uniformity, migrating to a new system and the lack of viable products to choose from, the lack of innovation in collections management systems, and how we can look at collections management data differently in order to better capture the stories and people behind objects rather than focusing solely on the object itself.

Interview With an Entrepreneur MCN 2016

As the museum technology field talks about digital transformation and the changes cultural organisations need to make to remain relevant and be sustainable, we talk about the need to be nimble, innovative and entrepreneurial. But what does that really mean? We also talk about looking outside our field for new ideas and new business models. The Balboa Park Online Collaborative (BPOC) is actively embracing these philosophies and even though it has a track record of mobile development and delivery, it has established a public/private relationship with Guru, a local for-profit, mobile experience startup. But the partnership started before Guru was founded with one individual, a former market trader turned serial entrepreneur and investor looking to enter the museum space and consolidate a number of companies to provide compelling way-finding and cultural and attraction-based mobile experiences. The experience has been mutually beneficial for both organisations, but particularly for BPOC watching an entrepreneur go from zero to an nine-person team, see real-world Minimal Viable Product development, investor pitch, market-analysis, market evaluation, revenue and business model development, product pitch, pivoting and last but not least, how to fail quickly and keep moving. In much less than a year, Guru and BPOC have delivered way-finding, museum and attraction mobile apps. What lessons can we learn from the techniques and philosophies of a real entrepreneur? They see no hurdles, they are incredibly optimistic and their speed of execution is impressive. Join this talk show-style interview with a real-life entrepreneur for some frank insight into what it really means to fail quickly and be nimble, innovative and entrepreneurial. Speakers Session Leader : Nik Honeysett, Director and CEO, BPOC Co-Presenter : Paul Burke, Chief Executive Officer, Guru

The Future of Museum Technology

A live podcast presented at the MCN 2016 Conference in New Orleans. Hosted, written and produced by Chad Weinard and Jason Alderman.

Guests: Jane Alexander, Heidi Quicksilver, Jeffrey Inscho, David Newbury, Matt Popke, Micah Walter, Miriam Langer, Tracey Berg-Fulton, Jennifer Foley, Meagan Estep, Scott Sayre, Nik Honeysett, Nina Simon, Beck Tench, nikhil trivedi, Seema Rao, Ahree Lee, Amelia Wong, Lanae Spruce.

Music: Electronic Presentation by Alexey Anisimov, Something Elated by Broke for Free

The View From the Top: An Executive Roundtable The Executive Roundtable will include:

Shelley Bernstein, Deputy Director for Digital Initiatives and Chief Experience Officer

Nik Honeysett, CEO, Balboa Park Online Collaborative

Jo Ellen Parker, President, Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh

Susan M. Taylor, The Montine McDaniel Freeman Director, New Orleans Museum of Art

The Director’s Roundtable will be moderated by Jeffrey Inscho, Innovation Studio, Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, and Chad Weinard, Independent Museum Technologist.

MCN2016

During the past several years, the narrative threads of digital transformation and organizational adaptation have been extremely prevalent at forward-looking conferences such as MCN. This is understandable because the pace of our digital lives, combined with the pervasive reach of technology, have been the urgent catalysts for many institutions to begin considering holistic organizational change strategies.

While meaningful and vibrant discussions about transformation have taken place among MCN’s increasingly diverse attendees, one fundamental voice has been noticeably absent from the dialog: the voice of senior leadership. Until now.

In this salon-style session, museum executives will discuss their views on technology-inspired transformation across the sector. Special attention will be given to the executive-level considerations that come into play with such shifts; the nuances of leading organizational change efforts; communicating change both internally and externally; the emerging skill-sets that will impact museum work of tomorrow; and the conditions, leadership and steps necessary for museums to proactively evolve.

“Our Enchanted Future, Tessitura’s Innovator Series” Nik Honeysett, CEO of Balboa Park Online Collaborative in San Diego presented his talk “Our Enchanted Future” to an audience of almost 1,900 cultural professionals in August 2016, as part of the “Tessitura’s Innovator Series Live at TLCC” session at the 2016 Tessitura Learning & Community Conference (TLCC2016) in Washington DC.

There has never been a better time to be in education and interpretation in the museum field. If current examples of the use of Augmented and Virtual Reality, Haptic Feedback, Creative Coding and the Internet of Things are anything to go by, the cultural experience of the future will be a jaw-dropping mixture of education and entertainment, with a heavy dollop of magic. Using compelling examples from the field and the predictive powers of the Cone of Plausibility, Nik takes the viewer on an unforgettable ride. Strap in and brace yourself for a glimpse into our enchanted future.

MCN2016: Ignite by Nik Honeysett “The Angle of Curiosity and the Open Jaw of Awe”

About That Definition of Insanity MCN 2015 Kaywin Feldman, Nik Honeysett, Elizabeth Neely, Merete Sanderhoff and Koven Smith.

Along with the music industry, newspapers, and Hollywood, museums have seen their business and revenue models irrevocably impacted by the Internet and new digital economies. Yet here as in so many areas, the cultural industry has been slow to change; even the adoption of digital technologies by museums has outstripped their adaptation to 21st century financial realities.

Money, Money, Money: Turn Great Ideas into Funded Projects MCN 2015 Douglas Hegley, Susan Chun, Charisse Gendron, Nik Honeysett and Mary Mortenson.

Technology and digital projects - for all of the awesome capacity to engage and inspire, to empower and enable, and to provide effective tools for organizations - don’t come cheap! This session brings fundraising professionals from the museum sector to the MCN conference to share practical, real-world tools and strategies for turning your great ideas into funded projects AND for finding innovative ways to fund ongoing activities.