Travelling Fellowship

Through my work, the National Library of Australia, I was lucky enough to win the 2013 Kenneth Binns Travelling Fellowship (thank you!). I have been awarded a grant to undertake an overseas trip that will enhance my current and future projects in Web Publishing here at the Library, as well as to help develop my own personal growth as a professional and as a human.

I will be traveling to the USA in April 2013, three different cities, to attend a conference, visit a range of incredible cultural institutions and meet with a range of practitioners and experts in a variety of fields. From this trip I hope to be learn from and by inspired by industry world leaders in the areas of web publishing, social media, mobile content, content strategy. and ePublishing.

I will be documenting my travels through this blog as much as I can, check out my posts tagged with Travelling Fellowship. Below is my initial itinerary, including what institutions I am visiting, who I will be meeting with and what I hope to gain by meeting with them. This list is ever growing!

Seattle

• Attending An Event Apart website design conference
• Meeting with Jonathan Coleman and other content strategists

New York City

• The New York Public Library, meeting with Johannes Neuer, Associate Director of Marketing
• Content Strategy New York meetup group
• Museum of Natural History, meeting with Catherine Devine, Chief Digital Officer
• New Museum, meeting with Annie Wachnicki, Director of Marketing

Washington, D.C

• Library of Congress, meeting with Michelle Springer, Digital Initiatives Project Manager
• Smithsonian Institute, meeting with Sara Snyder, usability testing practitioner; Sarah Banks, Erin Blasco, Sarah Sulick, Victoria Portway, social media practitioners; Brian Alpert, Web Analytics and SEM Analyst; Nancy Proctor, Head of Mobile Strategy and Initiatives
• National Archives of America; Mary Krakowiak, social media team.

My quest

There are many things I am hoping to learn about on this trip; many, many (many!) questions to be asked. I can’t wait to learn from other institutions and practitioners and hear real-world examples about work being done in a number of different areas. I’m looking for inspiration for future projects, and possible solutions to very current and looming issues faced at the NLA. Below is another ever-growing list of questions, topics and interests that I will be exploring during my travels.

Web

• Content strategy
  Do you have a content strategy? Where do you start? How do you manage multiple authors, voices, types of information? How do you manage a broad demographic of users? 
• Displaying digital content
  How do you display your collections online? For mobile? How can people access collection items off site and what parameters are their around the quality and quantity of material they can access? Innovative ideas for displaying digital content?
• Taxonomy and information architecture
  Where do you start? How do you prioritise content (and convince authors to agree with you)?
• Statistics and analytics best practice
• Usability testing
  Does it work? Best practice?
• Content management/authoring
  How much work should you expect your CMS to do?

Social media

• Management
  How do you deal with multiple content authors? What software/s do you use to manage authoring and statistics? How do you encourage staff engagement to provide content?
• Campaigns
  Have you run any particularly successful social media campaigns? How did they work?
• Social curation
  How much do you let your users curate your content (displays and access)? Both online and on-site? Have you had success with any social curation activities?
• Enterprise social media 
  Do you use it? How to do you engage your staff? How does it work for you?
• Copyright
  How much does copyright impact your social media content? How risk averse do you have to be?
• Pinterest
  How do you feel about copyright surrounding Pinterest? Low risk?

Mobile

• App vs. mobile site
• Augmented reality apps
  How precise does your metadata/geodata need to be? Are they really worth it?
• Mobile strategy
  Do you have one? How has it impacted your content and authorship of content for the web?
• Mobile content
• Metadata/geodata
  “Metadata is the new art direction” – thoughts? How do you convince your staff?
• Responsive design
  

Other

• eBooks
• Online identity guidelines