Engaging With The Social Web: A Risks and Opportunities Framework

1. http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/cultural-heritage/events/mcg-2009/ Engaging With The Social Web:A Risks and Opportunities Framework Acceptable Use Policy Recording of this talk, taking photos, discussing the content using email, instant messaging, blogs, SMS, etc. is permitted providing distractions to others is minimised. Email: b.kelly@ukoln.ac.uk Twitter: http://twitter.com/briankelly/ Brian Kelly UKOLN University of Bath Bath, UK Blog: http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/ Resources bookmarked using 'mcg-2009' tag UKOLN is supported by: This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence (but note caveat)

2. Concerns identified in discussion group sessions at various UKOLN 1-day workshops for the cultural heritage sector MLA East of England workshop, Nov 2008 Renaissance West Midlands workshop, Feb 2009

3. The Challenges Expertise Money Time Resources Understanding Reliability Sustainability Culturalissues Challenges Interoperability Colleagues Technical Issues Management Privacy, DPA, FOI, .. Council Accessibility IT Services Legal Issues

4. Chasm • Failure to go beyond developers & early adopters (cf Gopher) • Need for: • Advocacy • Listening to users • Addressing concerns • Deployment strategies • … This talk looks at approaches for avoiding the chasm & reshaping the curve Take-up Of New Technologies • The Gartner curve Rising expectations Service plateau Enterprise software Large budgets … Trough of despair Developers Early adopters

5. Over-hyping expectations Let’s Be Realistic • Ning allows you to set up and manage your own social network. Sounds great, doesn’t it? • But: • Will it have the momentum to support thriving discussion? • Might it not just be an automated aggregator of content

6. Over-hyping expectations Let’s Be Realistic • Want to provide a safe social networking environment? • You can with Ning. • But what of the pitfalls? • “Am I bovvered?”

7. Accessibility Accessibility Concerns • Aren’t Social Web services: • Inaccessible to people with disabilities? • Break accessibility guidelines (WCAG) • Leave us liable to be taken to court? DDA: Institutions must take ‘reasonable measures’ to ensure PWDs aren’t discriminated against. Is it discriminatory to fail to provide services? People with disabilities are using Social Web services – as are disability activists People with disabilities are using Social Web services

8. Sustainability Sustainability Concerns • What happens if Museum 2.0 services: • Are unreliable? • Change their terms and conditions (e.g start charging)? • Become bankrupt • Things to remember: • Services may be unreliable e.g. Twitter • Market pressure is leading to changes to T&C – & paid-for services may become free (e.g. Friends Reunited) • Banks may go bankrupt too – but we still use them • Need for risk assessment and risk management

9. Interoperability Interoperability Issues • What happens if Social Web services host your data and: • You can’t get the data back out? • You only get the unstructured or poor quality data back out? • You can’t get the comments, annotations, tags out? • There’s a need to: • Ensure data export capabilities or • Upload data from an alternative managed sources • Understand limitations of data export / import and make plans around limitations How do we share knowledge & experiences?

10. Organisational barriers Deployment Strategies • I want to do use the Social Web but: • The IT Services department bans it • The council bans it • My boss doesn’t approve • Area of interest to UKOLN: • “Just do it” • Subversive approach – ‘Friends of Foo’ if Foo can’t use it • Encourage enthusiasts • Don’t get in the way UKOLN briefing papers available with Creative Commons licence. (over 40 docs published)

11. Organisational barriers The Council Firewall New Internet access policy for childrenFrom December 2008, children will be able to enjoy improved Internet access in all Portsmouth Libraries. The current “Walled Garden” arrangement will be discontinued. The Internet access offered will be similar to that provided in Portsmouth schools but we will also be allowing access to games, Web chat and social networking sites. For further information, please contact … • The reality: • Useful Web services do get blocked • There is dodgy/illegal/ dangerous material on the Web • It may be simple to have a blanket ban • Suggested approaches: • We can accept certain levels of risks • More sophisticated responses are needed • We should share the approaches we’ve taken Feel free to respond to blog post at <http://blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/cultural-heritage/2009/02/24/access-to-social-sites-is-blocked/>

12. Deployment Strategies • Interested in using Web 2.0 in your organisation? • Worried about corporate inertia, power struggles, etc? • There’s a need for a deployment strategy: • Addressing business needs • Low-hanging fruits • Encouraging the enthusiasts • Gain experience of the browser tools • Staff training & development • Address areas you feel comfortable with • Workflow processes • Impact analysis and assessment • Risk and opportunity management strategy • Critical Friends & friendly critics • Culture of openness • …

13. Headlines For 2010? “Tories Win General Election” “Drastic Cuts in Public Sector Funding” “Market place to have increased role in public sector” “Review of public sector Web services” “Digital Lame Ducks condemned”

14. Paul Walk (UKOLN) was described as a ‘critical friend’ of JISC See <https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0903&L=MCG&T=0&F=&S=&P=19929> See <http://dev8d.jiscinvolve.org/2009/02/10/five-minute-interview-paul-walk/> • But is such open debate encouraged? Critical Friends • JISC U&I programme is encouraging establishment of “Critical Friends” See <http://critical-friends.org/>

15. Critical Friends / Friendly Critics • Critical Friends: • Have a mission to make projects succeed • Balance informal approach with critical eye • Maintain confidentiality, frankness, sensitivity & independence • May have a funded role • Friendly critics: • No formal responsibilities • Willing to discuss and engage • Will appreciate sensitivities, constraints, … • Unfriendly critics & hostile opponents: • You know what they are!

16. Biases IntendedPurpose • Critical friends / friendly critics • Application to existing services • Application to in-house development • … • Sharing experiences • Learning from successes& failures • Tackling biases • … Benefits (various stakeholders Risks (various stakeholders Missed Opps. (various stakeholders Costs (various stakeholders Subjective factors Towards a Framework • “Time To Stop Doing and Start Thinking: A Framework For Exploiting Web 2.0 Services”, Museums & the Web 2009 conference

17. Twitter for individuals Organisational Fb Page IntendedPurpose Community support Marketing events,… • Critical friends: • Paul Walk / Brian Kelly blog posts) • MCG discussions • Learning • UKOLN cultural heritage guest blog post • Conferences • Papers • … Benefits (various stakeholders Rapid feedback Large audiences Risks (various stakeholders Justify ROIOrg. brand Ownership, privacy, lock-in Missed Opps. (various stakeholders Community-building Marketing opportunity Costs (various stakeholders Low? Low? Using The Framework • Use of approach in two scenarios: use of Twitter & Facebook Note personal biases!

18. IntendedPurpose Benefits (various stakeholders Risks (various stakeholders Missed Opps. (various stakeholders Costs (various stakeholders Use The Framework Yourself • Feel free to you apply framework to: • Services you’re planning • Existing services • Large scale initiatives (e.g. Creative Spaces) What is the purpose? Who are the users? What are the benefits? To whom? What are the risks? To whom? What are the risks of doing nothing? What are the costs – to developers, to users,… Remember the biases! Is the service really intended to sustain the service provider? Remember the need for the critical friend and the need for sharing?

19. Sharing Your Experiences (1) • There’s now an even greater need to share ideas, plans, decisions: • Rapidly changing technical environment • Best practices now yet established • Changing political context • … Developers at COPAC service use a blog to share technical decisions, experiences, etc.

20. Sharing Your Experiences (2) • Guest blog posts on UKOLN’s cultural heritage blog provide opportunity for sharing experiences • Note that PR-pieces are not welcome! I knew nothing of blogs back then, and nor did our local authority. There were certainly no policies on them at the time, but a suggestions from one of our e-business staff led me at first to open a MySpace account. But this didn’t look good, so Google’s Blogger was tried instead. So great were our webstats submitted under the now-superceded system of “Best Value Performance Indicators” reported by local authorities, that the Audit Commission even questioned their veracity. .. they declared our figures unsuitable for reflecting website usages by museums. … this decision might put the viability of the whole project into question … this could be a case of the statistics-gathering tail wagging the audience-focussed dog. But common sense prevailed …

21. Let The Public Know • Frankie Roberto as a friendly critic Social services, communities, etc. are now being used to seek evidence of value-for-money. We need to be able to demonstrate appropriate processes are in place. “The paper sets out to answer this question by way of original research and experimentation on real data sets of museum objects, obtained from a number of UK museums by way of a Freedom of Information request.”

22. Openness & The Sector • We are experiencing: • Promotion of culture of openness (e.g. Creative Commons) • Political pressures for public sector to be ‘transparent’ • Legislation such as FOI • Implications for museums: • Opening up data can enhance access, support innovation, … • Need to be open about our policies, decisions, … • This can enhance museum values of trust

23. The Risks • Open government data: • Allows greater accountability to the public (friends & enemies) • Enables ‘mashup maestros’ to visualise the data A map of MPs expenses claims – click on tag to get MPs name

24. What You Can Do • You can: • Seek to open up your data (and start on the easy aspects – your slides, perhaps) • Open up your development processes • Build on a culture of sharing .. • …but go beyond the MCG JISCmail list • Regard an FOI request as an opportunity to be welcomed

25. Conclusions The future is exciting - but Curator Sapiens will need to address the challenges. Acknowledgments to Michael Edson for the Web Tech Guy and Angry Staff Person post / comic strip