Office 2010 Key Museum Directors and IT Profession

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As promised, here is everything from the Museum Directors and IT Professionals: A Conversation about Leadership panel that I had the pleasure of moderating at MCN Chicago. What a blast. If you attended, thanks for your time – I hope you got as much out of it as I did. If you didn’t make it to Chicago or the panel, I hope you get something out of this post.
With a small amount of time, luck and a following wind, I’ll try and distill this into something more formal.
Enormous thanks to the panel for their insight and sharing: Janice Klein, John Dodge, Sam Quigley (The man with the longest title in Museum Technology) and Jim Cuno. Enormous thanks also to Holly (the queen of conference-notes capture).
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Introduction from Nik Honeysett, a recovering IT professional, Chair of AAM Media & Technology SPC. The Media & Technology SPC has a MUSE award that is dedicated to Jim Blackaby, who was mentioned in the last session, and this session is dedicated to Jim Blackaby.
(Nik) What I’m hoping for in this session is a full and frank discussion. Where does technology sit in the museum environment? How is information technology perceived by museum directors? What can we do to advance and support it strategically? This session will be broken into two halves—first a discussion with my esteemed panel and part two will be opened up to the floor for a broad conversation based on issues in the first half. Discussion will also be framed by the results of a survey sent out.
Two months ago I sent out a survey—63 responses—I’ll present some of the highlights here now.
One of the comments that came back from the survey epitomizes the problem. A comment from a director re technology staff—”I don’t know what they do and they don’t know why I make the decisions I make with regard to technology.”
How do we remove the “dont’s” from that statement? That’s one of the tasks of this session.
Survey Results:











(Nik) The fact that about 75% of respondents thought that there is a large gap between the IT staff and the rest of the institution is very worrying. A survey question that asked “Use one word to describe the relationship between any IT staff and the rest of your institution” also gave some concerning results – one third positive, two thirds negative:
Positive comments were in green, negative comments in red. Nik asked, as another outcome for this session, if you are from a green museum, pass on some advice to your colleagues on the red side. If you are from a red museum you need to think long and hard about what you are doing.
Now, I’d like to introduce the speakers and instead of asking for their biographies, because this is a technology conference, I Googled them.
Janice Klein – Violin Maker
John Dodge – Baseball player (now dead)
Sam Quigley – Coal Miner
Jim Cuno – Gospel Singer
Nik then provided audience with the real bios for the speakers.
I’d like to thank the museum directors for being here. What we need is a brain dump from Jim and Janice. Audience is largely IT professionals.
(Nik) What does technology mean to you? How does it sit in your institution, Jim?
(Jim Cuno) Internally technology means record keeping, all the data we need, financial, human resources, curatorial, and data about the collections. Technology means all the data that we need to function efficiently. Externally this is about communications. How do we provide information to the people who want to know about us and also how do we market the museum and shape peoples understanding of us. It’s an ineffable part of what we do. It is also a black hole for resources.
(Nik) The Art Institute of Chicago is also engaged in technology. How did you get to that point? What decisions did you make in your head to get at that level? Was there a moment when you figured it out? Were you forced to figure it out?
(Jim) Three years ago I got there and I inherited an internal system. It was rich and robust internally but not as rich externally. I had worked with Sam before at Harvard on a different scale. We have a morale obligation to provide people with information about our collections equal to that of our moral obligation to preserve the objects in our care. It seemed to me obvious. The other thing that seemed obvious was that the scene is changing rapidly and we have to be nimble, we couldn’t afford to be left behind. As modes and means change rapidly we needed to throw ourselves in front of the train.
My predecessor is someone who hadn’t ever placed his own telephone calls certainly he never used email (still doesn’t). He was supportive of the internal mechanisms but he had no concept of how anybody out there would be interested in accessing information about the museum externally. How did I get there? Maybe I got to it this way—I’ve got two daughters who went to college. One went eight years ago, one went to college four years ago. There is a huge difference between what was available on line 8 years ago and what we found 4 years ago. Four years ago we got more information about the college and more of a sense of the place. That’s the trajectory for the world and the museum has an obligation to present itself well.
The other story is iPods. I’ve got one but can’t find the time to use it. I remember when Blackberries were under threat and it seemed as if everybody had a Blackberry. About the time of the threat I read an article about the millions of iPods that are being purchased every day. The order of magnitude of this was far greater than the Blackberry purchases. This convinced me that we had to be more of an iPod institution.
And I went on a visit to the Google offices here—the offices are perfectly juvenile. The Google guy was saying you really need to think about YouTube for the museum. I had no idea what it was; people had sent me clips of commercials. I thought that was what it was fun videos for people to watch at work. Okay I thought I’ll check it out (not at work I’d like to point out). I Googled museums and found some clips from MOMA that were good and some that were boring and one from CIA. I Googled the Art Institute of Chicago and there were dozens and dozens and dozens of them. One was of a kid going down a ramp on his wheelie sneakers. One was a hypnotherapist – he was in a ############## with Degas paintings and someone was videotaping him advertising his new website on hypnotherapy. He said “You can overcome fear of success just like Edgar Degas” and I thought to myself “where are the security guards.”
(Janice) From the sublime to the ridiculous. There’s a lot of money over here there are actually 14,000 museums behind me, museums with budgets of under $250, 000 all of them would like to have some technology. I asked some of my colleagues on the small museum list serve and one of her people is a high school person. She needed a high school student to install Spy ware.
Two years ago there was a wonderful session called “Technology’s No Tea Party.” Technology for small museums = email, voicemail, web site, digital camera, photo-shop, word processing, spreadsheets. Technology for us is primarily data organization and communications. Most of us do not have an IT person on staff. In my own institution, in addition to John Dodge who serves as a volunteer and gets some grant money. My husband is our web master and a volunteer does an occasional email blast.
(Nik) Do you see technology as a priority way of communicating to a larger audience?
(Janice) Probably not. Basically, in a small museum, technology is a tool. We want to learn how to use it. We want the easiest thing. The first solution that comes to mind. We don’t want to have to relearn it every six months, because as the director of a small museum I am busy doing several other things. It really is one of those things when there is something we want to do we are open to new ideas but we want it explained simply. I was at the Field Museum before I worked here. I would say, “I need to know how to do this.” The IT person would offer me a number of choices, but I really just need a straightforward answer. That really is the role. Technology is a tool. It is not a great joy to figure out how to use software—we just want to do something. I have horrible things to say about Word 2007.
(Nik) Strategically speaking, where is the driving force to use technology coming from in small museums?
(Janice) It will come from the director or a member of the board. A board member will say “When I was at such and such a museum I saw they had interactive kiosks, why don’t we have interactive kiosks?” To give another example, we have a 10,000 square foot museum and one of the board asked “why don’t we have an audio guide?”
(Nik) Sam, you occupy a rarefied position in the museum world, an IT professional who sits at the director’s table, what’s that like?
(Sam) I would have to say it’s a privilege. We all crave the opportunity to speak to the strategic decisions being made in institutions –it is thrilling but daunting. I feel sometimes that I really have to come through for all of us—not just the art institute. And sometimes the situation is better than other times.
(Nik) How did you get there? A key thing from the survey is there is no strategic technology leadership.
(Sam) The director directs what needs to be directed. You cannot shoehorn your way in. My director had the idea. I was fortunate to be the one chosen. The plan would be assured by virtue of the director wanting the plan to happen.
(Nik) John you have that soft money situation?
(John) I can neither confirm nor deny that.
(John) Janice contacted me last year to work on a project on a shoe string budget. In my previous job I was a register and then I went into the for-profit world. This gave me an opportunity to get back into the museum world. It opened a door. I have a set of parameters to work within, these are the parameters (the soft money), let’s see what can we do. As I got more engrossed I saw different areas of IT within the Mitchell Museum that would benefit from information technology.
(Nik) Jim I want to come back to you. If we are at an institution that doesn’t have technology at the director’s table, what are the magic words we should say? What shouldn’t we say? Is it based on having someone in the director’s seat who intrinsically knows the situation?
(Jim) I’m baffled …
(Nik) As are we
(Jim) …that there isn’t that understanding. There must be someone championing bringing it forward to the desk of the director. That person has to have some influence. It could be a staff person or a trustee. There are 77 trustees and 3 have no email and fax. Most have email. There is a lot of leverage now. The greatest leverage is the fear of failure. The museum will succeed to the extent that it rides with the wave of technology development. I can’t imagine any director who would be opposed to it. There may never be enough resources but its impossible to think they see it as not necessary.
(Nik) Technology funding is year by year. There’s no real way to plan long term strategically.
(Jim) There is no area of the museum which will succeed without a long term strategic plan. You’ll only get benefit out of your investment if it is for the long term. Whether that’s just maintaining a building or anything a museum wants to do. You do a project that is for one time only and it’s a waste. We need to have a sense of a long horizon.
(Nik) Janice?
(Janice) Museums in my experience can be extremely boring places. There is a tension between wanting the technology to be usable, affordable, and understandable. Not a lot of room for R& D. A big project is not usually technology driven. There is a lot of overall museum direction that doesn’t understand technology. Many museum directors and directors of small museums, we’re lucky if we’ve got a teenager to learn it from. These things aren’t in our vocabulary. When someone says,”you must do this” I have to weigh it along with all the other things I have to do. There may be a generational issue here as well. There are also difficulties in terms of balancing other needs. There are also a lot of protected domains within the museum that the director needs to be aware of. As director, curator, conservator of a small museum I can have all these conversations in a corner…
(Nik) With yourself?
(Janice) Absolutely. A volunteer once saw me standing in a corner staring off into space and asked me what I was doing, I said, “the curator and conservator were disagreeing with one another.” They don’t know why I make the decisions I make. Part of this is I don’t understand how this is going to work, so I don’t know how to explain to some one else.
(Nik) Jim?
(Jim) Political campaigns have also been a wake up call—you can download a Barack Obama ringtone! If we don’t do it we will be left behind.
(Nik) Here’s a scenario that may resonate. IT professional goes to director with project plan. Director says you’ve got half the money and half the time. What is going on in both sides of that conversation? I think there is a type of dance that goes on. IT person expects to have budget cut, director expects to be presented with an inflated budget —the root is trust—neither side trusts the other side.
(John) Once you start upgrading you have to start looking at infrastructure and padding.
(Nik) Its like a building construction company that comes in with a bid and fees start going up almost immediately. How do we help each other?
(Sam) Trust is at the bottom of it. It’s important to make realistic, lean budgets and then to stand your ground. I don’t view my conversations with Jim as a negotiation. I try to come in with a way to fund the project too. I don’t try to play any games here because that’s not what we are doing.
(Janice) From a small museum perspective the more uses you can find for a single action the more likely it is to fly. If an upgrade or project will accomplish four or five things or serve more purposes they are more likely to get done.
(Nik) It’s about trust. People don’t feel comfortable expressing their lack of knowledge to IT professionals. If we are using technology as a black box to advance our initiatives this is a problem. Jim, how do we get our museum directors, who don’t think like you, to think like you? Is there an internal mechanism? I appreciate your point that a lot of this is external forces. I have a couple of slides about external forces.
(Jim) Fear of failure is a great motivator and not to pursue these technological means will ensure failure – even if the goal is greater efficiency. The sense of obligation to the mission that we have, the more we can do this the better, the third is we are competing for resources and they are distributed based on perceptions. People have to think that we are alive and dynamic and that will attract support. It’s as much about appearances as deliverables.
(Nik) Any thoughts from the panel — or floor?
(Rich Cherry,Windows 7, Skirball) What I wanted to say the way it sounds like we are approaching this is how do we fix the person above us? My job as a technology professional is to try and see it from their perspective. The technology is not about the technology. The way to engage your director is to think like your director: mission, efficiently. If your project serves the mission and is high enough up on the priority list than you are going to have a receptive director. If your project is going to save money on the operational side you message is going to be received. The job for us is for us to think like them and solve business problems.
(Nik) Len Steinbach, I know this is one of your issues. How do we convince people of the strategic importance of technology?
(Len) I’d like to focus on a couple of things you said, Nik. I have a project to help the museum–not a technology project. I would say that those of you who manage user support staff should train them not to talk about technology solutions. Janice, that guy who wants to solve your problems, think about the visitor who comes to the museum and the museum staff says I can show you this or this or this and the visitor says I just want to see some art. You get right to the heart of the respect issue. Really nothing should be done unless there is return on investment.
There are essentially three types of ROI. One is cash-based –$1000 now will save you $5000 ultimately—financial return and is sometimes difficult to calculate. ROI in opportunity cost. ROI with mission—this is going to make our art more understandable. Lots of tech folks don’t know what the mission is? So I would say if you can’t find a cash return, a mission return, and you can’t explain it in English there’s something wrong with a project. There is also social return—investment in educational programs—this outcome is sometimes difficult to measure. In my experience, I’m a former, former, CIO of the Guggenheim. If you make a persuasive case you get on the agenda.
(Nik) An IT Professional goes to his director with a technology project,Office 2010 Key, and gets the go-ahead but with only half the money and half the time. Would a director do the same thing with a curator who wants to buy a million dollar painting next year? Tell him he can have a half a million dollar but he needs to buy it next month? There’s something fundamental going on in the technology space. Staff argue that you don’t really know what people on your web site are looking at—but do you really know what they are looking at when they are in the physical museum?
Technology people have been compartmentalized. How did that happen?
(Len) Historically that’s always been the case. Even in the corporate world. The notion that museums lag only twenty years behind should not be surprising.
(Nik) What do we do? Look at these paraphrased comments to both sides, Directors and IT people:
In comments to Museum Directors, the survey responses found that IT Professionals are:
Excluded from planning initiatives
Concerned that the IT voice in their institution is not represented at the Executive level
Concerned that IT does not factor into the vision of the institution
Frustrated that their opinions are sought but then ignored or minimized
Not trusted by senior management
Frustrated that they only receive short-term funding so can’t make strategic long-term plans for a healthy and sustainable IT environment
Concerned that the longer Museums ignore technology the less relevant the institution will become
Concerned that inappropriately skilled personnel in technical positions are making technology decisions
Concerned that Museums see them only as the helpdesk and not valid partners in strategic thinking
In comments to IT Professionals, survey responses found that IT Professionals:
Don’t understand what Museums are about
Place too much importance on technology itself rather than thinking of it as an enabler
Don’t recognize what they do is a ‘service’ to museum professional staff and the institution
Are too defensive
Don’t do a good enough job of educating non-IT staff about IT
Assume that non-technical staff have no interest or can’t understand technology
Talk down to non-IT professionals
Don’t present user-friendly solutions
Don’t speak English
Are constantly performing upgrades
We are viewed as providing a derivative service.
(MB) I’m not an IT person and I’ve got the salary to prove it. But I use IT in my work. IT people and people who use IT for their work have not done a good job of communicating what we do. In my own institution a few years ago, we had a couple of projects where we basically wasted money and man hours because someone thought they were doing a cool technology project. We need to do a better job of communicating and marketing and explaining to the Jim Cunos and small museum directors what technology can do.
(Nik) And not talk down?
(Nik) What do you need from me as a result of this session?
(Guenter) I think we could really discuss it’s all about how can we demonstrate that what we do is relevant to the mission. I know all of my ideas are in perfect alignment with mission statements. Three quarters of the visitors to the Met don’t come through the doors. What kind of conversations do we have to have about this? Mission statement tells us a general direction. How do we tie this down to specifics? How do we relate this to what people at MCN think it means and what directors think it means.
(Janice) Are there any other directors in the audience? I think one of the things that is a sort of basic down at the bottom conflict. Curators, directors, and educators–they see that the value of the museum is to have access to the real thing and they see technology as providing a virtual thing. They don’t understand that there are a lot of ways technology can enhance the real thing. It’s not true that if they go to the web site they won’t go to the museum. But there still is that perception. My background is in collections care. I am hearing a lot of the same things from IT that I see from collections care—there is a lot of overlap. They too are asking why aren’t we at the table? I don’t know that they have any solutions.
(Jennifer Trant) Nik you talk a lot about trust. It’s really important to understand that trust doesn’t happen overnight. Building trust is an incremental process. It’s enabling their manager to talk to your manager. If you can’t talk English to your manager and he doesn’t understand what you are doing, imagine what he’s saying to the people above him. You might get funded for something completely different by the time the board gets the project. We cannot even communicate among ourselves about what we bring to the table, how are we going to communicate with others. If we can’t cite work and evaluation that’s been done then we aren’t actually serving our purpose. We need to think about building credibility within the institution about what we do. We contribute to the goals of museums and couching it in the language of the museums. If we were technical we wouldn’t be working in museums we’d be out there making money. Use that as a point of departure in building these bridges so we build a trust that enables people to come to you.
(Nik) Why aren’t we in a position of trust?
(JT) What have we done to deserve it? We’ve seen a generation of people rising through the ranks. Nik now you are the boss. Something happened that enabled that transformation. If we can take what you did personally and transfer that knowledge. We need to understand what that is—that willingness to engage with others. Something changes and that’s the heart.
(Cathryn Goodwin) It really doesn’t hurt sometimes to change jobs to go someplace else. To go where what you say is new. Not that I’m advocating that necessarily. The fact that that happens and you get a whole fresh start. It’s about the way you present yourself. You have to think carefully about what you want to achieve and how you communicate that to the administration. I do think that also this conversation at MCN and the fact that we have a good number of people who feel like they have good and trusting relationships to share as Nik said re the red side and the green side. I think too that the network that we have when you are talking to your own directors is really important. I can say that I know that Sam Quigley at Chicago did this and Erin Coburn at the Getty did that –these are places they’ve heard of and it garners respect for us and it assures them that we have access to information externally of our own heads. We know and are known by others.
(Clive Izard) We are at a point where content is king and technology is the way we will all have to go. I’m a creative director. What happens is that technology partners are coming along and your audience is in need of technology. All the opportunities are going to fall to you and as long as you package your products beautifully you will become important. Collaborative learning will bring people to your institution. You mustn’t be too defensive. If your director doesn’t react, and it’s happening now, its even a little ahead in the library community, you are going to fall behind. The opportunity is just about to happen.
(Julie, Field Museum) I’m new to MCN. I found this day very productive. I’m Director of IT for the Field Museum. I’m on the green side. I don’t sit at the table but I have a good relationship with the director. I’d like to share the three things I’ve done. I came into a new job and I LISTENED for a year and then instituted change. My whole department has turned over. Money. We need more money than we had. I’ve had to become creative and I’m now 50% a fund raiser. When a vendor calls me, I pitch right back. The third thing is I recognize that the traditional IT professional doesn’t have a technical background and the salary isn’t that high. We have been bringing in IT professionals working 4 days out of 5, the 5th day they can consult.
(Sam Quigley) Although this whole session is about working with directors, alliance building with others in your institutions (like curators) is an extraordinarily important part. It can be done everyday, every week. Once you start doing that the director will start hearing about it. They listen to their constituents. We’ve got to be very straight forward about this and be aware of the political environment.
(Matt Morgan) How many people have taken management training and are confident in your management styles? (About 1/3 of audience raised their hands to this). Managing is managing up and down. I recommend that you get some training in how to manage.
(Nik) Thank you.
(Len) I’d like to echo something that Julie said. At both the shops that I ran at museums I emphasized the following to my staff: The core competency of a museum is not the management of complex technologies it is the creative use of them.
The notion that some IT management has of building up IT teams I think is wrong. You will never have the professional development dollars you will need to have to keep them at the top of their game. The issue of trust that Jennifer mentioned is very complex. I wonder if there is a need for discussion of “how is change managed.” The trust break down – I don’t think we should take personally, There is a ricochet currently going on in museums—many managers are feeling the backlash. Cleveland Museum of Art has moved away from a CIO, the Field Museum used to have a VP of Information Technology. This backlash is possibility because of frustration with the complexity of issues or mismatch of communications.
(Nik) Is it really a backlash? I think IT Professionals are in an environment that doesn’t really want them there. We represent the complete other end of what they are about. But its changing, we have a young curator at the Getty just starting. He doesn’t look like a Curator, complete with tattoos,Microsoft Office 2010, he ‘gets it’ about technology. We’ve all lived through this period where we weren’t welcome.
(Gillian McMullen) I think what we are talking about is really a generational thing. It’s going to take a younger and younger staff. This trust problem seems to be about things that seem unfamiliar. There are those bright spots like Jim Cuno who get it.
(Rich Cherry) I disagree. I’ve had the opportunity to work with two directors. I’ve had successful and trusting relationships with them. Like Julie, I went around and asked questions. The first thing they needed was for their stuff to work. If you can’t go in and make their stuff work then you aren’t going to build any trust. You articulate that as a capital investment. You have to convince your institution in an articulate way that your capital investments are needed to make your people more efficient. They are going to be more efficient because they want to be more efficient. They do more and more work as you give them better tools. Become the curator, the facilities person, the educator. You build the trust by tailoring solutions to them.
(Nancy Allen,Office 2010 Key, ArtStor) One other thing we need to know how to do well. It’s not good enough to provide the services. It’s also important that we know how to talk and write about it. They don’t know how to talk about what technology does, we need to be ready to give them writing. How what you do enable the museum to achieve mission-related goals?
(Nik) Here’s what’s at stake: Museums will have to do a better job of dealing with and using technology:
IMLS Leadership Lecture on Oct. 22 in Washington, D.C by Robert L. Dilenschneider:
“The paradigm is rapidly shifting in your world,Windows 7 Ultimate, and you must prepare for a great leap forward using technology as a teaching tool”
“To stay relevant and useful you must remain true to [your] mission and reinvent yourself at the same time. You must use new technologies wisely and identify the problems of concern to your communities and to our nation that you are uniquely positioned to solve.“
[Libraries and museums dealing with the new technology and multi-media applications] “must accept, adapt, and accelerate their use, or simply atrophy,”
A place to start - L.A. Art Online:
The Getty’s Electronic Cataloguing Initiative was designed to help LA visual arts organisations make information on their collections available online. Today a web-savvy public expects immediate user-friendly access to visual arts collections, but many organisations struggles with how to fund, develop and justify these programs.
What is the relationship between collections access and a museum’s core responsibilities?
Can online access have a meaningful impact on an institution’s broader mission and programs?
How will online access affect an organisation’s budget and operations?
This report hopes to address the concerns of museum leaders and their staff by providing candid accounts of the challenges encountered by both the Getty and its grantees.
Downloads:
Handout and Results
Session Powerpoint