More fun to be had in the exhibit hall

I’m sure there were some great papers at the AASLH conference, but I spent my time in the exhibit hall. Most people wander through at some point, and I had the unexpected pleasure of meetings some old friends. 

So rather than talk about papers I’ll talk about neighbors! I’ve been following the work of Eduweb   for years and they’ve done some great stuff.  One of the great things they been doing is putting some resources into finding out what works. Check out the research papers at their site.

Opposite me was The Museum Bookmark Collection.  Their graphics and production quality were great. So good in fact that while I chatted across the room someone came up to my booth, ignored my material, and took the sample bookmarks I’d collected earlier!

Kapesni is on a mission to get mobile apps everywhere, and they have a very competitive pricing model. I think the current app is for iPhone with the Android app coming in a September.

Around the corner was Re:discovery  (where I worked for many years). Rediscovery is providing the back end of the upcoming NPS web catalog site which is getting some early testing. I’m very excited by the progress and early reactions. Plus they have an updated version of their archaeology module which is hierarchical, content rich and full of features.

Thanks to everyone that stopped by and chatted!

Putting the cart before the virtual horse

I’ll be attending the AASLH conference in Richmond this month. Many of our clients are in Virginia and I look forward to catching up, and meeting also new faces. 

The conference includes a focus on “Take(ing)  advantage of the constantly emerging technologies that have the potential to enable us to increase access to history experiences”

Stories Past has been working on interactive media for over ten years now. (btw check out Google’s page on browser development ). We’re now developing using AJAX, looking at HTML 5 and using Adobe Flash for some other applications. 

The danger with new and exciting technologies is that it’s sometimes possible to put the cart before the horse. The issue, I think, is less what can the new technologies offer, and more what do we want to do. We can now develop more quickly; we can incorporate databases, animations and media. But the start of a project is the public outreach/education that you want to achieve. Then we’ll find the best way of doing it. I believe the strength of Stories Past is in its empathy and understanding of history, archaeology and education. 

The good news is just virtually anything is possible.

Being There - still going to conferences

At VAM

March is conference time. Last week was a fun time at the Virginia Association of Museums conference in Portsmouth, VA. This week I am exhibiting at the Tennessee Museums Conference (TAM) in Johnson City, TN.

Personally, I love the opportunity to get to places around the States, but are conferences becoming redundant? There’s an increasing trend to offer virtual sessions and more online papers. I imagine conference organizers are trying to balance offering access while still wanting people to come. There’s the cost, and time, of travel and hotels, and long hours sitting and listening to papers that sometimes would be better read, than heard. And at the end there’s often little time for questions or debate.

And yet until we reach the singularity , there’s still a lot to be said for personal contact, networking, discussion and serendipitous conversations that come from standing in line at the bar! I enjoy conferences and I am disappointed to be missing out on two others that I’d have liked to have attended. The CAA conference is in China, and the Museums and the Web conference is in Philadelphia. I’ve attended both of these in the past, and I’m still thinking about some of the papers I heard. This was the first year in many that I didn’t attend the Society for Historical Archaeology conference, which means that there are a lot of people I won’t get to see for nearly two years. We’ll make the next one.

So, like many things, the virtual is great but it’s still not as good as the real thing!

Conferences

It's that time of year. Stories Past exhibited at the Society for Historical Archaeology in January (love those Canadian conferences) and now we are facing a busy Spring.
March 18-20 Tennessee Association of Museum in Chattanooga. Please visit the booth.
March 22-24 Virginia Association of Museum in Virginia Beach. Again, please come visit.
March 22-26 Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology. Just attending this one!
April 22-25 Society for American Archaeology in Atlanta. Lots of new archaeology installations to play with at the booth.