2010 Conference Speakers


The keynote speakers for Tue 7 Sept 2010:


Jane Burton, Tate
Jane is Head of Content and Creative Director for Tate Media, a division of the Tate. Projects she oversees include films about artists for TV and the Tate Channel, the weekly video podcast TateShots, and the recently announced Tate Movie – a collaboration with Aardman animation.  In 2002, she launched multimedia tours at Tate Modern, winning a Bafta for innovation, and in 2008 piloted the UK’s first gallery tour for the iPhone. Current projects include ‘Tate Trumps’, a multi-player game for mobiles, and ‘Lost Art’, a virtual exhibition produced in collaboration with Channel 4. She initially joined Tate in 1999, as Tate Modern’s Curator of Interpretation, and previously worked as a journalist and editor for national newspapers.


Nancy Proctor, Smithsonian Institution

With a PhD in American art history and a background in filmmaking, curation and art criticism, Nancy Proctor published her first online exhibition in 1995. She co-founded TheGalleryChannel.com in 1998 with Titus Bicknell to present virtual tours of innovative exhibitions alongside comprehensive global museum and gallery listings. TheGalleryChannel was later acquired by Antenna Audio, where Nancy headed up New Product Development for nearly 8 years, introducing the company’s multimedia, sign language, downloadable, podcast and cellphone tours. She also led Antenna’s sales in France from 2006-2007. When Antenna Audio was acquired by Discovery Communications in 2006, Nancy worked with the Travel Channel’s product development team and subsequently headed up research and development for the nascent Discovery Audio brand. She joined the Smithsonian in 2008 as Head of New Media at the American Art Museum, and in 2010 took on the role of Head of Mobile Strategy and Initiatives across the Institution. She continues to teach, lecture and publish widely on museum interpretation for digital platforms, while managing MuseumMobile.info and its wiki and podcast series on mobile interpretation, content and technology for cultural sites. In 2009 Nancy was appointed Digital Editor of Curator: The Museum Journal. This year Nancy is Program Chair for the 2010 Museums Computer Network (MCN) and co-organizer of the Tate Handheld conferences.

 

Robert Stein, Indianapolis Museum of Art

 

Robert Stein is the Chief Information Officer at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA). In that role, Stein leads the museum’s IT, Web and New Media teams and has played a significant role in shaping the way that the IMA has applied technology and media to the mission of the museum. In 2007, Stein and the IMA launched the IMA Dashboard (http://dashboard.imamuseum.org), a pioneering effort that supports and encourages transparency among museums, and have since released the tool as open source for the benefit of other institutions. More recently, the IMA created and published TAP, an open-source mobile tour platform to help museums author and distribute mobile content both in the galleries and online. In 2009, Stein and colleagues from the IMA launched the streaming video website, ArtBabble.org.  Awarded the 2009 AAM MUSE Award for Best Online Presence and the 2010 Best Overall Site award from the International Conference of Museums and the Web, ArtBabble brings together 23 prominent cultural organizations to create a true destination for art video online. Stein has also been instrumental in the success of the Steve.Museum social tagging project serving as both Project Director and Technical Lead on several of the project’s grant initiatives.  He continues to advocate for the ways in which user generated data can be integrated with museum practice.  Stein currently serves as Secretary on the Board of the Museum Computer Network and continues to be active in speaking and writing on topics related to museum transparency and technology and seeks to encourage the adoption of open-source tools and platforms.


Ted Forbes, Dallas Museum of Art

Ted Forbes is the Multimedia Producer for the Dallas Museum of Art. His duties include production of interactive and digital content including video production, exhibition Web sites, online education materials and in-gallery interactive content (kiosks and touch screens). In 2008 he developed the DallasMuseumofArt.tv project - an online hub for the museum's multimedia works. In 2009 he headed the implementation of the smARTphone Tours project, a web-based mobile application for creating tours for the Collection and exhibitions. smARTphone Tours are available to any visitor with a web-enabled mobile device. Ted started his career in the mid 90's working as producer for iSong.com creating and producing music education software. After iSong sold to Hal Leonard, he went on to lead his own design studio for the next 7 years designing both print and interactive content for a multitude of clients including Microsoft, Best Buy, The Public Broadcast, the Dallas Opera, the Science Place, the Illustrators Partnership of America and RasGas LNG in Doha, Qatar. After  he went on to lead his own design studio for the next 7 years designing both print and interactive content for a multitude of clients including Microsoft, Best Buy, The Public Broadcast, the Dallas Opera, the Science Place, the Illustrators Partnership of America and RasGas LNG in Doha, Qatar. Forbes was recognized in 2005 winning two gold light bulbs including an unanimous best in show judges gold in the Dallas Show and served on the Board of Directors for the Dallas Society of Visual Communications from 2001-2006. Forbes has been an adjunct faculty member at Brookhaven College since 2003 teaching interactive and Web design and is the Professional Chair for the Brookhaven Multimedia Design Curriculum Advisory Committee.


Mike Saunders, Kew Gardens

Mike is Director of Digital Media at Kew Gardens, the world’s leading plant science organisation and an international visitor attraction in London. Mike led the re-development of www.kew.org, and launched the acclaimed www.greatplanthunt.org. Over the past three years he has developed a series of prototypes to investigate the potential of hand-held services to interpret and deliver value from Kew’s collections – both in the gardens and beyond. Kew was recently commended in the government’s Digital Britain report for its excellent use of digital media. Previously, Mike had 12 years of experience developing digital products and holds an MA in interactive design. After founding agency Forma Communications, he developed cross-platform products for Channel 4 Television, and then at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, commissioned multiple award-winning websites for schools including Soundjunction and Artisancam. Mike has also consulted and spoken widely in the sector, including last year at the HEMBI conference at MIT Media Lab.


Margriet Schavemaker, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

Margriet Schavemaker is art historian, philosopher and media specialist. After a career as assistant professor at the art history and media studies departments at the University of Amsterdam, she currently holds the position of head of collections and research at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Schavemaker has written extensively on contemporary art and theory, (co)edited/authored several edited volumes (for example Now is the Time: Art and Theory in the 21st Century (2009), Vincent Everywhere: Van Gogh’s (Inter) National Identities (2010) and MonumentalismHistory and National Identity in Contemporary Art (2010)) and is an acclaimed curator of discursive events and public programs. The past years new media have been high on Schavemakers agenda resulting in a.o. the ARtours project; the creation of an augmented reality platform for smartphones which can be used by museums to present their collection in innovative and interactive ways both inside and outside the museum. 

 

 

 

Peter Samis, SFMOMA
Peter Samis is Associate Curator of Interpretative Media at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). In 1993, he served as art historian/content expert for the first CD-ROM on modern art; later he spearheaded the first implementation of multimedia PDAs in an art museum for SFMOMA’s 2001 Points of Departure exhibition. Programmes produced by SFMOMA's Interactive Educational Technologies (IET) team have received wide recognition, recently including three AAM Muse Awards in 2006 and a “Best of the Web” in the category Innovative and Experimental” for SFMOMA Artcasts at Museums and the Web 2007. In January 2010, SFMOMA's IET team launched Making Sense of Modern Art Mobile, a mobile multimedia tour published in-house on iPods with the collaboration of Earprint Productions, using the NOUS-Conductor platform. Samis has served on the board of the New Media Consortium (www.nmc.org), on the governing councils of two museum-focused open source initiatives: Pachyderm 2.0 (www.pachyderm.org) and steve (www.steve.museum), the art museum social tagging project; and is adjunct professor at the University of Lugano's Masters program in technology-enhanced communication for cultural heritage (TEC-CH).  

 

 

Jason DaPonte

 

Jason DaPonte has over 10 years experience working at the junction where media and technology collide - and he loves it.  He spent the last 3 years working in the midst of the mobile content and services explosion as Managing Editor of BBC Mobile and now offers mobile consultancy via THE SWARM.  At the BBC, he oversaw the content across mobile web, apps, messaging and A/V offerings as well as looking at emerging areas including mobile broadcasting and out-of-home entertainment and information services. Before that, he was an Executive Producer for BBC ONLINE and chaired the BBC Future Media Editorial Forum and was a mentor and facilitator on the BBC Creative Network.  He is a non-executive director for youth charity End2Endz.

 

 

Demonstration of mobile mixed reality by Tomotsugo Kondo, Open University (Japan)

www.soundjunction.org