The keynote speakers for Tue 7 Sept 2010:

Jane Burton, Tate
Jane Burton is Head of Content and Creative Director, Tate, London. She is responsible for developing and delivering the creative strategy for Tate’s video and film productions, and for digital interpretation at the four Tate galleries.  Her current film productions include a series of documentaries about artists for UK television, the video podcast series TateShots, and animation-based programmes on art for children. Her most recent work on handheld tours includes the UK’s first tour for the iPod touch and iPhone, launched for the Gustav Klimt show at Tate Liverpool in May 2008, and a pilot multimedia tour for school groups that invites user generated content. She initially joined Tate in 1999, as Tate Modern’s Curator of Interpretation, where, in 2002, she introduced the first wireless multimedia tour to be used in a gallery. Before that, she worked as a journalist and art critic 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

Margriet Schavemaker, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

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)