Openlab Workshop Report

A Report on the Openlab Workshop December 1-2, 2015 Arlington, Virginia

Written for the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) Diane M. Zorich Cultural Heritage Consultant

Posted June 26, 2016 by user:edsonm

About this Report

This report summarizes and synthesizes the discussions that took place at the Openlab Workshop held on December 1-2, 2015 in Arlington, Virginia. It focuses primarily on the second day of the event, which was held at the offices of the American Alliance of Museums [[[Openlab Workshop Report#note1|Note 1]]].

Sources used to develop this report include the author’s own “real-time” notes, audio and written transcripts of discussions from Day 2 of the event, social media feeds and blog postings that document the event, and post-workshop discussions with Openlab’s organizers.

The narrative outline of this report follows the agenda and general trajectory of discussions that occurred on the second day of the Openlab Workshop. The report is not a refined transcript but a summary account that highlights the key ideas and themes to be discussed further by the project’s stakeholders. Major discussion points are synthesized and reported in sections where they were most frequently discussed rather than in strict chronological order.

For purposes of clarity the term “GLAM” (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) is used throughout this report to represent all memory, knowledge, and humanities-based organizations. The term “technology” is used to represent the entire spectrum of technology and practices related to computers, mobile devices, the Internet, and the World Wide Web. “Openlab Workshop” is a rubric used to refer to all events that took place on December 1st and 2nd, including a smaller workshop meeting held on the second day of activities.

1. What is Openlab?

The Backdrop

The idea for Openlab emerged from several years of work, collaboration, and discussion with people trying to bring the concepts and practices of ‘new technology’ into the work and thinking of GLAMs.

There is broad consensus in the GLAM sector that GLAMs are struggling with technology and change. Many Openlab Workshop attendees and stakeholders feel that GLAMs are conservative, 1950s-style institutions that often wrap themselves in a veneer of 21st century technologies but don’t understand or utilize these technologies to their full extent. They acknowledge that GLAMs have created exciting and innovative projects, but these initiatives have had little lasting impact sector-wide. For many attendees and stakeholders, GLAMs are not leveraging their use of technology to address the grand challenges of our time, and thus are not on the forefront of work that affects the public good.

Attendees also assert that the GLAM community suffers from its own “digital divide” between institutions who have the capacity and expertise to explore technologies and those who do not. The latter have few opportunities to leverage the knowledge and work taking place elsewhere in the sector. Many GLAMs never even hear about these efforts.

Crosscutting all these issues is the trajectory of change, which attendees assert is fast, continuous, and far-reaching in society but slow, sporadic, and isolated in the GLAM industry, with little scale or urgency across the sector. The rapid changes brought about by digital technologies in other sectors (such as medicine, publishing, or industry) will not occur in GLAMs without new efforts to jumpstart sector-wide change.

Openlab as a New Way Forward

Openlab’s central premise is that a focused effort is necessary to help GLAMs address change and harness the opportunities provided by technology. The ultimate outcome of this effort is a GLAM sector that is adept at change and able to use technology to increase the scale and impact of its work in society.

Spearheaded by digital strategist and Council of Library and Information Resources (CLIR) Distinguished Fellow Michael Edson, the Openlab concept received formal support in July of 2015, when CLIR received funding through a cooperative agreement from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Office of Digital Humanities and Division of Public Programs to host a series of events where the Openlab concept could be explored further.

Openlab’s first day of events took place at a hotel conference facility in Arlington, VA and included a public Unconference and Ignite talks designed to generate ideas and solicit participation from a broad spectrum of GLAM stakeholders. The dialogues that emerged from this day were continued and examined more deeply in a follow-up meeting (structured in a smaller workshop setting) that was held on the second day at the offices of the American Alliance of Museums.

The Unconference sessions addressed far-reaching topics such as funding and sustainability in GLAMs; issues for small and start-up organizations; communities of practice; the politics of change in nonprofits; community engagement; partnerships; solving the “grand challenges” that threaten our world; and the purpose and potential of GLAM Labs. The Ignite talks presented perspectives of 15 GLAM professionals who spoke about issues of social justice in museum practice; engaging global communities of learners; bringing GLAM data to life in new ways; getting GLAMs to look outward; and rethinking the concept of “museum time.” Several individuals proposed innovative ways for GLAMs to participate in education (e.g., “Smithsonian High,” sensory learning), and offered case studies demonstrating how hacking, historical preservation, and personal archiving can support and engage local communities.

The Openlab events received sector-wide endorsement, with over a dozen cultural heritage organizations and associations providing financial, leadership, or in-kind support. (See this wiki's home page for a full list of supporters and partners.) Over 100 professionals from 80 institutions attended the Unconference/Ignite talks, and 36 individuals participated in the Openlab workshop meeting. A Twitter backchannel engaged many others in virtual conversations and sharing of Openlab information.

Information and materials from Openlab events are available on this wiki, including videos of the Ignite talks, Unconference session notes, and information about the workshop meeting and attendees.

2. The Openlab Workshop Meeting - Honing the Idea

The Goal and Process

The goal of the Openlab workshop meeting was to clarify the scope and magnitude of what is needed to accelerate change in the GLAM community, and to outline a way forward in this process. Underlying this goal was the question of whether the Openlab concept, as expressed in verbal and written form, identified a viable pathway for addressing the need, and if not, what alternative solutions might be developed.

To encourage a high level of participant engagement and reduce meeting fatigue, the workshop was divided into a series of timed “sprints.” The goal of the first sprint was to foster an esprit de corps and draw out detailed personal observations about the Openlab concept through extensive participant introductions. Attendees introduced themselves, summarized their professional backgrounds, and expressed their hopes for, and concerns about, the broad issues that Openlab seeks to address.

In the second and third sprints, participants debated what Openlab might be, who it might serve, and how it might operate. This discussion was structured around a review of the one-page Openlab Concept document that was developed prior to the meeting. The review also highlighted gaps Openlab might address, and issues that require more considered attention.

The fourth and fifth sprints offered attendees an opportunity to delve deeper into Openlab’s scope. Participants split into groups to hold informal conversations and later reconvened to share summaries of their discussions.

Sprint 1: Openlab's Relevance and Possibilities - Initial Thoughts

The extensive time allotted for introductions gave participants an opportunity to speak about their motivations for taking part in the workshop, their hopes for how Openlab might affect the GLAM sector, and their concerns about the Openlab concept as it moves forward. Their thoughts are summarized below.

Motivations

Openlab’s funders (the Council on Library and Information Resources and the National Endowment for the Humanities) and host organization (the American Alliance of Museums) felt their programs and missions aligned with Openlab’s goals. Representatives from these organizations noted that:

• Openlab supports their organization’s mission to advocate for the GLAM sector and ensure it remains sustainable and thriving
• Openlab’s ideals are so important that their organization wants to be at the forefront in supporting conversations about accelerated change in the GLAM sector (whether Openlab goes forward or not)
• The US federal endowment programs have supported the creation and use of cultural content in digital form for years and want to see these investments leveraged for greater ends
• The sector’s current model of developing an “enormously expensive…beautiful array of silos” needs to change to a model where GLAMS work together toward a greater public good.

Participants from individual GLAMs had a different set of motivations that were more personal and wide-ranging. They include:

• Inspiration

> Many attendees were inspired by Openlab’s mission and hoped the workshop would be “the disruptive event that (serves as) a turning point in GLAM culture.” Having talked about change for years, they now want to start working toward it by leveraging local efforts at their home institutions into something larger and more global. Indeed, many participants spoke of how Openlab’s model is a macrocosm of what they want to do in their own institutions. On a more personal level, attendees spoke earnestly about the value of learning from, and being inspired by, fellow attendees.

• Representing issues and ideas

> Getting “grand challenges” and marginalized issues (such as climate change, biodiversity, human migration, and social justice) on the GLAM agenda was a motivating factor for many attendees who see these topics as the critical issues of our time. They are disheartened by GLAMs’ avoidance or misguided efforts to tackle these problems and by their failure to take leadership roles to address them.

• Representing disenfranchised voices

> For many participants, a critical motivating factor was ensuring that disenfranchised communities and groups (e.g., people of color, rural communities) are represented in GLAM conversations. Several professionals also identified themselves as the voice of underrepresented members within the GLAM community (e.g., archivists, stymied change agents, smaller organizations such as historical societies.)

Hope and Change: Thoughts on What Openlab Might Do

The reasons for attending the workshop often foreshadowed the attendees’ deeper hopes and aspirations for the types of transformative change Openlab might engender. These aspirations include:

• Leading and driving change

> Openlab was envisioned as a sector-wide leader who might lead in a manner similar to a coxswain - simultaneously guiding and serving, helping a crew row toward a common goal. Some tangible suggestions for how Openlab might accomplish this feat include: enabling small but bold steps that have intrinsic relevance to communities; marshaling resources and energy to undertake community wide projects that match GLAM beliefs and values; scaling up innovative, individual efforts and helping them catalyze the community; and proposing collaborative ways to address common challenges facing GLAMs.

• Putting a focus on the “grand challenges” of our time

> Openlab might help GLAMs collectively address critical global issues that have local impact, such as climate change, human migration and conflict, social justice, education, etc. By positioning GLAMs to address these issues, Openlab would work with them to reshape the public good.

• Bringing the local to the global

> Openlab might help GLAMs leverage local issues and needs in ways that involve the global public, bringing smaller community concerns to larger audiences.

• Establishing a value proposition for GLAMs

> The purpose, role, and value of GLAMs increasingly are being called into question by industry and political leaders, and by the public at large. GLAMs have responded to the skepticism in separate and unconvincing ways. Openlab might help them establish a cogent value proposition for why GLAMs are integral to the public, and what makes their work and collections so interesting and necessary to the world.

• Empowering GLAMs

> GLAMs struggle to provide their communities with an “emotional, passionate connection to cultural heritage.” Openlab might help by promoting efforts to democratize access to culture and science through technologies, enabling communities to tell their own stories, and facilitating user innovation.

• Offering a lifeline

> GLAMs frequently serve as a lifeline for rural and dispersed communities who need access to larger communities and to information. But GLAMs that serve these communities are now struggling to maintain these lifelines. Openlab might help them reconnect with their communities in new ways through technologies. In a similar vein, Openlab might serve as a lifeline for the many GLAMs who do not have the in-house capacity to think creatively about technology, or do not have the opportunities to learn from those who do.

• Serving as an innovation hub

> The sector needs an independent innovation hub that can help build infrastructure, develop collaborations to support GLAM needs and interests, and foster organizational adaptation to technological and social change. It also needs an organizing agent and space to bring together the different groups of people (representing different voices and points of view) that are necessary to foster true innovation. Openlab might serve as this hub and agent, helping to establish a “partnership with future generations by building an environment … that will be used by those who come after us.”

• Serving as an information hub

> Information about technology in the GLAM sector is widely dispersed. Openlab might serve as a central source and distributor of this information in both the GLAM sector and further afield.

Notes

#note11. A parallel and complementary effort will focus on the Unconference and Ignite talks that began the workshop on December 1st. See the Openlab wiki at https://openlabworkshop.wikispaces.com for more information.