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So both Tate and the Guardian have evolved their thinking to consider the online
space in its own right, in a way that is similar to those businesses that have only ever
existed online – those that were born digital. Crucially, both organizations value the
role of the digital curator or editor in the process of developing what they do online. A
good way to understand this is to consider the fact that a museum would not put on an
exhibition without a curator and likewise at Culture24 6 we would not publish a
website without an editor or digital curator.
Interestingly, the Guardian’s evolution has continued, and they have made the
move from a news site with a lot of columnists to having one of the most active
professional (as in, the writers are paid) blogs in the world – both in terms of actual
blog posts and in terms of the public response to them. In fact, the site has come so far
from its origins as an online news site that it almost feels now like it could have been
born digital.
Evolution and vision
For many people technology only comes alive when they find a personal reason to use
it, something that helps them to do something they already want to do, but better.
Then they start to see the potential it has through real experience, e.g. sharing
photographs with family members in other countries on a photo sharing website is a
great way to get you into the whole world of social networks and tagging.
But how could an organization evolve its online thinking? How does it set a vision
and who in the organization should do this? Do you try and recruit the skills in-house
or do you buy them in as you need them? Crucially – how do you know what skills
you need?
Let me give you an example: imagine you are a curator and someone says to you,
“We are going to build a wiki, what do you want to do with it?” How do you answer
that question unless you know not only what a wiki is, but what makes a good wiki
(and there are a lot of bad ones)?
If you are that curator, you would need to have your own good reasons and focus
for your wiki. You would need to know what the editorial issues were about
moderation, user engagement, etc., as well as more technical issues about authoring,
control, development, sustainability, hosting, etc. Also, crucially, you would need to
know if the audience you were supposed to be targeting would know what a wiki was
and care enough to want to use it.
6 http://www.culture24.org.uk
Turning cultural websites inside out
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