October 6th, 2010
Leo Mullen
CEO
Join NavigationArts’ CEO, Leo Mullen, as he interviews Michael Edson, the Smithsonian Institution’s Director of Web and New Media Strategy, about the bold vision of the Smithsonian Commons- a new digital presence dedicated to catalyzing creativity, learning and innovation through open access to Smithsonian research, collections and communities.
Explore the wiki and the prototype.
“The Smithsonian Commons project is just beginning, but the commons—and the strategy behind it—offer important insights about how public and private sector organizations can connect their traditional strengths and missions to the disruptive opportunities of technology,” says Edson, who has been raising awareness for the effort with talks around the country and abroad.
NavigationArts helped the Smithsonian create their Web and New Media Strategy through a radically transparent six-week process. “Speed and openness were game changers: they helped us overcome complacency and leapfrog over bureaucracy to create a strategy that gets work done,” says Edson.
The strategy focuses on creating an updated digital experience, a new learning model, that supports global audiences across their lifelong learning journeys, and balancing autonomy and control within the Smithsonian’s organizational structure. The centerpiece of the strategy is the Smithsonian Commons, which Navigation Arts help to prototype as part of the strategy-creation process. Edson says “The prototyping process was unorthodox—as was much of what we produced! The prototype has been invaluable in focusing the conversation about the attributes and benefits of the Smithsonian Commons.”
Mullen and Edson discuss how the open and transparent process by which they created the Commons prototype, using wikis, twitter, youtube, etc. allowed them to stretch the bounds of imagination and envision an experience that could meet the demands of learning in the 21st century.
Watch the recording