Talking to IT students about the cultural heritage sector, and a small 'woot'

I've just written a report of a visit I made with June (our diversity manager) and Bilkis (our web content manager) to Kingston University to talk to students from the Faculty of Computing, Information Systems and Mathematics about the role of IT professionals in museums.

The full post is on the Museum of London blog ('Why should IT students consider working in cultural heritage?') but I thought it was worth linking to here because the discussion raised lots of interesting questions that might benefit from a wider audience:

How can we engage with our audiences? How would you challenge us, as a museum, do to a better job? Is there obvious stuff we’re missing? Do you have an idea for a project a museum could work with you on? Do you want to contribute to our work? Do you have any more questions about museum jobs?

On a more theoretical level, what effect might new methods of collecting objects or stories have – does it create a new kind of visibility for content from IT literate people with reliable access to the internet? How can we engage with people who aren’t comfortable online?

I think I got more out of the session than the students did, and it's nice to think that one or two of them might consider working in a museum when they graduate.

And the small 'woot'? This blog has been listed as an example of a 'programming and development blog' in the ComputerWeekly.com IT Blog Awards 08. I have no idea how that happened, but it's very flattering.

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