Welcome to the Digital Marketing Inner Circle

Name: Seb Chan

Works: Powerhouse Museum

Job Title: Head of Digital, Social & Emerging Technologies

1.     How, where and when did the digital industry find you?

I started running the Web Unit at the Powerhouse in 2003. Before that I'd been working in IT, and earlier researching youth subcultures. Being a child who grew up on Commodore 64, digital has always been close to me even though I never studied in the area.

2.    What is your current role and what do you actually do?

I've got a rather grand title - Head of Digital, Social & Emerging Technologies - which has a far more prosaic function in the organization. Primarily I manage a large group of teams which include the museum's web unit, audio visual and photography, rights & permissions and the photo library, the research library and Thinkspace - the Powerhouse's digital media teaching laboratories. Across these units we have a pretty broad remit - from content production and delivery, IP protection, commercialization, teaching and digital literacy, and research and development. This breadth gives my teams a wide range of exposure to both back and front of house functions

I develop the digital strategy for the Museum and do a large part of the creative direction in the way we interact and design experiences for our visitors on the web - and try to drive a user-centered design approach where possible. Right now I also do a lot of international consulting on behalf of the Powerhouse running workshops, giving presentations and seminars, and working with other institutions and public sector agencies to help them make better sense of the opportunities offered by digital.

3.    If you could have any job, what would it be (can be in and/or outside the industry)?

I'm looking for the sort of role that would allow me the creative freedom to undertake research and development, and experimentation, but also not be too far removed from the actual end user.   Working with good, intelligent people is essential. I'm pretty committed to having a good work/life balance and making sure I'm around when my kids need me - life is too short to chase money.

4.   Can you give us some information about the Powerhouse Museum's charter, role and forward objectives in regard to Digital Media?

Since the Powerhouse emerged from the much older 'Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences' in 1988, it has been known for its 'interactivity' in the galleries. On the web, we were one of the early adopters of the web and especially the notion of content sharing and federated search across multiple institutions. In the late 90s and early 00s when I started we were also known for our virtual reconstruction work (especially my former colleagues Sarah Kenderdine and Tim Hart who both moved on to Museum Victoria where they still do amazing 3D reconstruction work). Since then, though, I've tried to build a more social digital presence for the Museum and develop new forms of 'interactivity' that go far beyond the "push button/receive reward" model of the 80s (and 90s).

Our organizational charter is, broadly speaking, "to preserve and present the State's cultural heritage" although this gets refined every three years with our strategic plans. The notion of what 'preservation' and 'presentation' means is incredibly dynamic and up in the air right now - and I've been taking that to mean greatly increasing the access and relevance of the collection to the general populace. Traditionally museums have used the medium of exhibitions but with digital there are new ways of taking our content to citizens - rather than waiting for them to come to us.

This philosophy has been the driver behind a lot of our open access initiatives, mobile experiments, social media and the like.

5.   Take a punt on the 'next big thing' in digital?

Everyone is betting on augmented reality and I'd take a fair punt that there'll be some interesting things happening in that space. Clearly mobile devices are going to radically reshape how we 'the Internet' operates in our everyday life - this has been on the cards for well over a decade and we've been waiting for the right devices to arrive. Now that they have started to arrive we're at the beginning of some interesting times.

I'm also very interested in the Internet of Things - the idea that lots of physical objects can and will be connected to the Internet and addressable and producing data. I remember one of the first times I used the Internet at university (pre-WWW) in the very early 90s and the buzz I got out of connecting all the way from Australia to a Coke machine in Carnegie Mellon University to see what it had in it. (More on that Coke machine here - http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~coke/history_long.txt). Now you have projects like Pachube (pronounced 'Patch Bay') which is an index of whole lot of sensors on all sorts of things that are addressable over the Internet. On Pachube you can get XML feeds from private homes, weather stations, tidal level meters and much more.

Then you have the coming rush of 'smart meters' that should, if deployed properly, not only tell you in real time, your electricity, water, gas consumption but also how your readings compare to others in your suburb, city and with similar patterns of use.

Add to this the security and building management systems already communicate (albeit securely) over the Internet, and you can imagine a far more data saturated world than we have already.

6.    How do you see the digital media industry in the next 5 years? (any forecasts and challenges)

We're at the beginning of a pretty big shakeout. The content industries are in for even more rough times and that is going have a lot of flow on effects.

7.     How do you see other media evolving in the next 5 years?

There's some serious issues around payment models that are going to come to a head soon, as well as the widely divergent attitudes of the content industries and consumers (presumer's?) around Copyright. Everything is becoming 'media' now.

In my world, museums are becoming media organizations and are starting to need to think like them too. I distinctly remember the Tate in the UK developing strategies that align it more along the lines of a public broadcaster like the BBC or a non-profit media organization like The Guardian than simply an 'art gallery' (or group of art galleries). These changes pose significant challenges for many in the content industries (and those supported by the content industries like advertising).

8.     Can you give us an insight into a consumers daily media habits in the next 5 years?

I expect we are going to see both a widening of media consumption at one end of the market and a narrowing at the other end. These will occur in scope and ownership, medium and viewpoint. I expect that the universe of media commentary will continue to grow exponentially spreading deeper into the community. As we've seen with music becoming almost 'ambient' as a continuous background to everyday life, we've likely to see the same with other media - and this changes the sense that consumers' have over ideas of 'ownership' and how much they are willing to pay for it.

The digital divide will be less one of access but of literacy and type of use as suggested by researchers such as Eszter Hargittai http://www.eszter.com/ (We'll see what changes the laptop roll-out under the Digital Education Revolution brings - hopefully we'll have enough technologically literate creative teachers to ensure that these laptops that are going to every senior school student are able to be used flexibly enough.)  Access to information has radically democratized but access to knowledge is still as hierarchical as ever.

9.    What updates and insights can you give us into the progress of the National Broadband Network and the effect it will have on our industry?

The NBN, should it come to pass, will radically change the nature of 'digital'. Always on connectivity requires bandwidth to be commoditized and the NBN makes that possible. For example, as I've said earlier, the ability to have smart meters that allow us to, for example, compare our utility consumption (electricity, water, gas etc) with that of our neighbors' and suburb creates the potential for some quite radical changes in social dynamics. The ability to share and distribute large media rapidly allows for some exciting new opportunities in community storytelling and knowledge sharing - think Wikipedia, with high definition video, at the street and neighborhood level. The possibilities hinted at by projects like Every-block in the US will begin to be able to become a reality with ubiquitous connectivity.

It all depends on whether, by the time the NBN is a reality, a large enough proportion of the population's media habits have changed significantly from consumptive to co-creative. This requires mass scale digital literacy - something which is only partially generational.

As a society we haven't properly thought through nor debated what 'ubiquitous connectivity' might actually mean for us. I'm with Adam Greenfield's thinking in this space and we need to start having a serious debate about the implications of this - well beyond just privacy - but also what sort of digitally activated society we actually want to live in.

10.   What does the digital media industry need to do right now to better position itself in the broader media landscape?

I don't see them as essentially different. We're seeing a gradual but increasingly rapid shift as digital becomes not only integrated but central to all business functions. Those who are in a position to accelerate this will do best.

11.   Where do you get your industry information from?

On a day to day basis I read a select set of about 30 RSS feeds daily and then a number of thematic search-based feeds as well. I'm not interested just in one 'industry' and these feeds are a mix from across the cultural, technology, science, art and policy fields. One of the benefits of working at a museum is that I have access to a great research library and many knowledgeable subject specialists - and try to make the most of any face to face meetings I get to have with people internationally. I find that a lot of information I get online is a gateway to new areas of knowledge rather than destinations in themselves - digging deeper is something that generally requires significant offline effort. Yes, I still read books.

12.  What industry groups or networks are you a part of?

In the museum world we don't do 'industry groups' so much but I'm on a number of international committees in the museum and cultural sector, spend a fair bit of time with academics and others involved in Australian Research Council Linkage projects, and I'm also on the Federal Government's Government 2.0 Taskforce