The Electronic Museum is wholly a personal project by me, Mike Ellis.
I work for a Bath-based company called Eduserv who are a not for profit IT services group. I’m a Solutions Architect which basically means I help clients (both internal and external) with their web strategy, forming rough ideas into workable and user-accessible end-results. In a nutshell: I like IT, but people are better. I spend a fair amount of time talking about the web, too.
Prior to that I spent 7 years as Head of Web for the National Museum of Science and Industry, UK, which comprises the Science Museum in London, Media Museum in Bradford and Railway Museum in York. Before that I was Production Manager at Waterstone’s Online and before that I ran my own business doing web stuff, graphic design…oh, and picture framing 
Find out more about me on LinkedIn, or by reading my 8 random things or personal website. Oh, or there’s a thing called Twitter where I’m known to lurk on the odd occasion - have you heard of it…?
If you want to get in touch (for instance to buy my services or incredible intelligence for vast quantities of cash, new media stock or crumpets) then please leave a comment on this page with your contact details, and I’ll get back to you with a speed commensurate with what you’ve got to offer.
My interests are in user generated content, web 2, ubiquitous computing and innovation, and how to lever these for maximum benefit, particularly in cultural institutions. I’ve presented at various conferences and am usually happy to talk, so get in touch if you’re interested.
Please note that the Electronic Museum is not sponsored by, affiliated to, hosted by, paid for, influenced by, in debt to or generally attached to any organisation or professional body. Any opinions that you read here are mine and mine alone and do not necessarily represent those of the organisations for which I work or have worked previously.
6 responses so far ↓
Mike DIckison // November 24, 2007 at 5:31 am |
A note to say you have a great blog, and I wish folks here in New Zealand were a little more up to speed with this stuff. I’m not a web designer, but I just gave a talk and wrote an article for NZ museum folk on museum websites, because I couldn’t believe how dire it is. The national museum is developing from scratch a closed proprietary system for NZ museums which will mostly just put their collections online, ready maybe August 2008, with some blogs and wikis blah blah slapped on at an unspecified future date. And that’s it. If I had the cash I’d bring you over here to stir things up a bit.
Anyway, keep writing. Good stuff.
Cheers,
Mike
Mike // November 26, 2007 at 5:52 pm |
Mike, thank you so much for your encouragement
– always nice to know that people are not only reading but responding positively, too…
I’ll have a look at your paper – it sounds interesting. The collections online thing is always interesting – tendancy is to either 1) do the old school thing and just have search/display/detail (zzzz) or, 2) slap on every single web2 thingy you can think of just because you can… It’s a fine line…
Mell // March 12, 2008 at 10:41 am |
Hi ya Mike, came across you blog and I laughed out loud at your blog comments about lack of understanding. It was refreshing to read someone put it in a way that summed up the whole situation. I will be popping back to read other entries.
I was one of the first educators in the UK to produce a podcast (a succesful podcast one, with over 1,000 subscribers) and about to relaunch it. Would you be intersted in doing a short feature (2-3 minutes) once a month about your own experience/thoughts.
I wanted to move acvross to doing more technical based podcasts and cut out the jargon and your comments really made perfect sense.
Get in touch if you would like to bounce around any ideas and in the meantime keep up blogging you talk sense
Cheers
Mell
tvisio // March 26, 2008 at 11:10 pm |
Mike,
I am a hopeless groupaholic and web two point schmo in search of the open networking Holy Grail. I would be so honored for you to become my enabler exploring the fine line between endangered common courtesy and blatant huckstering subversively disguised as neuromarketing socialprise research.
My girlfriend, Carol is mortified that I spend inordinate amounts of time talking to people I don’t really know. If you find my tendency pathological, then please exclude me from OneTag consideration. I am certain my contributions in the technogeek realm would seem paltry to a man of your training and experience. However, if you may be swayed by character traits such as having the milk of human kindness by the quart in every vein, I would be inspired to share my obsessive content development
compulsions with your fair experiment.
I shan’t mislead you with seductive offers of filthy lucre. Instead I offer my humble abode to you and your family should travels to Birmingham, Alabama ensue. Our Museum has one of the most impressive Wedgwood collections in the world and our UAB Medical System is technologically second to none. I gave up flying years ago and am perfectly happy to Tag One, and Fear not, with God’stentatious Delight, Love our Virtual World and Avatar where We might!
Sincere Best Wishes,
Bill Whetstone
Barry Spooren // February 26, 2009 at 10:30 am |
Hi Mike,
I’m a student Music Management in The Netherlands and I’m currently working for ZXZW. It’s a festival on Independent Culture. I came across your blog because I was looking for information about user generated content, innovation in business models and web strategies. A great blog you have, and I’ve had a good time reading your articles.
Right now, there is a development going on at the ZXZW festival, which you might also find interesting. It’s like this: this month, ZXZW launched the ‘Social Festival Model’. In short this means that the whole businessmodel of the festivalorganization is made public through open source. You can see it in full here: zxzw.wetpaint.com. So everyone is being invited in the participation of organizing the festival. With this we’re trying to create a new and fresh view on our policy, and to work toghether with our visitors and everybody else that’s interested to decide which way we are (or have to be) going.
Maybe you would be interested in taking a look around on our Social Festival Model? I would very much like to hear your opninion on this story. You can contact me anytime.
Thanks!
Barry
OpenCulture » Blog Archive » When Worlds Collide // July 2, 2009 at 11:00 pm |
[...] this community, the principle of aggregation – most eloquently expressed by Mike Ellis of Eduserv – was simply a truth that was universally acknowledged. ‘Locked in’ data is [...]