Speaker: Jon Pratty
April 11-14, 2007
San Francisco, California

Speakers: Biography

Jon Pratty

Editor
24 Hour Museum
Office 4
28 Kensington Street
Brighton
BN1 4AJ United Kingdom
http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk

Jon Pratty is the Editor of Britain's National Virtual Museum, the 24 Hour Museum. Jon has a degree in Fine Art and has worked in the museum and gallery sector for twenty years. He also worked in retail and heritage design consultancy in London as a marketing and communications specialist, as well doing professional photography for design consultancies.

After consultancy Jon trained as a journalist and established himself as one of the principal feature and news writers for Connected, the technology section of the Daily Telegraph. Jon has also written features and news about technology, the net and culture for the Sunday Times.

Jon joined the 24 Hour Museum in January, 2001, and has been responsible for creative and editorial direction of all the content on the site. This included developing an editorial strategy, building a national student writer network, evolving and devising an editorial policy that fulfils a government funding remit, as well as attracting lots of readers - not always quite the same thing.

In 2003 Jon devised with SSL Ltd the UK's first dedicated museum and gallery news feed service via the 24 Hour Museum, and in 2004 launched the Culture Online-funded City Heritage Guides. Content for the sites comes from a MLA-funded network of student arts writers.

Visitor statistics to the site have doubled every year for the last three years - currently reaching 350,000 visitor sessions per month. 24 Hour Museum wins awards regularly, including the BT New Statesman new media award in 2002, and a prestigious Best of the Web award at Museums and the Web 2003 in North Carolina.

Jon will teach Hands On - Exploring RSS in a Cultural Context. [Workshop]