Workshops
April 13-17, 2010
Denver, Colorado, USA

Workshops: Description

Handheld Coding Workshop

Nancy Proctor, Smithsonian American Art Museum, USA
Theodore Forbes, Dallas Museum of Art, USA
Chris Alexander, Toura, LLC, USA
Rob Stein, Indianapolis Museum of Art, USA

Aims:

Participants in this workshop will:

  1. Get to know some of the opensource solutions that are currently available. Examples will be presented and discussed from the Dallas Museum of Art, San Jose Museum of Art, IMA (TAP & TourML), and Wordpress. Discussion of how these opensource solutions are similar, different, compatible & incompatible. Attendees gain an understanding of whether choosing one rules out the others (or makes them redundant), whether one might start in one and migrate to another, or whether in fact they are solutions one uses at different points in the same product development lifecycle.
  2. Gain understanding of how to use the presented opensource mobile solutions. Participants should be able to download and begin to work with any of the solutions presented after the workshop, and become active participants in the opensource communities around these solutions.
  3. Understand what key features your organization requires of a mobile solution, and how to go shopping for those on the opensource (and proprietary) market. Understand pros & cons of opensource vs proprietary mobile solutions, and how this debate takes on particular inflections and power with mobile interpretation platforms. Web app vs. iPhone app: mapping visitor experience expectations/needs to each solution

Schedule

  1. Welcome & Introduction of the 3 approaches being demonstrated in the session: CMS, CSS+HTML, XML (5 min)
  2. Key questions for the day: Onboard or online? App or Browser? Platform-agnostic or dedicated device? Museum-owned or user-provided? Staffed or not? (each presenter does a 5 min intro to his project responding to most if not all of these points) (20 min total)
  3. Presentation of 2 opensource solutions: presenters do a live demo of each solution by building a short 'tour' using the same content, so that the resulting product can be compared across the platforms. (30 min each, including Q&A)
    • TAP
    • Wordpress
  4. 30 min break
  5. Presentation of final 2 opensource solutions: (1 hr total)
    • SJMA
    • Dallas
  6. Wrap-up discussion: Comparison & analysis of products of the 4 solutions

Workshop: Handheld Coding [Afternoon]

Keywords: handhelds, mobile, programming, open source