Winter Shows

Today a joined a Mentor group looking at Segmentation. Mentor groups are and new way of devolping new processes, visitor offers etcetera from the bottom up as oposed to the top down. A number of property staff, including property managers, who share a particular issue or problem get together, with functional support, in workshops to try and discover and develop a common solution, that can be tried out. If it works it can be shared with the rest of the Trust.

This particular group were looking at one particular market segment, which we call Curious Minds. The properties concerned wanted to create an attractive offer for this market, to attract them to properties outside the main season, when the house (none of the properties are exclusively countryside properties) is closed. After their first two workshops, the participants decided they wanted to create a centrally supprted themed exhibition, which could be promoted nationally, but with a local feel.

I was invited to join the group because they felt they needed some learning related techinal support. I agreed because the objectives they have set themselves matches our regional objective of extending beyond core hours.

So today, we were reviewing progress so far, and developing themes for the trial exhibit or show (which will be in Jan/Feb 2010).

We came up with two themes, to develop further and test. The first is object orientated, inviting our supporters to tell us about, or even bring us the treasured objects that they would most like to pass on to future generations. The objects would appear alongside equivalent obejcts from our own collections, and audiovisual, photographic and other material putting the objects and related stories into context. The exhibition would be accompanied for conservation demonstrations and workshops insured by the nominated objects.

The second potential theme the group will explore will unpack how the skills and techniques used to manage houses and estates in the past inform our modern day management of our properties, and might also offer alternative and perhaps greener ways if looking after your own home. This would be supported with a campaign that asks our supporters to share with us their own home management choices.

Both of these exhibitions themes are aimed at our older audience, those visiting the house without children (look out for the upcoming Wild Child offer for families with children). So they’ll have the opportunity to explore whichever theme we go for in some depth. They’ll both have a resonance with personal remininsence and nostalgia.

Think yourself into the mind of this type of visitor and tell me, which theme would be of most interest to you?

Guidebooks

First of all, apologies for the short hiatus. My home Mac crashed last week running iPhoto (I blame my wife, which is unfair but it happened on her watch). All sorts of weirdness happened wih the finder, including loosing the menubar and dock, and clicks on desktop items having no effect. A Time Machine restore back to the day before didn’t help, neither did going back to the day before that. So, frustrated, I did a clean install, and now I’m having to rebuild my digital life from the Time Machine. Thus no posts about work stuff. I did however just download the new WordPress iPhone app, so remote blogging without the clunky mobile interface, here I come!

To business. I met with the retail managers from across the region yesterday to talk about guidebooks. Guidebook sales are down this year – down more than the drop in visitors we are currently experiencing. Add in that that measure is based on the income form guidebooks, not the unit sales, and its a pretty sorry picture. Prices have gone up, so units sales must be even worse.

It’s not the retail managers fault. Guidebooks are sold in the shops yes, but are most likely to be bought at the front desk. The retail managers have little influence over what goes on in visitor reception, but the the guidebok sales are part fo the shop’s bottom line, and thus effect the percieved performance of the retail manager. So I thought it was only fair to ask the team what they thought of the guidebooks as a product. Are they proud to sell it? Is it on sale at the right price?

Over all the shop managers were positive. Our guidebooks are a mixed bag. Newer ones are of course more highly regarded, and there are some very old ones still in (huge) stock. Retail managers would like to see guidebooks updated (with a new cover at least) every three years. They’d also like to make sure that the people selling the guidebook (visitor reception team members generally and volunteers) had a better knowledge of what was in the guidebook and how a visitor might use it. There is also room for some price flexibility, and some sites are experimenting with dropping the price to improve sales. They also thought a separate sales point after reception but before the main area of the visit would take some of the pressure of the reception team, if enough suitable volunteers to man it could be found.

Guidebooks are updated by a central team, at a reasonable rate. But I’m wondering if the region shouldn’t invest in a bigger updating push, to make sure all our guidebook product is as good as the best-sellers.

BETI gets it done

I’m struggling to write a brief at the moment. He have a resource bank on good interpretation called BETI (Better Engagement Through Interpretation). Theres lots of really useful advice for property staff there, but the problem has always been directing people to the most relevant resource. My central colleagues have wroked hard to make the intranet site more relvet and easier to navigate, and we started a pilot programme in the region this year to welp teams work through smaller projects using the resources (BETI gets it done!). But its one of the projects I can’t spend so much time with, so I’ve hired in some outside help (an ex NT staffer) to fill my shoes. Actually putting it down on paper, half way though the project is stumping me though. I thought I might work though someof the issues here:

Background: The South East business plan tasked the CLV team to come up with a framework for improving the quality of smaller interpretation projects to implement next year. The Regional Learning and Interpretation Officer also needs a way of better managing the calls on her time made by properties throughout the year to help with smaller projects, that come to her unplanned, only when the help is needed. We also want to empower properties to have the confidence and skills to manage these projects on their own in future. We are also aware that a lot of very good guidance on all aspects of interpretation already exists and we do not want to re-invent any part of the wheel.

 

We’ve started series of workshops, to which any property that is planning an interpretation project (which is not large enough to appear on the regional projects list, and thus receive planned support) may send a representative. The workshops are devised around a generic critical path, leading to installation of the new interpretation in February, in time for invoices to be paid before the end on the financial year (as some projects may be funded through operating budgets), and in time for the beginning of the core season in March. The workshop format will deliver:

• shared learning, ideas and peer review
• signposting to existing resources relevant to each project
• direct access to, and training from regional and central advisors (including. curators)
• key outcomes necessary to the successful completion of the project

The workshops planned are listed below:

Starting out (Completed in May) – Input: the Golden rules of interpretation, Defining the project (outcomes, resources, scale, team etc) Output: A project initiation document.

Proving demand (June half day)  – Input: Easy evaluation tool-kit Output: Front-end evaluation plan Commissioning the work (planned for August) – Input: Evaluation results, media, working with designers, the NT brand, narrative Output: project brief.

Testing Ideas (planned for Sept) – Input: Design roughs, worked up examples, evaluation toolkit. Output: Formative evaluation plan

Script Doctors (planned for November) – Input: Evaluation results, narratives, editing, “aging text” Ekarv, language and layout Output: Final script (e.g.. text for panels/trails, outline for guided tours).

Signing off (planned for January, half day) – Input: Final proofs, peer evaluation, proof-reading. Output: Final approval for production, summative evaluation plan

We have also planned another evaluation day in May. But we won’t have the hired help by then, as I’ll be back in my old role.

In Praise of ActiveSync

 

Sync'd! My work calendar now appears effortlessly on my iPhone.

I was planning to write about the reading I’ve been doing around TMS today. But I’ve got great news! I can see my work emails and calendar on my personal iPhone! I’ve been an iPhone user since last November. I won’t go on about why, except to say I’ve long refused to have anything to do with mobile phones until they had no buttons but a touch screen, and finally, with last year’s release, the technology caught up with my wishes.

 

I love my first gen iPhone so much I have no interest in last weeks release of iPhone3G. But I was interested in the 2.0 firmware and the launch of MobileMe, either one of which I hoped would finally allow me to keep all my appointments, work and personal, up to date on the one device. Previously, because the NT run a pretty secure IT ship, with no useful downloads or the ability to plug in your personal device allowed, I had to kludge my work dates onto my phone. I used to periodically export my work calendar to a .csv file, upload that to Google calendar, publish/subcribe that to iCal on my home Mac Mini, and finally sync iCal with my iPhone. And because that was a palaver, I’d do my best to enter new dates in both work and iphone, and forward meeting invites to yahoo mail, so that they got pushed to my iPhone.

Phew! So, I was pretty keen to see if I could get the new ActiveSync enabled iPhone firmware to talk to my Exchange account at work. If that failed I was excited by the possibility that MobileMe, the replacement for .Mac, would be able to sync with Outlook on Windows machines. I thought it was pretty unlikely that the NT would be running ActiveSync, as all the Senior Management Team have Blackberries, which use a proprietary alternative to ActiveSync. So I’ve been looking more keenly at MobileMe. But that, it turns out requires iTunes on the PC. I can’t load iTunes (or anything else) on the locked down Desktop, so that was a non-starter. Which found me idly playing about with the settings that I use to access webmail when I’m at home without my laptop, or when VPN is playing up (our VPN and Outlook appear to have a love-hate relationship). No luck, until I tried adding a domain to my username, and hey presto! My inbox and, when I flicked the switch, my calendar too! god bless Steve Jobs (and Microsoft of course, which wrote ActiveSync)!

Doh! New improved website

My first meeting as a proper MSDM, with my other MSDM’s was interesting in many ways. But of particular interest was a presentation/discussion with Nick Burne, our interim head of e-engagement. He talked through some of the work he and his team have done since he joined the Trust.

The first interesting thing he said was that he is taking a beta approach to improvement, small incremental changes, and live piloting, just like Google does. He talked about how it has become much more acceptable to the public to be offered a chance to watch us try our new ideas out, and join in on testing them and offering feedback.

I’d already heard about the most obvious exaple of this, our use of Googlemaps to locate our properties, with a lot more functionality than our old mapping had, and the possibility of mashing other data in. For example, right now you can link on a link to get a weather report for that property.

But then he talked about smaller usability changes that he’s making to the interface, and particularly the home page. And as he talked i realised that these changes had already been made, and were so subtle I hadn’t noticed them, until there were pointed out. But they really do improve the visitor experience. Putting the logo at the top left, on white (rather than middle left, on a grey background), reducing the number of options in (and relocating, below the logo), the menu bar, making pictures clickable, makeing the “calls to action” more obvious. It has made a huge improvement, with only tiny tweaks.

Then, he asked us about where we saw priorities in the coming year. I made an impassioned plea for Radical Transparency, more for my colleagues hearing than Nick’s. We went on to talk about blogs, and then got more esoteric with a brief chat about Creative Commons, but that was a step too far for my colleagues, I think, and went over their heads.

TMI?

When I meet with my colleagues in the regional operations group, the conversation often turns to colours. “Oh, thats very red”, “You are being so blue”, “I’m sitting here quietly yellow” etc. I’ve heard the talk before, of course. Last year the word Insights spread through regional management teams and central teams like wildfire. People had obviously been on some sort of course or awayday where they’d discovered what colour they wear, what management style they had, and how they might work better with their colleagues. Now I am in the team but I missed out on the course and I wonder, what colour am I?

I Googled Insights – nothing. (Well of course not “nothing” but rather thousands of links for other things called Insights). Then I remembered that a friend of my wife’s had mentioned doing some “what colour am I” stuff on her MBA. A phone call to her reveals the Margerison Mc-Cann Team Management Index. We look through. The names are different, but it smells of Belbin. Sure enough, back on google we find a comparison. I know my Belbin team roles. I’m no completer finisher, but rather a Resource Investigator with a touch of Co-ordinator. That makes me Orange, tending towards Yellow. 

Hurrah! No longer embarrassed by my lack of self-awareness in management team meetings!

More NT blogs on their way?

First of all, apologies for not keeping up to my aim to post more regularly than this. It’s been a week since my last post! But here’s a thing: We’re updating our regional business plan, to meet newly set targets, which reflect better the desired end result, rather than focus on how we get there. So in the last region planning group we paired up function managers (thats me) with area managers (they manage the property managers – the operational line, as we call it) and divided up parts of the plan between the pairs.

My colleague and I got the Engaging Supporters section. One of the proposed new targets there is a measure of how close people feel to the Trust (See post passim). And my colleague (note: not me) suggested every property has its own blog! “I know nothing about blogs” says he, “That’s ok, I do” I reply. So its in our proposed plan. There’s a few months of navigating its way through the regional planning group and other approvals before its there to stay, but, fingers crossed!