Draw on people’s appetite for social interaction and personalised experiences Building on a nation of Nature Lovers Estimated 13 million actively involved Support an understanding of the Museum as a research organisation with 300+ scientists who are experts in their fields Citizen Science is capturing public and political imagination Government/Europe looking for new ways to reinvigorate debate Publics sophisticated in using new communication channels to influence Citizen science builds scientific capacity Understanding of what we do and value of our research. Not just stuffed shirts/animals Nature Plus and use of existing social media in particular, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube
New initiative and new area of website launched with new Darwin Centre Sep 09 and definitely still evolving. For online visitors key features are: forums to discuss areas of interest with other nature enthusiasts and with our scientists blogs from our scientists, both on a regular basis eg beetle and Erica and on some of the amazing field trips they make to do original research collected content The area also extends the Museum visit, at certain exhibitions eg Cocoon and new Images of Nature gallery can ‘collect’ content by scanning a NaturePlus card – go to NP and find your collected content. Home page you can personalise with drag and drop technology We are looking to run this across the museum. Most popular areas currently our Identification forums, where the Museum’s ID team of scientists join in with anyone from kids to people with really good knowledge to id anything from fossils to trees or spiders. Support content relating to exhibitions and general discussions from wildlife photography tips to what’s your favourite dinosaur. Good feedback, good interaction, relationship building
New initiative and new area of website launched with new Darwin Centre Sep 09 and definitely still evolving. For online visitors key features are: forums to discuss areas of interest with other nature enthusiasts and with our scientists blogs from our scientists, both on a regular basis eg beetle and Erica and on some of the amazing field trips they make to do original research collected content The area also extends the Museum visit, at certain exhibitions eg Cocoon and new Images of Nature gallery can ‘collect’ content by scanning a NaturePlus card – go to NP and find your collected content. Home page you can personalise with drag and drop technology We are looking to run this across the museum. Most popular areas currently our Identification forums, where the Museum’s ID team of scientists join in with anyone from kids to people with really good knowledge to id anything from fossils to trees or spiders. Support content relating to exhibitions and general discussions from wildlife photography tips to what’s your favourite dinosaur. Good feedback, good interaction, relationship building
Want to talk to you briefly about a specific instance in which we used social media and natureplus to find out what people were thinking and to use that to highlight the fact that people really do care about issues relating to the natural world. In the run up to the Biodiversity Conference in Nagoya, very little was being said in the press – or anywhere – about the importance of this conference. In the Big Nature Debate we focused on this issue and discussed issues around biodiversity We ran a blog written by a range of experts from a variety of organisations with strong views about the issues and ran forums where these people participated with the audience. We canvassed views from our audience on the website, on Facebook and on Twitter, to find out what questions that they would like to have answers to and hosted a live, streamed web debate about these with experts from the Museum, from ZSL and from the Millenium Seedbank at Kew. We collated the queries from our audiences and presented them to Defra representatives after the debate was aired.
Citizen science Citizen Science is capturing public and political imagination Government/Europe looking for new ways to reinvigorate debate Publics sophisticated in using new communication channels to influence Citizen science builds scientific capacity Been running for quite a few years, surveys include Bluebells and Seaweed. Cherries last year and ongoing urban trees. Now encorporates our social channels – people can upload pics and this year will be able to comment on their trees. There are forums to support them if they can’t identify what they’ve found, even using factsheets and interactive keys. Promotion and encouragement through Facebook and Twitter. Video on YouTube.
Key point of all of this is that none of it is stand alone. We are continuing to develop an integrated, interactive and personalised website, pulling feeds from forums, Twitter and potentially Facebook to present them where relevant. Bookmark pages across the site to tell other people what you like, with comments. Upload to FB Twitter You Tube, share with sharing sites. Shortly be launching a Your interests area, where people can be asked to be served more of the topics that interest them, eg more dinosaurs or more about plants. Learnings We started with premise of virtuous circle of Museum visitors pre-during-post visit. Now reaching people in an extended circle of communication, to suit the needs of the individual. Not broadcast, but conversation, with audience shaping how we develop our content and our strategies Learnings? We’re still just at the tip of the iceberg Don’t underestimate the resource required Ask the audience what they think Listening is at least as important as telling We haven’t nearly begun to use to the full, enjoy and share the full value of the content that our audience can generate. This is a constant learning process