Dan Hill

So attended my first conference this week - National digital forum, a place for museums, galleries, archives and libraries to discuss digital initiatives. Some pretty interesting ideas came out of this. But the biggest thing for me was hearing Dan Hill talk. This guy is a freaking genius! Like actually, I wish I had some of the ideas and vision he has.

I mean first off, he designed the BBC radio1 website, which gives him mad cool points.
But what was really amazing is how hes developed a career from combining his interest in architecture and digital-ism-ness together. First off discussing how getting free wifi into the public library in Brisbane has changed the whole dynamics of the place, and peoples behaviour. From a public place which, IMO, is struggling to maintain its prominence in our society - to a place where people spend 23 hours a day at, and its totally transformed the role of the library and also how people use it.
anyway I'm not doing that idea any justice at all, given that i cant really explain it.

But to me the most interesting point Dan was talking about the lack of social interconnectedness we have these days. He pulled up a movie of Sydney in the early 1900s, with people walking along roads, trams and horses. No cars. Dan talked about how - well my interpretation of what he meant was - we have had so much progression since then in our society, but in some ways all that progression has inhibited the way we use and interact with public places, and that his vision is to go back to that film, when people were free to walk wherever they want and were much more aware of each other.

In the Netherlands they are now putting in intersections with no traffic lights, people are forced to interact with each other, to take responsibility for their behaviour while they are driving and actually look at other people. These intersections have the lowest accident rate of any intersection in the world.

Its made me think about how with all this technology it would be really easy for people to not interact in a public way, its a lot easier to switch off from the world, with an ipod, playing games on your phone, etc etc. But then I think what Dan was going on about is that all the new technology can also work to create more connectedness and maybe even a greater sense of community. And I guess relating it back to work, theres a big struggle with the whole whats the role of the visitors to our website. Theres one side of the site that wants to use the website as a platform to get people into the actual museum. But then with the digitalisation of collections, theres the ability to bring the museum to those who cannot physically visit. I guess museums dont want it to become something quite stagnant - with people coming to the website and only passively interacting with the collections, and there needs to be that ability for those visitors to interact with the collections in a different, but just as important way, as they would if they were to come to the museum physically.


I dunno, Dan Hills vision really got to me, and I will definitely be keeping an eye on his blog.

Oh and his designs of this awesome bubble tower to look over London was pretty bad arse too.