Digital Snapshot | 05.07.22 | The Audience Agency

Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Digital Snapshot, bringing you all the latest digital news, ideas, tips and guidance for the arts, culture, museums and heritage world.

First up, bookings are now open for Culture 24's two free online seminars for heritage leaders and trustees, Digital leadership - Inclusion, equity and digital on 18 July and Digital leadership - Digital enterprise in heritage on 25 July. They're designed for senior leaders of medium and large UK heritage organisations, so if you fit the bill then please come along!

Then, a bit further down the line, we'd love you to join us for our own free TEA Break session about Digital Participation on 14 September. We'll be exploring how (or even if) digitally technology can bring archives and communities closer, looking at our current Digitally Democratising Archives project as a case study.

Latest News ?

The UK Government published their Policy Paper Transforming for a digital future: 2022 to 2025 roadmap for digital and data last month. Sexy.
Twitter is experimenting with Notes, which are basically blogs. This might get around the impossibility of fitting nuance into 280 characters and it benefits Twitter by keeping people on its platform. Win win with a pinch of who cares.
Mozilla is stripping some UTM parameters from links in Firefox to boost privacy. Google Analytics and Google Ads links aren't affected...yet.
TikTok has abandoned their live e-commerce initiative in Europe and the US. There's always QVC I guess.
It's easy to dunk on apps, but for Edinburgh Fringe it's a crucial way to find out what is on and where. The absence of the app this year due to pandemic-related difficulties is frustrating comedians and fans.

Useful / bookmarkable ?

If you press the Windows key and full stop (.), Windows opens the emoji keyboard. Thank you Alice Kershaw. Or should I say ???‍?.
One Further's Georgina Brooke has written about different approaches to online collections.
I've been digging into audio/multimedia guides recently, and love this simple approach by Harewood House using Google Presentations. (I also just read Corinne Fowler's Green Unpleasant Land, so it's good to see they're being clear about their roots in the transatlantic slave trade.)

Distracting / entertaining / inspiring ?

The SCP Foundation is my favourite online collaborative writing project - a fictional secret organisation responsible for capturing and containing various paranormal, supernatural, and other mysterious phenomena. The oldest entry, SCP-173, used an artwork by Izumi Kato with his retrospective but unwilling permission, but they made the decision after 15 years to take it down as its popularity means they cannot guarantee its non-commercial licence.
Popular Minecraft Youtuber Technoblade died from cancer only a few days ago. His posthumous video hits hard, and the outpouring of grief online is another reminder of the power and importance of online communities.

Good Reads ?

How can galleries and museums stay relevant over the next ten years? It all comes down to accessibility, digital transformation and the social function of museums according to Celina Lei.

And that’s all for this edition. If you come across any interesting or noteworthy content or have any of your own projects to share please do send it my way. Don't forget we're here to support you with training, research and consultancy, so please do get in touch. You can find all past editions of the Digital Snapshot here.

You can also post your thoughts on digital and data-related topics to us and a wider community through our newly launched Community forum.

You can find me or The Audience Agency on Twitter. See you soon.

Adam Koszary

Head of Digital, The Audience Agency

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The Digital Snapshot newsletter shares the latest, most important news from the social media and digital world - as relevant to the arts, culture and heritage sectors.