Hello and welcome to the Digital Snapshot, bringing you all the latest digital news, inspiration, tips and guidance for the arts, culture, museums and heritage world.
Ho, ho, ho. Merrrry Tuesday.
It's nearly Christmas, so you know what that means. Chocolate and presents. This is neither chocolate nor presents, unfortunately. But it is at least "regular" - which a reader recently said to me as their favourite thing about the Snapshot. I aim to please.
I just wanted to take this chance to say a big thank you for reading over the last year. Here's to 2026, as we near the end of another year of "regular" digital news.
📰 Latest news
- Looking for a cheeky little Christmas present for yourself, or are your relatives constantly bugging you asking you what you'd like from St. Nick? Well why not grab a ticket to the Let's Get Real conference?
- Myself, Stephen Miller and Jocelyn Burnham have shared some insights into what we've learned so far from our Let's Get Real programme on AI.
- This is a useful overview of how the social media ban in Australia will work.
- A recent study of 8,300 US children has suggested that social media may be contributing to a rise in ADHD diagnoses.
🤓 Useful / shareable
- This is a touch old from The Wildlife Trust (about a year), but I still think it's a useful resource. 'How to use AI responsibly'.
- This is a great post by Rachel Coldicutt exploring the challenges around AI notetakers in meetings.
- Rachel also has some useful resources on checking consequences, through Careful Industries.
- Ash Mann presented his research into the failure of digital projects at the Museums Computer Group conference last Friday. Two points that really stood out as common themes in his research into digital failure: "leadership is often present in name, but absent in practice" and "digital is not the problem, it's the mirror". Read the report on his website.
- Manifesto recently published a report on ways to transform visitor engagement in the cultural sector - lots of useful stuff in there.
💥 Distracting / entertaining / inspiring
- The other week I was in Greece for a HAMLET project meet-up. We're working with a number of partners to create a Collaborative Community Hub which will act as a 'digital platform where artists, designers, game developers, and cultural professionals connect, share expertise, and co-create'. Find out more on the HAMLET project website.
- The UK Heritage 3D Data at Risk project is developing a strategy for long term access and storage to the UK's 3D heritage data.
- Watershed were recently challenged by people who assumed that they'd used AI to create some of their marketing content, when they hadn't. Here's their response.
- Ash Mann has created a Google Drive with over 100 reports covering trends for 2026 and beyond. There's a lot in there to properly engage with it, it's certainly distracting and definitely useful.
- GLAM-E Lab has created a really useful guide to going open - giving a clearer picture of what open means in practice for you, your organisation and your community.
👍 Something good
- Last week I was all over the place and it ended with chairing the Museums Computer Group Conference. The projects I got to work on last week were great fun, but the MCG conference was the culmination of months of work from several dedicated committee members. So I thought I'd take this opportunity to say thank you to them, and to the community, for making it such a great day.
And that’s all for this edition.
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.
Photo by Lesya Tyutrina Andrey Biyanov on Unsplash.
