So in last month's issue I promised you a picture from my hiking holiday and, for the first time ever, I finally had a clear view from the top of a mountain. My friends and I climbed Scafell Pike late last month, which was great fun, and we scrambled up via Mickledore to make the route a little more interesting. If you fancy a little adventure I really recommend it.
In digital news, have you got your ticket for the Let's Get Real conference on AI yet? It'll be a blast. We've got some Super Early Bird tickets on sale to save a few bob, so that's nice.
📰 Latest news
- Come along to the Museums Computer Group conference on 5 of December at Thinktank Birmingham. I've recently taken over as Chair of the MCG as the current Chair, Georgina Brooke, is off on maternity leave. So I'll be there chairing the thing. If you do come, please no heckling.
- Recently the UK Department for Business and Trade ran a year long trial of Microsoft Copilot for Office 365, to see if it increased productivity. Their findings found that it did not. But 72% of the participants enjoyed themselves so at least they had fun - the most important part of experimentation. (I'm realising upon re-reading that this sounds very snarky, but I promise it's written in earnest).
- AI tech firms, like Microsoft, are investing billions of pounds in the UK to make it an 'AI superpower'. Yay for the economy I guess. Though there's also been a lot of news on the concern of an AI bubble burst which could crash the global economy. So... maybe nay for the economy?
- After a spate of high profile cyber-attacks, the government is now recommending that any cyber-attack contingency plans should be printed out and stored for easy, non-digital access.
🤓 Useful / shareable
- My colleague (and all round great guy) Stephen Miller, Chief Technology Officer at TAA, has written a great article about the need for data that we can trust.
- I found this post by Ash Mann super interesting, on the debate between build vs buy for digital solutions. I've been entangled in many of those conversations over the years and Ash's post covers some of the more important things to consider during those debates.
- Lauren Pope, a content strategist, has written a useful report on unlocking content potential based on a survey of over 70 different content teams. Lauren focuses on the organising structures that they use and how that impacts on the content they're creating.
- This is a great article on the lessons learnt from The National Museum of the Royal Navy's recent cyber-attack.
💥 Distracting / entertaining / inspiring
- This is an interesting article on The Stage, featuring interviews with a number of theatre sector leaders on navigating the 'digital-first landscape of modern theatre marketing'.
- The National Gallery of Art have been sharing some of their art works animated in 3D - quite well done.
- I really liked this post by Nick Poole, Chief Executive of Ukie, on why he regularly uses TikTok. His reasoning is that it gives him keen insights into how people interact with video games and what it means in their lives. Though a quick PSA to say that you should never feel pressured into spending more time than you'd like online for work, outside of work hours.
- This is a great long watch / listen, featuring an interview with Sir Tim Berners-Lee. They cover a lot of ground, but Sir Tim has some interesting thoughts on AI and his catagorisation of different websites. One to have on whilst you're doing emails, I'd say.
👍 Something good
- UNESCO has launched its Virtual Museum of Stolen Cultural Objects – the first of its kind worldwide.
- ... I recently learnt about the "Millennial Pause". Apparently my generation has a tendency to wait in the first few seconds of a video before we start talking. I guess because we're used to the video tech of old, which wouldn't start recording audio straight away. Anyways, it's super noticeable and now I'm seeing it everywhere (including in myself) so I thought I'd share it with you, too. You're welcome.
And that’s all for this edition.
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You can find all past editions of the Digital Snapshot here.
