Handout for Creating Digital Content event

 This morning I spoke at the Museums Association event Changing platforms: creating effective digital content (more later).  Here is the information from the handout that I intended to be in the delegates' packs.

Things to decide about the resource

1. What are you producing?
2. Who is the resource for?
3. What will it do for them?
4. How and where will they use it?
5. If applicable, what areas of the curriculum/programme of study etc does it relate to?
6. What area of the organisation’s work does it relate to? E.g. is there a taught session that it links to? Or a gallery on the same subject?
7. Why should (or should) your organisation be creating these specific resources?
8. Have any other organisations created similar resources for the same audience?
9. What benefits will come from the project?
10. Will there be any dis-benefits or negative effects of the project?
11. What are the outcomes against which you will evaluate?
12. What limitations are there to what you can achieve?
13. How will the project maintain momentum once it’s over - sustainability
14. Will the project require the use of images from the Museum’s collection? If so, which ones, what restrictions on use are there?

Practical things about how the project will work

1. What role is each individual on the team going to play?
2. What needs to happen in the project and what are realistic timescales for these activities?
3. How are you going to sign things off?
4. Who needs to be kept informed?
5. What risks are there to the project?
6. What different ways of approaching the project are there?
7. How will you evaluate?
8. What will need to be covered in each meeting agenda
9. Will there be any training needed?
10. How will you communicate?
11. When will we meet?
12. What do all of the people in the working group want out of it

My AMA begins

Right, I've just sent off my AMA CPD plan so, providing it gets accepted, today is the official start date of me being able to log activity towards my AMA. This will therefore, hopefully, give me stuff to blog about again after a rather long silence.

For those of you that don't know, the AMA (Associateship of the Museums Association) is a continuing professional development programme run by the Museums Association. It basically encourages you to look at what areas you work in now that you want to improve on and where you want to go in the future and then guides you through how to get there and improve your skills. It's basically what you should be doing anyway to improve your career but within an organised framework that employers recognise and that hopefully gives you the structure to keep it going when time is tight (that's the theory anyway!)

I have aims to use my current role to improve on my skills in the following areas:

• project management
• people management
• evaluation
• web accessibility and standards
• e-Learning theory and practice
• strategic development

In terms of future aspirations, I want to keep my options open. I'm still in my late 20s and I'm in a job that's quite specific and that doesn't exist in a lot of museums. I feel like I don't want to shut any doors, so I want to try and keep my finger in as many other 'museum pies' as possible as well as e-Learning. A lot of the skills in my role are quite transferable so that's good, but I also want to work on my subject knowledge and keep my hand in with writing and research and exhibitions. Lastly, I want to finish my AMA with a better idea of what jobs are out there and what skills I need to work on to move up to them.

Throughout my AMA I'll be reading books, attending courses, interviewing people in more senior roles and I have to keep a log of it all. I'm hoping to use my blog to do that so if you're interested in Museums, in e-Learning, and in project and people management, then please add me to your RSS feeds and help me through!