Museums and The Web 2006 Presentation

The PDA Tour: We Did It, So Can You

Museums and the Web Conference, Albuquerque, NM.

March 24, 2006, 1:30pm to 2:30pm.

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Everyone’s talking about it, some are doing it. What does it take to do a PDA tour in your Museum? What’s involved? What are the options? How do we get from point A to point B?

There are many questions an institution must answer before undertaking the implementation of a PDA tour for an exhibit.

Does it make sense for your Museum? How much can be done in house versus out of house? How do you leverage your internal expertise for a successful project? How do you choose a partner? How do you future-proof so you’re not throwing money away, but keep yourself open to leverage the proliferation of PDA phones and iPods?

The Museum of Science, Boston asked itself all these questions in 2002 and 2003 as it considered doing a PDA tour for the big, travelling exhibit it was opening in October 2005.

Leveraging the large technology exhibit, we evaluated our internal strengths and chose a partner that complemented our skill-set. After much consideration, the Museum partnered with Antenna Audio and we set-about the task of creating a cutting edge Multimedia Tour with them.

From integration with the exhibit, to generating new content, to media production, to technological infrastructure, to web-extensions for the tour, a lot of coordination and decision-making was required at every turn.

Find out how we identified opportunities and risks, building on the one and mitigating the other, and how we leveraged this project to help the Museum move forward with its use of technology while keeping ourselves open to migrating to newer technologies as they continue to take shape.