I think I've already said pretty much everything I can about the museum website mashup competition we're launching around the 'Cosmos and Culture' exhibition, but it'd be a bit silly of me not to mention it here since the existence and design of the project reflects a lot of the issues I've written about here.
If you make it along to the launch at the Science Museum on Saturday, make sure you say hello – I should be easy to find cos I'm giving a quick talk at some point.
Right now the laziest thing I could do is to give you a list of places where you can find out more:
- You can RSVP at eventbrite or simply find out more about the Cosmic Collections launch event and about the mashup competition.
- You can read 'A new API and hack competition – this time not from a tech company but by a museum!', an interview with Chris Heilmann on the Yahoo Developer Network blog.
- There are two separate interviews with me, 'Cosmic Collections: the geeky stuff' and Ali Boyle, the Curator of Astronomy, 'Background on our Cosmos & Culture exhibition'. (My apologies to the readers of the collections blog for my nerdtastic interruption. And that was me trying to speak like a normal person – tragic, really.)
- You can also ask questions about it, connect with other participants, share tips, etc on the competition wiki.
Finally, you can talk to us @coscultcom on twitter, or tag content with #coscultcom.
Btw – if you want an idea of how slowly museums move, I think I first came up with the idea in January (certainly before dev8D because it was one of the reasons I wanted to go) and first blogged about it (I think) on the museum developers blog in March. The timing was affected by other issues, but still – it's a different pace of life!