Culture Geek brings together leading organisations from around the world to share how they are adapting to the changing digital landscape.

2. Lead Partner Sponsor Organiser
CultureGeek

3. Come in
Geek out
We are pleased to welcome an inspiring line
up of speakers and delegates from a plethora
of cultural organisations to Southbank Centre
for our third edition of CultureGeek.
Museums, galleries, festivals, theatres and other
organisations across the cultural landscape are
adapting their online presence and expanding their
digital activity. The conference focuses on how
organisations and individuals are adapting and
utilising digital developments to connect with their
audiences through new channels of communication,
generating new revenue streams and developing
additional layers of programming and curation.
CultureGeek is a great opportunity to learn
about best practice, new ideas, what works
(and what doesn’t!) and provides delegates
with a collaborative platform to network
with like-minded arts professionals.
We hope you enjoy the day and encourage
you to share what you hear on Twitter
and beyond using #CultureGeek.
www.culturegeek.com #CultureGeek
17 June 2015

4. 9.00
Registration,
Tea and Coffee
Collect your delegate badge and bag
and network with fellow delegates
9.20
Welcome
Emma McLean will welcome delegates to
Culture Geek 2015.
Emma is a marketeer with specialist
experience of digital advertising and
audience development. Her role at AKA
sees her strategising and delivering full
service marketing campaigns, including
the Natural History Museum, Science
Museum and Imperial War Museums.
She has previously worked for Royal
Museums Greenwich & Audiences London.
Emma has spoken about digital marketing
and audience engagement at a number of
international conferences and has chaired
our Culture Geek events since 2012.
@emmclean
9.30
How to Speak Art & Tech:
Social Media and the Global
Guggenheim
JiaJia Fei
Associate Director, Digital Marketing,
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
@VAJIAJIA
Social media is a lot like language. Users communicate with each other while living in a digital
dimension of the world with trends that shift and evolve over time. If you’re not a part of that
world, it might as well be a foreign language. How can social media be used to speak to a
global audience—about art—a foreign language in and of itself, and how do you tell stories
from within your own institution in a meaningful, accessible, and authentic voice? Conversely,
how do you translate digital speak to key stakeholders who aren’t fluent in technology?
Using the Guggenheim as a case study, this talk will guide participants on how to speak art
and tech—from creating a digital content strategy around visual literacy and best practices for
integration within a digital ecosystem, to leveraging success internally to inspire participation
and champion support. The presentation will also include highlights and case studies from
recent Guggenheim social media initiatives that engage both local and global audiences.
JiaJia Fei is the Associate Director, Digital Marketing at the Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum in New York, where she has catalyzed the museum’s embrace of digital media
through integrated social media, e-mail, web, mobile, and new media marketing initiatives
since 2010. JiaJia received her BA in History of Art from Bryn Mawr College, and has lectured
widely on social media and digital marketing at museum conferences and universities
worldwide, including Museums & the Web, College Art Association, Sotheby’s Art Institute.
#CultureGeek

5. www.culturegeek.com #CultureGeek
17 June 2015
10.30
Culture and imagination
in a digital age -
it’s ours to lose and
it’s ours to lead.
Sarah Ellis
Head of Digital Development,
Royal Shakespeare Company
@scarahnellis
Creativity has worked hand in hand with technological innovation for
centuries. The rituals in culture have been set and then re-defined and
re-interpreted. Through that process artists, makers and inventors have
used new tools in extraordinary ways.
Ford when he designed his version of the car is alleged to have said “If
I asked people what they wanted they would have said a faster horse”.
It can be said that culture gets us to think about the things we couldn’t
imagine otherwise - an empathetic glance at the other or something
deemed impossible in the everyday. Technological innovation moves
us forward and paves the way for the future and its solutions. Culture
and technology are a neat fit.
As we have over the past few years discussed the merits of digital tools
enabling us to reach new audiences. It’s time for us to look at other
possibilities. As the YouTube generation has established itself as the
purveyor of the internet’s taste. What is liveness? What is connectedness
is a connected world? How is culture a diverse and relevant stakeholder
in the debate?
Sarah Ellis is an award winning producer currently working as Head of
Digital Development for the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 2013 she
was listed in the top 100 most influential people working in Gaming and
Technology by The Hospital Club.
11.15
Open Everything
Rob Gethen Smith
Chief Information Officer,
Southbank Centre
@robgethers
The digital team at Southbank Centre are investigating how to build
an ‘Open’ website. The journey started last September with a 10-
week stint in a glass box where the team met 100’s of people who visit
Southbank Centre. Following this unique experience, the team grew
in confidence and decided to open everything up to the public – this
included their website vision, processes, thinking, designs, and even
the development backlog. They have now created the first version of
an open CMS platform that any cultural events organisation could pick
up, configure, change and use. In this presentation Rob will explain why
the Southbank Centre opened up everything. He will talk about the
Glass Box experience and what the team learnt. He will also present the
Open Event CMS and how he thinks this approach could fundamentally
change how the cultural sector develops future digital platforms.
Rob Gethen Smith is the Chief Information Officer at Southbank
Centre where he is responsible for Digital and Technology
strategy. He joined Southbank Centre in November 2012.
Before this, Rob led business and technology transformation
programmes at Tate, Macmillan Cancer Support and WWF-UK.
An aeronautical engineer by background both in the British Army and
also the Private sector, Rob takes a keen interest in how technology
can enable organisations with a strong social purpose improve how
they work and extend their reach, often when resources are limited.
An MBA from London Business School underpins his technical approach
with sound understanding of business strategy and commerce.

6. 12.00
Lunch
A light buffet lunch will be
provided for delegates
1.00
Me and My Instagram
Alice Rawsthorn
Design Critic and Author of
“Hello World: Where Design Meets Life”
@alicerawsthorn
When Alice Rawsthorn started to post on Instagram on 1 January 2015, she decided to treat
it as a project by choosing a weekly theme on a different aspect of design, and posting once
a day about a relevant project. The objective of her posts is the same as for all of her writing,
whether in a column for the New York Times, or a book like “Hello World: Where Design Meets
Life”, to defuse the misconception of design as a superficial styling device by demonstrating
its power to make an increasingly dynamic and eclectic contribution to our lives.
A recent week of posts on Design and Disaster included a humanitarian design coup in
R. Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome and a flop in the ill-judged PlayPumps irrigation
program, the world’s first smart phone made from conflict-free minerals and a wind-
powered landmine detonator. While a celebratory St. Andrew’s Day week on Scottish
design ranged from the Dundee illustrators who drew Dennis the Menace and Gnasher,
to the design patronage of the choreographer Michael Clark, William Playfair’s pioneering
19th century information graphics and the world’s most advanced prosthetic hand.
Alice will discuss the impact of her Instagram feed at the CultureGeek conference,
and her plans for its future.
Alice Rawsthorn writes about design in the International New York Times, which
syndicates her columns worldwide. She is also a columnist for Frieze magazine,
and the author of the critically acclaimed book “Hello World: Where Design Meets
Life”, which explores design’s influence on our lives: past, present and future.
Alice is a trustee of the Whitechapel Gallery and the contemporary dance group
Michael Clark Company, as well as chair of trustees at the Chisenhale Gallery in
London. She was awarded an OBE in 2014 for services to design and the arts.
#CultureGeek

8. CultureGeek#CultureGeek
17 June 2015
1.45
Digital Revolution –
Exploring Digital Creativity
Conrad Bodman
Head of International Relationships,
British Film Institute
@conradbodman
Conrad Bodman has been a curator for most of his career, his gallery exhibitions exploring
film, television and digital culture. He has had a lifelong interest in videogames and curated
Game On at the Barbican in 2002, the first exhibition of its kind in a cultural venue and most
recently Game Masters at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne which
has just completed a successful run at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
In 2014 he developed ‘Digital Revolution’ at the Barbican Centre which was the first
exhibition to highlight the growth of digital arts practice since the 1950s. The exhibition
included a range of large-scale digital installations including Chris Milk’s iconic
‘Treachery of Sanctuary’ and a series of innovative digital art commissions.
Now working at the British Film Institute Conrad has developed a cultural strand
which explores creativity in the areas of videogames, VFX and digital animation.
Recent events have included explorations of VR and Mocap technologies. Conrad
will also discuss BFI Player the BFI’s VOD player and how it is being used to
showcase both contemporary film and archive film from the BFI’s collections.
2.30
Tea and
Coffee Break

9. www.culturegeek.com #CultureGeekwww.culturegeek.com #CultureGeek
3.00
The British Library
Ventures Off the Map
Stella Wisdom
Digital Curator,
The British Library
@miss_wisdom
The Off The Map competition is a collaboration between the British Library and GameCity,
a videogame cultural hub and festival run in partnership with Nottingham Trent University. It
challenges higher education students based in the UK to create videogames inspired by the
British Library’s collections. The 2014 Off The Map competition accompanied the British Library’s
exhibition “Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination”. Curators selected maps, sounds,
text and illustrations to provide three Gothic themes for entrants to base their videogames
on. These were author William Beckford’s home Fonthill Abbey, Edgar Allen Poe’s short
story The Masque of the Red Death and the seaside town of Whitby, which features in Bram
Stoker’s Dracula. The 2014 winning entry Nix, created by three students from the University of
South Wales, invites gamers to reconstruct Fonthill Abbey via a series of puzzles in a spooky
underwater world. It uses Oculus Rift, a revolutionary virtual reality headset for 3D gaming,
to enable the user to virtually explore the Abbey. You can see a flythrough of their game at
http://youtu.be/8ESieZO4VHw. For 2015, students are currently working on their entries for
“Alice’s Adventures Off the Map”, as the competition accompanies the Library’s forthcoming
exhibition, opening in November, which celebrates Alice in Wonderland’s 150th birthday.
Stella Wisdom is a Digital Curator at the British Library, where her role explores and promotes
new methods of research using both born digital content and digitised collections. In 2013 Stella
co-founded with GameCity a competition for Higher Education videogame design students
called Off the Map, where students are challenged to create videogames inspired by British
Library collections. Stella has worked for the British Library for nine years and prior to working
in Digital Research, she managed Collection Storage at the British Library’s site at Boston Spa in
Yorkshire. Stella has also previously worked at the Library and Information Statistics Unit based
at Loughborough University, the Warburg Institute Library and the National Library of Scotland.
17 June 2015

10. 17 June 2015
#CultureGeek
3.45
Universal: Digital
Transformation at
The British Museum
Chris Michaels
Head of Digital and Publishing
The British Museum
@chr1sm1chaels
Chris Michaels is Head of Digital and Publishing at the British Museum. His mission is to help the
world’s first museum achieve its founding goal of being the Museum of and for the world, by fully
embracing the potential of mobile, the cloud and big data to transform our visitors’ experiences of
our programmes and collection.
Chris was previously CEO at children’s education mobile startup Mindshapes. Backed by Index
Ventures and some of the world’s greatest gaming entrepreneurs, Mindshapes released over 40
apps with partners including the BBC and the Jim Henson Company, winning multiple awards and
delighting children and families around the world.
Chris has previously been an SVP at international media company Chorion; Digital Publisher at
HarperCollins; and started professional life in advertising. He has a PhD in American Literature
from the University of Bristol.
4.30
Conference
Closes

12. www.sumodesign.co.uk