Welcome back to Digital Works, the newsletter from Substrakt that's part of our programme of free talks, podcasts and other content, bringing arts, culture, museums and heritage professionals together to talk all things digital. I'm Katie Moffat, Director of Sector Strategy at Substrakt. Please get in touch if you have anything you'd like to share, or if you need any support with your digital projects. And if you find this newsletter useful, do forward to a friend or colleague.

Latest Things

Our first Digital Works Conference is shaping up to be a fantastic event, with some brilliant speakers including Shani Dhanda (one of the UK’s most influential disabled activists), Kati Price (Head of Experience and Digital at the V&A), Anna Rafferty (Vice President at LEGO), Seb Chan (CEO of ACMI), Richard Shotton (leading behavioural psychologist and author) and Aled John (Interim Managing Director at FT Strategies).
The conference will be a two day event, held in Leeds, UK, on 24-25 April 2024. Day one will be focused on leadership, strategy, and new ideas and day two will be all about successful execution. You can get your tickets here.

I wrote an article for Arts Professional about likely trends during 2024, in summary - it's set to be a wild ride! If you're a subscriber to AP you can read it here. 

At the end of 2023 Substrakt launched a couple of sites that will be of interest to anyone working with archives. Firstly, the Living Archive for Royal Court (which got a lovely write up in the Guardian) and secondly Black Plays Archive for the National Theatre. 

In other end of year news, Google revealed it's new multimodal AI platform, Gemini. Expect 2024 to be all about AI.

Meanwhile on X, searches for Taylor Swift were temporarily suspended due to the platform being flooded with offensive AI fakes of her. It's yet another marker of how moderation appears to be failing (for which read practically non existent) on X. Once again I'll say that I expect to see more cultural organisations stop posting to X this year. As, for example, the Association of Cultural Enterprises, has done. 

Also suffering backlash is Substack, the newsletter platform. Fast becoming ubiquitous for anyone sending out a content based newsletter, recently they have been accused of allowing groups on the platform who explicitly support the views of 1930s Nazis. A leading tech journalist left the platform which generated a raft of negative press coverage, a group of high profile writers wrote an open letter and the founder posted a response.

Useful Things

Research released by ONS reveals that the over 70s are some of the most online adults in the UK. And other recent research reveals that kids are spending more time on TikTok than YouTube.

If you manage your organisation's social media accounts this is a good read from Hugh Wallace about why now is a good time to reconsider your approach. 

Invisible Machines is an excellent podcast from UX magazine about UX and conversational AI.

A helpful round up of the latest opportunites, events and resources from The Space.

Talking of AI...there are a plethora of articles and opinion pieces currently being shared about AI, some better than others, so if you want one consistently reliable voice, I recommend Ethan Mollick. His piece about what might happen this year with AI is thoughtful and useful.

Thought-provoking, Inspiring & Entertaining Things

The National Gallery's social media team are doing a brilliant job on Threads and TikTok.

I'm not sure this is the correct category for this but it is a reminder that creating customer service AI chatbots needs careful thought...

A cute little visualised map of small, fun and thought provoking websites.

Tumblr is back!

Digital Works Podcast

A reminder that, in addition to our regular interview podcast, we now have a new short 'Bytes' episode, which will be released after every newsletter to discuss three of the most interesting stories in the newsletter. Have a listen and let us know what you think!

How cultural organisations can unleash social media's potential - Haydn Corrodus

Crowdfunding, owning your niche, dealing with censorship and ignoring the trolls - Zoe Williams, Vagina Museum.

Getting to 1 million digital subscribers, creating meaningful metrics, and working with NT at Home - with George Montagu, FT Strategies.

What effective funding looks like and thinking differently about value and risk - with Fran Sanderson, Nesta.

The power of cultural leaders developing a 'digital imagination' - with Seb Chan, CEO and Director of ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image)

Running a successful digital project - with Fiona Morris, CEO and Creative Director of The Space.

Strategy & team culture - with Hilary Knight, formerly Director of Digital at Tate, now a consultant at AEA Consulting.

Listen to all the episodes.

Good Reads

Many of you will be familar with immersive theatre makers Punchdrunk, this is a fascinating article about their recent attempt to build a 'gamified theatrical experience'.

A sobering long read about the recent cyber attacks at the British Library. The full scale of the impact of the attack is both sad and shocking.  

See you soon

That's all for this issue, if you see anything interesting, surprising, fun, or useful, please do share it with us so we can include it in a future newsletter.

And if you're looking for help with a digital project or any kind of digital consultancy support, please do get in touch. Consultancy projects we are currently working on include a digital strategy for a global not-for-profit and a digital capacity review for an arts and culture organisation.

Until next time, stay safe.

Bye!