Decided to celebrate my fourth year of working for myself as a content specialist (predominantly) in the online world, with a new look. Elliot from eliptus designed my much-admired business card, and I was so happy with it that I decided to ask him to extend the design to a letterhead and design for my website. Ben Bailey cleverly took the design and wrote nice clean html and css and integrated it into my CMS. So now you can read what I have to say against a backdrop of super hero flying Ms and that lovely swimming pool turquoise/blue. Thanks Elliot. Thanks Ben.

Famous for its diet of parochial, sensational news served up by the likes of Fox and CNN, the USA is also home to some really wonderful publications. I LOVE the New York Times (and am happy to admit that I might be influenced by the fact that it comes from one of my favourite places in the world). Why do I love it? Mainly for its tone and use of language. 

I also love the diverse range of publications on the newsstand in this country. I tripped over Mother Jones while in Washington and was blown away by the quality of the writing and the ideas and issues tackled. Their claim on the cover of producing 'smart, fearless journalism' is confirmed as you flick through the formidable table of contents (March and April issue: articles about the why the US food system is rotten, Obama, the environment and the economy, adoption, inside forgotten psychiatric hospitals, and more)  and for the low low price of $5.95.

I love Helen Thomas. She's an 88-year-old who is still working at the White House press pool as a reporter, who is not afraid to criticise the administration, the mainstream media and the journalists working for it, and says she has always planned to die in her boots. I found an interview by John Greenya in the free Washington Flyer that contained a few exquisite quotes:

"The more we know the better off we are. An informed people is very important to democracy - and we might be able to prevent some bloodshed."

"The day Dick Cheney is going to run for president, I'll kill myself."

"...So many presidents do not rise to the people's expectations, because to be president is top of the mark - ain't no other place to go..."

I have started getting really interested in the educational opportunities that the Web offers students and their teachers.

For the past 18 months I have been project manager of the National Gallery of Victoria's Broadband Innovation Fund project (known as 'BIF'), which was funded to create innovative online resources for education audiences using works from the NGV collection.

Today at Museums and the Web, i attended a presentation about ArtsEdConnect is a particularly good example of the power of the Web and its benefits to education audiences. Its presenters claimed 14,000 teachers trained, 1 million users, and 200,000 art collector 'sets' devised by teachers since it launched in 1997. It will be great to see the new redesigned website when it launches on 4 May.

For ages tagging has provoked a big 'so what?' in me. Tag clouds are all very well for showing what everyone is searching for most, but what does that mean (other than other people looked for it too, you're normal...).

So who is Steve? I have yet to discover where the name cam from, but basically the US Institute of Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS) threw big $$ at The New Media Consortium to fund a project to further develop the Steve tagging application, a tool that simplifies the navigation of online museum collections by allowing viewers to tag an image with descriptive terms.

The team are dynamic and their presentation was provocative and I have a few ideas to test out when I get home...

To end the day, however, the organisers performed an experiment in which they ran 'Un-conference sessions', for which attendees suggested topics for discussion and broke into groups.

I joined the a discussion about 'insource or outsource', which obviously attracted a few managers from public sector organisations who don't have the budget or workload to hire fulltime expert designers, IA, developers etc but who worry about exorbitant fees, not getting what they want and the IP walking out the door with contractors. It was great to hear a few other participants who were contractors (there were no other freelancers present and only two or three in evidence at the conference) confirming that they consider part of their job is to refine the brief with their client, to ensure that everyone is happy with the outcome, and to provide some education in the documentation of project outcomes, handing over of files etc.  

An important outcome of this conference for me is confirmation that I am getting things right!

I have lots of ideas to take back to Melbourne about bringing artworks alive online. Not to replace a real-life experience (you can't substitute standing infront of an artwork) but enriching that experience by presenting supplementary information, helping visitors to interact on in a different way to find out more, and present related information (about artists, locations, genres, subjects, eras etc).

Hearing about the challenges and tactics used by project manager Carolyn Royston and the positive outcomes, as reported by stakeholder Steve Gardam from the Imperial War Museum, gave me hope as a project manager, business analyst and content designer and (informal) information architect for hire.

I am hoping to do more work in the e-learning space, especially in cultural organisations.

Not sure, unless you are a great thinker or famous or newsworthy person, how interesting all these tweets can be.