{"id":1771,"date":"2014-02-14T14:31:32","date_gmt":"2014-02-14T14:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/memetechnology.org\/?p=3020"},"modified":"2014-02-14T14:31:32","modified_gmt":"2014-02-14T14:31:32","slug":"questions-for-tech-smes-and-cultural-heritage-institutions-on-working-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/archaeology\/2014\/02\/14\/questions-for-tech-smes-and-cultural-heritage-institutions-on-working-together\/","title":{"rendered":"Questions for tech SMEs and cultural heritage institutions on working together"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been putting it off for weeks even months, finding distraction activities rather than tackling the challenge that appears so simple, but feels incredibly complex. Even now, I’m wrestling the impulse to go and see if the chickens have laid eggs that need collecting, 0r to try one of the new games that I’ve downloaded.<\/p>\n

But my task is to plan the structure for the interviews that I need to conduct with technology SMEs (small and medium enterprises) that have worked with heritage organisations, and cultural heritage personnel who have worked with tech SMEs.<\/p>\n

My intellectual paralysis is due to the fact that while I’m sure the interview structure will change as I conduct more interviews\u00a0and discover what makes my interviews open up and offer real insights, I don’t want my initial interviews to be “just practice.” I want to be reasonably confident that I’ll get something worthwhile from these first ones, and not wish, twenty interviews down the line, that “I wish I’d asked that question!”<\/p>\n

My opening \u00a0is easy:<\/p>\n

“I’d like to ask you about one particular project where you’ve (been commissioned by a heritage organisation\/commissioned a digital technology provider). I’d like to keep that one project in mind as well talk, though of course please feel free to refer to other projects to illustrate particular points of alternative ways of working. If you have a number of projects to choose from, I’d like to to select one that is relatively recent, and ideally one that you think might have gone better if you (and\/or of course your client\/supplier) had handled things differently. Of course, if every project has been a perfect (or alternatively, and absolute disaster) feel free to select one of those. All the details of the project(s) will be anonymised, and these notes will be secure and confidential, so I hope you to feel able to speak freely about even difficult issues.”<\/p>\n

But then I have a muddle of questions, and a huge amount of doubts over order. So I thought I might share where I am so far, the hope that writing this post will help me, or force me, to make some sense of it all. Of course any comments will be thansfully received.<\/p>\n