John Williams

Head of ICT, Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales

While John has worked in Amgueddfa Cymru-National Museum Wales since late 1999 initially as a Project Manager responsible for delivering a wide area network and latterly as Head of ICT, his background is in heavy industry. Originally an apprentice he studied Electronics at the University of Kent before returning to British Steel at Port Talbot in 1974 to work as a shift engineer on blast furnace relines. Several years designing and implementing process control software for the coke ovens and blast furnaces followed after which he left to work on gas control systems and computer networks at Wales Gas. He became a Chartered Engineer in 1985. Following privatisation John moved to British Gas Retail in 1994 to help establish their network and, when they closed in 1999, he moved to the Museum. Outside work he followed a second degree with the Open University in History. He drinks espresso, reads the Guardian, and enjoys travelling in Europe particularly Italy. His other interests include museums, computers, photography, walking, detective fiction, European history, politics, and folk music. He has been known to sing in a choir and is currently learning to play an alto saxophone.

Rhiannon Looseley

E-Learning Officer (Web), Museum of London

Rhiannon Looseley graduated from the University of Warwick in French and History in 2003, and obtained an MA in Modern History from the University of Reading in 2005. She began her museum career at The British Postal Museum & Archive (BPMA) where she worked in various different roles from 2005 until 2008. During her time at the BPMA Rhiannon completed her MA in Museum Studies by Distance Learning at the University of Leicester, finishing the course with a dissertation on the opportunities and challenges for museums using wiki technology.
In September 2008 she left the BPMA to take up a role as the E-Learning Officer (Web) at the Museum of London. In this role, she takes responsibility for online learning at both the Museum of London and the Museum of London Docklands. Projects so far have included overseeing the development of two interactive games for 3-5 year olds, working on a project to develop web resources for special educational needs (SEN) schools, and reviewing and renewing all the information and structure of the Learning site.

Mike Ellis

Solutions Architect, Eduserv

Mike Ellis works for a Bath-based company called Eduserv who are a not for profit IT services group. He is a Solutions Architect which basically means he helps clients (both internal and external) with the web, forming rough ideas into workable and user-accessible end-results.

Before working for Eduserv, Mike was Head of Web for the National Museum of Science and Industry, UK, which comprises the Science Museum in London, Media Museum in Bradford and Railway Museum in York.

Mike’s interests are in the social web, UX, ubiquitous computing and innovation, and how to lever these for maximum benefit, particularly in cultural institutions. Mike does a lot of writing and presenting about the web and what it means to people and institutions, recently wrote a unit for the new Digital Heritage course at Leicester University, and is hopefully about to write a book all about the web and cultural institutions.

Gemma Sturtridge

Assistant Collections Officer, Museum of Croydon

Gemma has over 6 years experience working in the museum sector. After graduating from the University of Birmingham with a BA Medieval Studies she completed a MA Museum Studies degree at University of Southampton. Gemma has worked at the Museum of London, Royal Naval Museum and Portsmouth City Museum.

Her current diverse role gives her responsibility for the Museum of Croydon’s collections and information. She has a well rounded skill set of research, documentation and collections management as well as a good knowledge of HTML, SQL and databases. She is particularly interested in the application of IT for interpretation.

Dave Patten

Head of New Media, Science Museum

Dave Patten is Head of New Media at the Science Museum, London. His responsibilities include; new media strategy, managing and developing new media based exhibits & experiences and giving technical advice on all aspects of exhibition development.

He has worked at the Science Museum in London for more than 20 years and in that time has been involved in numerous permanent & temporary exhibitions as well as 2 major building projects.

Mia Ridge

Lead Web Developer, Science Museum
Mia Ridge is a cultural heritage technologist, and has worked internationally as an analyst, consultant and programmer. Her work currently focuses on the application of human-computer interaction theories to the design of museum interpretation and collections online.

Mia has written and presented on a range of topics including best practices for museum websites and on the possibilities of the participatory web for the cultural heritage sector. Mia’s personal blog, Open Objects can be read at http://openobjects.blogspot.com/

Angus Kneale

Collections Systems Manager, National Museums Scotland

Angus is the Collections Systems Manager for the National Museums Scotland and is based at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, where he has worked since 1990. The main responsibilities of his post are the development and support of the NMS’s Collections Management information and image management systems.

In previous lives he has been a computer programmer and would-be semi-pro musician, amongst other odd jobs. On landing his first museum job as temporary part-time Assistant Curator at the Scottish Mining Museum, he quipped, “Maybe this is the start of a new direction for me!” Little did he know at the time …

Linda Spurdle

Digital Resources Manager, Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery

Linda Spurdle is Digital Resources Manager at Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery. She has been involved in managing digital projects in museums since 1997 when she worked for East Riding of Yorkshire Museums on their digitising community history project. She worked for Tyne & Wear Museums managing their NOF funded ‘IMAGINE’ project 2001 – 2004 before moving to Birmingham to become Hub Online Resources Manager for Renaissance West Midlands. Her job is now focused on managing and developing digital resources at BMAG. From 2007 to 2009 she managed the JISC funded Pre-Raphaelite Online Resource project.

Linda is also involved in setting up a social enterprise for Deaf and Disabled digital experts, evangelists and activists called Pesky People.