Open Forum

Listing virtual visitors as a separate category would be fine but listing them as physical attendees is fake news...

Steve

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Steven Miller
Executive Director
Boscobel House and Gardens
Garrison NY
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Original Message:
Sent: 07-05-2017 11:05 AM
From: Katie Edwards
Subject: Counting Virtual Attendance

Recently we held an event that was also streamed live on Facebook. We had 35 people attend in person, and 109 watch online. For attendance tracking purposes, do virtual participation numbers count? Or is it more accurate to only count people who were physically in attendance?

 

Thank you for your feedback!

 

Katie Edwards

Director of Communications & Development

The Society of the Four Arts

(561) 659-8506 | (561) 685-7758 mobile | kedwards@fourarts.org

 

 

The answer to this question may be different for different organizations. I think it is helpful to think of the function these two groups serve to your overall strategic goals and how you want to think of them. For many organizations, the audience who attends events in person is an audience they've been building for a long time. The audience online is a different audience some museums are currently in the process of building in order to expand reach beyond physical walls. Add to that the caveat that, dependent on how you note the info on Facebook, people can simply be scrolling through your timeline and be counted as a view. So the more interesting information as far as Facebook goes may be how long the average person actually watched the Facebook stream and how many people watched for longer than a certain amount of time. Considering all of this, you may want to track this information in different ways.

For us, the audience that physically attended is tracked in our official database attendance records. This keeps our data clean because our attendance line has always been those who physically attended; we don't necessarily want the numbers to become inflated due to our changing the definition of what attendance means. The audience that "attended" online are tracked in excel sheets or online tracking tools so we can report on that as well and analyze how we build our digital audience over time. If portions of our stream continue to live after the actual event concludes, the audience for this particular stream will continue to grow. So, we can continue to update it and analyze which online content is most popular, etc. Hope this helps!

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Abigail St.Pierre
Public Programs Manager
Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum
Nashville, TN
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Original Message:
Sent: 07-05-2017 11:05 AM
From: Katie Edwards
Subject: Counting Virtual Attendance

Recently we held an event that was also streamed live on Facebook. We had 35 people attend in person, and 109 watch online. For attendance tracking purposes, do virtual participation numbers count? Or is it more accurate to only count people who were physically in attendance?

 

Thank you for your feedback!

 

Katie Edwards

Director of Communications & Development

The Society of the Four Arts

(561) 659-8506 | (561) 685-7758 mobile | kedwards@fourarts.org

 

 

Similar to the last respondent, you really just need to decide if virtual attendance is an important kpi for your event.  Obviously being able to grow an online audience is very key moving forward for every organisation.  In your example I would likely include it as the overall number, then break down the specifics from there.

It is also key to set your outcome goals specifically for each audience from there.  100 people watched, but were they engaged?  Did they access the chat, leave comments, share the broadcast.  At the next event did these numbers change, in what way?  

Regardless, if you are planning to continue to do events live and online it's important to consider the audience as a whole regardless of how they are accessing your content, only keeping in mind that depending on how they are accessing, you may need to change your content in ways that work for the varied audiences you engage.


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Michael Mackay
Manager, Sales & Marketing
Spongelab Interactive
Toronto, Ontario
Michael.Mackay@spongelab.com
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Original Message:
Sent: 07-05-2017 11:05 AM
From: Katie Edwards
Subject: Counting Virtual Attendance

Recently we held an event that was also streamed live on Facebook. We had 35 people attend in person, and 109 watch online. For attendance tracking purposes, do virtual participation numbers count? Or is it more accurate to only count people who were physically in attendance?

 

Thank you for your feedback!

 

Katie Edwards

Director of Communications & Development

The Society of the Four Arts

(561) 659-8506 | (561) 685-7758 mobile | kedwards@fourarts.org

 

 

​At the same time, though, are you tracking if the people physically in the room were engaged? It's just as easy to be in a chair and mentally checked out to the person talking at the front of the room as it is to be logged in online and not paying attention.

In my opinion, this question can really only be answered by your organization because you'll be the ones ultimately setting the definitions. How do you define "engaged," how do you define, "present," etc. Do you count physical attendees who don't stay the whole time? If so, why can't you count online attendees who are there for a while but then navigate away? If it were me, as a young whippersnapper fully embracing technology I would have zero qualm stating "we had 144 attendees to our event between online and in-person participants." I think it's unfair to not count the online attendees just as equally as those in-person, especially as we say that we want to push into digital frontiers as a museum community. Why is the person who took the effort to log on to Facebook from home, excited that they finally have this avenue to connect to the museum because dangit they can't make that interesting-sounding event work with their schedule or don't want to fight traffic, any less valued than the person who took the time to physically go to the museum?

Michael makes a great point; the streaming experience is different than the live experience. You can find little ways to make those at home feel more 'present' through interactivity like a staff person actively encouraging discussion or soliciting reactions.

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Sean Mobley
Docent Services Specialist
Museum of Flight
Seattle WA
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Original Message:
Sent: 07-06-2017 11:02 AM
From: Michael Mackay
Subject: Counting Virtual Attendance

Similar to the last respondent, you really just need to decide if virtual attendance is an important kpi for your event.  Obviously being able to grow an online audience is very key moving forward for every organisation.  In your example I would likely include it as the overall number, then break down the specifics from there.

It is also key to set your outcome goals specifically for each audience from there.  100 people watched, but were they engaged?  Did they access the chat, leave comments, share the broadcast.  At the next event did these numbers change, in what way?  

Regardless, if you are planning to continue to do events live and online it's important to consider the audience as a whole regardless of how they are accessing your content, only keeping in mind that depending on how they are accessing, you may need to change your content in ways that work for the varied audiences you engage.


------------------------------
Michael Mackay
Manager, Sales & Marketing
Spongelab Interactive
Toronto, Ontario
Michael.Mackay@spongelab.com
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 07-05-2017 11:05 AM
From: Katie Edwards
Subject: Counting Virtual Attendance

Recently we held an event that was also streamed live on Facebook. We had 35 people attend in person, and 109 watch online. For attendance tracking purposes, do virtual participation numbers count? Or is it more accurate to only count people who were physically in attendance?

 

Thank you for your feedback!

 

Katie Edwards

Director of Communications & Development

The Society of the Four Arts

(561) 659-8506 | (561) 685-7758 mobile | kedwards@fourarts.org

 

 

I think your digital audience are a constituency so to speak - your organization is reaching out and this audience is receiving your message, which hopefully aligns with your mission. 

I would look at interactions vs. visitation, where physical visitation is one aspect of interactions. Break out the interactions by the categories that make the most sense to your institution and way of doing things. 

If I had such an event, I would report that we had x number of attendees, and then break that down into who participated on-site, and who participated off-site.

As museums put more content online, either on sites, or through streaming, or augmented reality settings, we need to re-examine how we think of the public we are serving. When we redefine our audience to include those who email us research questions, view online exhibits, engage with webinars and off-site and digital experiences, and interact with our site in augmented reality through games like Pokemon Go and Ingress, we start to get a clearer picture of the impact we have in a wider community.

At the end of the year, or for grants, I would break that down.

In (fiscal or calendar year x) we had this many interactions.
this many people visited our museum
approximately this many people interacted with our website
this many people attended webinars via live streaming
about this many came to our site playing AR games and viewed our AR content
etc. etc. etc.

It takes some out of the box thinking, but can be really eye-opening, especially for small museums.  

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Christine Hoffman
Museum Director
Chappell Hill Historical Society
Chappell Hill TX
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Original Message:
Sent: 07-05-2017 11:05 AM
From: Katie Edwards
Subject: Counting Virtual Attendance

Recently we held an event that was also streamed live on Facebook. We had 35 people attend in person, and 109 watch online. For attendance tracking purposes, do virtual participation numbers count? Or is it more accurate to only count people who were physically in attendance?

 

Thank you for your feedback!

 

Katie Edwards

Director of Communications & Development

The Society of the Four Arts

(561) 659-8506 | (561) 685-7758 mobile | kedwards@fourarts.org

 

 

The museum field needs a standard answer for this question. AAM, ISO, COVES or DataArts should publish some data field definitions and museums should use them consistently. It would help if all these data collecting agencies agreed on the definition of virtual engagements.

i agree that we need an umbrella term. Christine Hoffman's "interactions" is a good candidate; I favor "engagement" for a number of reasons. The shared idea is what is important now: a museum needs to count all its engagements, not just site visits. Then, we'll need meaningful sub-categories of annual engagements. In my recent books, I have used site visitors, program participants and virtual engagements. The first two are physical, i.e. face to face. Site visitors come to the museum physically to visit one or more of a museum's visitor venues. Program participants, both on-site and off-site in outreach, are defined broadly to include every physical engagement that is not a site visit-- camp-ins, board meetings, function rental guests, school auditorium shows, volunteer shifts, ceramics studios, etc. Virtual engagements need definitions and sub-categories, but I trust others to propose those. Together, these three categories total a museum's annual enagagements. 

My book Measuring Museum Impact and Performance has a full set of definitions in Appendix A
 
I think AAM should take the lead in endorsing definitions. I encourage you to ask Rob Stein at AAM how they define virtual visits, and then adopt that so that your data is comparable and meaningful to others.

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John W. Jacobsen
CEO
White Oak Associates, Inc.
Marblehead MA
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Original Message:
Sent: 07-05-2017 11:05 AM
From: Katie Edwards
Subject: Counting Virtual Attendance

Recently we held an event that was also streamed live on Facebook. We had 35 people attend in person, and 109 watch online. For attendance tracking purposes, do virtual participation numbers count? Or is it more accurate to only count people who were physically in attendance?

 

Thank you for your feedback!

 

Katie Edwards

Director of Communications & Development

The Society of the Four Arts

(561) 659-8506 | (561) 685-7758 mobile | kedwards@fourarts.org

 

 

John, 

I like your term engagements very much. I am going to have to get a copy of your book, as it is something that while I have been working to define, I have struggled in tracking. I am the only staff member at my organization, and the board is not well-versed in some of the ways the public engages with us through technology. 

I second your call for some kind of guidelines for the field, it benefits us as it gives a stable metric for donors and granting organizations to understand our impact as well.

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Christine Hoffman
Museum Director
Chappell Hill Historical Society
Chappell Hill TX
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 07-07-2017 09:59 AM
From: John Jacobsen
Subject: Counting Virtual Attendance

The museum field needs a standard answer for this question. AAM, ISO, COVES or DataArts should publish some data field definitions and museums should use them consistently. It would help if all these data collecting agencies agreed on the definition of virtual engagements.

i agree that we need an umbrella term. Christine Hoffman's "interactions" is a good candidate; I favor "engagement" for a number of reasons. The shared idea is what is important now: a museum needs to count all its engagements, not just site visits. Then, we'll need meaningful sub-categories of annual engagements. In my recent books, I have used site visitors, program participants and virtual engagements. The first two are physical, i.e. face to face. Site visitors come to the museum physically to visit one or more of a museum's visitor venues. Program participants, both on-site and off-site in outreach, are defined broadly to include every physical engagement that is not a site visit-- camp-ins, board meetings, function rental guests, school auditorium shows, volunteer shifts, ceramics studios, etc. Virtual engagements need definitions and sub-categories, but I trust others to propose those. Together, these three categories total a museum's annual enagagements. 

My book Measuring Museum Impact and Performance has a full set of definitions in Appendix A
 
I think AAM should take the lead in endorsing definitions. I encourage you to ask Rob Stein at AAM how they define virtual visits, and then adopt that so that your data is comparable and meaningful to others.

------------------------------
John W. Jacobsen
CEO
White Oak Associates, Inc.
Marblehead MA
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 07-05-2017 11:05 AM
From: Katie Edwards
Subject: Counting Virtual Attendance

Recently we held an event that was also streamed live on Facebook. We had 35 people attend in person, and 109 watch online. For attendance tracking purposes, do virtual participation numbers count? Or is it more accurate to only count people who were physically in attendance?

 

Thank you for your feedback!

 

Katie Edwards

Director of Communications & Development

The Society of the Four Arts

(561) 659-8506 | (561) 685-7758 mobile | kedwards@fourarts.org