This website has been produced by Dan Zambonini and Mike Ellis. The main bit of the site was built in 12 hours. 12 long, slightly insane hours, mainly on 2nd November 2009.

It is therefore two things:

Firstly, an experiment in web and content development. We decided that we’d like to see whether (and what) we could produce in a day, from beginning to end. We don’t know yet whether we’ll succeed (I’m writing this while we’re still building the site..). We are documenting everything we do – all the time and money we spend – over at http://museuminaday.com/.

Why are we doing this? Firstly because both Dan and I have spent a fair amount of time over the last few years writing about the web and suggesting that things should be easier than they are, and we thought we’d better demonstrate that we can do as well as talk.

Secondly, we hope what we do will be a useful insight into the various things that are required to build a museum website. Along the way we might build some tools or develop some techniques that are of use to others.

Secondly, we genuinely like the content we’re aiming to produce – so much so that we’ve committed to keeping this site fresh for a year at least. That way we hope to create a site that is both visited and interesting. We also know only too well that building a site in 12 hours and walking away is easy(ish), but that keeping it going is harder.

We intend to spend some time presenting about our experiences, starting with DISH later on in 2009. If you’d like us to come and speak to you, please do get in touch.

By the way, you’ll find technical details for this site on the museuminaday blog, but briefly it is a hybrid Wordpress MU / Omeka thingamajub.