Delegates met at Newcastle, UK’s Sage Gateshead for MuseumNext – Europe’s biggest conference on industry innovation and technology – to explore ways of engaging visitors with new technology and industry trends.

“It’s all about the connection with the object beyond the four walls of a museum,” said Antenna International’s Jessica Taylor, during Friday’s (20 June) keynote address at the two-day event.

Speaking alongside Sam Billington, Taylor discussed the importance of Google’s upcoming Project Tango – a device which will contain customised hardware and software designed to track full 3D motion, while simultaneously creating a map of the surrounding environment – which was said to have “huge implications” for the future of museums.

iBeacons will also be increasingly appearing in museums, with the devices able to use a new format of Bluetooth that has been built into many modern smartphones and can send a signal to all those around identifying its location, offering data from either a local database or cloud-based storage. The smartphone user will see a notification on their home screen – even if the phone is locked – with, in a museum’s case, facts about the surrounding artefacts displayed directly to the user.

“We’re only at the beginning of those kind of technologies and it’s exciting to see where we’ll go with that,” said Billington. “It gives us huge and exciting potential for museums to use their expertise to create digital interpretations at the world’s greatest institutions.”

Elsewhere at the event, alternate uses of existing technology and the advancement of smartphone technology was showcased. There were speeches from Adam Clarke about how video games such as Minecraft are engaging young people at museums, and from Ferry Piekhart, who showcased the power of mobile phone apps with his brand-new open air augmented reality museum in Spijkenisse, Denmark.

In Thursday’s keynote speech, Colleen Dilenschneider of Impacts Research and Development said the importance of social media in relation to “real time digital touch” was vital for museums as an area where more visitors could be tempted to visit a museum through digital engagement. Dilenschneider also said that while digital touch is important, museums can’t forget the physical touch, and that the two should work in harmony to deliver top-quality experiences for museum visitors.

For more from this year’s MuseumNext event, be sure to visit the AM2 website over the coming week.

*Story by Tom Anstey, edited by Jak Phillips