Jeff Steward

Jeff Steward is Director of Digital Infrastructure and Emerging Technology, Harvard Art Museums. He directs the museums on the use of a wide range of digital technology.

He oversees the collections database, API, and photography studio. For the opening of the new Harvard Art Museums in November 2014, he helped launch the Lightbox Gallery, a public research and development space. Steward has worked at museums with museum data since 1999.

He builds Twitter bots to spread joy and spark conversations; game engines to explore new modes of storytelling; and online databases to gain a better understanding of how to contend with the relative uncertainty and instability of digital platforms.

Jeff Steward will be speaking at the Museums, Games & Play Summit :

Building Games with Digital-Physical Interfaces

What do power washers, paint brushes, physical cards, couches, pineapples have in common? They’ve all been used as controllers in physical-digital games. Imagine museum interactives that combine the durability and flexibility of digital with the satisfaction and tactile learning of physical objects. This game will explore how museums are building imaginative digital-physical interactives to engage audiences in new ways.