Personal History

Tim Hart's career path has detoured to accommodate comet impacts, ancient Greeks and digital dinosaurs. Who says the road to CIO has to be a straight line?

Currently director of Information, Multimedia and Technology at Museum Victoria, Tim Hart was previously CIO of Sydney's Powerhouse Museum from 1999 to 2001. An architect and an archeologist by training, Hart started as a volunteer at the Powerhouse the day after he graduated from the University of Sydney. Three months later they offered him a full-time job, and he stayed for 17 years.

Hart decided early on that he wanted a career in museums, but after being promoted to collection manager he could not see himself going the curatorial route. During 17 years at the Powerhouse, he worked a total of eight different jobs.

His first step out of collection management came with a posting to Sydney Observatory, where he acted as project manager for the restoration of the facility's heritage-listed buildings, which date back to 1848. Hart's background in architecture made him ideally suited for the role, which only furthered his interest in computer technology.

"I absolutely loved the few years I spent there," Hart says of his time at Sydney Observatory. "I loved the astronomy, the Internet was just coming on and we had the Shoemaker-Levy comet impact on Jupiter."

Hart worked on that project, obtaining impact images from NASA and the Anglo-Australian Telescope for use in public programs put on by the Observatory and the Powerhouse. Then in 1997 he was appointed National Project Manager of Australian Museums OnLine.

Hart threw his hat in the ring for the role, not really expecting to land the job. "I was working with the director of the Powerhouse as a special projects manager, examining exhibition proposals, when the opportunity to run Australian Museums OnLine came up," he says "When we won the tender, it was somewhat surprising to us, because the National Museum had held it for years."

One of the highlights of that period was 'The 1000 Years of The Olympic Games: Treasures Of Ancient Greece' Web site, a virtual tour of an exhibition presented at the Powerhouse in the lead-up to the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. A generous sponsorship from Intel saw Hart travel to Greece for fieldwork, taking the information back to Australia to create a virtual reconstruction of ancient Olympia. The Web site was selected as a finalist in the prestigious British BAFTA Interactive Awards, only to be beaten by the BBC's Walking with Dinosaurs.

Managing Australian Museums OnLine (since renamed Collections Australia Network) was Hart's first move into straight technology - and it was also a big step on the path to CIO. He says that Australian Museums OnLine taught him a lot about the Web and, more importantly, enabled him to gather a collection of talented staff, some of whom he was able to convince to move to Melbourne with him when he accepted the new role at Museum Victoria.