Digital meets Culture

Brussels, 13-14 November 2014

Preservathon: Select the best services and tools for your audiovisual digitisation project

PrestoCentre Preservathons are two-day hands-on events developed around main themes and challenges in audiovisual digitisation, preservation and long-term access.

During the first day, attendees will work together in small groups. Activities include workshops, roleplaying, demonstrations, presentations, writing and negotiation exercises (e.g. call for tender, SLA). Each Preservathon includes a competitive element.

The second day is organised as a mini-conference including concise presentations and demonstrations of the results and experiences from the first day, a ceremony to award the winning group, and a short but informative review on the subject, including the state of relevant technology, related research, and open questions.

The Preservathon organised in Brussels on 13-14 November 2014, made possible by the Presto4U project, will provide context, meaningful discussions and insights into opportunities and challenges within the force-field where AV archives need to decide on what to preserve (selections), when to digitise (priorities), how to digitise (formats & technologies) and, above all, who to partner with.

Digitisation is a highly specialised and technical niche. Even though AV archives could consider building skills and competence themselves, it makes far more sense to develop long term business relationships with knowledgeable and reliable commercial partners. The Preservathon caters for this approach. It will provide a challenge to all attendees to learn to understand their own requirements and how these relate to existing vendor services and solutions. The challenge will set the scene for understanding the institutional requirement and needs and how to scale these to the initial thinking about RFI and RFP processes. During the Preservathon, participants will be supported by experts from major AV archives that went through this process over the last decade and they can consult a panel of experts from vendors and learn to understand how their services link to their specific challenge.

For further information and to register to the Preservathon please visit the event website.

Milan, 26-27 November 2014

High level conference on PCP/PPI

130M Euro of EU co-funding will be available in 2015 from Horizon 2020 to support the implementation of new Innovation Procurements across Europe. As the majority of the on-going PCPs are in the procurement execution phase it is the perfect time to start planning the deployment of the developed solutions. The 2015 H2020 PPI calls – that cover many domains of public interest such as education/e-learning, e-health, cloud computing etc – are presenting unique co-funding opportunities to support the deployment of innovative solutions through PPI. Proposals for new PCPs and PPIs that are not follow-ups of on-going projects are of course also welcome.

On 26/27 November the big annual high level EU conference with the title “Modernizing the public sector and boosting economic growth through Innovation Procurement” will take place in Milan Italy at the occasion of the Italian Presidency of the EU. The event is co-organized by the European Commission, the Lombardy Region and Eurocloud Italy. The aim of the conference is to share experiences about Innovation Procurement as driver for public sector modernization and creation of economic growth in Europe, plus inform and network procurers for the upcoming 2015 calls. The conference will therefore also provide parallel sessions per H2020 Innovation Procurement call/topic.

Do not miss this opportunity to learn more about the 2015 H2020 calls that provide funding for new innovation procurements. Join that conference, present your project ideas and network with other stakeholders that are interested to submit proposals in the framework of those calls.

On line registration is possible through the following link where you can find also the agenda of the event http://www.eventbrite.com/e/modernizing-the-public-sector-and-boosting-economic-growth-through-innovation-procurement-tickets-13238483661

Catania (Italy), 20-21 January 2014

DCH-RP plenary meeting in Catania

On January 20th and 21st, all the DCH-RP partners met in Catania for the project’s plenary meeting, hosted by INFN at the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Catania.

This plenary meeting was particularly important for the partners because it followed the project’s review and it was the occasion to discuss and implement the review’s follow-up.

Main topics of discussion in this plenary included:

the release of the intermediate version of the roadmap for digital preservation (D3.4);
planning the second proof of concepts, whoch will involve other projects such as EUDAT, APARSEN, SCIDIP-ES, SCAPE, ARIADNE and OPEN AIRE;
planning the next steps, among which the DCH-RP International Conference and the e-infrastructure Concertation Workshop.

The list of the next appointments that will be attended/organised by DCH-RP is:

Amsterdam, 4-6 March, participation to the EGI Workshop on Managing, Computing and Preserving BigData for Research
Tallinn, 23-24 April, DCH-RP e-Infrastructures concertation meeting
Helsinki, 19-23 May, DCH-RP Workshop at EGI Community Forum (proposal submitted, exact date of the workshop to be confirmed)
Stockholm, early June, DCH-RP Workshop in cooperation with EUDAT on trust building (exact date of the workshop to be confirmed)

Finally, the project is currently investigating he possibility to present the final results of the project in two workshops, in September, in the frame of:

JCDL/TPDL 2014 in London
CIDOC 2014 Annual Conference in Dresden

For further information visit the DCH-RP showcase or the official website.

Paris, 28 November 2014

Succeed Final Conference

PREFORMA project will participate with a poster to the conference “Succeed in digitisation. Spreading excellence”, organised by the Succeed project on November 28th, 2014 at Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF).

The conference schedule will focus on the following blocks based on the main outcomes of Succeed:

Libraries’ experiences in the take-up of tools.
Results on competitions.
Roadmap for the future of digitisation in Europe.
Interoperability of tools for text digitisation.
Recommendations on formats, standards and licensing schemes related to digitisation.
Panel discussions on digital humanities / digital conservation

For further information visit this article.

Limassol, 3-8 November 2014

International Conference EuroMed2014

The audience of Euromed 2014 congress

The 5th International Euro-Mediterranean Conference (EuroMed 2014), devoted to Cultural Heritage (CH), was held on the 3rd-8th of November at the entrance of the ancient Amathus city, by Limassol, in Cyprus island. The EuroMed2014 is under the Patronage of H. E. the President of the Republic of Cyprus, Mr. Nikos Anastasiades.

Conference proceedings and nice photos of the event are available via the congress’ official website: www.euromed2014.eu

EuroMed brings together researchers, policy makers, professionals and practitioners to explore some of the more pressing issues concerning cultural heritage today.

Dr. Marinos Ioannides opening the event

The Conference Chair dr. Marinos Ioannides, announcing the event, said: “The ultimate aim of the 5th EuroMed conference will be to bring together as many stakeholders as possible from different backgrounds in order to achieve a high level of mutual understanding of the needs, the requirements and the technical means of meeting them. Therefore, our common goal is to focus on interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary research on tangible and intangible Cultural Heritage, the use of cutting edge technologies for the protection, preservation, conservation, massive digitalisation and visualization/presentation of the Cultural Heritage content (archeological sites, artifacts, monuments, libraries, archives, museums, etc). At the same time, the event is intended to cover topics of research ready for exploitation, demonstrating the acceptability of new sustainable approaches and new technologies by the user community, SME’s, owners, managers and conservators of cultural patrimony.”

E-Agenda of the Conference (PDF 214 Kb)

Main objectives of the conference were:

• highlighting the role of European CH research within international activities and cooperation;

• assessing the impact of EU policies on European CH and evaluating the positive contribution of CH innovative research to competitiveness and job creation;

• disseminating the results of European CH innovative research and discussing new possible developments;

• discussing coordination of national research within educational programmes for CH in Europe and the world;

• refining, amending and publishing main ideas of any technological platforms opened to the entire field of CH, in the context of preparation of 2016/17’s Work Programme for the EU Horizon2020 FP (2014-2020);

• emphasizing the relation of conservation practice to contemporary legislation, especially experienced by SMEs and especially as regards problems of orphan works, fraud and crime in the movable cultural heritage market, health and safety issues;

• evaluating how research influenced the impact of EU policies on CH and discussing the mitigation of possible adverse effects;

• underlining and discussing the role of current and future developments in international activities, agreements and cooperation:

a) against demolishing and/or looting in CH;

b) on the e-documentation and e-preservation in CH;

c) on the establishment of standards in the field of CH;

d) on conventions (like UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible CH);

e) on documenting, archiving, monitoring, preserving, protecting and presenting CH worldwide using innovative ICT solutions;

f) on the legal and ethical responsibilities of CH Informatics.

For more information: www.euromed2014.eu

Pisa, 4-5 December 2014

RICHES International Conference

PREFORMA project will participate to the digital poster exhibition at the International Conference organised by the RICHES project on December 4th abd 5th in Pisa, at the Museum of Graphics of Palazzo Lanfranchi.

The event, patronised by the Tuscany Region, Municipality of Pisa, University of Pisa and Fondazione Sistema Toscana, is organised by Promoter Srl, partner also of PREFORMA.

The conference, entitled “Cultural Heritage: Recalibrating Relationships” considers the over-arching objective of the project: how to reduce the distance between people and culture and recalibrate the relationship between heritage professional and heritage users. Such recalibration process will maximise cultural creativity and ensure that the whole European community can benefit from the social and economic potential of Cultural Heritage.

For further information visit the official website of the Conference.

Brussels, 17 December 2014

C4BI conference on procurement

The Cities for Business Innovation – network of procurers, also known as C4BI, is a European initiative that aims to provide an integrated answer to the challenge of urban innovation, fostering therefore the development of a consistent and sustainable policy of innovative public procurement within European cities.

The C4BI partners with the support of the Committee of Regions (CoR) invited PREFORMA to attend the conference “Local and regional governance approaches for innovation, economic development and cooperation”, taking place in Brussels on December 17, 2014.

This event will be an unique opportunity for sharing and debating diverse public procurement approaches and instruments that can impact the capacity of local and regional authorities for promoting innovation both internally and within their local communities. In addition, this conference will also discuss the influence and efficiency of authorities to pursue local economic development and social well-being.

A high-level panel of experts from the European Commission and project coordinators from different EU-funded projects will also participate in the conference.

Conference program is available here.

Conference admission is free of charge but with limited sitting. Please register no later than December, 11, 2014, by filling in the registration form available here.

Bozen-Bolzano (Italy), 29-30 January 2015

PREFORMA @ IRCDL 2015 Conference

Since 2005 the Italian Research Conference on Digital Libraries (IRCDL) provides a great opportunity for Italian researchers in the field of Digital Libraries to present and discuss their current research activities and to envision together further developments.

IRCDL 2015 edition is committed to preserve the traditional emphasis on the multidisciplinary nature of the research on digital libraries which has been characterizing the conference over the years. This multidisciplinary nature ranges from computer science to humanities in the broader sense, including research areas such as archival and library information sciences, information management systems, semantic technoologies, information retrieval, new knowledge environments. This is a continued challenge for the DL field and there is the need to continue to contribute to improve the cooperation between the many communities that share common objectives.

Another focus of IRCDL 2015 will be on the deep changes affecting the world of scientific communication, where new non linear but object-centric products are progressively taking shape, and on the growing role of the integration, publication and preservation of research data.

The aim of IRCDL 2015 is once more to provide the opportunity to explore new ideas, techniques, and tools, and to exchange experiences also from on-going projects. The IRCDL conferences have been launched and initially sponsored by DELOS, an EU FP6 Network of Excellence on digital libraries, together with the Department of Information Engineering of the University of Padua. Over the years IRCDL has become a self sustainable event that is supported by the Italian Digital Libraries Community.

A paper about PREFORMA has been accepted and will be presented by the Department of Information Engineering of the University of Padua. The title is “The PREFORMA Project: Federating Memory Institutions for Better Compliance of Preservation Formats”.

The 2015 edition is under the patronage and it is sponsored by the Faculty of Computer Science and the Library of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. For further information visit the Conference website.

See IRCDL home page at DEI for information on previous editions and the DBLP entry for information on proceedings and publications of past IRCDL editions.

Post proceedings of the previous edition of the conference held in Padua in 2014 have been published by Elsevier in the Series Procedia Computer Science and are now available as Open Access here.

Brussels, 31 January - 1 February 2015

PREFORMA @ FOSDEM 2015

FOSDEM is a two-day event organised by volunteers to promote the widespread use of open source software.

Taking place in the beautiful city of Brussels (Belgium), FOSDEM is widely recognised as the best open source conference in Europe.

PREFORMA will participate to the FOSDEM conference and one of the suppliers, MediaArea.net will have a developer room: see the Open Media DevRoom at https://fosdem.org/2015/schedule/track/open_media/.

What is FOSDEM?

FOSDEM is a free and non-commercial event organised by the community for the community. The goal is to provide open source software developers and communities a place to meet to:

get in touch with other developers and projects;
be informed about the latest developments in the open source world;
attend interesting talks and presentations on various topics by open source project leaders and committers;
to promote the development and the benefits of open source solutions.

Participation and attendance is totally free, though the organisers gratefully accept donations and sponsorship.

For more information visit the Conference website.

Paris, 12-13 February 2015

Europeana Tech Conference 2015

The second international EuropeanaTech conference will be held on February 12th and 13th 2015 in Paris, France.

The conference will showcase the most recent technological developments and innovations in the context of cultural heritage. From standardisation efforts, lessons from daily practice, fundamental research themes and disruptive innovations as proposed by businesses.

EuropeanaTech 2015 will bring the international network of technical specialists from memory organisations, research institutions and creative industries together to network and share progress. It will discuss topics that the Europeana community should address, and advise on the technical development of Europeana and related initiatives. EuropeanaTech 2015 is aimed at creative innovators in the heritage domain, ranging from staff contributing to institutional strategy, R&D software developers, academic researchers, managers of future oriented projects and so on.

PREFORMA project will be represented at the Conference through The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, community manager of EuropeanaTech and partner of PREFORMA.

Learn more about the conference programme here.

Source: http://www.europeanatech2015.eu/about/