Australian Digital Forum 2010

In Melbourne today the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) generously hosted the Australian Digital Forum (an unconference) for practitioners from the digital GLAM, eresearch and egovernment arenas.. people all working with web, mobile, data and metadata seeking peer groups to share ideas and thrash out issues. Several ANDS projects were represented there from: RMIT (digital archives for screen production and research sectors, Rachel Wilson), Monash University (the capture of researcher data, Jackie Waylen) and Powerhouse Museum (Museum Metadata Exchange project). The morning’s sessions were a series of Pecha Kucha style presentations 10 minutes apiece to get ideas across, questions out there to think about, and convey project information. The afternoon was devoted to a series of informal workshops around a plethora of shared excitement, interests, concerns and frustrations, sometimes all together in the same individual and group. I suspect that electric mix of synchronicity and energy is what is called synergy. The details of the activity appear on adf2010 Weebly and tweets on Twitter under #adf2010 as the hashtag.

Julie-Anne’s second day on the MME project was immersive and the unconference held in ACMI’s Cube was a fantastic opportunity to meet and network with others in similar work. She and I got the chance to take time for intense thinking and exchange, with multiple mentions of the words metadata and terminology by many of us, and not just me. By a happy coincidence one of the organisers behind the scene at ACMI is also the MME Site Coordinator (Michael Parry) and he and Julie got to meet immediately and face to face. This project has the significant benefit of time and effort that will be contributed by these key professionals (nominated from the 14 CAMD member organisations and the NFSA) to facilitate the development of collection description statements with the help of their peers internally and project Data Analysts. Face to face time will be a little precious, and the means of ongoing dialogue and liaison following on from the site visits to each organisation to support the data gathering process will be via email, phone and online via the project site. Sharing experiences (albeit asynchronously and through posting on the project website) permits wider shared learning by others outside of the project and reflects the incredible collaboration underway.

Andrew Hiskens | State Library of Victoria

My “take aways” from today (aside these thoughts) came from Andrew Hiskens (State Library of Victoria) and Deb Verhoeven (RMIT) and David Methven (Museum Victoria). Andrew talked about digital initiatives being undertaken with a treasure map not a road map in the cultural sector. Andrew introduced us all to the Sterndale funnel (or mindsets) – which was introduced to him by Jason Clarke, from Minds at Work – represented by a kite shape. He also introduced us to a matrix drawn from Learning from the Extremes by Charles Leadbeater and Annika Wong. I can’t help but think a great deal of moving from analogue to digital is in the bottom left hand corner… disruptive, formal, reinvention, through innovation when it comes to shifts to digital practices.

Stendahl's funnel | Ideas-Design-Evaluation-Action

Learning from the Extremes

Deb kept both workshop sessions I sat in on with her on our toes. I really enjoyed the way she asked direct questions about what researchers want access to and why and how their research needs can be best met and how research and/or collection data is made and or is ideally accessed by researchers. It isn’t often I’m sitting at a table with someone who states that searching is different to finding – and as a librarian by profession – and a search/find fiend – that’s music to my ears! David spoke about being in the business of engagement and wishing to be open, but necessarily being in a situation of where levels of oversight and moderation in an online universe mean control. A good deal of constructive conversation around how online feeds into the critical success factors of exhibitions was also had thanks to David’s suggestion for a workshop. My 10c worthis there are opportunities all the way through the planning process to aid to the success of exhibitions, including online ticketing facility, a key part of “enabling” access, by providing an easy user friendly way to purchase tickets, immediate visitor feedback when in the exhibition, to afterward when visitors “return” to the exhibition by finally reading exhibition labels on their mobile device.

#ADF2010 was a day well spent, and ideally, if Australia could have something similar to the annual NDF (National Digital Forum) in New Zealand, it would extend this opportunity to the many digital practitioners in these three realms: collecting, research and government to network, share and collaborate.

Image Credit: Streaking through Flickr: swirlingthoughts CC by-nc 2.0