Digital meets Culture

Rome, 1-2 September 2014

On the first two days of September, the premises of the Ministero dello Sviluppo Economico will host the CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES Kick-off Meeting, which brought together 12 cultural institutions and archives, universities, research centres and innovative SMEs from all over Europe.

The CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES project is about the participation of citizens in research on cultural heritage and humanities. The project will last 16 months and it has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration.

The project aims to develop and validate a Roadmap for the use of e-Infrastructures to support the participation of European citizens in research on cultural heritage and digital humanities. Critically, the Roadmap will offer support for improved social cohesion arising from the sharing of knowledge and understanding of Europe’s citizens common and individual cultures.

The project, started on August 2014, is coordinating by Mauro Fazio for the Italian Ministry for the Economic Development while the Technical Coordinator is Antonella Fresa, Director of PROMOTER.

More information for the project are available on the project official website: www.civic-epistemologies.eu.

More information about the kick-off meeting are available here.

Amsterdam, 24-26 September 2014

EGI Conference on Challenges and Solutions for Big Data Processing on Cloud

This year the aim of the EGI Autumn conference will focus on the open issues related to the efficient processing of big data towards the realization of the EGI vision of the Open Science Commons, and will feature user-orientated sessions, as well as a rich track on Cloud including:

the joint EGI-GÉANT two-days Symposium on Federated Community Cloud Services for e-Science on the requirements, opportunities and next steps for the implementation of a publicly funded community cloud for the European Research Area;
the CloudWatch plugfest and workshop on Cloud standards profiles that will see implementations of a number of Cloud related standards tested against each other for interoperability, and a closing workshop where participants will elicit use cases, supporting implementations and hosting standards developement organisations for specific profiles on existing standards, where needed.

On the 24th of September after the EGI conference, the participants are warmly invited to join at the EUDAT networking cocktail from 17:30 until 19:30 in the foyer area of the RDA conference venue. It will be an excellent opportunity to network and share a drink together. EUDAT will host a poster session for organisations, initiatives and projects to showcase their data related activities and results and EGI participants are welcome to submit an application for a poster to be displayed during the networking cocktail. For more information see the EUDAT networking cocktail session details.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND THE CONFERENCE

User communities with cloud service requirements: the conference will gather expert researcher, cloud technologists and cloud providers to discuss scientific use cases and requirements for big data management, analysis and re-use on cloud;
Community and commercial cloud providers: the conference will provide networking opportunities for cloud providers to discuss technology roadmaps and challenges related to operating a cloud federation;
Cloud technologists: the conference will offer opportunities to increase the user adoption of community cloud service solutions and new collect requirements.

REGISTRATION
While the programme is being finalized, we encourage you to register online – no registration fee is required, but capacity offered by the conference venue is limited.

MORE INFORMATION

For more information please visit the Conference website at https://indico.egi.eu/indico/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=2160.

Pisa, 9-12 October 2014

INTERNET FESTIVAL. Forms of Future

From 9 to 12 October in Tuscany, Pisa, it is being held the Third Edition of Internet Festival, one of the most important European events dedicated to the digital world, promoted by Tuscany Region, Municipality of Pisa, Registro.it, the IT and Telematics Institute of CNR, University of Pisa, Sant’Anna High School, Normale High School, together with Chamber of Commerce, Pisa’s District and Science Festival Association.

As confirmed by the numbers, last edition of the Festival was a great success: 280 thousand visitors in four days, 20 dedicated locations, 65 thousand users connected via Web, 150 events, 200 speakers from 60 countries.

Pisa territory is heart and brain of the network and first Italian area for research investment and development in respect to the GDP (3.5% versus 1,1% of the national average), also thanks to the 1300 high technology enterprises of which 800 works in the ICT sector.

The commitment of Tuscany Region to digital development, considered as main tool for the full citizen engagement, this year will connote many areas of the Festival. In particular Logge de’ Banchi, recognised centre of Pisa society, will host services and initiatives related to the regional Open Data.

Testimonial of IF2014 will be obviously Galileo Galilei, whose 450th birth anniversary is celebrated this year.
Key word of the event will be matter: almost a provocation, considering that the web is immaterial by definition. But so as the industrial revolution was born out of coal and steel, the digital revolution is born out of mines bursting with an inexhaustible supply of binary numbers, which when put together generate big data, the vital substratum for complex matter and active semi-processed products. The new economic paradigm of Internet Economies emerge out of these mines; citizens, researchers, public administrators, makers, start-ups, artists and visionaries play a leading role, extracting first matter to realise projects and products which impact our daily lives.

The Festival will also analyse the Internet Economies, common thread of 2014’s edition, into eight sections: Take the money, Make it good, Go Green, Design to innovate, Culture is smarter, Cooperation wanted, Break the rules and Play the Game. These section are intended to investigate themes related to culture, participation, opportunities for young people, green start-ups, design, game business and the connection between hackers and privacy.

Among the already confirmed speakers of IF 2014: Alberto Abruzzese, Lucia Annunziata, Moni Ovadia, Fabio Vaccarono, Alex Giordano, Derrick De Kerkhove, Remo Bodei, Giulio Giorello, Giacomo Marramao, Nathan Jurgenson, Riccardo Luna, Mario Tedeschini Lalli, Anna Masera, Massimo Russo, Marino Niola, Michele Mezza, Vincenzo Susca, Giancarlo Sciascia, Simone Cicero, Donata Columbro, Alessio Jacona, Mattia Sullini.

A very important area will be the T-Tour one, dedicated to playful educational workshops for adults, teenagers and children, which in 2013’s edition registered more than six thousand attendees.

This Tuscan event will involve important places of Pisa such as Bastione San Gallo, the Cineclub Arsenale, the Research Area of CNR, Cavalieri Square (where a geoide will be raised), Normale High School, Sant’Anna High School, Logge dè Banchi, the Mixart, Fibonacci UniPi Pole, the Ponte di Mezzo, the Sms Library – Piagge Urban Park, SMS Exhibition Centre for Contemporary Art, the Leopolda Station, the Feltrinelli and the Ubik bookshops.

Festival director is Claudio Giua, President of Fondazione Sistema Toscana.

Adriana De Cesare of Fondazione Sistema Toscana is Festival Coordinator, while Anna Vaccarelli (IIT-CNR) and Gianluigi Ferrari (University of Pisa) coordinate, respectively, the Executive and the Scientific Committee.

Internet Festival, 9 – 12 October 2014, Pisa www.internetfestival.it

Promoters:
Tuscany Region
Municipality of Pisa
CNR
Registro.it
IIT
Pisa Chamber of Commerce
University of Pisa
Pisa’s District
Sant’ Anna High School
Pisa Normale High School
Science Festival Association

Organized by:
Fondazione Sistema Toscana

Under the patronage of:
ISCOM

dissemination of Europeana Space at a AHRC-funded workshop organised by the Winchester School of Art and Goldsmiths

Image Research and its Futures, workshop in London

Image Research and its Futures is a AHRC-funded workshop, in the framework of the project Looking at Images: A Researcher’s Guide, organised by the Winchester School of Art and Goldsmiths on 19 June 2014.

The workshop covered a diverse range of image-related research projects and methodologies. Plenty of time was given to discussion for consideration of institutional, ethical, intellectual and practical matters when devising, conducting and disseminating image-based work.

Among the speakers, Joanna Zylinska from Goldsmiths was invited for a presentation, where she also illustrated about the Open & Hybrid Publishing pilot and more in general about Europeana Space.

Further information of the workshop: http://blog.soton.ac.uk/wsapgr/workshop-2/

in the Summer 2014 issue an extensive article appeared about Europeana Space

Innovate: the applied research magazine from Coventry University

From futuristic car design to helping children with dyslexia, Innovate magazine showcases the diverse range of applied research activities taking place at Coventry University.

Coventry University’s approach is in facts “Research Excellence with Impact” and in the years the University has earned a strong reputation for enterprise and innovation, which helped to secure the Times Higher Education “Entrepreneurial University of the Year” award in 2011 and the status as “Modern University of the Year” in 2014.

The Summer 2014 issue of the Innovate magazine features a 2-page article about Europeana Space, developed by the Project’s Coordinator Sarah Whatley and by Marion Doyen, Business Development Manager at Coventry University.

The article explains the purpose of Europeana Space, as well as its structure and objectives, and states the ultimate aim of our project: to stimulate jobs and growth in and across the creative industries, through the creative reuse of digital cultural content.

Download the full article here (PDF, 248 Kb)

Download current and past issues of Innovate here: http://www.coventry.ac.uk/research/research-excellence/innovate-magazine/

hosted at the National and University Library in Zagreb, an important conference was the occasion to disseminate the project to a valuable audience

Europeana Space disseminated in Croatia

An important conference hosted at the National and University Library in Zagreb saw the participation of Marinos Ioannides from the Cyprus University of Technology CUT with a speech in the session dedicated to Availability of Information and Documentation.

Marinos Ioannides

Although the topic of the speech was focused on the importance of e-documentation and on the current initiatives in the digital documentation/preservation in Cultural Heritage, the event was an important gathering of experts and professionals in the domain of cultural heritage preservation.

So, it was also a valuable occasion to disseminate Europeana Space to a audience of Scientific Community (higher education or research) and Industry representatives, as well as Policy Makers and Medias from various EU nationalities.

The conference title was “Protection of Cultural Heritage from Natural and Man-made Disasters” and it was held on 8-10 May 2014. This conference is part of a three-year project aimed at the development of guidelines for a strategic plan for the protection of cultural heritage from disasters and the formulation of a proposal for introducing amendments to the existing legislation, as well as at the determining of the key institutions and individuals which will be involved in the development and implementation of this strategic plan.

There was also a long discussion at the end of the invited presentation by Marinos Ioannides related to Europeana Space project objectives and pilot cases. Moreover, a leaflet indicating the current activities of CUT (including the participation to Europeana Space project) was distributed during the event.

The programme of the event is available here: http://chp.nsk.hr/en/programme/ along with the speakers’ presentations.

'All About Imaging: Transactions' symposium was organised by the Faculty of Media, Arts and Design of the University of Westminster

Open & Hybrid Publishing pilot @ Transactions event

Joanna Zylinska

Joanna Zylinska from Goldsmiths, University of London and Jonathan Shaw from Coventry University were invited speakers at the ‘All About Imaging: Transactions’ symposium, organised by the Faculty of Media, Arts and Design of the University of Westminster, London, with the co-operation of the Imaging Science Group of The Royal Photographic Society, on 22-23 May 2014.

They gave two presentations about open access projects, also discussing the Europeana Space pilot on Open & Hybrid Publishing at length.

Jonathan Shaw

The audience was a mixture of academics, professionals and amateurs interested in photography and image science, and was intended to create opportunities for knowledge exchange, demonstration and discussion and to traverse discursive boundaries between disciplines, to build shared vocabularies, mutual understanding and new synergies.

Learn more about the event here: http://www.rps.org/news/2014/april/transactions

Download the relevant slides of the presentations about the Open & Hybrid Publishing pilot (PDF, 573 Kb)

The Coordinator Fred Truyen will be keynote speaker at the congress organized by the University of Sheffield

Europeana Photography @ Digital Humanities Congress

Europeana Photography will participate in this important conference, organized every 2 years in Sheffield, with the keynote speech of the coordinator Fred Truyen (KU Leuven). The purpose of the congress is to promote the sharing of knowledge, ideas and techniques within the digital humanities.

Digital humanities is understood by Sheffield University to mean the use of technology within arts, heritage and humanities research as both a method of inquiry and a means of dissemination. As such, Europeana Photography is a very concrete example of the use of technologies to enhance cultural heritage.

The speech by professor Truyen is:

“All Our Yesterdays”: Europeana and the Phenomenology of Photographic Experience through the Framing of Digitization

When the partners in EuropeanaPhotography embarked on the journey to digitize over 400.000 early photographs for Europeana, few would realize that their very concept of the photograph would change forever.

While sifting through often unseen and unpublished photos from Europe’s top collections, a fascination grew among the collaborators of the involved musea, archives and photo-agencies for what was captured on these dusty glass negatives, daguerreotype plates and albumen prints ranging from 1839 to 1939.

What was there was not only revealed through the digitization, but urrevocably reframed into an new visual experience. Questions about the very nature of what in the end the elusive “photo as object” is, and its ramifications for archival practices, became unavoidable. In this talk, looking through the lenses of old photographers who were priviliged wittnesses of Europe’s history, we will zoom in on different aspects from a Digital Humanities perspective: curation, digitization, metadata provision, rendering and digital preservation.

The conference takes place on 4-6 September 2014.

Registration and more information here: http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/hri/dhc

DEADLINE Monday 16th June

Europeana Space – Questionnaire for the Pilots (technical requirements)

On the 3rd November, a valuable workshop including several EU projects was the occasion to disseminate Europeana Space

Europeana Space at Euromed Congress 2014

Project Coordinator Professor Sarah Whatley spoke about Europeana Space project during a focused workshop, dedicated to analyse the stategies for cultural heritage in the new digital age, held during the important congress Euromed in Cyprus (3-8 November 2014).

Marinos Ioannides, Sarah Whatley and Antonella Fresa

Europeana Space was presented to the congress’ wide audience of international cultural institutions as the new Best Practice Network of allied partners who intend to explore new ways for the creative re-use of digital cultural heritage. The final aim of Europeana Space is to pave the way for unlocking the business potential of cultural heritage for both cultural Institutions and creative industries.

The audience at Euromed 2014 congress

The workshop is organized by Promoter, who is the Technical Coordinator of Europeana Space, and included representatives of several important projects in the domain of digital cultural heritage.

The title of the workshop is “The Digitization Age: Mass Culture is Quality Culture. Challenges for cultural heritage and society” and took place on 3rd November at 4 pm.

Download the workshop’s agenda (PDF, 438 Kb)

Visit the Euromed 2014 Congress website: http://www.culturalheritage2014.eu/