Solving Challenges Facing Digital Cultural Heritage Professionals at EuropeanaTech 2015

The world of digital cultural heritage is expansive, interdisciplinary and complex. Europeana’s quest to make Europe’s heritage available online for all faces technical challenges that require complex problem solving, technical innovation and collaboration. At EuropeanaTech 2015 on February 12-13 in Paris, the EuropeanaTech Community will gather at the National Library of France to tackle these issues, and look at the developments and future of a number of major R&D aspects of cultural heritage.

Image: Montmartre [le Sacré-Coeur], Public Domain marked. Source: National Library of France

The EuropeanaTech Community brings together operators from the cultural sector, developer and IT architecture communities, and the creative industries. By doing so, EuropeanaTech creates a unique opportunity for collaboration on key issues from data modelling, multilingualism, discovery, content re-use and open source development, to Cloud and workable funding models. The parallel sessions at the conference will provide the opportunity for in depth discussion of these topics and for ideas and advancements to be shared.

The programme has been finalised and you can view it here, but let us introduce you to the speakers and take a look at the questions they will discuss during the two days.

Click the speakers’ names to find links to their Twitter accounts, articles, personal websites, or project pages. Remember: EuropeanaTech 2015 is not only a great opportunity to learn but also to network and find potential project partners for the future. With some of European cultural heritage’s greatest cultural heritage technical minds together in one place, we could not be more excited about the new projects that might emerge as a result .

Here’s our breakdown - find what inspires you and register now.

Thursday, February 12

Data Quality, curated by Jill Cousins (Director of Europeana Foundation)

Question: How can we improve data quality to in order to improve discovery and re-use?

Speakers:
Ruben Verborgh (iMinds), Runar Bergheim (Avinet), Gildas Illien (BnF), Sébastien Peyrard (BnF), Ted Fons (OCLC).

Discovery, curated by Antoine Isaac (R&D Manager at Europeana Foundation)

Question: What new paradigms can we explore to employ richer data or new modes of interaction so as to offer better discovery Services?

Speakers:
Daniel Pitti (University of Virginia), Jaap Kamps (University of Amsterdam), Paul Clough (University of Sheffield), Akihiko Takano (NII), Piotr Adamczyk (Google Cultural Institute).

Reuse, curated by Johan Oomen (Head of R&D at The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision)

Question: What are some innovative and potentially disruptive ways in which digital culture can be reused? What are the latest international cooperations investigating interoperability and exchange technologies that support re-use?

Speakers:
Ben O Steen (British Library Labs), Tommaso Venturini (Sciences Po médialab), Jonas Öberg (Shuttleworth Foundation), Petr Pridal (Klokan Technologies GmbH).

Multilingualism, curated by Antoine Isaac (R&D Manager at Europeana Foundation)

Question: What are the various facets around multilingual issues, which are most urgent, and what are the most promising ways the community can address them?

Speakers:
Juliane Stiller (Humboldt University, Berlin), Spyridon Pilos (European Commission), Jussi Karlgren (Kungliga Tekniska högskolan), Asunción Gómez-Pérez (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid), J?nis Ziedi?š (Gavagi).

Friday, February 13

Open Data, Open Source, curated by Max Kaiser (Head of R&D at the Austrian National Library)

Question: How open is open? Who’s doing what with open source software, who’s developing what, and what needs to be developed?

Speakers:
Salvatore Iaconesi (TED Fellow), Bram Lohman (Europeana Foundation), Lydia Pintscher (Wikimedia DE), Patrick Peiffer (National Library of Luxembourg), Jon Voss (Shift).

Data Modelling, curated by Emmanuelle Bermès (Head of BnF Digital Library)

Question: What are some implementations of data models in various domains and subject areas and how can we identify further steps for the development and application of relevant data models within Europeana?

Speakers:
Matthieu Bonicel (BnF), Dominic Oldman (British Museum), Marco Rendina (Istituto Luce - Cinecittà), Valentine Charles (Europeana Foundation), Kate Fernie (2Culture Associates), Dimitris Gavrilis (Athens Research Centre), Stefanie Gehrke (Equipex Biblissima).