FutureEverything 2013 - Digital Public Space...and Caravans

Being involved with both culture and technology, Europeana gets to attend some pretty great events that bring the two realms together. Yesterday, we told you about our time at the Paris Book Fair, complete with VIPs. Another exciting event we've been to recently was the FutureEverything Conference 2013.

The FutureEverything Conference 2013 was held in Manchester on 21–22 March 2013. Speakers came from around the world, from prestigious organisations such as Google, Vimeo & the BBC, making the conference, according to its organisers, 'one of the most exciting and inspirational we have hosted in recent years.' FutureEverything was recently hailed by the Guardian as one of the top ten international ideas festivals, alongside TEDx, 99% and South by South West (which our Antoine Isaac attended - read his blog).

The conference and workshops brought together hundreds of delegates from around the world from across the creative industries, new technologies, innovation, arts, public sector and academia. Its three themes for 2013 were those that are instrumental in shaping the digital future: Creative Code, Future Cities and The Data Society.

With UK partners - the BBC, Creative Exchange and Lancaster University - FutureEverything is investigating the potential of a Digital Public Space, which it describes as 'a framework for thinking about the ways in which the arts and culture will reshape themselves in the screen-based, online world'. The Digital Public Space will, say FutureEverything, 'enable digital content to be made as freely available as possible for anyone from anywhere, doing for the whole range of digitised cultural content what the Open Data campaign is doing for publicly-funded datasets. Within the Digital Public Space every digital asset that can be shared will be shared, and as we digitise more of the analogue past this will stretch to encompass the whole of recorded culture.'

In her presentation at FutureEverything 2013, Europeana Executive Director, Jill Cousins said, 'Europeana has a huge number of similarities to the Digital Public Space. It exists so that everyone, everywhere can have unrestricted access to culture and knowledge. It has pushed for open standards and interoperability and for me, it is about creating the backbone, the hub, the space, the commons where others can seize the opportunities presented there and develop new ones.'

You can download the FutureEverything publication exploring the idea of the Digital Public Space, which includes an article by our very own Jill Cousins (page 12).

As well as presenting at the conference, Europeana also partnered up with others to run a Europeana Mashup Workshop at which participants could remix Europeana content with content from other online sources using Mozilla's Popcorn Maker. The workshop focused on introducing participants to the possibilities of hands-on manipulation of historic archives, providing support for participants to explore these resources and their potential. The workshop also encouraged discussion about the potential impact of the emerging digital public space and its affect on knowledge transfer, curation and interaction with culture.

One of the results of the Mashup Workshop was this cute work-in-progress video entitled 'A little film made on Mozilla Popcorn celebrating the job of caravans - Travelling for Pleasure' by Lara Devitt, aka @lil_Madam. It includes photos, videos and text relating to the iconic vehicle that is the caravan, and draws some of its resources from Europeana, all to a soundtrack of Goldfrapp's 'Caravan Girl'.