Paper accepted!

This abstract I wrote, together with Harry van Vliet, about the usage of Flickr the Commons was accepted for the Heritage Impact 2012 in Brighton. I'm quite excited because this will be the first in a serie of papers focussing on social media data harvesting and analyses. Read the abstract here:

Tagged with: flickr, social media, cultural heritage, conference,

Bringing the Past to the Present: The use of tagging and storytelling for the enrichment of digital cultural heritage

Together with Harry van Vliet I recently submitted an abstract to the International Conference on Knowledge Work and Innovations. In this paper we address the use of social tagging and storytelling in order to enrich digital collections of cultural heritage. The purpose of this conference is to deepen the co-operation between the members of the strategic partner network: HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, Turku University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences and Polytechnic University of Valencia by discussing the new practices of knowledge work and innovation creation. We submitted our paper to the Applied Arts track. Let's hope it gets accepted.

Tagged with: roots2share, ikweetwaditis, social storytelling, social tagging, cultural heritage,

House of Alijn

At the expert meeting of the CVN - Commission Cultural Treaty Vlaanderen – Nederland – (www.cvn.be) last week in Antwerpen I participated in a breakout session lead by Sylvie Dhaene of ‘Het Huis van Alijn’ (House of Alijn; www.huisvanalijn.be). This former museum of folklore has set out to tell a timeless story about the culture of everyday life. In the museum ordinary objects and curiosities offer an introduction to the common inheritance of the time periods of the fifties, sixties, seventies and so on, up till now. Digital media is used to let you zap through photo albums, listen to sound recordings and plunge into film excerpts.

Tagged with: participation, vlaanderen, cultural heritage, pace,

The Archives in the age of cool

The city of Utrecht has, as many Dutch cities and regions, a rich and well-documented history. There is a huge mountain of data of all sorts of events taking place in or around the city. And by mountain of data you can take that quite literal. If you would make a stack of all the documents it would form a pile higher then the Mont Blanc, with its 4811 meters the highest mountain of Europe. The preservation of these huge collections is a complex task, and making it easily accessible is even harder. Making it all something that a non-professional audience can experience in a fun way seems like an almost impossible task.

Tagged with: vrede van utrecht, experience, mobile, cultural heritage,

A compass to help museums develop crossmedia services

'Museumkompas' is a research proposal submitted for a RAAK grant (www.innovatie-alliantie.nl) that will start in the spring of 2011 and will run for two years. The project will be implemented by the Crossmedialab in collaboration with several museums, Erfgoed Nederland, DEN, and an expert agency in the field of information management in the public sector (BMC).

Tagged with: crossmedia, business models, cultural heritage,

New NWO proposal

In collaboration with University Utrecht the Crossmedialab developed a proposal for a NWO subsidy, the proposal is titled 'A Digital Infrastructure for the contextualization of Cultural Events (DICE)'. The immediate aim of the DICE proposal is to connect four major data collections, part of which were NWO-funded, in the domain of theatre and cinema culture collected by museums and archives. Each of these four collections holds different data on the production, circulation, presentation and reception of film screenings and theatre performances. Since this information has not as of yet been systematically collected and connected, our current knowledge of theatre and cinema culture is particularly fragmented, compartmentalized, incoherent and full of holes, and does not allow for a more systematic and comparative approach of Dutch stage and screen entertainments.

Tagged with: contextualization, digital communication, cultural heritage,

The Fat Guy

No I am not talking about a new cartoon series or a new Flickr community but about something I picked up today at the conference 'Business Model Innovation Cultural Heritage' at the Hermitage in Amsterdam (not a terrible bad place to spend a afternoon by the way). The term 'de dikke man' refers to the added value one must seek in developing new innovative services. Eppo van Nispen of DOK, keynote speaker at the conference, used it. He demonstrated what he meant by this by showing a video clip of an audition of a Michael Jackson imitator on one of the many 'nobody's got talent' shows aired nowadays. Nothing special so far, but halfway through the act a 'fat guy' joins him and they start dancing together. The crowd goes wild.

Tagged with: business models, cultural heritage,

Not one, but two!

Yes indeed we are proud to present the first two issues of our CELL Cahiers series. Both are the result of the research we did the passing two years since we started the crossmedialab. Speaking of first results!

Tagged with: cell, media literacy, cultural heritage,

Looking Back at the Museums and the Web 2009 Conference

I had the pleasure to attend the Museums and the Web conference 2009 in Indianapolis. It were four full packed days of keynote speakers, panels, demonstrations and workshops all on the topic Museums and the Internet. As mentioned in an earlier post I was allowed to demonstrate the application ‘I Know What This Is’ during the demonstration rounds on Saturday. The application is part of the PACE project.

Tagged with: cultural heritage, web 2.0, pace, social media,

Presenting Social Tagging and Digital Storytelling Project at Museums and the Web 2009

On Saturday the 18th of April I will present a social tagging and digital storytelling project called ikweetwatditis.nl at the Museums And The Web 2009 conference in Indianapolis. This project looks at the use of social tagging and digital storytelling for cultural artifacts. For this project a pilot application was created that allows users to tag these artifacts. In a sense one could compare this to Flickr the Commons but we try to invite groups ranging from experts, amateurs and people with no relation with these artifacts.

Tagged with: pace, cultural heritage,