In the next couple of months I’m on a bit of a conference-a-thon, presenting the idea of the cultural sector having a proactive relationship with Wikipedia and more generally learning things about the intersection between culture and technology.

1) Right now I’m sitting in the University of Canberra attending the first ever THATcamp in Australia.

The opening discussion was a fascinating investigation of whether it is possible to do for Privacy what CreativeCommons did for copyright. That is, create a easy to understand, mix-n-match schema to explain privacy issues especially in context of archives and libraries. These could include: the period of time data is to be kept; what happens to the data when that period expires; 3rd party use/access; what kind of people have access to the data; what jurisdiction is it in; etc….

I’m looking for the rest of the rest of this unconference!

2) Museums Australia “Interesting Times: New Roles for Collections” 28 September – 2 October. Melbourne.
This is the annual big event in the Australian museum world and they’re very keen to hear about new ways that existing collections in museums can be used to reach their audience(s). No prizes for guessing what my presentation will focus on 🙂

3) Europeana “Open Culture Conference” 14-15 October. Amsterdam.
Amazingly, I’ve been invited to not only speak at this conference, but to Keynote it! Europeana is a project co-funded by the European Commission to make European culture more accessible digitally. Interestingly, Europeana doesn’t itself own any of the data being used in its services so by definition it’s a project that lives in a world of reuse culture. I’ll also be working with them to see how their project can collaborate with Wikipedia.

4) Museum Computer Network “I/O: The Museum Inside-Out/Outside-In” October 27-30. Austin.
This is a major part of the US museum calendar as the headline event of the MCN. I love the range of interlinked themes for this year’s event:

• Behind the scenes and transparency in the museum
• Commons and digital collections
• Igniting the Imagination: building communities locally and globally, on-site and online
• Open Source, Open Content, Open Learning
• Democratizing Access
• User-generated and museum content: quality, trust, reputation and relevance
• Integrated communication strategies in print and online
• Bridging the Digital Divide

My presentation will be talking about my time at the British Museum and how other museums (large and small) might be able to produce their own version of the “Wikpedian in Residence”. This is highly relevant to many of the above conference themes and I would hope that many more museums will start to look at Wikipedia as a way of achieving those outcomes.

[Between MCN and GLAM-WIKI:UK I’ll be undertaking a couple of other interesting projects in the US which I’ll talk more about another day]

5) GLAM-WIKI:UK 26-27 November, London & GLAM-WIKI:France 3-4 December, Paris.
I’m incredibly pleased to say that the conference that I ran in Canberra one year ago has now become a series. Both the French and UK Wikimedia chapters will be running their own editions where the GLAM sector (art Galleries, Libraries, Archives & Museums) can come together to talk with the Wikimedia community to see how we can best collaborate productively.

Moreover, I’m very happy to say that I have been contracted by Wikimedia-UK to convene the London edition which will be hosted at, you guessed it, the British Museum. There will be more information about these conferences in the near future but if you can be in London or Paris then – save the date because you won’t want to miss it 🙂