Ministers show their support for Europeana
2012-05-14
Building Awareness in Brussels
On Wednesday 9 May Europeana held a major event for all Ministers of Culture and leaders of Europe 's creative industries and memory organisations. Very positive speeches by Neelie Kroes, Vice-President for the Digital Agenda, and by the Danish Minister on behalf of the current EU Presidency, were followed by statements in support of Europeana by Ministers from a dozen countries.
All Ministers had been asked to pick an item from Europeana, and the blogs about their choices can be seen on Europeana's home page http://www.europeana.eu/portal/ . The full list of choices and the press release are here: http://pro.europeana.eu/web/guest/9mayministerstreasures
The event focused on building support for the Connecting Europe Facility funding infrastructure, one small element of which will support Europeana long-term as a core service. It was also the opportunity for Mme Kroes to launch the Hack 4 Europe 2012 competition that will take place over the next 6 weeks.
The eCloud
Around 350 people attended and had a chance to see a short demo of the eCloud, the big screen 3D interactive display of all the material collected as part of the various 1914-1918 initiatives. The eCloud will be on show again at the Leuven plenary on 14/15 June , and some of the most remarkable stories are also featured in our new 1914-1918 exhibition
The best photos of the event show Neelie Kroes and the Mininsters with their 3D glasses on, immersed in the eCloud experience
Films of some of the main speeches can be seen here:
http://ec.europa.eu/avservices/video/player.cfm?sitelang=en&ref=85238
Recommendations for Change
The event began with a seminar that looked at different perspectives on open data, called Culture for Innovation - Recommendations for Change. Advocates of digital innovation and GLAM practitioners developed a set of forceful recommendations that were then taken up by the political representatives in the second part of the programme.
The recommendations are:
- Invest in digitization & preservation - only 15% of our cultural heritage is digitised so far!
- Rights, rights, rights! Make copyright work in the digital age
- Explore the new business models based on opening up content
- Exploit the power of open - data, licences, standards