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

http://ec.europa.eu/avservices/photo/photoByReportageNews.cfm?rid=7644&sitelang=en&utm_content=photo&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

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