I'm fighting my way through the backlog of notes to write some more posts on the JISC Digital Content Conference. The unreliable wifi at the conference means that while I managed live tweeting for some sessions, others exist as notes on the PowerBook. I may summarise the tweeted sessions too, in time.
The third plenary session, on Wednesday morning, began with David Baker trying to sum up the previous day's parallel sessions, from a series of slides that I hope will be on the conference blog. He drew out some points from each: the hidden costs of digitisation, the need to improve the 'big deals' and to work with publishers without ideological arguments, that in order to engage teachers with existing resources, they have to offer value and be a good fit, and, finally, that innovation breaks rules and that users are collaborators. I'm not sure I understand the point about avoiding ideological arguments with publishers: do the ideological positions come from publishers, from librarians or from academics? If he meant we should stop trying to understand the economic imperatives that drive publishers' behaviour, I'm not sure I agree.
Nick Poole, the CEO of the Collections Trust, who blogs at http://www.collectionstrust.org.uk/, gave us a very up-to-the-minute and enjoyable presentation, and contributed to the conference the memorable and resonant phrases, 'free as in puppy, not free as in beer', and 'less innovation and more doing' . Starting from the government document published only the day before, Building Britain's Future, he took us through the political and economic situation and how it might affect us. A new European Commission might have money for digitisation, but In the context of a weak pound against the Euro, the effects of the slump and 5-10% cuts in public expenditure, will the digital economy bail us out?
Digital Britain has five priorities: modernising the infrastructure, creating a climate for investment, securing high quality content, building skills, and giving universal access to broadband. But the Treasury look for public value, public sector efficiency and savings of more than £30bn on top of the Gershon savings of £26.5bn. There is a contradiction between cutting on this massive scale and at the same time requiring public services to increase their social impact. Politicians now think e-services can be harnessed.
Nick thought we had two options: to build on the last ten years' investment, or to witter on about standards and interoperability and consign that ten years' work to digital landfill.
He then gave us ten problems
1. Money: what is a digital economy? We can't buy our own lunch. What is the real economic value underlying transactions?
2. Politicians: we need some core principles which exist irrespective of which politician is at DCMS this week
3. Trust: these are centuries-old industries. How do we crowd source? We can't even build decent websites. We need a contract with users, or we are stuck with command and control
4. Projects: everything is project funded. Nick confessed to being allergic to innovation. In a phrase that struck a chord with the conference, he suggested we should have less innovation and more doing
5. Managers: would you like a business case with that? There is no business case. Free stuff can be 'free as in puppy, not free as in beer'.
6. Copyright: end copyright fear, and take risks. There is so far little case law so we have more freedom to act than we think
7. Users: keep changing. We should reject idealised models of what users might be or need and have a new social contract and collectivism
8. Strategy: new unified field theory.
9. Digital: can mean many different things: delivery of service online, use of computers, digitisation
10. Marketing: the delivery of the project is the outcome. Sustainability is achieved by production of a successful service
The heritage sector is becoming a public service broadcaster sending content into homes and can do things that the commercial sector would find uneconomic. He referred to the RIN work on researchers' needs, Dicovering Physcial Objects, Meeting Researchers' Needs and suggested there should be a researchers' charter.
Therefore, we need a culture grid which can reach an audience who wouldn't come to a museum website. We could do much more: joint procurement, collaborative prioritisation of digitisation, crowd source the interpretation of content, consolidate licensing and, at the political level, sound dissonant.
In questions, Catherine Grout asked about the Strategic Content Alliance. Nick thought there was nothing like it. It was doing things to solve problems, and participant were leaving their guns at the door
Tom Morgan (NPG) asked about the changing marketplace. If there is digital content and a finite pot of money should content be free at point of use or part of the market place? Nick though that the media market place is changing, like the Maryland decision to give away , assumeing some income later.
Is there a consensus as to what is value? No, it's what the user is willing to pay. [No, that's price, value is different, read Marx-TR] We are not clear about our value to users, for example to newcomers to the UK. We have to be clear about different between public and private value.
