Participants from all over South Africa gathered in Durban this week for the 74th South African Museum’s Association conference held at the Riverside Hotel in Durban North. The conference theme was Museums in Action: to 2010 and beyond.
I could not be at the whole conference, but the morning I attended on the 28th was certainly interesting with some excellent papers. I got to present alongside: Vivienne Garside (who gave a paper on the Vukani Digitisation Project that was tackled jointly by ourselves at Africa Media Online and the Vukani Museum staff); Ria Groenewald of the University of Pretoria speaking on “Life After Digitisation – the ever changing electronic environment;” and Roger Layton with whom I have been working on the National Digitisation Policy who presented on “Towards a digital future for museums : creating a digitisation strategy.” All were really engaging papers and it was encouraging to see the momentum that is clearly picking up in the digitisation realm. I did not get through all of my own paper (presenting in Prezi, the speed I had to go I am sure made everyone quite motion sick), “Threats and Opportunities for Museum Collections in the Digital Era”, but I think the point was clear, there are now workable solutions to every threat faced in the digitisation arena. To go through the presentation in your own time, click here. (To view it full screen in the bar just below the presentation itself roll over the button that says “More” and click on “Fullscreen”).
Well done to the organising committee here in KZN for an excellent conference!
