I was last week on wednesday and thursday (9-10/12) at DISH 2009 (DIgital Strategies for Heritage) conference in Rotterdam. My own presentation Participatory management of heritage assets (presentation also attached to this article) discussed participation, strategies and critical success factors for engaging users and experts vs. amateurs dichotomy. At the same session were two other interesting papers about archaeology at the Thames forefront and social media in Flemish museums. All in all the conference was very good with a number of thought-provoking keynotes by, for instance, Andrew Payne, Josh Greenberg, Simone Brummelhuis, Susan Chun and Ross Parry, and a good mixture of workshops, papers and other sessions.
Even though the question of how to manage digital assets and how to relate to digital heritage is still a big question, the discussion on the seems to be shifting toward the matter itself from overarching statements without much reference to anything practical, theoretically valid and functional. It is, as stated, a question about digital strategy or, as I would argue, even more question of embedding the digital into the larger strategy so that it is a self-evident component of everything done rather than something external.
