IDCC 09 Gets Underway...

The 5th International Digital Curation Conference got underway stylishly in London this evening as Dr Liz Lyon, Associate Director of the DCC, welcomed delegates to the opening drinks reception at the Natural History Museum, which was specially lit in DCC orange and red for the occasion.


Liz gave us some background to the Natural History Museum and some of its exhibits – including tales of “Dippy” (the iconic skeletal Diplodocus) and an 8-foot squid housed in a tank produced by Damien Hurst's suppliers. These impressive displays aside, Liz noted that the museum has its own range of digital curation challenges, which are explored in an interview with Neil Thompson at the DCC website. Liz then introduced us to Lee Dirks of Microsoft Research, who kindly sponsored the event.

Lee expressed his team's honour at having the opportunity to sponsor the evening drinks reception and noted that the IDCC was one of the more fascinating conferences in the field and the one that he has prioritised getting to for the last three years. He explained very briefly that Microsoft Research has been doing a lot of work in e-Science and e-Research areas and they feel very strongly that data curation is a critical activity that needs to receive more attention. He proposed a toast to Chris Rusbridge and all the organisers for putting on the event and reminded the speakers that those of us in the audience will be looking to them for all the answers over the coming days.

With that in mind, I will be blogging here over the next two days to summarise all of the hopefully illuminating presentations that are packed into this years' programme, together with a range of interviews with speakers and delegates. Please feel free to comment, and if you are attending the conference and blogging yourself, please include a link to your post.