AIC-AM Thru Web 2.0

Conservation 2.0

The American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (AIC) held their Annual Meeting (AIC-AM) in Los Angeles, CA. The theme of the conference was “Conservation 2.0: New Directions”. The AIC Conference brochure outlines the official content of the conference.

This year I wasn’t at the AIC-AM, however, unlike previous years I don’t have to wait an unknown amount of time for the ‘post prints’ to appear, or to track down speakers or attendees to discover what went on… why? Well because this year, much to the pleasure of many of us unable to attend, several people chose to participate in the experience by sharing their experiences online… conferences are always much more than their official outline of events, I was interested to see that these “other” aspects of the conference seem to really come to life through Web 2.0 sharing, and the online event becomes in many ways a part of the offline conference.

I thought it’d be interesting to collate some of the online content that I followed during, and just after, the conference. I have almost certainly missed a huge amount of content as I wasn’t actually able to spend a lot of time this week following the online aspects of the conference, although I tried to follow what I could, periodically checking blogs and twitter for url’s of interest, and major points of discussion. If anyone wants to send more links, etc, please put stuff in the comments.

Incidentally it should probably be noted that this online content is not an official “AIC-AM Online Conference”, which would be an entirely plausible approach, but instead is produced by conservators as individuals or small groups supporting each other, however, their efforts have not gone unnoticed and I have seen comments from across the world that indicated that many people were following the conference.

What I haven’t managed to find is a good sound bite for what is meant by the term “Conservation 2.0″. I am beginning to come to a personal understanding of what it means to me, but, I’d like to know how the conference was contextualised within this phrase. So anyone who was present and can answer that.. I’d love to hear it.

Blogging:

there were several bloggers present at this years AIC-AM, and some very interesting posts were made, and I am sure over the coming days more will follow. Ellen Carrlee (http://ellencarrlee.wordpress.com/). Seems to have been the most prolific and wide ranging blogger during AIC-AM, with a wide array of interesting posts and a brilliant style that both reviews the content and the general vibe of event…. including
one of the best synopsis of a poster session I’ve ever read entitled: ‘posters’, the hilarious ‘museum visits’ post that concentrates mostly on the varying draw of the museum shops, including a photographic run down of gifts bought, their review, and cost, then there are a couple of posts about tours: ‘my villa lab tour’, and ‘Getty Center Tour’. Not content with that array of posts Ellen also discusses specific lectures and particularly the Objects Speciality Group sessions; with the summary overview of the ‘OSG talks: May 20th’ which include hilarious antics in the gut skin talk worth checking out (I wont spoil the surprise) and also posting a summary of the ‘OSG Tips Session’. Ellen’s other posts were more generally about the conference such as: ‘AIC 2009 in LA: As If You Were Here’, about some of the side attraction such as ‘Vendors’ who don’t appear to have had much left to vend after Ellen’s raid on all their stalls! Or events such as ‘Awards’, or particular opening talks such as ‘Joyce Hill Stoner on Cons 1.0′. After all this Ellen also managed a post called: ‘what 2.0 Mary’s Using’ which could serve as a perfectly good introduction to Web 2.0 for conservators.

However, Ellen was not the only blogger at the AIC-AM, members of the Emerging Conservation Professionals Network (ECPN): (http://www.emergingconservator.blogspot.com/) also blogged about their experiences of the conference, including a post by Rachel: Live from LA – It’s AIC Annual Meeting! and Laura Brill: After the Issues… Some Random Thoughts…. On another blog Suzy aka: Digital Cellulose: (http://digitalcellulose.blogspot.com/) made several posts about both sessions taking place: Digital surrogates (aka Photoshop for conservation)., LIbrary and Archives collections discussion groups @ BPG and comments on being a blogger/tweeter at AIC- AM: Conservation 2.0 (WiFi not included). and AIC is not ALA…. …but I’m liveblogging it anyway!

Flickr:

the Web 2.0 digital image archive now has a selection of images, and film, from (or at least vaguely related to – at the end of the day lectures aren’t that interesting to photo really are they!) the AIC-AM. I have not found any official AIC images from this years meeting, however, Maria L. Glibert’s Photostream has some great photo’s, and Richard McCoy’s photos are also up on Flickr too.

Microblogging:

seems to have made it’s first impression on the conservation conference world too, with numerous conservators ‘tweeting’ using the hash tag #AIC20, reinstating it’s use from the twiterthon a few weeks ago.

So, does this online experience of a conference remove the need for conferences, to my mind clearly not… and I don’t think anyone seriously suggested it would. What I think it does do however is provide “New Directions” for conferences to take, new avenues to explore, as well as new needs to be met (free wifi throughout the conference building for example). So although we are unlikely to ever get rid of conference to be replaced by Web 2.0, mostly because the direct human contact is missing we can start to envision new ways of ‘doing conferences’ and perhaps most importantly Web 2.0 has shown once again that it’s central preoccupations are with free and open participation and the free and open dissemination of knowledge.