The innovative museum: creating a brighter future

The annual UKMW conferences, convened by the Museums Computer Group, have long been the place for high quality presentations and discussions on the matters that are shaping museums online today. As the UK heritage sector continues to live through difficult times, this year's conference is an opportunity to reflect on the new landscape museums are now in, learn from inspiring speakers and network with your peers. As the MCG's Spring Meeting in Brighton showed, a renewed emphasis on partnerships inside and outside the sector will continue to challenge museums to be more flexible in their working practices.  Sharing the stories of our successes and learning to discuss failures constructively is more important than ever before.

The conference will frame solutions for the issues affecting the museum sector, and feature positive case studies with actionable lessons.  We've got an exciting keynote speaker, and the conference will also include sessions on getting projects right from the start, redefining success and designing for the future.

By remaining in touch with the leading edge of research, the politics of policy, as well as the day-to-day realities of professional work, UKMW continues to appeal to practitioners and academics, technologists and curators, policy makers and the commercial sector – with over 100 delegates from across the sector attending each year. And the event has built a reputation for the calibre of its speakers, the affordability and accessibility of its content, as well as the focus of its debate.

More information about the event can be found on the Museums Computer group website.  Please note, we cannot accept payment on the day of the conference.  If you would like to attend, please ensure you register in advance.  Formal registration will close at the end of the day on 24 November.  It is still possible to register after this date but please ensure that you bring your eventbrite confirmation email with you to guarantee entry to the conference.

Speakers include:

• Peter Pavement, Surface Impression and Marc Steene, Pallant House
  Gallery: Intensive collaboration between museum, developer and
  participants
• Claire Ross, UCL and Tom Grinsted, IWM: Cultural Collaborative
  Exchange: Collections, Social Interpretation, Partnerships and Project
  Management
• Jane Finnis, Culture24: Let’s Get Real: How to Evaluate Online
  Success’ – presentation of key findings and recommendations from
  recent research.
• Alex Bromley, Rhiannon Looseley and Matthew Rose, Museum of London:
  Integrating collections data to build sustainable online resources
  * Luke Smith and Giv Parveneh, IWM: Lives of the Great War: Building
  First World War life stories across archives through crowdsourcing
• Seth van Hooland and Max De Wilde, Université Libre de Bruxelles
  Information and Communication Science Department, Ruben Verborgh and
  Rik Van de Walle, Ghent University, IBBT, ELIS – Multimedia Lab,
  Johannes Hercher, Hasso-Plattner-Institute, University of Potsdam:
  Bringing your collection into the Linked Data cloud: how to use Google
  Refine to get more out of your metadata
• Joe Padfield, National Gallery: Presenting and Referencing High
  Resolution Images on the Web
• Jon Pratty, Arts Council England: New ACE funding offers and
  progress of the NESTA R&D work
• and our session chairs, Ross Parry, Carolyn Royston, Mia Ridge.