Yesterday, Culturenet Cymru played host to the latest RunCoCo workshop, at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth (27 July 2010). We welcomed about 30 delegates to the excellent conference facilities of the National Library. As the dust settles we are preparing to publish the programme, the presenters’ slides, and some audio/video from the day which focussed on engaging communities either online or face-to-face. In the meantime here is something of a photo-story from the day.

I’m the manager of RunCoCo (based at the University of Oxford) and I arrived in Aberystwyth on the day before the workshop, to help the Culturenet Cymru team set up.

After an afternoon spent printing, stuffing delegate packs and making last minute arrangements I chilled-out with a short walk on the coast path above Borth, just North of Aberystwyth.

With so many travelling to join us in Aberystwyth we held a friendly evening social before the workshop.

The weather closed-in as we made our way to the National Library on the morning of the workshop, and the grey did not lift from the beautiful town of Aberystwyth. The lovely interior of the Library made up for that gloom.

Dafydd Tudur, manager of Culturenet Cymru, welcomed everyone to the National Library, and the tone for the day was set perfectly by Brian Teeman, (brian.teeman.net and c0-founder of the Joomla open source online content management system).

Dafydd presented about the National Library’s many years involvement in community contributed digitisation projects and the agenda of digital inclusion from the Welsh Assembly Government. Tea and coffee followed with the chance for the delegates to network.

Presentations from Jenna Bailey, University of Sussex and Gethin Matthews, Cardiff University, described real problems their JISC-funded community collection projects are facing now, and considerered how they have tried to overcome them. These included the risk that a community collection might receive illegal material or the disclosure of illegal activities from potential contributors to the Mass Observation Communities Online (MOCO) project, (website just launched), and the difficulties in attracting contributors to a submissions day for the Welsh Voices of the Great War Online project, (website also just launched).

Lunch in the Pen Dinas café in the National Library of Wales – which I’m afraid I failed to enjoy. I could not do justice to the amazing ham in mustard sauce and the towering cheesecake – nerves about my impending session that afternoon. However the conversation was fascinating, my first chance to really engage – a break from sorting out the speakers and the day. So many different views and backgrounds represented – the delegates coming from across the UK, from local authorities, from Higher Education, the voluntary sector and national institutions, as well as the private consultancies which support all of those.

For the afternoon’s presentations we moved from the Drwm to the Council Chamber and the President’s Room with spectacular views over the town and and the sea of Cardigan Bay.

Sioned Rees-Jones gave us a preview of the People’s Collection Wales website, which launches next week at the National Eisteddfod. The website is visually stunning, a colourful feast – which the project hopes to match with content contributed by institutions and communities from across Wales and a range of facilities and services (like digital scrapbooks) for the public to re-use and re-arrange the display, e.g. for ramblers plotting a route or for teachers to show their pupils. There is a fascinating video currently available from the beta site where you can hear some of Wales’ most familiar faces talk about the People’s Collection Wales.

The afternoon continued with discussion sessions, punctuated by the chance for tea and cakes and further networking, and ended with a Q&A session with all the speakers, and a generous gift of a book for the delegates from the hosts, the National Library of Wales.

I’ll leave you with the enigmatic titles for the discussion sessions, we will post later in more detail about these:

• Digital storytelling led by Mog (The George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling, University of Glamorgan, a partner in the Welsh Assembly Government’s Communities 2.0 programme)
• Stump the geeks led by Paul McCann (Culturenet Cymru) and Brian Teeman (brian.teeman.net)
• Getting your message out there led by Alun Edwards (RunCoCo, University of Oxford)

Thanks to everyone who engaged so whole-heartedly in the day!