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Not really, it's a geek meetup... But I made you look, right? Sorry for tricking you like that, but I wanted to make sure non-geeks saw this because I'd love some feisty sceptics to show up and challenge people to make all these geeky acronyms work in the real museum world. A very informal meetup to discuss 'Linking museums: machine-readable data in cultural heritage' is happening next Wednesday. I'm hoping for a good mix of people with different levels of experience and different perspectives on the issue of publishing data that can be re-used outside the institution that created it. The basic details are: July 7, 2010, Shooting Star pub, London. 7:30 - 10pm-ish. http://museum-api.pbworks.com/July-2010-meetup I know EVA London and THATCamp London are on that week, and I'd love to invite attendees from those and other geek or cultural heritage events, so please do pass this on to others who may be interested. If you would like to come but can't get down to that London, please feel free to send me your questions and comments (or beer money). In more detail... Why? I'm trying to cut through the chicken and egg problem - as a museum technologist, I can work towards getting machine-readable data available, but I'm not sure which formats and what data would be most useful for developers who might use it. Without a critical mass of take-up for any one type, the benefits of any one data source are more limited for developers. But museums seem to want a sense of where the critical mass is going to be so they can build for that. How do we cut through this and come up with a sensible roadmap? Who? You! If you're interested in using museum data in mashups but find it difficult to get started or find the data available isn't easily usable; if you have data you want to publish; if you work in a museum and have a data publication problem you'd like help in solving; if you are a cheerleader for your favourite acronym... Put another way, this event is for you if you're interested in publishing and sharing data about their museums and collections through technologies such as linked data and microformats. It'll be pretty informal! I'm not sure how much we can get done but it'd be nice to put faces to names, and maybe start some discussions around the various problems that could be solved and tools that could be created with machine-readable data in cultural heritage. Cheers, Mia For updates on all Science Museum news and events sign up to our free e-newsletter at www.sciencemuseum.org.uk This e-mail and attachments are intended for the named addressee only and are confidential. If you have received this e-mail in error please notify the sender immediately, delete the message from your computer system and destroy any copies. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender and may not reflect the views of the National Museum of Science & Industry. This email has been scanned for all viruses by the MessageLabs Email Security System. **************************************************************** For mcg information visit the mcg website at http://museumscomputergroup.org.uk/ To manage your subscription to this email list visit http://museumscomputergroup.org.uk/email-list/ ****************************************************************