*Apologies for cross posting*

Free event on managing and preserving digital data, SPRUCE Mashup London, 18th-20th September

The JISC funded SPRUCE Project cordially invites you to attend a free event focused on managing and preserving digital collections. Would you like to learn about working with digital content, meet colleagues in a similar position to you, and get hands on in tackling your digital challenges with help from the experts? If so, sign up for a SPRUCE Mashup.

If you’re a practitioner working with digital materials, bring some of your digital content along to one of our practical SPRUCE Mashups. We’ll work with you to capture your challenges and requirements and then match you up with the expertise you need to solve them. We’ll also take you through the process of articulating your funding needs and making the business case to resource your work effectively, whether its securing external funding, or convincing your managers of the importance of all things digital.

This is what practitioners from our previous events said:

• Great to have people working on real life practical solutions to digital preservation problems at the event, rather than just talking about it and then not doing anything!
• I am not alone! There is a community out there and while I understood this, the Mashup opened the door to approaching others with my problems
• Really found it useful to speak to others involved in similar work, finding out about different tools, and experiences.
• This is such a good idea - I found tools I did not know existed and benefitted from others' expertise.
• I was quite nervous about coming - never done anything like this before, and a total non-techie! But atmosphere was relaxed and friendly, and found it really helpful

If you’re a developer working with digital repositories, data management or digital preservation (or would like to gain experience in these areas), a SPRUCE Mashup is the perfect chance to take on some new challenges, learn from colleagues and experience the freedom of really agile development. We’ll line up some concrete technical challenges for you, and provide a supportive and fun environment in which to take them on.

This is what developers from our previous events said:

• It felt very productive. Lots of development. Every solution that was developed was enlightening and showed potential for future use.
• I loved working hands-on with the practitioners! (I was a little worried that the idea of getting devs and practitioners to work side-by-side was optimistic/idealistic, but I think the reality worked out amazingly well!) 
• The fact that every single developer created a useful and re-usable tool
• Putting 30 people into a room, some with problems and some who can write solutions is extremely eye opening. I've learnt that free from restrictions on infrastructure and process at point of idea conception and prototyping can solve a varied number of non-trivial problems quickly

Attendees at our Mashups even have the opportunity to bid for funding that they can use to fully exploit, develop and embed the best results from the Mashups at their own institutions. We’ve already awarded £20k of funding following our last event in Glasgow!

SPRUCE Mashups are free to attend (including accommodation, food and drink) and last for the best part of 3 days. Our next event will be held in London on September 18^th – 20^th. Register here:

http://sprucelondon.eventbrite.co.uk/

See this link for more information on SPRUCE Mashups, what they involve, who they are suitable for and what you can get out of them:

http://wiki.opf-labs.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=13041673

SPRUCE is a JISC funded partnership, led by the University of Leeds, with expertise from the Digital Preservation Coalition, the Open Planets Foundation, the British Library and the London School of Economics.

Paul Wheatley

___________

SPRUCE Project Manager

The University of Leeds

http://wiki.opf-labs.org/display/SPR

Open Planets Foundation

http://openplanetsfoundation.org/

Please support this Stack Exchange proposal for a dedicated Digital Preservation Q and A site:

http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/39787/digital-preservation?referrer=ikyDT2iSDeEl8-Pye4BdZw2