The 2nd Annual ECHOES meeting in Poznań buzzed with activity and excitement for the week 16th-20th March with a packed agenda for project members. Days 1-2 consisted of ECHOES internal meetings to present and discuss the project progress and results and to plan for the upcoming months. On Day 3, the morning involved the sister projects and the afternoon opened up ECHOES to all stakeholders at a Public Event. Day 4 involved the Advisory Boards and Sister projects with Day 5 rounding up the week with internal project meetings.
A full programme is available here.
Days 1-2: ECHOES Internal Working Days
Monday 16th March started with a Steering Committee meeting in the morning with the first gathering for all the ECHOES project members in the afternoon which focussed on project management and administration. The General Assembly followed for two hours from 16:30-18:30 which was attended by delegates from each partner and summarised the key achievements and decisions and programme of action for the coming year.
Aleksandra Nowak (PCSS) welcomes ECHOES to Poznan
Xavier Rodier briefs members on the latest achievements
Audience at the opening session
Tuesday continued with meetings for ECHOES members where a series of sessions were each devoted to specific key topics such as the Vertical Applications, the Knowledge base, the Cloud Assessment Framework and Impact Model. After a final session where the participants updated the Mission, Vision, and Value Proposition, everyone enjoyed a dinner together and relaxed after an intense day of activity.
Paolo Cignoni talks about the ECHOES Vertical Applications
Tour of the Poznan Super Computer Centre during the lunch break
Sebastiaan ter Burg (Europeana) presents the Impact Model
Day 3: Opening up ECHOES
Wednesday morning was open not just to ECHOES members but also the Sister Projects, the Independent board and the European Commission. These sessions, which were held in the National Museum, started with a welcome from Xavier Rodier, Katarzyna Waletko (Polish Ministry of Culture) and Rickard Bucksch from the Commission, followed by a presentation by Rémi Peticol (FSP) and Claudio Prandoni (ARIADNE RI) of the ECHOES Consultation results and next steps for community-building. The next session was about the ECCCH ecosystem which aims to connect cultural heritage institutions (museums, archives, libraries etc.), researchers, and professionals from across the EU, enabling them to share data, develop advanced tools, and collaborate on the creation of a “Digital Commons”. The presentation by Laure Barbot (DARIAH) and Areti Damala (CNRS) focused on the Integration Framework for all the tools, services and data that under currently under development for the Cloud by ECHOES, the Sister projects and the smaller targeted initiatives of the Cascading Grants programme and how this will support the development and sustainability of this ecosystem. They presented the new booklet “How to be part of the Cultural Heritage Cloud?” which outlines the context in which the ECHOES project proposes its Cloud Architecture, its Data Model, and its Integration Framework, and explains how institutions, projects, and stakeholders can contribute to building the Cultural Heritage Cloud by integrating their resources into this emerging European digital commons.
The National Museum, Poznań
Rickard Bucksch welcomes ECHOES members to the National Museum
Laure Barbot and Areti Damala present the integration aspects of the ECCCH Infrastructure
There were two further sessions before lunch. Joanna Kowalska (PCSS) and Dimitris Kotzinos (CNRS) presented the most recent technical developments according to the recently published interoperability and integration guidelines and then Philippe Vendrix (CNRS) and Vania Virgili (E-RIHS) concluded the morning by looking at the governance and sustainability arising from WP10 and the WP11 dedicated to cost-benefit analysis and value-chain workshop in Antwerp.
The Public Event in the afternoon was attended by several Polish stakeholders (as well as people involved in ECHOES) who acknowledged the importance of the Cultural Heritage Cloud and their role as future users. It kicked off with a series of short speeches from the hosts, the Commission and key project executives. Tomasz PARKOŁA (PCSS) then gave the keynote speech about the PIAST AI Factory and its offer for cultural heritage sector. This was followed by a series of short presentations about ECHOES and the Cultural Heritage Cloud.
Public event audience
Welcome speeches
Xavier Rodier presents ECHOES and the Cultural Heritage Cloud
After the ECHOES overview, Charlotte Gallini (FSP) explained how the survey was the first step in mapping the Cultural Heritage community for the ECHOES Consultation process. Dimitrios Kotzinos (CNRS-CYU) and Joanna Kowalska (PCSS) then presented some real use cases to illustrate how this was being implemented and Lena Czech (CNRS) rounded up the session with a presentation on multilevel governance and sustainability.
Following the coffee break, Mailane Sampaio (CNRS), introduced the Sister projects starting with AUTOMATA, EXCALIBUR, UNICHE, COLOURS, INFINITY and PlaceMUS XR in the first panel. The discussion here was about the tools that these projects are developing and the communities they were targeting. All the projects emphasised the means they are using to reach their communities such as key partners in the Consortium, training provision, co-design workshops, test cases and pilots. A key observation from Angelina Broukou of UNICHE was that “Adoption (of tools) doesn’t just come from innovation, it comes from relevance and ease of use”.
The second panel consisted of HERITALISE, MusicSphere, TEXTaiLES, ECHOLOT and StratiGraph. The conversation here was about integration and collaboration with regard to both tangible and intangible heritage, the latter sometimes being overlooked. For example, HERITALISE will integrate intangible heritage such as historical customs and recordings with the associated tangible objects and ECHOLOT has two case studies dealing with contemporary culture such as digital based and performance art which is complex to record. The projects were also asked how they were going to interact with each other and the Cultural Heritage Cloud. HERITALISE are interested in the TEXTaiLES technology for clothing items (old fishing industry) whilst TEXTaiLES think the robotic arm developed in AUTOMATA could be used for digitising their artefacts – cross-fertilisation has already started! In concluding the panel discussions, Mailane reminded everyone that all the tools being developed by the Sister projects can be viewed on this dedicated webpage.
Charlotte Gallini presents the Consultation Survey
The first panel of Sister projects
The second Sister projects panel
Next on the agenda was the Joint Statement from the Europeana Initiative and the ECHOES project. Sofie Taes hosted the discussion about the common European data space for cultural heritage and the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage. In her introduction, she pointed out how the end users of digitised cultural heritage has expanded into areas such as research, education, tourism, creative practices and arts following Europe’s investment in this sector. Both initiatives are moving into these spheres, are interested in preserving cultural heritage and want to establish robust infrastructures. These are the commonalities but what are they about and who are the key stakeholders? What is the added value of having both? Harry Verwayen and Xavier Rodier explained that:
- The data space in a nutshell is a public infrastructure set up to access, share, reuse high quality, multi-lingual heritage data.
- Europeana has 61 million datasets. The added value is the human dimension – the training and stewardship of the data.
- It provides services to access metadata that is linked to the data.
- The Cloud and the Data Space for CH seem compatible in technological terms and will make every effort to be aligned.
- The Cloud will use the concept of digital twins.
- The Cloud is for researchers and CH professionals whereas the data space provides CH data reuse for educators, creatives and citizens.
- With the tools and community collaboration, new knowledge will be created.
Through collaboration, the added value will be created through the communities. Data found through the data space can be used to enhance the Digital Twins on the Cloud that have been created using its data and tools.
Valentine Charles and Rémi Petitcol then joined the discussion on the stage to answer the question: What are the next steps? This covered the topics of
shared policies and standards, data management and interoperability, capacity building and skills, governance, collaboration and joint advocacy. The key message was the need for collaboration, interoperability and integration.
The penultimate presentation was a real life use case based on St. John Lampadistis Monastery, Cyprus by Kirstin Arnold (Chair of the Europeana Aggregator’s Forum) and Nikolas Bakirtzis (Cyprus Institute) which illustrates how an end user can use the data space and the Cloud for her research work.
Following this, Xavier Rodier and Harry Verwayen then signed the Joint Statement for ECHOES and Europeana.
The Public Event finished with a Keynote Speech from Katharina FREISE (EHRI) on the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure and opportunities for cooperation with the Cultural Heritage Cloud followed by a social gathering on the terrace for all the attendees.
Watch the recording of the Public Event.
Rémi Petitcol and Valentine Charles on stage discussing the next steps
Kirstin Arnold and Nikolas Bakirtzis present the St. John Lampadistis Monastery, Cyprus use case
Xavier Rodier and Harry Verwayen sign the Joint Statement
Days 4-5: Working with the Advisory Boards and the Integration Task Force
On Thursday PCSS hosted the Coordinators’ Day organised by the REA for the coordinators of the sister projects. At the same time, parallel sessions for the Independent Boards (the Policy Advisory Board, the Scientific Committee, and the Technical Assessment Committee) provided an opportunity for them to meet for the first time and to begin discussions in preparation for sharing their input on the project.
The afternoon session was the first ECHOES Integration Task Force (EITF) meeting held on site, open to all sister projects and ECHOES members, to introduce the Knowledge Base, the Heritage Digital Twin Ontology (HDTO) and ECHOES Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructure. More importantly, the second half engaged the participants in three parallel hands on sessions to facilitate and refine the integration process across the entire ECCCH ecosystem.
This work continued on Friday morning where the focus turned to the scheduling and timetable for the next period of work before everyone departed for home after lunch.
The ECHOES and Data Space meeting
Sally Chambers introduces the ECHOES Integration Framework
Joanna Kowalska provides an update on the Cloud architecture
Conclusion
The Event was a great success, demonstrating that collaboration from various cultural heritage domains along with technical expertise, managed through an appropriate structure of Boards and Committees to oversee policy and technical aspects is bringing the vision of the European Cultural Heritage Cloud into reality. Working in close cooperation with the Sister projects is already resulting in cross-fertilisation whilst the Joint Statement ensures the coherent development of both the European data space for Cultural Heritage and the Cloud for the benefit of European cultural heritage. Good progress has been made and we can look forward to the announcement of further developments over the next year.
ECHOES would like to thank to PCSS for their excellent organisation of event and their wonderful hospitality.
