This year the IDCC is bringing a particular focus on how data are changing the world around us,  recognising that the growing volume and complexity of data provides institutions, businesses and communities with a range of exciting opportunities and challenges. The Conference will explore different drivers, the expanding portfolio of tools and data services as well as the diverse skills which are essential for organisations to manage, use and benefit from many valuable data assets. The programme will reflect cultural, technical and economic perspectives and will illustrate the progress made in this arena in recent months.

There will be a programme of workshops on Monday 24 and Thursday 27 February 2014. The main conference programme will run from Tuesday 25 – Wednesday 26 February 2014.

IDCC14 will be organised by the Digital Curation Centre UK in partnership with the University of California Curation Center (UC3) at the California Digital Library and the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI).

The Call for Papers and submission details will be announced later this month.

In addition Alex Ball, Liz Lyon, Manjula Patel and Catherine Pink will make contributions to the extensive programme of pre- and post-conference workshops.

The first has been written by Francine Bennett, data scientist and CEO/co-founder of Mastodon C, an organisation of agile big data specialists who offer the open source technology platform as well as the technical and analytical skills which help companies realise the potential of their data. Before founding Mastodon C, Francine spent a number of years working on big data analysis for search engines, helping them to turn lots of data into even more money.

Francine’s preview posting on the Conference is available on the Digital Curation Centre Web site.

The second preview is by Hans Pfeiffenberger, Head of IT infrastructure at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) and speaker for the Helmholtz Association’s Open Access working groups, where he specialises in access to data. Hans represents Helmholtz’ interest in access to data in various bodies, such as the Priority Initiative “Digital Information” by the Alliance of German Science Organizations and the Alliance for Permanent Access (APA).

Hans’ preview posting on the Conference is available on the Digital Curation Centre Web site.

The first has been written by Herbert Van de Sompel, team leader of the Prototyping Team at the Research Library of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. His team is engaged in research on various aspects of scholarly communication in the digital age. Herbert has played a major role in creating the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH), the Open Archives Initiative Object Reuse & Exchange specifications (OAI-ORE), the OpenURL Framework for Context-Sensitive Services, the SFX linking server, the bX scholarly recommender service, and info URI. Herbert is currently working with his team on the Open Annotation, Memento and ResourceSync projects.

Herbert’s preview posting on the Conference is available on the Digital Curation Centre Web site.

The second preview is by Scott Edmunds of GigaScience/BGI HK. Working with the British Library and DataCite, GigaScience published its first data (the genome of the deadly German outbreak strain of E. coli) in June 2011, and is currently developing an integrated data analysis platform to support  publication of executable papers. After postdoctoral positions on Cancer Molecular Pathology at the WHO International Agency for Research in Cancer in Lyons and Institute of Cell and Molecular Sciences in London (Queen Mary), Scott became senior scientific editor for the BMC Genomics and Bioinformatics journals at BioMed Central.

Scott’s preview posting on the Conference is available on the Digital Curation Centre Web site.

The first has been written by Stephanie Wright who is currently the Data Services Coordinator at the University of Washington Libraries and is responsible for developing and implementing a data services programme to support the research data management needs of UW faculty and students. Her focus is to promote collaboration on data management resource development, service provision and education which she does by building relationships between the Libraries and research data-related entities both on and off campus.

Stephanie’s preview posting on the Conference is available on the Digital Curation Centre Web site.

The second preview is by Patricia Cruse, the founding director of the University of California Curation Center (UC3) at the California Digital Library and who is responsible for all services within UC3. Trisha works collaboratively with the ten UC campuses to develop sustainable strategies for the curation and preservation of digital content that supports the research, teaching, and learning mission of the University. She has developed and oversees several of CDL’s major initiatives, including the NDIIP-funded Web Archiving Service, micro-services, a new and innovative approach to building infrastructure, the Merritt Repository, and the EZID Service.

Trisha’s preview posting on the Conference is available on the Digital Curation Centre Web site.

She will be joined by panel members Francine Bennett, Data Analyst,  Mastodon C,  Louise Corti, Data Steward, UK Data Archive,  Scott Edmunds, Data Publisher, Gigascience and  Stephanie Wright, Data Librarian, University of Washington Libraries.

Please note that the current registration fee will increase from Tuesday 11 December 2012,  so remember to register now.

Registration for the workshops and main conference is still open, so don’t forget to register now to take advantage of the current registration fees and to book for the workshops of your choice. Please note, some are limited in terms of delegate numbers.

Finally the DCC would like to encourage all delegates, speakers, authors, poster and demo presenters to share their attendance via Lanyrd and of course to tweet using the conference hashtag #idcc13

The workshops will cover a range of different areas including:
• Building capacity and capability for Global Data Science
• Data Management Planning
• The use and reuse of digital data in the Humanities
• Data publishing, peer review and repository accreditation
• Designing Data Management Training Resources
• Sustainability and the APARSEN Network of Excellence

The majority of the workshops will be free of charge and include refreshments and lunch for all attendees. Places may be limited due to room capacities so book now to avoid disappointment.

Registration for both the conference and the workshops can be completed using the same registration form.

Further details about the workshops can be found on the IDCC13 Workshops page which will be updated regularly as more information is made available.

Details of speakers, the conference programme and venue, conference aims and pre- and post-conference workshops are available in a news feature on the UKOLN Web site.