Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Organising the LIANZA 2008 Conference is at a really exciting stage. The buzz about the keynotes, particularly the latest one annouced, has been very encouraging. From the beginning we knew that getting Professor Lessig to come to New Zealand would be a coup and I am pleased to see the conversations that have been generated by the announcement of his visit.

You'll also know that we have been inviting abstracts of proposed presentations - the programme team and helpers will be starting on the first stage of the selection process in a few days. It's therefore far too early to say if any proposals received address the Creative Commons issue - but it's not too late for more abstracts!

So, we have keynote speakers confirmed and fleshing out the programme is underway. Don't worry - we haven't forgotten the social programme. Kim and her team have some great ideas and I am sure this conference will be beyond your expectations on that front too.

The organising committee has been exercising its collective brain for some time over the challenges of needing to generate income from the conference for the contined operation of LIANZA (of course, you will have read the President's column in the latest Library life that referes to this) and innovative ways of making conference content available. I've no answers to share with you today - but we haven't stopped thinking about this one!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

LIANZA must make make his (Lessig)(and others sessions) streamed, live and archived. This should be a given and I am sure it it already planned to do so.

But the idea of using the KAREN network to bring Lessig into some key research institutes is a fantastic idea - convergence of many things - invite key IT people, media, tertiary, and civic leaders (along with librarians of course)

And make the whole shebang free - but sponsored by the LIANZA - and release the outputs under a CC-NZ license.

Or LIANZA could charge - and just look feeble.

I look forward to seeing the innovative ways of making conference content available