Lukas Hechenblaickner works as an archivist at an international organization based in Vienna. He attended the iPRES 2024 Conference with support from the DPC Career Development Fund, which is funded by DPC Supporters.
This year, I was one of the lucky recipients of the DPC’s career development fund grant that allowed me to attend iPRES2024 in the beautiful city of Ghent (and Antwerp). It was an exciting opportunity and rewarding experience for many reasons!
Coming from a professional background and training as a historian-archivist, digital preservation is a field I have only gradually been exploring in recent years. It has, however, become increasingly important for my position as an archivist at an international organization which is in the process of transitioning from a paper-based to digital filing system (or has, in theory, already completed this transition – but tell that to the colleagues who are still transferring trolleys full of paper files to the archives!).
In my role as the admin of our archives management system (Axiell Collections), I have been closely involved in our endeavors to procure a digital archives system and working on a list of requirements with my colleagues. As for those of us working in large, bureaucratic organizations, we are well aware that these projects take ample amounts of time, and raising awareness of their crucial importance within management is easier said than done. But I digress.
In the process of working on these requirements with my colleagues, who are significantly more knowledgeable than I am, I realize that my “Novice to Know-How: Digital Preservation Skills for Beginners” certificate was certainly very useful to have, but in actuality only the first step into the wider world of digital preservation.
With my limited IT-competencies and my learning-by-doing approach - when it comes to all tasks digital - the idea of participating at the iPRES conference, where the global experts on the topic meet to exchange ideas, seemed a bit daunting at first, and it took some encouragement from my supervisors to go ahead and apply for the grant, which I eventually was lucky enough to receive.
The colleagues from the DPC did an excellent job in organizing my stay in Ghent. Along with some of the other participants, I was staying at a hotel close to a major public transport junction, which made getting to and from the venue perfectly straightforward.
And speaking of the venue itself, it was quite simply impressive! The Bijloke, where a beautiful historic building complex has been transformed into a modern conference center, was an excellent location to host such a large gathering with many concurring events and presentations, providing a charming historical background for a conference discussing present and future digital trends. Listening to the conference keynotes in an infirmary-turned-concert-hall below a 13th century roof truss was truly a unique experience, so was following lightning talks and paper presentations while sitting on the benches of a 19th century anatomical theater and auditorium.
But what left an even bigger impression was the thoroughly welcoming atmosphere and genuine diversity and inclusiveness of the entire conference. Despite not being at all what one could call an extrovert, I found joining in on conversations and exchanging friendly introductions to be an easy and natural endeavor. I could tell that the people at this conference were, without exception, passionate about their profession and eager to share and discuss the nature of their work, and this enthusiasm was very encouraging.
This enthusiasm was certainly needed to keep up with the schedule of the conference, for which the Floq-app proved to be an invaluable companion. The many interesting sessions often ran concurrently, and it was difficult to decide which ones to attend. And despite usually not being a coffee drinker myself, I did appreciate the breaks to “refuel”, as the nine-to-five schedule was quite demanding, and the friendly atmosphere of the social events that followed the regular program did help to keep up my spirits until late in the evening (only on the last day did a more veteran attendee advise me that “the key is deciding which sessions to skip” - but I found that almost impossible to do as a first-time attendee).
The variety of topics covered in the different sessions was considerable. Reminiscing about it more than a month later, I am having a difficult time picking one as outstanding compared to the rest. But in line with what I said above, it is indeed this sense of a community of enthusiastic, competent, and all-round delightful individuals that left me with the biggest impression. As many of the talks and especially the award ceremony and its winners showed, this digital preservation community does not limit its work to a narrow sphere of information technology and bureaucracy, but in many cases looks to apply its expertise to global matters of concern, to preserve the cultural legacy of indigenous communities and identities under threat of vanishing.
Attending iPRES2024 provided me with the chance to meet this wonderful Digital Preservation community and engage in lively discussions and fruitful conversations and networking opportunities, for which I am very grateful. I can hardly recount how many hands I shook and how many incredible people I was introduced to, but I am certain that, should I have the opportunity to attend future iPRES conferences, there will be many pleasant reunions and new acquaintances to be made!
Acknowledgements
The Career Development Fund is sponsored by the DPC’s Supporters who recognize the benefit and seek to support a connected and trained digital preservation workforce. We gratefully acknowledge their financial support to this programme and ask applicants to acknowledge that support in any communications that result. At the time of writing, the Career Development Fund is supported by Arkivum, Artefactual Systems Inc., boxxe, Cerabyte, Evolved Binary, Ex Libris, Iron Mountain, Libnova, Max Communications, Preservica and Simon P Wilson. A full list of supporters is online here.