Digital Strategies for Heritage (DISH)

Digital Strategies for Heritage (DISH) is a bi-annual international conference on digital heritage and the strategies that heritage institutions can follow. Triggered by changes in society, heritage organisations face many challenges and need to make strategic decisions about their activities and services. The key motivators for the conference are inspiration, knowledge, skills and networking.

What is DISH 2011?

Digital Strategies for Heritage (DISH) is the bi-annual international conference on digital heritage and the strategies that heritage institutions can follow. Triggered by changes in society, heritage organisations face many challenges and need to make strategic decisions about their activities and services. The key motivators for the conference are inspiration, knowledge, skills and networking.

Who will be attending DISH 2011?

The conference welcomes all who make or influence decisions touching on the field of cultural heritage (directors and managers of heritage institutions, policy-makers, innovators and researchers). DISH enables participants to learn more about strategic decisions on all aspects of digital heritage, as well as about how their fellow participants are coping with strategy.

The four main themes of the conference will be:

• Business for heritage
  A business-like approach of heritage is becoming more crucial, as becoming a cultural entrepreneur is now a key trait for institutions. This theme offers inspiration and tools to management to professionalise their entrepreneurial skills. We all want to create value, but how?
• Crowdsourcing and co-creation
  Society is becoming ever more influential in the creation of institutional policy and the different products and services that institutions deliver. Knowledge management will soon be as important as collection management. How do you manage the crowd in a networked society?
• Institutional change
  Rapid digitisation is the defining trend in today’s society. The public expects institutions to be as active on the Internet as they are. How do you equip yourself for new tasks that demand new functions in your organisation, new competencies of your staff, different use of the means at your disposal and a shift in activities from the physical to the digital domain? How can institutions successfully cope with these changes?
• Building a new public space
  Institutions often perceive a friction between policy-driven and user-driven strategies. Strategies should be user-driven, but are often policy-driven. The complex relationship between policy development on the European and national levels and the digital strategies of individual institutions will be a key topic at DISH2011. The European policy push is important, but does it serve the best interests of the heritage institutions?