Greetings mates, from the British Isles, which might explain why my usual monthly report is a bit late. That and the fact that March was completely monopolized with helping Prof. Nadia Caidi design and implement a public event for the On-Demand Book Service, in collaboration with K-NET. It has been an experience that opened my eyes to the world of First Nations in Canada, and the challenges of information service delivery that bridges geographical and cultural differences. Below you will see the equipment and demos being setup at the Keewaywin First Nation School. It consisted of a computer station, an all-in-one colour laser printer and scanner, a thermo book binder, a DIY book binder. What you don’t see is Daniel Reetz’s DIY book scanner, as well as the Adobe software that was purchased and installed on the machines.
The Reading in First Nations multi-node video-conferencing event was a success. We connected with people in Toronto, Thunder Bay, Sioux Lookout and Keewaywin (a first nations community in keewaytinook Okimakanak), with local facilitators (Nadia, Mark, Daniel & Marta, and myself respectively) to bring out the different perspectives. The introductions and keynote is already up on the website, and the rest of the feed will become available and archived. It was amazing to see all the technical, virtual, physical and communal elements come together, and the experience of working with an inspiring team of individuals, without whom none of it would have been possible.
It was an great opportunity to see a perspective on Canada’s great north, to be away from the constant bombardment of advertising campaigns and going at nature’s pace instead of my calendar’s pace. What was most rewarding were meeting the locals, albeit briefly. The things you learn in a face to face encounter is more than any paper or article can tell you, and it helps you better define and operationalize the scope of future initiatives and research. The most interesting question is how to move forward. I have a few ideas, but first I have Oxford to tackle.
In addition to presenting at the Music Knowledge Conference, I am also hoping to pay the Oxford Internet Institute a visit. It’s an opportunity to meet the specialists who are interested to the two key areas to my own focus; those that try to understand the nature of musical knowledge, and those that try to understand the dissemination of knowledge using ICTs. It is exciting and isolating at the same time to be bridging between different domain interests, and I am very grateful for the opportunity to address this gap during this visit. I hope to make the most of it, meet as many people as I can, and learn as much from them as possible. The hard work is done, the rest is up to serendipity and luck.
