Mr. Patrick Le Boeuf, Conservateur, DCO/Département des arts du spectacle Bibliothèque nationale de France

From 1999 to 2006, Patrick Le Boeuf worked in the Department for standardisation of the National Library of France. In that position, he specialised in conceptual modelling, which led him to chair the IFLA FRBR Review Group from 2002 to 2005. He still (as of 2007) co-chairs with Martin Doerr (ICS-FORTH, Greece) the International Working Group on FRBR/CIDOC CRM Harmonisation.
Since 2006 he has been in charge of archival collections at the National Library of France's Department for performing arts (most notably the Louis Jouvet collection and the Edward Gordon Craig collection).

Dr. Toby Burrows, Digital Services Director, ARC Network for Early European Research, University of Western Australia

Toby Burrows is Digital Services Director for the ARC Network for Early European Research, and has extensive experience in developing Web portals for humanities researchers, including such services as the Western Australian Cultural Heritage Portal and the Guide to Australian Literary Manuscripts. He also manages the Scholars’ Centre in the University of Western Australia. His research fields include medieval studies and library and information science.

Links:

http://www.neer.arts.uwa.edu.au/

http://confluence.arts.uwa.edu.au/

Mr. Eero Hyvonen, Professor, Helsinki University of Technology, University of Helsinki, and HIIT, Laboratory of Media Technology, Semantic Computing Research Group

Eero Hyvönen (http://www.tkk.fi/~eahyvone/) is a professor of semantic media technology at the Helsinki University of Technology, Laboratory of Media Technology, and a docent of computer science at the University of Helsinki, Department of Computer Science. He directs the Semantic Computing Research Group SeCo (http://www.seco.tkk.fi/) specializing, e.g., on the Semantic Web.
His current research projects include the "Finnish National Ontology Project (FinnONTO), 2003-2007" (http://www.seco.tkk.fi/projects/finnonto/) aiming at developing the basis for a semantic web infrastructure in Finland. This infrastructure includes development of large core Finnish ontologies, metadata schemas, and ontology services for their cost-effective usage on the web using Web 2.0 technologies. The infrastructure is being tested and demonstrated in various pilot applications for the national semantic web. A major theme in these systems is to facilitate distributed collaborative content creation on the web based on shared ontologies and ontology services.
SeCo group has developed, e.g., the internationally awarded semantic portal MuseumFinland (http://www.museosuomi.fi), a web publication channel for museums to publish their collections on the semantic web. This system is being developed further into the cross-cultural CultureSampo portal (http://www.kulttuurisampo.fi) for different kind of cultural content providers. In the eHealth domain, the national HealthyFinland portal (TerveSuomi.fi) for publishing health promotion information, produced by different national health organizations, is being implemented (http://www.tervesuomi.fi). In the same vein, a semantic eLearning portal Opintie is under construction.

http://www.seco.hut.fi/

Mrs Kate Fernie, ICT Adviser EU Projects, Policy & Advocacy Team, The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA)

 Mr. Eetu Mäkelä, Researher, TKK and UH, Semantic Computing Research Group

Eetu Mäkelä is a researcher and post-graduade student at the Semantic Computing Research Group at TKK, where he has been working since 2003. His past and current work has been on intelligent querying and presentation interfaces for the Semantic Web, including the award-winning virtual museum exhibition MuseumFinland. He has published several articles in the premier semantic web conference series ISWC, one of which was nominated for the best paper of the conference.

Mr.  Daniel Olmedilla, Researcher, Learning Lab Lower Saxony [L3S] Research Center , Leibniz University of Hannover, Member of REWERSE participant Hannover, Involvement in REWERSE packages I2

Mr. Jacco van Ossenbruggen, senior researcher with the Semantic Media Interfaces group at the Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica (CWI) in Amsterdam

Jacco van Ossenbruggen is a senior researcher with the Semantic Media Interfaces group at CWI, the Dutch national research center for mathematics and computer science in Amsterdam. His research interests include semantic web interfaces, multimedia on the Semantic Web and the automatic generation of user-tailored hypermedia presentations (Cuypers).  He is the co-founder of the W3C Multimedia Semantics Incubator Group, and was a member of the W3C Working Group that developed the SMIL 1.0 and 2.0 Recommendations. Jacco obtained a PhD in computer science from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in 2001.

http://www.cwi.nl/

Mr. Jon Pratty, Editor, 24 Hour Museum (UK)

Jon Pratty is the Editor of Britain's National Virtual Museum, the 24 Hour Museum. Jon has a degree in Fine Art and has worked in the museum and gallery sector for twenty years. He also worked in retail and heritage design consultancy in London as a marketing and communications specialist.

After consultancy Jon trained as a journalist and established himself as one of the principal feature and news writers for Connected, the technology section of the Daily Telegraph. Jon has also written features and news about technology, the net and culture for the Sunday Times.

Jon joined the 24 Hour Museum in January, 2001, and has been responsible for creative and editorial direction of all the content on the site. This included developing an editorial strategy, building a national student writer network, evolving and devising an editorial policy that fulfils a government funding remit, as well as attracting lots of readers - not always quite the same thing.

In 2003 Jon devised with SSL Ltd the UK's first dedicated museum and gallery news feed service via the 24 Hour Museum, and in 2004 launched the Culture Online-funded City Heritage Guides. Content for the sites comes from a MLA-funded network of student arts writers.

Visitor statistics to the site have doubled every year for the last three years - currently reaching one million visitor sessions per month. 24 Hour Museum wins awards regularly, including the BT New Statesman new media award in 2002 and 2005, and a prestigious Best of the Web award at Museums and the Web 2003 in North Carolina.

http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/

Mr. Anton Pärn, Under-secretary (cultural heritage), Estonian Ministry of Culture

Anton Pärn is since 2002 Under-secretary of the Ministry of Culture, his area of responsibility is cultural heritage, including direction and co-ordination of heritage protection activities, museums and public libraries, direction of state programmes for schools in manor houses and churches and working out legislation on the import and export of objects of cultural value and its implementation.

Anton Pärn has MA in archaeology (University of Tartu). He has previously worked in National Heritage Board, 1986– 2001 area of responsibility – archaeology, 1993-2001 Deputy Director General of the National Heritage Board – responsible for the direction of conservation activities and state supervision of monuments in the counties of Estonia.

His area of research is urban archaeology in Estonia during the Middle Ages, including defence buildings, dwelling houses, town and hinterland, road and communication systems.

http://www.kul.ee

Mrs. Mariann Raisma, Assistant director in development, Estonian History Museum

http://www.eam.ee

Mr. Patrik Svensson, Director of HUMlab at Umeå University (Sweden)

Patrik Svensson has a Ph.D. in linguistics (from 1998) and since 2000, he has been the Director of HUMlab at Umeå University in Sweden. HUMlab is a highly ranked research and development milieu for culture and technology.  Dr. Svensson is also one of the executive directors for the Wallenberg Global Learning Network II which supports innovative learning and technology collaborative projects between Stanford University and Swedish universities. Over the years Dr. Svensson has served as the project manager for a number of externally financed projects, some of which have involved large and diverse project groups. The focus of these projects has mainly been on digital culture, online language, e-learning and humanities-based approaches to ICT. Currently he is the project manager of QVIZ (IST-FP6) and of a large-scale initiative to create a center of excellence for digital humanities at Umeå University. Between 2001 and 2005, Dr. Svensson was the coordinator for a large national network for IT and language learning (funded by several Swedish national agencies) involving more than 20 universities and university colleges. His own research focuses on the intersection of the humanities and information technology, language education in mediated environments, and representation in virtual spaces. He has been published in several international books (e.g. in Brenda Laurel’s Design Research, MIT Press, 2003). In 2006 he published an edited book on language education and information technology, and he is currently finishing a monograph on the same topic for a Swedish publisher. He is also working on a large article on the field of digital humanities.
 
Links:
 
Personal website: http://www.humlab.umu.se/patrik
Personal blog: http://blog.humlab.umu.se/patrik

Mrs. Emma Tonkin, Interoperability Focus Officer, UKOLN

Emma Tonkin is an Interoperability Focus Officer working for UKOLN at the University of Bath. She is working towards a PhD at the University of Bristol, in the area of wearable and ubiquitous computing. Her current project is the IEMSR, a metadata schema registry designed to support registration, use and reuse of DC and LOM metadata schemas and profiles. She serves as co-moderator of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative's Schema Registry community, and as a member of the DCMI advisory board. As her background is in human-computer interaction, her major interest is in
developing an understanding of user behaviour and the factors that influence the uptake and use of these technologies.

 Mr. Kim Viljanen, Researcher, TKK and UH, Semantic Computing Research Group