Come for the Papers;
Stay for the People
William Kilbride,
Executive Director of the Digital Preservation Coalition
General Chair of iPres 2022
It’s wonderful to be asked back to contribute to the ‘WhyPres?’ blog. As General Chair in 2022, I am genuinely proud of what we did last year. I will cheerfully, brazenly and entirely without supporting evidence claim it as the best iPres so far. I can confidently predict that it’s a title I’ll be handing to Illinois in September, which promises to be the best iPres ever. So if you enjoyed it last time, or you’ve missed out on previous years, don’t worry because the best is yet to come.
An eventful start
My first experience of iPres was San Francisco in 2009. I remember the Best Western in Geary Street, promisingly named ‘Hotel California’ and my entire staff (my whole staff was called Carol then because there were only two of us) laughing that I could check out any time I liked but would never leave. She wasn’t wrong. It was a long journey. All flights from London were cancelled and I had lost my mobile phone somewhere between the plane and the hotel. Then my bank blocked my card after a security call, to confirm it really was me at the ATM in Union Square, had gone unanswered. So there was nothing doing except wait in the hotel for the handset to be found and returned. A prisoner of my phone device.
The power of presentations
This was not an auspicious start to my conference career, so you might wonder why I came back.
A simple answer is to be found in the presentations and the content. These matter a great deal. I remember being genuinely impressed in 2009 by my first proper exposure to things like workflow management and micro-services architectures: taken for granted now but major steps forward then. Year on year – I’ve been to iPres ten times now – the papers have helped inform and situate my practical and conceptual knowledge of digital preservation.
I can still remember a killer paper about database preservation in Lisbon, a wild debate about OAIS in Bern and a series of outstanding keynotes in Amsterdam, the latter I can now replay through the magic of webcasting. I recall Chris Prom’s and Tricia Patterson’s tutorial on email preservation in Boston in 2018, and Helen Hockx-Yu describing the challenges of streaming media for web archiving in Vienna in 2010. I have revisited, cited and recommended these and many many other papers and posters over the years. So if you work in digital preservation, iPres is going to matter sooner or later.
That’s only half of the story though. In fact it’s significantly less than half. The people I have met and the relationships I have formed have been fundamental to my progress and professional confidence in digital preservation, and this is why I came back and continue to do so.
Connecting beyond the content
That’s only half of the story though. In fact it’s significantly less than half. The people I have met and the relationships I have formed have been fundamental to my progress and professional confidence in digital preservation, and this is why I came back and continue to do so.
I remember the time I took the unusual (and for me quite brave) step of disagreeing with David Rosenthal about some detail of a presentation he had given, and knowing I was right, him welcoming my contribution. I honestly cannot remember what we discussed, but I can take you to the room where it happened in Bern in 2016 because I walked away a little taller. I remember chatting about book recommendations with colleagues from Finland while waiting for a bus in Kyoto. (Vaino Linna’s ‘Unknown Soldiers’ is on the shelf behind me as a I write.) I remember the kindness of a Portuguese delegate when a friend’s wallet and phone were stolen in Lisbon. I remember Zhenxin Wu explaining the Mid-Autumn festival to me as we walked to a restaurant in Boston under a full moon.
I honestly don’t think I would be able to do the job I do now without the friendship and advice of these and many, many other people I have met at iPres over the years. That’s not to say these have been the only or even the most important influences. But you can know everything there is to know about digital preservation and still if you’re doing it alone you’re not doing it right. Digital preservation is a journey and like all journeys you can progress quickly on your own, or you can progress far in company. So come to in Illinois. It’ll be great.
Come to iPres for the papers. Stay with iPres for the people.
