Minutes

Specialists from technology and marketing sectors of the Romanian market, from press agencies and from cultural institutions contributed actively in the debates.
Discussions were moderated by Gheorghe Samoila, ITC coordonator of BRTs and SWs in ACTeN who presented the context in which the BRT is organized, the aim of discussions and invited Grigore Popescu General Manager of ITC to open discussions.

Grigore Popescu in his managerial quality of an Institution involved in IST e-content related projects reminding his participation to the WSISA award in Geneva spoke about a serious problem the world is facing now, respectively the "digital divide" which, neglected, will lead to serious inequalities in the world. His intervention stressed the idea that the access to information should be unblocked by social problems, by poverty and disbalance. It emphasized also the idea that this problem is not only global between rich and poor countries, but also local, inside societies where several factors stop the people to have access to new technologies. He analysed the Romanian economic and cultural context as symptomatic for NAS countries and discovered economycal, cultural, psychological factors. He stressed the idea that neglecting cultural aspects of content leads to negative impact, the Internet used to spread culture has also the negative aspect of spreading the subculture, the shining atraction to technology overshadow often the strive for quality content and launched the rethoric question of how IT and communication served culture. The remarcable involvement of IT in cultural project as the 3D scanning of documents of the Vatican Archive done by IBM, or the in-depth scanning of Painting found in Louvre Museum, though remarcable, are still isolated and should be expanded to many other cultural projects.

Gheorghe Samoila spoke about the necessity of a National approach even in multimedia products as our country goes toward integration into European cultural space. It is imperative, from this point of view, to conserve the values (Romanian folklore is one of the richest in Europe, the Byzance heritage, the unicity of our culture-Romanians are Latin and Eastern Orthodox in the same time). That is why he reiterates the multimedia projects presenting the treasures of the Mediaeval section of the National Museum of Art from Bucharest as a project where exceptional content is implemented into a multimedia project.

He invited Roxana Theodorescu, General Manager of the National Museum of Art to expose the specific problems of this museum.
She apreciated that the cooperation established years ago with ITC was fruitfull, generating interesting projects, as the first interactive information point in Romania installed at the museum. It was a happy encounter between technology and content with benefic results for the public. She mentioned also how IBM helped too, the institution and apreciated that there are still ways to improve the presence of the museum on the web, or to develop a project of an image database which can exploit the content of the museum heritage making it more clearly available to a larger audience.

Ioan Opris, State Secretary at the Minister of Culture and Religious Affairs came with a general view over the cultural problems and the New technological tools offered by the Information Society. He stressed the fact that, generally, in the last years, cultural institutions found solutions to informatise their activity and mentioned the large project of creating the National Heritage Network, a database of the whole heritage found in museums all over Romania. He made an apeal to a more systematic approach and a more active cooperation from technology side because synergetic actions can produce great benefits for, both cultural sector and technological one. He mentioned also the active role of multimedia production as a cultural segment itself and spoke about the second edition of the Award for the Best Cultural Content of a multimedia product as a prestigious event.

Doina Banciu, general manager of Central Institute for Informatics and INFOSOC Program coordinator spoke about her experience as a professor of Digital Libraries at the Bucharest University and coordinator of Infososc program. This experience is clearly described by dynamic projects run by SMEs inside the INFOSOC program which financed tenuous research projects for the New Information Society. She saluted this event whose title put in discussion the notion of „Information’s culture" which should be separated from that of Informatics culture, a different notion. It is advisable for Institutions to make proposals for projects for cultural institutions and they will have the support of Infososc program definitely.

Serban Mestecaneanu, Communication Manager at the British Cultural Center spoke about the sense of community generated by the local networks accessing the Internet, telling how the administrators of these networks can control information over the Internet and can influence opinions with serious effects over the people. He communicated to the audience how British Cultural Center generated and supported programs for the Romanian Information Society benefiting from a strong infrastructure, British Cultural Center’s Information point being in a large proportion virtual. In the strive to be permanently updated in IST field, the experience of British Cultural Center can be used. He made also an appeal to those who place cultural content over the Internet-responsability should be the must, because mass spread information means sometimes low cultural standards.

Mircea Angelescu, Director in the Culture and Religious Affairs Minister spoke about the seeds of a new cultural paradigm noting a notable shift toward the visual zone which claims also a high responsability toward the content.

Catalin Niculescu Manager of New Solutions at Nokia spoke about the efforts that Nokia made to help cultural projects. It is not only through direct sponsorship, but mainly for designing new technological facilities which can implement mobile applications essential for the Information Society of today and in the same time for the cultural areas. The intelligent guide based on location sensitive operation can be used for turistic applications. It is culture’s turn to put cultural content into these new mobile applications.

Horea Murgu, professor of Multimedia at the University of Theatre and Film from Bucharest spoke about the role of such programs for the education of young students. Multimedia is an available tool for education and he stressed the idea that the development of DVDs overcomes the CD-ROMs production offering a valuable alternative.

Georgeta Gabrea spoke about multimedia and architecture where Bucharest, „The Little Paris" offered an interesting subject for a comparative approach of the French architecture of the 20th century and the Bucharest’s architecture of the same period. This multimedia approach could be an interesting subject of a multimedia product.

Gheorghe Samoila, moderator, apreciated the quality and relevance of the participants’s intervention and invited participants to conclude the session watching a presentation of the Multimedia products selected for The Best Cultural Content of a Multimedia product Award.