Summing-up

The conference gathered 786 delegates from 20 countries. Russian delegates came from Moscow, Saint-Petersburg and other 50 regions. 168 papers were registered and presented during 5 conference days in 2 plenary sessions and 13 sections. Workshops, round table discussions, a master-class, a game –contest for teenagers were organised as special events.

At the Exhibition “Multimedia in Culture, Art and Education” 38 institutions showed 176 exhibits (CD-ROMs, Internet-sites, data-bases, software and hardware for cultural institutions, video-films on culture, art and education). The 7^th annual festival “Content” winners were presented and awarded and the annual festival “ADIT-Premium” was announced.

The main Conference organisers are Centre PIC and the State Tretyakov Gallery. The Conference was supported by the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Science and Technologies of the Russian Federation, by the Russian Foundation for Fundamental Researches, by the Open Society Institute (George Soros Foundation – Moscow), by the Moscow Department Non- movable Cultural Heritage Preservation and other institutions. Technical support of FORMOZA(computers) and ACTIVISION (projection equipment) was also important.

The EC Delegation in Russia is interested in EVA Moscow conferences starting from 1998. In 2002 the delegation was represented by JL Lavroff, Counsellor for Science and Technology.

EVA2002 Moscow working languages are Russian and English. Simultaneous interpretation during the key sessions was organised. The papers of foreign speakers were translated into Russian.

The Conference proceedings were printed before the conference in Russian and English and given to the delegates at registration as well as the conference Programme, the list of delegates, the Exhibition catalogue and CD-ROM with the previous EVA Moscow Proceedings.

All conference events are free of charge. Cultural visits to the State Trtyakov gallery, to the Moscow Kremlin Museums, to the State Pushkin Fine Arts Museum, to the State Historical museum, to the Moscow Art Library were organised.

Conference WEB-site (www.evarussia.ru ) in Russian and English was opened for information and registration from May 2002. The conference Programme, lists of delegates and institutions, abstracts and papers, the illustrated exhibition catalogue are available on the WEB-site. The WEB-site is accessible also between the EVA Moscow conferences, the lists of events are updated regularly. The WEB-site is hosted by ARTINFO. From July 2002 till February 2003 the WEB-site had 10228 visits.

A copy of the WEB-site with the conference announcement and the programme, the lists of delegated and institutions, abstracts and papers, the illustrated exhibition catalogue, the photo album will be published on CD-ROM for further promotion.

EVA2002 Moscow brought new topics and new trends. Audiovisual archives and collections are becoming traditional with the help of EСHOLOT annual conference organised by Centre PIC and other activities on audoarchiving.

The section “Culture and Business: active partnership” was new at EVA Moscow and showed the interest to the economy of culture and to the ways of cultural enhancement through new technologies.

Round table "Retro-conversion of museum, library, archive catalogues" was a place of a deep discussion of digitisation problems. As libraries and archives used professional digitisation facilities and services museums tried to do it themselves. The first museums (the State Russian Museum, the State Tretyakov Gallery) started to use professional technologies and services for retro-conversion only in 2002.

“Information society and communication problems” section (7 papers + one paper without presentation) brought the problems of cultural heritage – person, museum – visitor, government – citizen etc. communication in the information society. The need of common vocabulary, terminology understanding was discussed.

Regional session in 2002 presented Tatarstan and brought discussion of multilingual and multicultural problems. Seven papers were presented at the specifically Tatarstan session and some more papers from Tatrstan were presented at other sessions and at the exhibition. The Tatarstan session was the most successful.

Educational aspect was much stronger in 2002: 15 papers were presented at the section “IST and Education” and 2 papers were published without presentations. 7 papers were presented at the section “ Information Technologies for Museum and Library Pedagogic” (compare with 10 and 7 papers in 2001 respectively). The game-contest for teen-agers on the books and the CD-ROM “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the looking glass” was evident success and was highly estimated by school teachers and by James Hemsley. The game showed how information technologies could be used in learning process.

Master-class “Multimedia technologies in culture and education” is a new a new form of EVA Moscow activities. James Hemsley highly estimated the multimedia projects of the participant and proposed to summarise this experience at EVA2003 Florence. It was decided to proceed with this form of activities at future Moscow EVAs. For the first time the master-class united the efforts of a software company, University professors and content holders.

International co-operation and synergy with other EU projects were much stronger then the previous years. Ten papers presented at the International section on the first conference day and Round Table discussion "Russia, East Europe, Baltic and EU co-operation" lead by James Hemsley (NMS, Scotland) with participation of Davis Fuegi (MDR partners, UK) on the last conference day were essential conference frame work. The International aspect was also strengthened by the Cultivate-Russian information day and the E-cultureNet meeting.

The following FP5 projects were presented at EVA2002 Moscow:

EVAN

Cultivate, Cultivate-Russia

Pulman, Pulman-XT

E-culture Net

DigiCULT Forum

TRIS

FP6 was presented in Claude Poliart paper.
UNESCO programme “Information for all” was also presented.

Russian participation in future EU projects was discussed at E-cultureNet meeting, at ADIT meeting (VOLGA project of NETIMAGE, France, presented by Jean Barda), with JL Lavroff (EC Delegation in Russia). The future of Cultivate, Pulman, EVAN with Russian participation was discussed.

The paper of M. Morbey, York University, Toronto “Cybercolonialism in the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia: Does it Matter?” attracted the public attention and was discussed here and there during the whole conference week.

EVA Moscow is growing every year in participation (630 delegates in 2001 and 786 in 2002), in paper quantity (138 papers in 2001 and 168 papers in 2002), in topic diversity and is becoming one of the most important digital culture conferences in Russia.

EVA Moscow and the conference WEB site are good instruments of the Russian digital culture monitoring and analyses.

The diversity, quantity and quality of the conference events (plenary and parallel sessions, conference-inside-EVA, pre-EVA conference ECHOLOT, workshops and master-classes, game-contest for teen-agers, exhibitions, and festivals) show that EVA Moscow is becoming a real digital culture forum.