This seminar on digital storytelling in St Kilda here in Melbourne on the 18th of August looks interesting. ACMI runs workshops on this stuff and early last year I helped make a documentary about the history of waterskiing on the Yarra river (which was sort of fun). And of course, there is milkbar.com.au
ACMI held a conference on Digital Storytelling earlier this year, but I heard from a number of people who attended that the people who spoke at the conference were not really qualified to do so. I checked the lineup, and it did seem a bit hit and miss (at least half the national speakers do not really know anything about digital storytelling or issues of engaging with the past (ie. look at the rather bizarre choices of speakers from QUT, RMIT, and Swinburne media studies). Basically, I agree that there were too many academics there from fields that do not really understand the past nor understand the ways we engage with it through new technologies. I think that the seminar in St Kilda will be a lot better and I really hope that Digital Storytelling isn't hijacked by the wrong people as it seemed to be at the First Person Conference. It is good to see that people from Museums, Libraries, Local Government, and trained public Historians are invited to this one. I wish them luck.
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