I recently attended the Dev8D conference (14 – 16 February, 2012) which is primarily aimed at developers working in Higher Education, but also attracts developers from other sectors. The conference is a mix of invited speakers, delegates offering talks, workshops and tutorials. The event is free for the attendee and is funded by JISC and other sponsors. The Professional Development Group of IT Services at the University of Bristol were kind enough to fund my travel, accommodation and subsistence.
One of the great aspects of the conference are the whiteboards where delegates can offer to do talks or ask for talks. In the afternoon, those sessions that attracted the most interest went ahead – you put a mark next to a session you were interested in with a marker pen. One such session was the really informative session by Owen Stephens and Thomas Meehan on library data. I’ve started accessing library data for m-biblio and they provided a really useful session on MARC and why library catalogues provide the information in a certain format. The session was a rich mine of information on systems, tools and formats!
For a more detailed report on the event, see my personal blog.