During the window of beautiful weather (26^th – 30^th March) Anthony Beck, Dan Boddice, Rob Fry, Chris Gaffney and David Stott all attended the Computer Applications in Archaeology conference in Southampton. The conference was fantastic: there were 8 sessions of interesting presentations, many useful contacts and new friendships were made (as well as old friendships renewed) and there was obviously the socialising! It was interesting to put physical form to people I had only seen as twitter avatars. Dan, Rob and David all gave very good presentations on their different DART research strands (which will soon be on slideshare and available in the presentations section), Chris and Ant were part of a roundtable session examining ‘Problems, methods and solutions in archaeological prospection’ and Ant gave an impromptu presentation on DART and our approach to data sharing.

Our position on open science and open data, particularly in respect of a sensor rich multi-temporal data set, was well received by the community. One of the benefits of this approach is the goodwill that this generates. As a result Dr. Rachel Opitz (Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies, University of Arkansas) has offered to processes the Full Waveform LiDAR data that NERC ARSF is collecting. This is fantastic news: not only does it take off the processing pressure but it enhances our collaborative network and crucially brings in an international colleague.

In addition I spent some time talking to member of the archaeological community who might want to re-use the DART data in teaching and learning. This includes undergraduate courses and projects (final year undergraduate, MSc and PhD), Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and outreach. Everyone I approached expressed interest so once the data server is up and running I will follow up with Simon Crutchley (EH), Steve Davis (UCD), Graham Earl (Soton), Helen Goodchild (York), Stuart Jeffrey (ADS) and Axel Posluschny (ArcLands).

You can find Ant Beck’s mindmap of the conference here.

During the window of beautiful weather (26^th – 30^th March) Anthony Beck, Dan Boddice, Rob Fry, Chris Gaffney and David Stott all attended the Computer Applications in Archaeology conference in Southampton. The conference was fantastic: there were 8 sessions of interesting presentations, many useful contacts and new friendships were made (as well as old friendships renewed) and there was obviously the socialising! It was interesting to put physical form to people I had only seen as twitter avatars. Dan, Rob and David all gave very good presentations on their different DART research strands (which will soon be on slideshare and available in the presentations section), Chris and Ant were part of a roundtable session examining ‘Problems, methods and solutions in archaeological prospection’ and Ant gave an impromptu presentation on DART and our approach to data sharing.

Our position on open science and open data, particularly in respect of a sensor rich multi-temporal data set, was well received by the community. One of the benefits of this approach is the goodwill that this generates. As a result Dr. Rachel Opitz (Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies, University of Arkansas) has offered to processes the Full Waveform LiDAR data that NERC ARSF is collecting. This is fantastic news: not only does it take off the processing pressure but it enhances our collaborative network and crucially brings in an international colleague.

In addition I spent some time talking to member of the archaeological community who might want to re-use the DART data in teaching and learning. This includes undergraduate courses and projects (final year undergraduate, MSc and PhD), Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and outreach. Everyone I approached expressed interest so once the data server is up and running I will follow up with Simon Crutchley (EH), Steve Davis (UCD), Graham Earl (Soton), Helen Goodchild (York), Stuart Jeffrey (ADS) and Axel Posluschny (ArcLands).