Allison Druin will close the conference with a talk focusing on her work as Special Advisor for National Digital Strategy at the National Park Service:
The speed of change in the digital world makes it difficult to point to just one tool, technology, or “digital infrastructure” that can support all the education, conservation, and historic preservation priorities of the National Park Service. It is that combination of data (content), software (interactivity), and device (context) that can address the priorities of NPS for the next century. It is important to remember that digital infrastructure can change more quickly than physical infrastructure. The power of digital is that it is so malleable for change, but this is also the challenge. The speed of change and the scale of impact, is unprecedented. Digital innovation makes use of a variety of new tools that can address future challenges with novel solutions. Yet, innovation can be disruptive, transformative, and can still be an achievement that leads to new shared infrastructure.
Given this landscape of change and opportunity, we have to ask, how do we create communities of practice that can become true communities of innovation? How can we support workforce development, and build leadership pipelines for the digital work we must undertake?
The opportunities are there, but the challenges are many when considering constrained resources, silo-ed structures of leadership, and federal regulations. I will talk about these opportunities and challenges for the next century of service.
