Recently, three of our team - Piers, Sarah and Tyler - were guests at the 26th SouthEast Asia-Pacific Audio Visual Archive Association (SEAPAVAA) conference in the heat and humidity of Ipoh, Malaysia, very kindly supported by the National Archives of Malaysia, who also supported our travel to the conference.
SEAPAVAA, the conference organiser, is an important institution supporting the audio visual archives across the region:
Founded in 1996, the SouthEast Asia-Pacific Audio Visual Archive Association (SEAPAVAA) is a professional association of organisations and individuals involved or interested in the development of audiovisual archiving in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. It aims to promote archiving of the region’s rich audiovisual heritage and assists members in strengthening their capabilities in this specialised field through training, consultancy and networking. As of 2025, SEAPAVAA has 84 members which include memory institutions (archives, libraries, museums), broadcasters, universities, professionals and the like from 24 different countries around the world.
Our team was there on request from SEAPAVAA to deliver our “Duct Tape and Downloads” workshop, which is an introductory level workshop that provides an overview of Digital Preservation, and how it can be achieved on a tight budget, by starting with the underlying principles and steps and ensuring that we demystify as much of this process as possible. Piers also gave a talk at SEAPAVAA on our Metadata Annotation Transcription Engine (MATE), where he was talking through how Artificial Intelligence can help to solve some of the challenges that are faced by archives in areas like transcription, description, access examination and search and discovery.
We asked the team to give us their highlights from the conference, and here’s what they came up with - along with their favourite photo!
Sarah:
SEAPAVAA was a unique opportunity in which we were asked to give back to the community in just the way we always want to. We were invited to give a full-day workshop on the basics of digital preservation, and this went off quite well. To start, the workshop was capped at 40 participants. We had over 50. It was a long day, but all in all a very successful one. The best compliment received from the workshop was that it was the perfect material that fills a crucial gap in available online materials. Having done the workshop on Sunday, participants and conference attendees engaged with us frequently throughout the rest of the week. It was rewarding to hear about digital preservation practices and challenges from a range of countries. Subsequently, we heard how our training materials will help inform a solution or a part of a workflow.
Piers’ session on MATE was well complemented by a presentation from Singapore Archives about the use of generative AI descriptive metadata and the exploration of how and when a human is required in the process. The audience was engaged, and there were some great questions about models and compute resources.
A surprising benefit for us attending SEAPAVAA was actually strengthening some of our relationships here in Australia and New Zealand. We openly discussed digital preservation challenges, emerging trends, and shared a few laughs. Presenting and attending at SEAPAVAA helps to bolster the visibility of Gaia Resources, both in the local community and regionally.
Tyler:
This was my first SEAPAVAA and my first time in Malaysia. While I’ve visited many countries around Malaysia, I’ve never had the chance to stop in, which is a regret because it is an incredibly beautiful place.
This was our third time presenting our in-person workshop, Duct Tape and Downloads: Digital Preservation on a Budget, and from the feedback we’ve had so far, it sounds like it had an impact on many attendees. The day-long workshop covered the basics of digital preservation in a pragmatic and solution-focused way. We run this workshop in a more informal style, encouraging participants to ask questions or share stories throughout the day, whenever they want. This open environment helps share stories from people who have already started their journey, encouraging those who are just starting, and helping others solve problems they didn’t know existed. This community-sharing spirit continued throughout the rest of the conference, during which we had amazing discussions about the projects people are working on, how others could help, potential tools, the challenges they face, how they could apply to their collections or organisations, and much more.
This conference was filled with talented people, excited about what they do, and hungry to talk about it. By the end, there were too many interesting conversations to count. There are still challenges in the world of audio-video preservation, unfortunately we didn’t solve all of them in a week (maybe next time!), but I’m confident that a few more have been solved at SEAPAVAA.
Piers:
SEAPAVAA was a welcome break from the usual and I was particularly excited to get back to Malaysia, where I have had the fortune to spend a fair bit of time over the years (although I'm sorry to my Malaysian side of the family that I didn't get to see them on this trip!).
While audio-visual archiving is a bit of a specialist area, but there were still so many areas that were of interest on this trip - some of the challenges of working with larger files, degrading media and carriers, different format types and so on are where this area really does extend the scope and practice of archiving. I find that the audio-visual side of archiving always leaves me thinking about issues like scalability and performance in the systems that we develop and support for archives, no matter where they are located geographically.
Our workshop and my talk seemed to go well, so I am happy that we managed to give back to the community at this conference. It was educational talking about some of the challenges that are faced in Southeast Asia; not just the humidity and temperature issues to deal with, but also challenges of different languages, cultures, and political systems. It will always be a challenge to work across this diverse region but we now understand it so much better than we did, and that's mostly thanks to the wonderful people we met on this trip.
My favourite photo is the one below, which was taken when we were at a ... conference-adjacent rather impromptu event at Abe Archive Books in Ipoh. A group of us went to this little bookstore/space, showed a few of the archival gems from the conference, and generally espoused the value of archives - and had a great time! (Thanks for the photo Joshua Harris!)
SEAPAVAA was obviously an interesting and engaging event not just for our team but also for some of the workshop participants as well. Some of the feedback included:
I will definitely look through the slides and keep in touch as questions inevitably pop up. Thanks again to the whole Gaia Resources team for putting together such an engaging and valuable workshop. Also, it was great having you here in Ipoh! I'm so glad to hear you enjoyed your time in Malaysia.
I will be sharing whatever I've learned with my team back home. Hoping that we can stay in touch and work on building tools to help our archiving process in the future.
The team really enjoyed the trip and we look forward to continuing to give back to the archiving community as well. Stay tuned for a few other outcomes from SEAPAVAA and some more news on our Duct Tape and Downloads workshops in the near future - and in the meantime if you’d like to get in touch with us drop us a line at [email protected], give us a call on +61 8 92277309 or reach out on our social media channels LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram.
Jarrad